IVF: Our Four Year Wedding Anniversary

Today is our four year Wedding Anniversary. It is so bittersweet and I am struggling with such a range of emotions right now that I thought I would try to put it into words, as I am sure that many others on the IVF roller coaster must feel like this too.

On one hand I am so happy and grateful for what we do have and cannot believe that it has been four years already. I am so happy that I found the love of my life and married such an amazing man. It hasn't always been easy, especially on this IVF journey but I am so glad we are making it though and I do believe we are stronger for all our trials.

Through all the hard times that have faced us, the joy of getting pregnant on our first ICSI cycle to the miscarriage, to the failure of our second cycle, my love for Andy has not waned. In fact I would say that I love him all the more for it as this journey is showing me just how strong and supportive Andy is. His patience, strength, love and support never ceases to amaze me. Had we not been though this would I ever truly have known just how wonderful he is? Have these testing times just resulted to prove the strength of our love? Believe me, I do think about this every day and for these reasons and that I have this wonderful man by my side I feel loved, I love and I am happy.

On the other hand today is also filled with so much sadness. Four years ago today we stood side by side in a beautiful garden in Mauritius and said our vows. On that day we were filled with so much excitement as to what our future held and we could not wait to start our family. On this day four years ago I threw away my contraceptive pill and had butterflies of anticipation in my tummy just thinking of the day when a pregnancy test would show positive and how wonderful it would feel to tell Andy he was going to be a daddy. I wasn't too naive to think that only a month or so of "trying" and boom - positive test. But after a year of disappointment each month I knew something had to be wrong and well, if you have read my post "our story so far", you know what brings us to where we are today.

I look back at our wedding photos and again my emotions conflict, from "wow, that was so amazing" and "I can't believe that was four years ago" to "we had no idea we would be in this situation", we were so happy and excited then and had no idea of the pain we would be facing. Sometimes it just hurts to look at our smiling faces in the photos and remember what it was like to not feel this much pain. Sometimes I think I would just love to go back to that even for a day when we were just Chele and Andy and not an infertile couple.

 So as I sit here at 5am having been kept awake all night by these thoughts racing through my brain and struggling desperately to articulate them I am willing the happier side to win. Today we will celebrate our marriage, we will celebrate our love for each other and the strength we have found that we never knew we had. We will be grateful that we are together in this journey and that we have the courage to keep pushing through it as we are only still on this journey because we want to be on it together, working towards our dream. Despite everything, we still believe we can make our dream a reality. It is just taking us longer to get there, but we will get there.

Together we can make this dream come true and I hope and pray that this time next year I will be writing a completely different story at 5am because, instead of my restless mind, our baby is keeping me awake.

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