Infertility is difficult enough so when you finally do get pregnant (and you WILL), you should be rewarded with an Infertility Exemption Pass. This pass will guarantee a great pregnancy, no complications, no morning sickness; just a beautiful healthy belly bump that you deserve to show off. First off, everyone (from those who got pregnant on their first try to those who struggled to conceive) are entitled to a good pregnancy without complications BUT Fertility Gods, just give us a break here and give us the Infertility Exemption Pass. We’ve put in our time, paid thousands of dollars to have a fertility doctor knock us up, failed, succeeded, failed again, and when (not if) it happens, we want it to go smoothly.
Fertility Gods in preparation, kindly exempt us from morning sickness, miscarriage, and complications. Please bring us a healthy baby. And we don’t mean to be greedy but while you’re at it, also kindly exempt us from 1. Excessive acne (we already have some from the fertility drugs), 2. Excessive weight gain (again, we have that already from the fertility drugs), 3. We hear that some women become uglier during pregnancy. No need for that. 4. An easy and pain-free labor and delivery (preferably on a good hair day as well). Thank you in advance.
In the meantime, keep bringing us hope, strength and determination because what isn’t today, could be tomorrow.
I have to say that the one good thing about struggling with infertility is that I don’t have enough space in my brain to worry about miscarriage. It’s like I’ll deal with that when (if?) I get there but right now, while I worry about everything else, I haven’t had the luxury of worrying about that yet. It’s in the back of my brain for sure as I read the stats for women 40 and older but I am successfully able to keep it way in the back for now.
Thanks so much for this blog, btw. I love it so much. It feels like a lifesaver.
AMEN!!!!
As if we’re not disillusioned enough. It should be impossible for Infertiles to experience complications and miscarriage once we finally get pregnant! Come on, fertility gods, throw us a frickin’ bone!
While I agree we shouldn’t have a complicated pregnancy after IF, I’m noticing that now that I am PAIF my stress is higher than ever. Even if you have no morning sickness, etc you worry about not having the symptoms! And of course there is the constant worry of miscarriage. I think IF has basically made us insane and that doesn’t go away after our BFP :/ Don’t get me wrong, I’m so happy that IVF worked for us and I’m not complaining about anything…just scared of losing what took so long to get. Hopefully it will be easier after the 1st trimester.
After six years of treatments and several miscarriages later, I finally got another BFP with my last IVF. This post is so dead on! I am a worse mess than I was prior to this pregnancy! I am 13 weeks pg with twins and my anxiety/stress level is off the charts! I worry about certain symptoms, the lack of symptoms, every little cramp, etc…
Just like the previous comment, I am extremely thrilled to be where I’m at. I just wish there was such a thing as the exemption pass. I’ve been through enough to last me the rest of my life! Just give me a break and let things go smoothly! I still haven’t even told anyone other than close family members and a few friends!
omg jen and ttc…1) congrats! and 2) i just found out on sunday, after 5 iui’s (one resulted in pregnancy but i miscarried), a failed ivf cycle and a FET that we’re pregnant – but i woke up in a PANIC yesterday morning because i didn’t have to get up and pee in the middle of the night and my boobs didn’t hurt – i was so close to tears! thankfully i was already scheduled for another beta yesterday and it had tripled in the 48 hours since the one on sunday so it put my mind at ease but seriously? the insanity is SO not funny!!!! i know we are not out of the woods yet but man, i SO can not wait for the next 8 weeks to be done!!!
The insanity is indeed NOT funny, I worry about everything there is to worry about and a little bit more :-S
In panic I almost verbaly attaced our RE when he wished me good luck with the pregnancy and the birth. ” Hey Dr. X, you knocked me up and now you´re leaving me all alone, what about your responsibility?? ”
I want to sleep through the next couple of weeks until my visit to the midwife.
Scandinavian endo girl
amen and halleluia! getting pregnant was hard enough the first time. then 25 weeks of a healthy and perfect pregnancy, only to lose my son to IC. and now we start over, a little older (we already felt like we waited too long), with only 2 IUI’s left to be covered by insurance. first appointment back w/ the RE next week to see where to go from here. can’t we get a break!?
In a perfect world this would be the case! But I guess in a perfect world women would not suffer from infertility-! Love your blog makes me smile— laughing about infertility, this is a miracle
I think a lot of us PAIF’ers spend so much time during pregnancy in denial that some symptoms tend to go by almost unnoticed as it is! It’s only when you start knocking things over with your bump that you realise “oh hold on… baby on board? REALLY?!” and go though the day/week/month in a stunned stupor.
