Onto Clomiphene cycle number four. Personally I don’t believe that Clomiphene alone will bring Bumble to us. The drug is used to induce and regulate ovulation, but my body was doing that naturally anyway, the only difference is it now happens around day 13-14 of my cycle instead of 16-18. The process has almost become a game to me now, something to pass the time while we wait for our next doctor’s appointment. I wonder what delight of side-effects it will bring to me this time. It seems I am dealt a different hand each cycle. Headaches, nausea, extreme tiredness…Looking back I think even my depression last month was triggered by the drug as it was so concentrated, ending as suddenly as it started, at the time of my cycle where the side effects usually occur. I don’t know what I expected. I knew what the drug did but for some reason I was so excited about starting it, some insane hope that this might be our miracle cure. It’s said to help in cases of unexplained fertility but the hope I had that it would help us is wearing pretty thin.
Hope is a funny thing and I know other bloggers have written extensively about it. At this stage of our journey I have pretty much given up hope. My biggest falls to date have come after hope-filled cycles. I build it up, think how one day I’ll be a mum. I feel positive about the future, about where we’re at, about how much there is left to try. Then I get my period and it all comes crashing down. Regardless of the fact that I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter if it happened this cycle or the next, or even some cycle far in the future, that one day of the month where my body shows its first signs of rebelling and all dreams turn to dust. For a few days I find it hard to pick myself up and keep going. I don’t want to do anything, I cry, I can’t face other people and their babies or their happy pregnant bellies. Everything just feels so pointless.
I let myself fall into the hope trap in Clomiphene round two and it wasn’t pretty, so I gave up on hope. Roll on the failure of cycle three and I feel next to nothing. No tears, no feeling down about our situation, nothing. It’s almost like I suspended all feeling and the absence of emotion makes the negative result bearable. There is no disappointment, nothing to get down about, nothing to cry over. I didn’t hope for something so there was no loss to mourn when nothing came about. Some people may say that suspending emotion is not a healthy way to deal with what’s going on, that it will come back to bite me in the arse further down the track and maybe that’s true, but if it means I am able to be myself, to hang out with my friends, to function as a normal human being for just a month or two out of this whole process then I’m prepared to deal with whatever emotions my body chooses to inflict on me somewhere down the track. Personally I wish I could feel this way for the rest of our infertility journey (presuming it has an end that is) but already I can feel hope sneaking back in at the beginning of this cycle. To reference Yet Another Bitter Infertile, hope truly is a virus. No matter how hard you try to fight it, it wiggles its way back in infecting your body, your mind, and your soul.
So on with Clomiphene cycle four and preparing myself as best I can to deal with the blow hope has in store for me at the end of it. At least this round has at doctor’s appointment at its conclusion where I can beg and plead to move on to the next step of the journey. Onto something I can truly be hopeful about.
Waiting For Bumble 