For those who know me, you’d be well aware this girl right here don’t raise her eyelids for nothing before the hours of 7am…there really is no need.

Except last week, I was awake at five every morning. I knew the lab would be calling each morning – obviously not at 5am, but that’s what time my body clock seemed to think would be a good enough warning to prepare me – with the update on our only two embryos that had managed to fertilise. Day one, we have two embryos. Day two they are growing. Day three, still growing. Day four, they’re still looking good. By day five, the lab says, if you don’t hear from us, expect your transfer to go ahead tomorrow morning. We’ll call you if there’s bad news. My body must have had some sixth sense the news wasn’t going to be good, hence the bolt upright Saturday morning to check my phone. It’s 5.03am, go back to sleep. But there’ll be nothing of the sort.

By 9am, I’m happy enough we haven’t heard from the lab, so it must be great news. I drag the 12 y o along in place of The Vet who’s tied up at work but once we get to the clinic it’s not as good as I thought. ‘The doctor will have a word,’ the nurse tells me. Oh shitsticks that can’t be good. He says while the embryo’s haven’t completely disintegrated, they also haven’t reached blastocyst stage which is required for a viable transfer. ‘We will wait till tomorrow and see if they can’t grow overnight,’ he says. ‘If you don’t get a call, we’ll see you at 9’. The 12 y o grabs my hand in a firm grip.

Another night of waiting. Torture. Except that isn’t a descriptive enough word. Every single ounce of our hope is pinned on this working. Four years of my body not belonging to myself. My sex life revolving around stupid fucking cervical mucus and ovulatory preparation. Being one step away from batshit-motherfucking-crazy-hanging-on-the-edge day in day out. My family having to put up with said mood swings for a large part of that four years. The bloating, the pain, the injections, the anesthetics, the hair loss, the weight gain, the depression, the disappointment, the unwelcome changes in every part of my body…the want to tell The Vet he’d be quite within his rights to ask for a refund on his utterly defective wife who can’t fulfill the one hope they all dream of, who could easily pick himself up a much younger, working model with pipes that are not just there for decoration…

Sunday morning. Five am again. Fuck me, who even needs to be up at this hour, apart from the birds? By seven, I think it’s looking positive. Seven thirty comes and hope is filling up to my ears. Yes, yes, yesssss little Hugo and Evie are ready and waiting to be planted into mama’s uterus and grow into beautiful teeny foetuses! Not ten minutes later and the number I really don’t want to see appears on the screen. I exchange my vitals with the scientist to ensure she’s not talking to some random woman answering my phone pretending to be me and about to get the worst news in the world. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘The embryos have not developed further, in fact they’ve gone backwards.’ One, two…nothing. Bye bye little Hugo & Evie, it wasn’t meant to be…

This was meant to be the one. The one we’d waited for. The one that would work. Everything was hanging on this. I’ve been a very good girl for six months. Weekly needles, swigging every herbal remedy known to womankind, quit drinking, eating too much gluten and flung my legs in the air in the name of Pilates for six fucking months…and all for what…? Blown close to the cost of a small house, tested my stress levels and heartache to breaking point over 1460 days…to end up here. Nothing. Nudda. Your eggs are shit. You’re defective. Infertile Barbie, the one noone wants to take home.

Tears shed. Hearts shattered into a million pieces. Everything we’ve been trying for, all that’s consumed our lives…gone up in a puff of shitassing smoke. It has engulfed me for the best part of four years. Every day I wake up thinking about it. Every night I close my eyes hoping for a miracle. But no, not today, not tomorrow and unless I happen to fall in the five percent of women aged 41 who can conceive naturally, there will never be.

It was never my intention to stay this long in firm clutches of IVF but like a gambling addiction…you can’t help but think ‘the next one could be the ONE…’ Call it stubbornness, optimism or plain stupidity I’ve never let the numbers dictate when we stop but when you’re only plucking three measily shitful eggs from a possible nine follicles that left your insides feeling as though they’d been through a mincing machine, it’s probably time to give up. And we said we would. This was our last round trying to use my eggies, trying to have a little me and him. A sibling for the 12 y o with some of his own genetics. Now it’s time to hand it over to someone else. To ask the universe if there’s someone kind enough, generous enough, young enough (under 32) and willing enough to put her body through a shitful round of injections, hospitalisation and a few days of internal pain to help our dream come true…to add to what is already the most loving, kind and beautiful two blokes to ever set foot on this earth.

I sure hope she’s out there…and she can make this happy little family even more perfect…lov’n’hugs, Lady MamaGxox