Majken’s Infertility Story
“Even now, when we are no longer trying to conceive, the pregnancy announcement anxiety appears to have become part of my DNA. ”
It’s the summer of 2015. My partner Ben and I have been together for about a year and a half. I’m in my late twenties, he’s in his mid-thirties.
We live a brilliant, slightly hedonistic Brighton lifestyle. We go to gigs all the time. We make cheese and sausage boards, accompanied by good wines just for the two of us on Saturday afternoons, because, why not? We do city breaks whenever the calendar says Bank Holiday. We cook dinner in our small kitchen, pack it up and take it to the beach with a side of craft beers on balmy summer nights. Life is pretty perfect. And still. I am getting increasingly preoccupied with the thought of starting a family.
Ben is not so sure. After all, we have a good life. A carefree life. Why add a baby to the mix? What's the rush?
I know he's right. But I can't help it. I want to start trying for a baby. Truthfully it's the trying I want to get on with because, at the back of my mind, I am worried. I worry that I will struggle with getting pregnant. My periods have always been unstable. And my family history isn’t promising. My mum and dad spent seven years trying to conceive my brother.
Then one night, through sobs, I tell Ben that I want, no, need, to start trying.
Trying for a baby
And so we do. I ditch the pill and I'm excited. Because what if we don't struggle? What if we get pregnant straight away? What if the next time I see my girlfriends back home in Denmark I can tell them that I am going to be a mum?
Five months later I am in the GP's office. I still haven't had my period since I went off the pill. I voice my concern to the Doctor and I ask him if it could be PCOS. He brushes me off ‘Even if it is PCOS there's nothing you can do about that.’ He's wrong. There are things you can do, and I know that. So I don't go back there. As I leave the GP’s office I get a message from Ben, who is visiting his family for Christmas: ‘My sister's pregnant.’ I go home and cry on my yoga mat.
My period eventually returns. Sometimes it comes 40 days apart, sometimes 54, sometimes the magical 30. Still no positive pregnancy test. I am constantly deep-diving into the internet looking for answers and quick fixes. It's the last thing I do before I go to bed, and it's the first thing I do in the morning. I am a baby-crazy, online archaeologist, digging for the holy fertility grail.
I eventually have to leave my phone in a different room before I go to bed at night. I spend all my money on food supplements and reflexology. We buy a special lube. For a while, we try a low-carb diet that actually seems to help a little with my cycle, but without any clear steer from a medical professional, we quickly lose steam. If I can't have a baby, I might as well have a bottle of wine and a baked potato!
We're counting down the days till we can go to the GP again and say: ‘Hey, we've been trying for a baby for a year. We need some help over here.’ And then I lose my job. And then Ben proposes. And then I land a new job. We decide that maybe now isn't the best time to get pumped up on hormone injections.
Asking for some baby-making help
Danish tradition prescribes that the wedding is held within a year of the proposal - we almost manage that and get married a year and a week after Ben's proposal. And a couple of weeks later, we walk to the health centre together to ask for some baby-making help.
We're sat in the blue pleather chairs in our GP's office. Ben is nervously twiddling his wedding band as I explain to her why we are there. We're sent away with papers for blood tests (me) and a cup (for Ben) and are told that when the results are back in three months we will get our referral to see a specialist.
It’s a year later, and we’re finally sat in the specialist's office at the hospital. It's been a bizarre year. First, we learned that if I ovulate it definitely doesn't happen when you’d normally expect it, which we pretty much knew, with me having long and irregular cycles. Then there were Ben's test results, which were so and so. Then followed an onslaught of misinformation followed by our referral getting lost in the system.
Not long before our meeting with a fertility specialist, Ben has surgery. For a varicose vein in his testicle that he discovered after researching ‘male infertility’. There is no guarantee this will make any difference, but we are anxiously awaiting his new test results, as the specialist tells us that there needs to be a significant improvement, otherwise IVF will be our only option.
On New Year's Eve, we get the results back. It looks like IVF can be taken off the table. For now.
With Ben's new test results in hand, we feel cautiously optimistic and we decide to have another go at the diet changes. Maybe if we can kickstart my ovulation we can get this show on the road?
A positive pregnancy test
After six weeks with no dairy, barely any carbs, loads of veggies, protein, and fat - and daily yoga practice - I travel back home for two weeks for some much-needed friend and family time. And then, in the early morning hours, in my dad's guest toilet, I see a super faint line on a pregnancy test. I take some more. No lines. When I get back home to Brighton the next day, I do a digital test. 1-2 weeks pregnant!
We're going to be parents.
A few weeks later we are traveling to Tromsø, Norway. To celebrate Ben's 40th birthday we are going to go chase the Northern Lights. We take pictures in front of snowclad mountains and talk about looking back at them in five years' time, with our son or daughter and saying: ‘You were on that trip. In my belly.’
We go snowshoeing, and afterward, the guide takes us to see some of the 300 huskies that they use for dogsledding. We meet a litter of adorable puppies. And their tired mother. I lean down and whisper into her ear: ‘I'm going to be a mum too, just like you.’
Four weeks later I lose the baby.
Just shy of a year later I am pregnant again. I lose that pregnancy too.
Dealing with infertility and pregnancy loss
Infertility and pregnancy loss have been one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life. There have been days when I wished we never started. Wishing we were back in that small Brighton apartment, eating cheese and drinking wine, and planning our next city break.
There's never any escaping it. You put it aside for a moment, and someone announces they're pregnant. You open up Facebook and baby scan pictures and mirror selfies scream: Look at what you can't have!
Even now, when we are no longer trying to conceive the pregnancy announcement anxiety appears to have become part of my DNA. The first few moments of phone calls with my girlfriends are always incredibly uncomfortable, with me trying to listen out for any small clue that there's something they want to tell me, but are afraid to.
Infertility has also shown me a side of myself I never really knew before. All-consuming jealousy. ‘Sometimes when someone announces they are pregnant, I just feel like punching them.’ I tell my friend one day as we're drinking coffee discussing the shit journey that it is trying to start a family. I'd obviously never do it. But this pain has taken root in me, and sometimes it turns evil and violent. If I can't have it. Neither should they.
Around 1 in 7, couples struggle to conceive, and something like 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet in my darkest moments, I often felt like we were the only ones who couldn't make a baby.
My top tip for anyone going through this is to find yourself a fellow barren buddy or two. Someone to compare miscarriage notes with over cold pints of beer. Someone who knows your anger, and sadness, but also your doubts whether it’s all worth it. Because as brutal as infertility is - looking around - babies also seem like really hard work!
Another path to parenthood
In the end, we decided that maybe pregnancy wasn’t for us - the biological aspect of parenting was never that important to us - like we’re great and all, but Ben has terrible eye-sight and burns just thinking of the sun, and I am allergic to chocolate, so maybe the world doesn’t need a Ben and Majken hybrid?
But parenthood is for us - and last summer we adopted the most amazing and cooky little four-year-old.
And who knows, maybe one day we’ll go chase the Northern Lights with our daughter, and when we visit the huskies again, I’ll lean down and whisper: ‘See, I told you - I’m a mum now too.’
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