@JC said in No kids, any regrets?:

Well for us kids just weren’t an option sadly. We tried everything but when we first got all the tests done they told us it would be extremely unlikely and they were right. The never ending hormone treatments permanently damaged Mrs JC’s health - one of the fertility experts guilt tripped her into some pretty extreme treatments by saying if she had any second thoughts then she just didn’t want kids enough. So now she’s got anxiety attacks, near constant IBS, blinding headaches about 50% of every month, excruciating period pain, everything except the child she desperately wanted and still misses. The kicker is she is a amazing with kids and would have been the most awesome Mum. Sometimes you just have to laugh because the alternative is you’d never stop crying.

Many thanks JC, I was wondering if my story was applicable to this thread.
We had a very similar experience and while my wife hasn't been affected to quite the same extent as your good wife, she too has had that hormone treatment totally fuck with her innards and still suffers to this day - perhaps 10 years later.

The above also coincidentally describes our situation more succinctly than I ever could, right down to the "jesus she'd be a good mum" bit.

My thoughts on IVF
The day you find out it's not going to happen naturally is a day spent wailing bucket loads of tears and a firm confirmation that nothing could ever hurt you emotionally as this is right now. It's a shitty and memorable day.

So then you embark on the emotional paradox that is IVF.

Its a fluffybunny

You see, the pertinent factor is 30%, well it was when we did it.

You're basically betting on the Black Caps beating Australia in any given game from 2000 to ..., well probably now!

So the whole thing is 28 days of that "hope so but probably not" conundrum every minute of the day but the stakes are the highest in your life.

You've got to be positive but you know how hard you're going to fall when the first painter turns up in 3 weeks...again. That's why it's such a rollercoaster. I remember gazing at the doctor thinking what an extraordinary life he has in that, in the space of a morning he can either painfully ruin or ecstatically complete a woman's entire life. Maybe even in the space of 2 appointments. Freaky places fertility clinics.

Basically they arm you with nifty syringe dispensing gadgets and boxes of vials that you keep in your fridge. Every morning Wifey turns the dial on the gadget and injects it into her tummy. I'm guessing that's the bugger responsible for the after effects.
Then clinic visits, stirrups, looking at magnified eggs on a screen and being told to pick one ? Some wanking. An implant visit and then a couple of weeks (I think, I try to forget) of fretting and the wife lying still.
Then it doesn"t work and you board the merry go round again

But then there is the masturbatorium

We used the best cliic in bkk and then a state run one,(state had the clinic doctors but only those good hearted enough to do a couple of mornings a week for free - fine people).

At either, the bloke must supply some pollen. The clinic had a small lounge sized, tastefully furnished mastabatorium with a comfy sofa and a massive tv. Windowless, but there is a sliding hatch for completion. Pre-Programming allows one a myriad of porn choices from all corners of the globe and magazines I didn't even look over.
I was in there about an hour I think the nurses said.

The state was a tiny toilet/janitor closet where my true professionalism came to the fore.

So the IVF at 30% ain't no picnic but please don't let that distract from the joy for those that were there the day McMillan and McCullum went nuts. Really pleased for all doting parents. Bitterness doesn't lie there.

Stepping over trafficked babies being held by non maternal trafficked beggars on the bkk pavements everyday steels the soul though.

A word of advice if you meet a couple who tell you they're on the merry go round, don't talk. Just listen and wish luck. For the love of god don't give the "My sister/cousin/aunt/friend got pregnant by that" anecdote because it comes across like a fait accompli, and really irked, well to me anyway.

Met some women on their 10th go or some such. It's a desperate state to be in with the only certainty being that plain shit luck has led you to walk into this particular clinic or hospital.

Also we learned to avoid mates kids baby birthday partys back in the day.

Absolute full power to those that chose no kids, we did too in the end, we weren't in a fair dinkum position to adopt. Sounds like all of us have benefitted from our choices and circumstances and life always supplies other paddocks to ponder.

Oh and those people that treat animals like kids... there might be a decent reason

Thanks for the therapy, haven't thought about that shit for a while

The Silver Fern

Siam