# Trying desperately for no.2 but have to give up soon



## Shiny148 (Mar 12, 2012)

Hi all, I'm new to FF and I've joined as I feel like I'm in quite a lonely place and can't really  talk to anyone I know about it. Just wondering if there's anyone out there in a similar situation?

I'm lucky enough to have a lovely beautiful 4 year old son who we conceived through our 4th ivf (first at argc). For the last 2 years we've been desperately trying for a second child, we've had 3 more tries at argc, the first one resulting in a miscarriage. We've only got one more go left in us - financially, mentally, emotionally and I'm about to turn 40  IVF is such a struggle and at argc especially it is pretty gruelling in every way.

I'm definitely facing up to the fact that we'll be giving up after the next go and I'm so sad about it. My husband has poor sperm, i have a low-ish amh, immune issues and seemingly poor quality eggs - our DS really was a miracle! My last cycle was mild ivf as the cycle before resulted in only one embryo on full dose of stimulation. The mild cycle resulted in a decent quality (on day 2) embryo but it didn't stick. 

I feel terrible moaning to other infertility sufferers as I've been lucky enough to have my DS, but I don't feel like people who have achieved my dream of a second child can understand how I feel. I feel like if I give up on my dream then infertility has won the fight 

It would be great to hear from anyone in a similar situation, thanks x


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## hope4life (Aug 18, 2016)

I’m so sorry you are going through this. My DH and I started trying right away once we got married, in 2003, and it took us till 2012 to have our DD. I was devastated when our FET in 2016 (with our last OE/OS embryo from our IVF cycle that gave us our DD) resulted in a CP. I thought there is no way that we can financially or emotionally go through more IVF cycles. Plus we were 5 years older than we were with our cycle that resulted in our DD so it would be even less likely to work. Our DD was devastated too, she desperately wants a sibling. For us we decided to try again, but using double donor to give us better chance of success. It’s such a hard choice. Like you said, I feel so blessed to have our miracle in our DD, but I don’t want infertility to win. None of us feel like our family is complete.


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## HopefulKayte (Jun 16, 2017)

I've been trying to find support for this same situation and it's a lonely place. I'm glad to hear from you but also sorry that we are in this situation!

I have many similarities. I have a wonderful little boy (turned 5 this weekend) also via OE IVF. I am also turning 40 this year (I can't believe it! Though nothing ages a person like a decade of infertility... and I definitely feel that.) The road to a sibling has been much harder on us in every way than our primary infertility journey, while I am able to say that of course the secondary journey is not as horrendously terrifying as the primary.

We have done 5 more fresh IVF cycles, a few FETs, have had a chemical and a miscarriage, although mostly BFNs. We even decided to move onto donor eggs, and had a BFN and then an early m/c before Christmas. The one before Christmas, we went overseas to the Czech Republic (we are from Canada) and took our little boy with us, so it really felt major to us when we finally read the pregnant test result and then a week later it was over. Christmas was very hard. I'm so grateful to have my little boy to share it with, and it was happy making it special for him, but the physical and emotional pain was big. I felt like I let him down, and I felt so lonely. No one I know relates or seems super concerned about this battle we face, although they love their own children more than anything, so sometimes this mystifies me.

I'm not comfortable expressing this in my cycle group because many of these women are still pursuing the reality of their first child and it would be completely inappropriate for me to express my feelings there. I know I am lucky to have my son and I'm grateful for him. But my grief is real, and I'm just looking for a place where others might have the same grief and it's a safe place to discuss it. Anyone I know that struggled with primary fertility, has had 1 or 2 children since their first, without big gaps.

Still we try, I am on the wait list for double donor embryos at the same clinic overseas. We've since realized in the past year my husband has sperm issues too and we are totally open-minded toward finding any way to bring another child into our family. Now it is really about our little boy's longing, and he is the only only he knows. He would love and accept any sibling and after everything we've been through the past 4 years, we would be beyond grateful to be able to have a healthy pregnancy again.

Hope4life, I can't imagine what you've experienced... taking 9 years to have your daughter. What an ordeal, what perseverance. You are amazing! 

I find that I'm getting more 'messed up' over this battle with each year that passes. Outsiders may say "that's your sign to give up and just focus on being happy and healthy for your kid" but I find it makes me more determined. With every holiday that passes, every party with friends where they bring their kids, each neighbourhood playdate where there are siblings, I feel more sad, and he becomes more aware. I also feel sad that it's obviously a big issue for our family, and everyone knows it, but there's a lot of silence and not always the support in the toughest times I know I would (and have) offered to others in need. It makes me feel even more committed to wanting to make sure my little one has a built-in family member and someone raised alongside him with open communication and a focus on empathy.

