“You can try your luck at conceiving naturally, but you will have to get an IVF done. There is no way out.” My heart sank as I heard those words, and I couldn’t look straight at the doctor with my eyes filled with tears.
It had been 3 years since I got married to my college sweetheart and was only 28 years old then. Yes, we wanted babies, and not one but three. One day, due to peer pressure, we went for a regular check-up at the doctor’s clinic, and to our shock, our dreams came crumbling down and were shattered before they could even turn into reality. I went into a depressive state of mind. I kept a strong face in front of people, always with a smile, but I cried every day. I cried at the thought of never being able to have a child, as I had heard so many stories about failed IVF. I cried at the thought of me being punished like this, and that God was being so unkind to me for nothing. I cried because I wanted children, not one but three.
After pulling myself together, I made my husband buy a fancy ovulation tracker kit from abroad while he was on a business trip, as finding them here in India, at that time, was nearly impossible. We started with our weekly doctor visits. We got a stack of blood work done to make sure that everything else was in place. It kept getting harder for us. Instead of having a glass of wine and trying to make babies, I was sitting at the doctor’s office trying to understand this whole thing. I was getting fertility checks done on my most fertile days, to see how many eggs were coming out and if they were healthy.
For those who don’t know, the method used to check the fertility is through vaginal ultra-sound. It feels completely normal to go through this check when pregnant as you can see your baby and you want to know if your baby is fine, but it leaves a completely unnatural feeling when you are emotionally strained and mentally depressed. It feels like a violation of your body. In case you’re feeling super uncomfortable, the doctor or their assistant may remind you that its nothing different than sex, sometimes even commenting, “have you never had sex before?”. Well, this is nothing like having sex, there is no pleasure at all when you are lying on a cold hospital bed, with a machine inside you, trying to check your fertility rate. Yes, there it is, I said it.
After doing some research of my own, about the medication I was prescribed, I chose not to have it. Few days later, I found out that those medicines would have depleted my egg counts really fast. I thanked God for it and I understood that He probably had something better in store for me than I could ever imagine. It was then that I decided to move on.
They say that positive thoughts attract everything good in life. You have to be headstrong and decide to stay positive in every phase of life, and you will attract positivity. Within a couple of days, I met an amazing gynecologist, who told me to take a vacation and go on a long trip, have fun and stop worrying about this. According to him, nothing was wrong with my reports and I was absolutely fine. You heard it right, I was absolutely and completely fine. It was not until later that I conceived naturally and went to for a check-up at just 6 weeks, when the doctor asked to do an internal ultrasound, to which I reluctantly agreed. Immediately after the ultrasound, I started spotting and I lost my baby. I never even got a chance to know if it was a boy or a girl. I lost the baby that I prayed for so much, before I even got a chance to get to feel it or know him/her more. I never got a chance to hold it or tell my baby how I much I loved him/her.
I conceived again after two months, NATURALLY, and I decided to get the heartbeat checked post completion of 10 weeks. I now, am a mother of 2 healthy and smart boys, from the apparently bad eggs that I had, according to the doctor I first visited.
This is not just my story. These things happen in India with so many women, who are unaware of the medicines and the procedures prescribed to them by these heartless doctors, who just want to make money. With the huge population of our country, these doctors take innocent people for a ride, sometimes even during the pregnancy or childbirth. I learned the harsh truth of life, after going through it myself, that these monsters can diagnose you with any medical condition they wish to.
One advice all the mothers out there, when it comes to any medical situation please don’t hesitate to take second opinions from other doctors. Read and study about the medicines before you take them. We are blessed to be living in the age of technology, make use of it. Believe in yourself and do good. God is kind and he knows the best. Believe in Him and in yourself.
