Reflections: On Choices that are also Challenges
Revisiting a snapshot of my IVF experiences a year before the proverbial veil was lifted, noting the parallels of choices & challenges with regards to receiving IV Ketamine treatments as well.
Here’s something you might not know about me.
After having our miracle IVF baby in May of 2019, I became a doula. I was so impacted by the doulas who worked with us to bring our daughter into the world and help us adjust to being brand new parents - I wanted to do the same for others. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn - not just about pregnancy and childbirth and postpartum life, but also about all of the things that nobody talks about - infertility and miscarriage and stillbirth and termination for medical reasons. So, I took my training even further. I became a bereavement doula, and I specialized in infertility.
I had experienced so much of my own infertility journey by that time that I thought I could pass that knowledge along - not just to friends and family, but to readers and to clients across the country (one benefit of starting a business during a global pandemic - clients could be located anywhere!)
Leading up to the writing of the article you’re going to read below, I’d experienced 3 years of infertility - one year of trying to track my cycle and conceive spontaneously, followed by hearing the words “I’m so sorry, but you likely will never get pregnant without technological intervention,” and then a battery of testing, four failed rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI), an egg retrieval cycle, a failed fresh embryo transfer via In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), and then finally a successful frozen embryo transfer - my baby girl, whom I grew and carried for 35 weeks and 5 days before delivering a healthy and happy preemie.
At the time this article was written, I’d returned to IVF. We had two genetically normal male embryos originally frozen alongside our daughter, and I knew they were just waiting for me to provide them a home.
If only that’s how life had turned out…
Infertility Treatment: Choices & Challenges
August 31, 2020
I have wanted a baby for as long as I can remember. Literally. I started babysitting at age 12 and was elated that I could begin “playing mom.” So, when I began trying to conceive, I had no idea that it could take a long time. Or that it might not happen naturally for me.
You see, infertility is not a choice. If I am any indication, it seems that those who struggle to conceive want a baby so desperately that the medical diagnosis of Infertility seems cruel and ironic.
What happens next, after that diagnosis, it’s a choice.
A really really hard, really really complicated, really really shitty, really really hopeful choice that individuals and couples make every single day on whether to pursue fertility treatments.
A choice that comes with feelings, emotions, conversations, financial and physical burdens, and one that is not guaranteed to be without heartbreak. From surgeries and procedures preparing the body to assisted reproductive technology and gestational surrogacy, the options within this choice and their feasibility looks different for everyone.
I remember meeting with my Reproductive Endocrinologist for the first time. I remember thinking, well, she knows what she’s talking about. If she’s suggesting these tests, we should do them. Then, afterwards, when she suggested a “treatment plan” in accordance with our diagnosis of Unexplained Infertility and the stipulations from our insurance, I agreed. For us, that meant starting with IUI — a financially and physically less draining, less invasive choice.
And when this failed, we tried again. And again. And again.
Choosing to switch to IVF was just that. For me, it was knowing what we were getting into. It was knowing the challenges ahead. The financial strain. The physical discomfort. The time commitment. And the fears of the unknown. It was knowing these things, and choosing anyway.
Knowing that my want to carry a baby superseded my feelings in any of the other areas, we charged ahead.
When the Esterase made me sick, I didn’t say anything. When the PIO hurt, I didn’t say anything. When our first embryo transfer failed, I didn’t say anything. I chose this path, right? So I didn’t have any room to complain, right?
WRONG.
Yes, IVF was a choice. But IVF was a choice because of Infertility, which wasn’t. IVF was a choice, my choice, our choice, but it wasn’t something I actually wanted to do. I wanted to be intimate with my husband and then take a positive pregnancy test. But what I wanted wasn’t an option for me, and I had to process those feelings.
What I choose — IVF, wasn’t easy. It came with challenges and changes at every turn. Should I have said something? YES!!! Infertility treatment is HARD. IVF is HARD. Medications have side effects. Hormones change everything. Injections are painful. Nothing is guaranteed.
If you’re standing here right now, please please know you’re not alone. Please know that I think you should talk about it — with your partner or your friends or your family or in an online forum. You shouldn’t swallow the hard. The feelings. The exhaustion. The frustration. The devastation. It’s not fair. You didn’t choose this. You don’t deserve this. You are a badass warrior a thousand times over, but warriors have army’s for support. Warriors need army’s for support.
Reading this today has drawn an uncanny parallel
I’ve shared before that I have been receiving therapeutic IV Ketamine treatments since August to combat treatment resistant depression. Depression that started postpartum after I not only spontaneously got pregnant - something I was told could never happen, but the baby implanted two inches too high - in my fallopian tube. As the baby grew, the tube stretched as much as it could, until it ruptured, and filled my abdomen with 1.25 liters of blood.