I found I was so depressed leading up to his birthday. I wanted to make it extra special for him. I also didn't want to face the fact he was turning 5. It makes me so sad to think we have been trying to give him a sibling since he was 1, a baby, and now he's in Kindergarten. I was happy for him and trying to make the day special, but when I was alone I was crying. And when family came over, his cousins (all younger than him) with their even younger siblings, and everyone is so busy paying attention to the babies and toddlers, and he's kissing them and my husband and I are just feeling sad. I wonder, does anyone think about how we're feeling? Our son is now 5 and he doesn't have a sibling and obviously we have wanted one and experienced loss. Not that I want them to feel badly for successfully having babies, but maybe to think about how we are feeling, that his birthday is actually hard for us, marking another year older and no sibling, and that it's hard for us as they all chat throughout his birthday get-together comparing baby notes. I know people don't intend to hurt, but this does hurt.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I'm here and I'm struggling, and I feel like our secret path and reality of cycling and now international cycling is so heavy on us. Again, my choice, but I too feel I deserve what they have, and am willing to put the work in for this dream, even if it's far beyond what most 'normal' people could ever relate to.


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## hope4life (Aug 18, 2016)

HopefulKayte you are so amazing at putting what you are feeling into words. I always want to post and can’t quite figure out how to say what I want. Everything you said I can completely relate to. It’s so hard with my daughter, who’s also in kindergarten, always asking me why everyone else in her class has a brother or a sister. Then she tells people when she meets them that it’s just us in our family, “no brother or sister or even a cat or dog”. And whenever I talk about when she’s older and starts having kids, she says to me “if God let’s me have babies” . I think that type of thing is what has actually made trying for number 2 harder than it was trying for number 1. And I have to let her know most people don’t have the struggles that we do to have a family. We stopped telling people that we are still trying too. Although I did tell my Dad last week because his wife keeps asking if we’re going to come visit them in Florida soon and I couldn’t avoid it anymore. There were a few road blocks/detours that made it take so long for us the first time. I knew I had PCOS and my GYN thought she could treat me, then when it was taking so long she decided it was beyond her skills so she referred us to a fertility clinic. My DH had blood work done and his FSH and LH were both so elevated that it was the levels of testicular failure. So that caused him to have a kind of mid life crisis, saying he wanted a divorce, which i wouldn’t let him have, he said he didn’t believe in God anymore...then a couple years later he wrapped his head around things and got back to himself. He still didn’t want anyone “cutting into his boys”. So he said we should do IUIs with DS. 5 medicated IUIs later without even a whiff of implantation and I said it was time to move on to IVF. So since I was going to do all that entailed he agreed to the mTese to get his sperm which we were able to use for both our fresh attempts. Both of which I produced over 20 eggs and had OHSS. So now here we are trying with double donor. Have you thought about contacting Zlin for double donor frozen embryos? You could see which clinic finds a match faster. IVF treatment with 1 frozen donor embryo is €1200 and 2 embryos cost €1800.


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## danielle1370 (Dec 4, 2012)

Hello, haven’t been on here for so long but really reaching out for women in a similar position at the moment. My situation is again similar, I have a four-year-old little girl who is due to start school this September and I’m absolutely heartbroken that she will go to school and my nest will be empty so to speak. It took 2 1/2 years  for us to have a successful pregnancy that led to her, three miscarriages before her and a lot of heartache. We have been trying again for over a year and have now found out I have low AMH  and now need IVF. Financially and emotionally I don’t know if I can do it, I am just so done with the whole thing foolishly I thought after having her my body would have reset like everyone promised and would know what to do. Sadly we had a miscarriage again in February of last year which confirmed to me my body is still as useless as it has always been. 

My little girl longs for a sibling, talks about babies all of the time and asked me when it will be her turn to have a brother or a sister. It hurts so bad knowing the reality is she will likely grow up alone. All of my friends have now gone on to have second or third babies and I feel very much alone. Every pregnancy announcement hurt again like it did In the past and I look at my daughters baby clothes, cot bed and everything else we have kept awaiting a second child that will likely never happen. It was just very s in the past and I look at my daughters baby clothes, cot bed and everything else we have kept awaiting a second child that will likely never happen. It is just  very sad that we have all been Dealt this cruel hand. 

I get so sick of the well-meaning advice from other people when you only have one child, be grateful for one, accept the hard you have been doubt, count your blessings.  And whilst I know people mean well you wouldn’t offer this advice to people going through any other type of loss all mourning.  Glad to be able to come on here and talk to like-minded people in Similar situations.


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