I am so close, so close I can almost taste it. Surely I will get there this time. Surely, please God, let it happen this time.
Here I stand, on the brink of what I hope will be my last in vitro (IVF) cycle. If this - my ninth attempt - doesn’t work, I don’t know whether I can do another one ever again. This is quite possibly the most terrifying thing I have ever done. It is taking every single ounce of whatever bit of strength I have left.
I know there are people who think I'm crazy – barking mad for doing this again, after what I've been through. I can sense people having to forcibly restrain themselves from begging me to stop – people who are dying to express thoughts I really don’t want to hear:
`Please just stop! We can’t take it any more. We can’t see you go through this agony again. Please. Just. Give. Up.'
I think they think if I continue down this road, I may lose my mind.
They don’t know I lost it long ago.
So many people ask me how I have the strength to carry on with these fertility treatments. They say I am brave, how much they admire me. Brave? I don’t know. Stubborn? Maybe. Determined? Probably. What they don’t know is that as terrifying as it is to do yet another fertility treatment, the alternative is way, way scarier. The alternative is not trying and therefore facing the possibility of a childless future. And that, for me, is terrifying - a future not worth considering. So, I don’t think I am being brave at all. I am just too terrified not to try again.
Tertia Albertyn is a recovering infertile and now mother to twins conceived on her 9th IVF. Her popular blog (www.tertia.org) about her struggle to have children was rated the top blog in South Africa in 2007 and 2008. She released her book ‘So Close’ in 2006, based on her blog and detailing her five year battle with infertility. Tertia has taken her experiences as an infertility veteran and channeled it into something positive for others. In 2008 she launched Nurture, South Africa’s premier Egg Donor and Surrogacy program (www.nurture.co.za) . She has a MBA from the University of Cape Town and lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her husband and two children.