I so wish this was true. After nearly four years of trying, and finally achieving a BFP after IVF (at the tender age of 42), I’m now in the traumatic and hellish wait for a final scan which is likely to confirm a missed miscarriage and need to book in for a D&C next week – and in the same day surgery that knocked me up! All I can say (with pitch-black irony) is it’s just as well I kept all my fertility meds (blog #713) as I could be booking in for another cycle just before Christmas… And if you ever think about the possible complications, you’d never have the energy to start the process in the first place.
omg. Infertiles do deserve easy pregnancies. We tried for three years and then I was on bedrest and then my poor little man was miserable for three months with acid reflux. He cried for twenty hours a day while I fought with his pediatrician for zantac.
I’m finally pregnant and it’s horrible how anxious I am and how long this pregnancy seems. I had a scare around 5 months and it was terrible. While I was waiting for the doctor, I was sobbing hysterically, thinking, “I knew this was too good to be true! I will never have a baby!!”. People who got pregnant right away or, worse yet, while taking birth control, just don’t understand all my worrying. When you have tried so hard and undergone so many unpleasant things to get pregnant and you finally do, (a) you can’t believe that it actually has happened, and (b) you are paranoid that, even though you’re pregnant, you will never actually have your baby. I’m sure the paranoia and panic continues after birth, especially those first 6 months when you’re terrified they will die of SIDS. Maybe I should write a separate blog for infertiles who have finally conceived. Things not to say, “See, I told you it would happen!” (um, do you want me to tell you everything I had to do and undergo in order for it to happen?!). Also, I was adamantly child-free before I wanted children. I hated it when someone pointed out this obvious irony, “How funny! You didn’t want children two years ago and now you’re desperate to conceive!”. Ha, ha. No, that hadn’t crossed my mind at all. Thank you for pointing that out. How humorous indeed. GRRRR..
And I won’t be one of those people who says, “See, it happened to me! I will happen to you!” because I know that that is, unfortunately, not true. I do hope it happens to every single one of you, but I know that it’s just one more hurtful bingo.
My husband I were able to conceive after 4 years of trying. I worried constantly throughout the pregnancy expecting the rug to be ripped out from under me at any moment. I was a special ed.teacher in a behavior room throughout my pregnancy which added a lot of stress and danger to my pregnancy. We were in and out of the dr.’s office many times with bleeding issues. I had hard contractions that brought me to my knees from 20 weeks on. At 20 weeks, the dr. found cysts on my baby’s brain through an ultrasound that he was quite concerned about. This was all in addition to the regular pregnancy aches, pains, etc. I did not complain one time about any of my pregnancy symptoms to anyone. My friends who were pregnant at the same time continued to complain about feeling uncomfortable, etc., and they all told me how lucky I was that my pregnancy was going so smoothly. They had no idea what we were going through. I know that even if I had told them, they would have thought that the fact that they were vomiting once a day was much worse than anyone else’s situation. Personally, I believe that for the most part, people who get pregnant right away have no idea how lucky they are. I was just so happy to finally be pregnant that I had absolutely nothing to complain about. I delivered my son without any pain meds because I felt that was what was best for him, and truly I wanted to remember every moment of his birth. I had earned the right to feel that pain (again, something none of my friends who conceived right away understood at all). It was not until I held my baby in my arms that I stopped worrying about something going wrong with the pregnancy. We now have a healthy, happy, absolutely perfect 18 month old son, and we have been trying 13 months already for baby #2. We continue to sit on an adoption list also. Somehow, someway, we will have a sibling for our son. My friend who complained the loudest during her pregnancy called me a few months ago to tell me how lucky I am that I don’t get pregnant easily b/c oops, she’s pregnant again. Here we go again with the drama of how horrible it is to be pregnant. Some people just have no clue.
Thank you also for your blog. It has helped me immensely. Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in anywhere as an infertile who was able to have a child, but is back in the land of infertility again. Thank you!
I know ths thread is old…but i am finding it very helpful. After 4 years of trying, many failed iui’s, 2 polyp removal surgeries, 2 miscarriages and all the other fun stuff that comes with infertility…I am finally doing my first IVF this month! BUT I am so scared that if it works I will lose the baby…it’s a crippling fear. It seems everyone around me has successful pregnancies but me. Im glad to read that others have had the same fears and actually had their babies…Trying to remain hopeful
I’m here to claim that pass now, just to have it in hand for our next FER. I think I’ve been trough enough the past nine months to deserve it; constant nausia for 14 weeks- headaches from a distant place I don’t want to mention- worrying all the time- finally accepting the pregnancy and believing you will be a mom, just to find out the next day that you have to give birth to your babyangel at week 19. Starting over once again, new FER, new meds, new positive HPT- worrying all over again, m/c at week 8.
Will I ever be a mom to a live miracle? Can’t stop trying, won’t give up- not yet
Scandinavian endo girl
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I could use this pass right now. At 14 weeks, I’m terrified something will go wrong at anytime, I’m suffering from crippling all-the-time sickness, been hospitalized for dehydration…but watching my baby move on the ultrasound was worth it. That was a moment i’ve waited 10 years for.