I found it quite difficult to expect support from my Mum for example. And Dads are Dads and my Dad was sort of in the background and sort of, I’m sure he was supportive, but he wasn’t really included in any conversations about it or anything. Like his role was to be a background person. But for my Mum there’s always that issue of she’s someone who’s wanting to be a Grandma who can’t be a Grandma, so like it’s difficult for her too. Which doesn’t mean that she can’t be supportive. But I was always aware, particularly like when I was pregnant, and it was just for a few weeks, my Mum would knit bootees and jackets and all sorts of things. So I knew how much, how important it was to her so you sort of, you want to protect your loved ones from sort of saying, you know she’d get the phone calls oh it didn’t work again and but actually I didn’t want to discuss it loads with her, because I knew that it was quite painful to her too. And probably the person I did discuss with most in the family would be my sister-law. And she’s like a nurse, and been a midwife so somehow it was a different sort, and I suppose she wasn’t quite, you know, she would have loved [husband] to be producing babies, but somehow it wasn’t quite as emotionally close to her as it was discussing it with someone like my Mum so you have to think about that sort of thing when you’re looking for support from yourI had to.

Well I suppose because it’s such an emotional thing and a psychological thing, you know, trying to have a child and worrying that you’re not going to be able to have a child, then I’m not sure that GP’s are very, well I’m [not] sure that they have the time really to deal with that. So whenever I went to the GP it was very much about this sort of consultation about, you know, hormones and periods and temperature, and so all these physiological things he was[n’t] interested in. But each time I went I was having to I suppose engage with all of the emotional side of it. So rather like if I was at work or something I could sort of push that to the back and forget about it a bit. So I think that was the frustrating thing about going to the GP.

Because I remember one, I went to see, it was the practice nurse and I had to, I think she gone to take, is it working, she’d gone to take some blood and it had to be at a certain point in my cycle and I think my period had started early so she couldn’t take the blood and so I went anyway, and said, Can. Because I wasn’t sure. Can you still take the blood And she said, No And just sort of sent me home. And I remember coming out crying thinking, if she, bless her actually appreciated at all that actually you know, I’d waited all month to go for that blood test and I was going to have to wait another month, which was putting off finding out what on earth is going on with me body for another month.

So, and then the GP was just not very good at recognising infertility as a psychological emotional thing as well as a physiological thing.

Well actually I don’t have any sadness at all about never having been pregnant. And that went away a long time ago, and I don’t have any sadness at all about not having children that are genetically ours. Because again that went away ages ago, and we decided to go down the route of donor eggs, and actually we talked about donor insemination at one point. So it was neverit was once about being pregnant and giving birth and that, that’s gone away. It was never having little [own name] and [husband’s name] running around. But there’s something about the feel of a baby in your arms, and actually I’ve been doing interviews with adoptive parents and one of the women that I interviewed who adopted, her children are grown up now, in their twenties and she adopted them when they were tiny babies, and her son has just had a child of his own, so it’s her first grandchild and she was talking about being in the hospital and this tiny baby being presented to her and having it her arms and bursting into tears, and she said I don’t know what’s wrong with me, you know, and she said you know, I’ve never held a baby this small. And so for her, it’s a similar thing, you know, sort of there’s something very emotionally powerful about holding a tiny baby in your arms and, or not, not being able to, not be able to have that experience. So I don’t know why it comes back or why that’s the powerful thing that feels like its missing but it is.