When Hope and Denial Move In

Denial and hope live together. Not next door neighbors, roommates. Like share a bathroom, steal each other’s snacks, finish each other’s sentences roommates.

Some say there’s a fine line between denial and hope, but honestly that’s nonsense. They’re not separated by a line. They’re basically conjoined twins. You feel them at the same time, constantly, especially when health gets involved. Especially when fertility gets involved.

Infertility journeys are all wildly different, but if there’s one universal experience we all share, it’s this. We have all held denial and hope in our hands at the same time and said, “Yeah, this feels reasonable.”

In the beginning, before diagnoses, before acronyms, before Google searches that ruin your entire afternoon, it’s just hope. Pure, blissful, wildly unearned hope.

You decide you’re ready to build your family. You’ve been taught your entire life that you’ll get pregnant just by looking at someone. So obviously, this should take a couple of months. Max.

Month one, okay, fine.Month two, still normal.Month three, totally normal.Month four, hmm.Month five, any cycle now.Month six, statistically this should be happening right now.

And still, nothing.

But during those first six months, hope is loud. Hope has plans. Hope is budgeting.

“This is probably the last time I’ll buy tampons this year.”

“By Christmas next year, I’ll either be pregnant or have an infant.”

“We shouldn’t plan that trip because what if I’m pregnant.

“Next year I won’t have to work on New Year’s Day because I’ll be on maternity leave.”

Hope loves a calendar.

By month eight, anxiety starts creeping in quietly. You’ve already experienced the monthly ritual of disappointment, pee stick, wait, squint, negative. Over and over. You start listening to your body, searching for signs that maybe this month will be different.

Meanwhile, everyone around you is having babies. Some are on their second. Or third. Or announcing accidentally while you’re standing there pretending you’re fine. And there you are, still in the same place you were half a year ago.

You start thinking, is it time to go to the doctor?And immediately follow it with, no, because that would mean something is wrong. And that can’t be us. We’re healthy, in our early 30s, that can’t be us.

So you try again. And again. Another three months go by. Nothing changes, except now anger joins the conversation. Why can’t we do this. Why does this seem effortless for everyone else.

By the time you finally make the doctor’s appointment, you’re already exhausted. This decision doesn’t come from confidence. It comes from desperation. From sadness that’s been quietly piling up.

For those of us under 34, the script is predictable. Try again. Come back in six months. That’s what we were told after two years of trying.

Instead of running tests, our doctor pulled out a whiteboard and explained how babies are made. Timing. Ovulation. Science. As if we hadn’t spent two years painfully aware of all of it. At first, we laughed. If he wasn’t concerned, then maybe we didn’t need to be either. Maybe we were just slow.

Another year went by.

By then, I stopped taking pregnancy tests entirely. I had never seen a positive, and the disappointment of another negative was just too much. No test, no heartbreak. Foolproof logic.

Eventually, I found myself in a doctor’s office with a nurse practitioner, crying. Not polite tears. Panicked tears. Something is wrong. We need help.

That’s when we were referred to a fertility specialist.

It took months to get in. Then came the tests. The first sperm analysis was devastating. Essentially no sperm. We were told there were just enough to attempt IVF, but natural pregnancy was not going to happen.

Then came the second analysis. 6.5 million. Not normal, but a drastic improvement. Enough to make hope sit back down with us again.

At that point, my husband was prescribed Clomid. The goal was to raise his numbers further. We were told this was a good sign, that things could improve from here. And we believed it.

Then came my results. At 33 years old, my AMH was 0.6, alarmingly low for someone my age. My ovarian reserve was low. I was running out of eggs. Again, we were told IVF was our best option. Again, we were told to act quickly.

More devastation.

To get insurance to cover one round of IVF, we had to complete three IUIs (medical turkey baste). So we committed the next year of our lives to fertility treatment.

At first, we were hopeful. IUIs increase your chances, right. Our clinic was an hour away. Each round meant driving in once or twice a week for two weeks, monitoring appointments, trigger shots, and then the IUI itself.

Round one ended in no pregnancy. Disappointing, but survivable.

Round two, we did everything. Monitoring, meds, trigger shot. Then I was told there was no availability for the IUI the next day, 5 minutes after taking the trigger shot which costs us $100 out of pocket. After all that time, money, and driving, it just did not happen.

At first, I brushed it off. It’s fine. We’ll try at home.Then it wasn’t fine. It felt like the clinic cared more about procedures than outcomes.

Round three brought more bad news. My husband’s post wash sample dropped to 0.75 million. A significant drop after months of hope and medication. We were told the doctor would follow up.

She never did.

We completed the IUI anyway, knowing the odds were painfully low.

At that point, we were done. Exhausted. Emotionally hollowed out. With numbers like ours and the stress of constant appointments, we decided maybe we were better off staying home. Relaxing. Because apparently if you just relax, it will happen.

So we relaxed. We went to Italy. We tried to enjoy life. We tried very carefully to imagine a future where it was just the two of us. Could we be okay with that.

We couldn’t.

When we came home, the sadness hit harder. For me, depression settled in. Even with insurance, IVF would likely take more than one round. We’d be lucky to get one or two healthy embryos. And we’d always wanted at least two children.

So what do you do.

Use insurance, pay $9,000 out of pocket for our one “covered” round, complete another pointless IUI, wait months for approval.Or look somewhere else.

That’s when I stumbled across a Reddit post about going to Mexico for IVF.

That’s when our journey changed.