Leaning In

So, I’ve received my copy of Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’, her treatise on women in the workplace. She is phenomenally successful and it’s easy to see why: she is ultra-smart, ultra-hard working, and she’s charming too. Not the ball-breaker stereotype of the successful business woman. In the ‘olden days,’ I would have normally considered myself to be very ambitious. I did well at university and had planned, in my idealistic moments, on being a working mother. But the events of the past few years mean that it’s an achievement just getting out of bed and getting to work. The mental energy it takes just to project the fine sliver of normality needed to function in the workplace is enormous, and most days I’m hanging on by my fingernails.

So I find myself asking: what would she do if she’d been dealt the cards I’ve been dealt? What if her children had been born dead rather than alive? Would she have still have fired off emails in the immediate hours after their birth, and then returned to work within three months, hitting the ground running like nothing had happened? How would someone like her have handled it? Am I on the overly-negative/depressed scale of things, or would someone with a more naturally optimistic outlook have coped better? I really don’t know. I’m just lucky that I still have a job given the recession and the scale of the job cuts all around. I’m lucky that I can still function in my job, in fact it helps to keep me sane and thinking of other things, even if I am a wordless misery while I’m here.  

But work is still only a temporary distraction. What has happened to me dominates - still - most waking thoughts. But now I at least can watch a program like ‘Born to Be Different' without crying. Realistically, all the conditions that these children have been born with would normally be identified in the ultra-sound scan, and many expectant parents would choose not to carry on. That does disturb me. The alternative life I would have led if I’d kept my babies (as long as they hadn’t been stillborn) is what this programme focuses on. That is the truth of the decision I made and I have to live with that.  

But we have had some hope recently. We have now completed our second round of IVF/PGD. And this time, for once, we have some good news. I was put on the ‘short protocol’, which meant a two-week treatment plan rather than a six-week treatment, which was a lot better (though I did have to do double the injections). We managed to get 12 eggs, of which eight fertilized. And two were ‘suitable for transfer’. They went ‘back in’ a few days ago, and then I have to do a pregnancy test next week. Watch this space…