No Regrets

I'd like to take you back just about 4 years ago.  To a small consulting room in a public hospital in Sydney.  And to a consultation with the most insensitive doctor imaginable.

I won't go into the details of the consultation, our first after finding out that I had PCOS.  Needless to say he believed that IVF was the way to go, and wasn't interested in discussing anything else, most particularly our views and thoughts on what was ethically appropriate.

Of course, we did go onto to do IVF (doing our best not to have him as our doctor while we did!), and now we prepare for our last.  But there is something in that terrible appointment that is still with me, and I can't help remembering it.

The doctor talked about a scenario in the future, when we are old and we are meeting a peer who says, "These are my Grandkids, where are yours'".  It is a horribly insensitive, terrible picture for an IFer.  But the point he made was this: "You may be able to have kids, you may not.  But you don't want to be that elderly person, filled with regrets with what you didn't do".

I still disagree with the premise behind his words.  Earl and I will only do what we think is right for any children we make, and if that means we don't have kids, then there will still be no regrets.  But that idea of no regrets has been a huge part of this cycle, started last night with my first injection.

We bought Earl some sperm assisting vitamins.  Now there has never been a problem that anyone has observed with Earl's sperm.  But you never know with these things, and I don't want to ever think- we could have done more and didn't.  No regrets.

I'm back on the vitamins I was on when we got pregnant with Thumper.  Again, nothing the doctor has told us to do, nothing special or significant about this mix of supplements.  But I would kick myself if I didn't do my best to replicate Thumper conditions.  No regrets.

The biggest one I'm failing on, the one that I'm really worried about regretting is my weight.  I am a little bit over-weight, and at least 3, maybe 4kg over what I was when I got pregnant with Thumper.  This worries me somewhat, but unless I do some crazy diet (which I don't think is a good idea is the throws of IVF, and lets face it, anytime!), I think I just have to live with it.  I'm still not very overweight, I'm still a great deal less than I was when I started this process, and I am going to exercise my butt off in the coming weeks.  So that can't hurt the process.  But I really hope its not something I regret into the future, and it definitely makes me feel guilty and sad.

Earl asked what I was writing on and I told him and he told me I was being ridiculous if I thought that a couple of kilos would make a difference.  I feel a bit better.

And our doctor is trying everything, even things he doesn't feel are particularly scientific, because he doesn't want us with any regrets either.

But there is another thing about this no regrets thing.  Part of it is the nature of this last cycle.  We have really tried everything.  Everything.  We've had a red hot go at IVF.  We've tried, and if it doesn't happen now, well then, we did our best.  There is something incredibly freeing about this.  I will be sad, I will be disappointed.  But I will have no regrets.  We did everything we could, and we did it upholding what we believe is right.

And there is a sense in which, if this doesn't work, then ED is the next path, and it is a good one.

No regrets.  But oh for a few less kgs!
LG