[Note: Our bodies contain approximately 5 liters of blood. This meant that 24% of my entire blood volume infiltrated my stomach and the surrounding organs. Had my husband waited longer to call 9-1-1, I would’ve died on our bedroom floor. How utterly terrifying.]
In one night, I lost a baby I’d just learned about but had spent four years desperately wanting, I lost a body part that’s somewhat integral to that whole conception thing, and I lost myself - not just in part, but in whole.
Yes, choosing to opt in to IV Ketamine treatments was a choice. But Ketamine treatments were a choice because of treatment resistant depression, which wasn’t. I chose Ketamine, but only because I didn’t choose depression. Ketamine was a choice, my choice, but it wasn’t something I actually wanted to do. So yes, it was a choice, AND that choice was also a challenge.
I was so afraid of surrendering to a different type of medication, to a different process, to a guide who started off as a stranger. I was terrified of what was going to come out of my mouth. Of what was going to be drudged up from inside of my brain. I thought about the worst days and the hardest moments of my life - all involving loss and tragedy and trauma, and I wondered if I’d be able to handle it all. I had no idea how any of this worked five months ago. Since then, I’ve learned my way through so much more than I ever thought possible.
Honestly, I expected to spend a lot of time in treatment talking about the last three years… Delivering the twins in our bathroom and watching Noah’s heart stop beating. Medical malpractice, medical neglect, physical violations by medical staff, loss of genetic materials and an insane amount of medical gaslighting. The collection of diagnoses, injuries, surgeries and medications I’d gathered along the way…
But, I have been surprised.
That’s not really how it went for me.
The medication has brought up so much more, so much from my past, and along with those memories, so many past versions of myself. It’s illuminated behaviors that were once so protective, that served me so well to get from point A to point B, but maybe stopped serving me at all after that. It’s increased my introspection. It’s forced me to stop running. To feel my feelings in real time, rather than swallowing them or doubling down and pushing through until I’m ready to face whatever it is. This is the absolute hardest part for me. It still feels really scary. I still question whether I’m brave enough every single time. I still want to reach for my phone to make sure I’m not in my head alone. Sometimes, I send the text. I ask for the reassurance. The validation. The help.
Here, today, I try my hardest to face a feeling the moment it happens. The moment it hurts. I label it. I journal about it. I speak about it in safe rooms with safe people. I process some of it. I sit with some of it. Some of it feels impossible to contain. My vulnerability is on fire all the time. And emotionally - I’m wrung the F* out.
IV Ketamine was a choice in that I was desperate to find something to help me believe in the purpose of staying alive, and it has not only done that, but it has sort of pushed me towards the edge of identifying, discussing, thinking through, processing and integrating things I’d long since let my mind cover up. It’s changed me as a human, as a woman, as a wife and most importantly as a mother.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t taken away the desperate longing to have another baby. To raise another baby. To have another chance at motherhood. But that was never the job of the medicine or the therapy coupled with it. It was just to bring all of this to the surface, so I could identify it. So I could feel it. So I could grieve it. So I could think about how to move forward with less suffering and more comfort. Less martyrdom and more nurturing. Less pain and more happiness.
I still think about the three babies that started to grow inside of my body and couldn’t make it to term. I think about the three embryos we lost too - the mere hopes of life we worked so hard physically, mentally, emotionally and financially to create. And I think about the embryos we have in storage, waiting… just waiting…
But I also think about how my living daughter has started writing sentences out at school. How she’s starting to spell sight words. How she always comes home with a treat for her and one for me too, no matter who takes her on an adventure. I think about her obsession with Wednesday Addams and Wicked - two things she’s never seen, but plays with the dolls as if she wrote the stories. She loves them because I love them, and that' melts my heart more than nearly anything else. Well, anything except the magic necklaces because that’s actually truly the part that makes my heart feel most connected to hers.
I almost wasn’t here for these moments.
There was a pretty long period of time where I didn’t think I’d make it to New Years Eve. 2025 sounded like something I’d watch from amongst the stars.
IV Ketamine was a choice. And it has been a challenge.
Trauma processing has been the hardest thing I’ve ever chosen to do.
But if I didn’t choose it - I don’t think I’d be here to talk about it. So tonight, I’m choosing to sit with that. I’m really tired of the hard. It’s been so hard for so long. But I’ve also been working my ass off to find Amanda again. To learn to ground myself. To regulate myself on my own. To be able to sit with the heavy and the devastating feelings and know they’re not going to harm me. To know that I’m going to survive the moment, the hour, the night.
That’s what this is all for.
So if you find yourself with a choice, please don’t let the challenge of the choice deter you.
As my ‘bestie’ Glennon Doyle says “We Can Do Hard Things”