Today show's Style Editor, Bobbie Thomas said this in a recent interview about her journey with IVF and I'm pretty sure she took the words right out of my mouth. I don't follow other infertility blogs or really read all that much about the process that other people go through (I used to, just not anymore), but I received this article in my email today and reading it made me feel so much better. At this point in the IVF cycle, I know I have a couple more days to go with increasing medications and symptoms so each day feels slightly worse than the previous. Hearing the story of someone else really helps me feel at ease with the process and like I'm not just all alone, trapped in my own head, feeling crazy. These could be my words:
You’re usually a very private person. What made you decide to go public?
"People don’t understand, like, IF you can afford it, IF you can suck it up and get through all the shots and the doctor appointments and the surgery, you are still just going to be spinning the roulette wheel hoping that the number lands on you. There is no guarantee. I have met women who told me they were going through this and they always say until you walk in someone’s shoes, but wow. The admiration, the heart I have now for other women…I would give them a hug on the street if I knew what they were going through. I just wish I had known more, and that is another one of the reasons I wanted to open up about this."
And the side effects of the hormones, like the weight gain—how did you deal? What advice would you offer to women going through this?
"I think the biggest thing that women talk about is the physical frustration of the weight gain and feeling hormonal. It’s hard enough, without all the drugs, for us as women to love the way we look, so you can only imagine what happens when you say, “Let’s just pump you full of hormones and then add on five to eight pounds!” But this isn’t about feeling fat—and I want to be really clear about that. Whether you are a size 6 or 26, it’s about you not feeling like yourself. You feeling like “ugh”: you’re breaking out, your face is a different shape, your feet are swollen, your favorite jeans don’t fit, your bra doesn’t fit, your underwear is tight. This is about just feeling like an alien on hormones and not being able to control that your boobs are four times their normal size and they hurt. And that you’ve got bruises all over your body.
In the hardest moment in your life, you have to stop and realize that you’ve got to be nicer to yourself. I did little things to treat myself so I could feel beautiful in ways that had nothing to do with staring at myself in a particular outfit. But I did have to look in the mirror to realize that I was strong and I was really lucky to be doing what I was doing. And when you really think about being grateful, that really got me through bad days. It was the gratitude, and it was being nice to myself. I can be meaner to myself than any social media tweet, blog, whatever."
What has this whole process taught you?
"I feel so overwhelmed by love. Whatever my experience can do to help someone else, I feel that I have been so gifted with so many friends and awesome things in my life that if there is anything I can do to help somebody else so they don’t feel alone, they don’t feel crazy, they don’t feel fat, then I’m game. I feel like if something bad still happens, I am going to have that many more people rooting for me and sending me heartfelt words.
I also just want more women including myself—I say this out loud, we just really need to be nicer to ourselves. We have to be kind, we have to realize that we are not super human. But, I think the biggest lesson that I am going to take away from all of this is to love myself a little more and to be a little nicer to myself."
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And here is the story behind her positive pregnancy test! :-)
It must be so amazing to finally get that BFP! Tell us where you were when you heard the news.
So I had a really rough weekend because the Friday before I was supposed to go to my doctor for the blood test, I had the worst cramping and I started spotting. Of course, I freaked out because I assumed it didn’t work. I was inconsolable. I had snot coming out of my nose and onto my mouth and I called my doctor and she was like, “I can’t understand you!” My poor husband was just sitting there, and after listening to me cry for an hour she told him to run to the store and get a pee stick. When he came back I took the test and there’s a faint line, and I’m having this whole heart attack. So I take a picture of it and sent it to my doctor and then called her and she’s like, “I’ve been waiting for this, you’re fine, you’re fine. Just relax, it doesn’t mean the worst.” So we didn’t have full confirmation yet, but we had this crazy night where I Googled the heck out of everything: Do cramps mean you aren’t pregnant? Does spotting mean you aren’t pregnant? Does it mean you’re pregnant? And for every one answer that said no, one said yes.
The following morning we went in and we did the blood test. I’m so tired from freaking out the night before that I got home and soon fell asleep sitting up and my doctor called. We called her back an hour later and she said, “I can’t believe you missed the phone after freaking out all night! But you are pregnant, it reads positive.” I just sat there in shock and I just started crying. And she said, “You’re just hormonal.” I literally laughed. I know that was a long-winded story but that is what the IVF roller coaster is.
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