Vanessa HayeThe Waiting Room
"In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice ; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly"... PSALM 5:3 NIV
As I mentioned in my last post, I am a Christian (I hate that it sounds so cliche me writing that), but yes I love the LORD, and this scripture resonates with me so much and helped me in some of darkest moments. As with most of my posts, the title is a pun but then also triggers and pertains to key parts of the infertility journey:
So to clarify, 'the waiting room' for me means two things. The first is the fact that for the most part of the past 3-4 years, I have spent countless months, days , hours, minutes and to the second in a waiting room of some sort. In fact I wish I could have found time to calculate how long in total I have spent in some sort of clinic or hospital.
The fact of the matter is all of us are all so familiar with waiting rooms. Speaking of which, there are main two types of waiting room I assume you are all familiar with; One is where individuals leave for appointments one at a time, or in small groups, for instance at a doctors office where you hear the most annoying coughs and the loud and sometimes unpleasant receptionist office telling the world your business.(pet peeve). A hospital triage area where you have mainly two types of people: (apologies in advance I'm going into savage mode) the hypochondriacs or the gravely ill person who needs to be seen ASAP.
The other type of waiting room is where people leave en masse such as those at railway/ bus stations and airports. Call me cruel, but due to the travel anxieties I've faced of being late and missing my boarding time, I tend to arrive early sit and wait whilst I giggle at 'the runner'. You and I both know there's always one who leaves it uber late (Do you like what I did there...?) and ends up narrowly missing their flight/train etc.
So before I further digress, these two waiting room examples also highlight the difference: where one is asked to wait (private waiting rooms) and one is where you can enter at will (public waiting rooms).
Somehow my journey kept me in a category that crossed between the two types. In one respect I had chosen to embark on the toughest journey despite knowing what it may have entailed , and on the other hand many key parts of that journey involved being in that single waiting room facing the unknown.
In exception to waiting at the Ghana Embassy, every single waiting room concerned with my fertility appointments were the hardest waiting rooms I have sat in. No one makes eye contact, when another female walks out of the consulting rooms whilst you wait, you will know why they are there but what you won't know is what has just happened in that room or what they have just been told. Every appointment and checkup brought feelings of fear, anxiety, loneliness, and in fact glimmers of hope.
Nearly exactly two years ago I had my egg collection at the fertility clinic - I want to blog more about the actual IVF cycle and process, so I will briefly try and talk you through what happened in each waiting room and where it all started after accepting the diagnosis and realising I needed more help.
Disclaimer: From this post going forward there will be some TMI references, so read at your discretion!
October 2015
My very first was when I first was referred to the fertility clinic . The initial appointment was to have some checks 'down there' to confirm if there were any hidden issues in my reproductive unit causing the problems - it was painful and uncomfortable. After a 2.5 hour wait only a male doctor was available to see me , so to add to the the list, I felt violated. All this was done via a transvaginal scan. Most of all, ironically this waiting room is within the hospital's gynaecology unit and so is shared by mothers who attend for early 'reassurance' pregnancy scans. For me that was painful and hard to experience but, on the other hand it was far but yet, a step closer to getting pregnant.
A few weeks later I had to have some more final checks to check if my tubes were tied , or I had a wonky pelvis (layman's terms). This procedure was called an HSG . It was awful and involved injecting a dye in my womb area to find out if there were any hidden infirmities causing the issues. The good news was there weren't , but that ultimately meant more tests and the definite possibility of going through assisted fertility treatment. I smiled all the way through though...
December 2015
In mid December I finally met my consultant. it was such a long wait from the HSG exam to this consultation. But it was also good to know that this essentially meant we were one less Christmas without having the additional family member we were hoping and praying for. He discussed all my tests and confirmed the 'unexplained fertility diagnosis'. It's crazy because whilst my faith was solely in God, I somehow looked at my consultant and was relying on him too. I prayed that the next few appointments, that Father (God) will use all these practitioners and help Dru and I to have a good experience through this tough journey.
February 2016
For the first time, I could not wait for the festive period to be over as I counted each day down to the most significant appointment that would start the process. The induction day 23rd Feb 2016. God has a sense of humour a that is exactly two year -a day to when Sebastian was born. it was such an important day as I wanted to know when the treatment will start , what it entailed etc. What we were told was very comprehensive and a lot to take in. We signed consent forms, discussed the treatment and then walked away anticipating the next appointment.
The Main waiting room
That's 'the surface' of what we encountered once the fertility treatment journey began, and so I made the conscious decision to walk by faith in this journey Dru and I were going to embark on. Suddenly the most important waiting room (and the second one I refer to in my title is actually the room I prayed in. Many of my early mornings I spent crying, and praying and hoping it would be a nursery for our first child. What remained unknown is how many more hurdles we would approach through 'the wait'.
Isaiah 40:31-1 "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint"