PIVOT!: Or, What Happens When the Best Laid Fertility Plans Fall Through
Last week on my Instagram, I shared a post that compared altering one’s fertility plan to the famous scene from FRIENDS of Ross Gellar shouting “PIVOT” while trying to maneuver a large couch up a set of narrow New York City apartment stairs.
Today I want to give a slightly more serious take on this, because knowing when to change course or even halt a TTC plan altogether can be one of the most difficult decisions a person or couple can be faced with. There’s no guidebook, after all. No clear set of signposts designed to offer clear and simple evidence that it’s time to move on or to try something different.
How, then, do you know? There isn’t one answer, of course. But I wanted to share something about mine and my partner’s story and see what others might take away from our experiences.
The Plan
As those of you who may have read my first post might know, by 2018 my partner and I had experienced one second trimester miscarriage as well as the live birth of our wonderful son whom I had carried. We were both excited for my partner to carry our next child; unlike me, who had been eager for the end result of pregnancy but not the process, she had always dreamed of being pregnant. And unlike me, we had no reason in terms of family history or her overall health indicators that she would have any difficulty getting or staying pregnant.
But of course, we did. We experienced several losses over the course of numerous IUIs and several rounds of IVF. I try not to speak too much in public about the exact details of some of these treatments because they are more her story than my own, but it is widely known that IVF in particular is hugely taxing on people’s mental, emotional, and physical health. It was no different for us, and as time both crawled and sped past, we had nothing to show for everything we had put into the process.
As I had watched my partner suffer, I had started to feel a growing sense of both guilt and dread. I, too, had a uterus, and I had already managed to carry our first child. Why was I sitting here and watching my partner suffer when I could offer to carry again and maybe save us both some heartache?
The first few times I brought it up, my partner was furious. She felt like I was giving up on her, declaring defeat and in so doing disregarding her body’s potential to conceive and carry a healthy pregnancy. This was absolutely never my intent, and I went back and forth between feeling guilty for having brought it up in the first place and angry that I wasn’t really being heard for what I felt I was actually communicating, which was that IVF was increasingly painful for our family to bear financially, physically, and emotionally.
This was what we might call the first major checkpoint of our fertility conversation. At this point, my partner was not prepared to move from our plan of having her carry. We both still wanted a child, and especially as I had no great desire to carry myself if it wasn’t necessary, we decided at this point to continue on as we were.
The Pivot
More rounds of IVF, including a second egg retrieval after our first had catastrophically failed. More losses. We got a dog. We tried our best to help our son, now four, cope with his loneliness, which had only been made worse by the isolation of the pandemic and then the subsequent awkwardness of our re-entry into public life. We watched in alarm as our bank accounts dipped and dipped again while we both also struggled to transition away from our current contract-based employment to more permanent positions. We reckoned with the lack of explanations we were getting from investigations into why we were struggling to conceive. We grieved yet more losses in the midst of all of it all.
It was not just one of these factors that led us to revisit our conversation about my carrying again. I firmly believe that if even one thing had been different, our fertility journey might have gone differently. But when we reached the second checkpoint of our journey, things felt different than they had before. We were both more prepared now to prioritize having another child, and soon, over the route we had initially chosen to reach that destination.
Even still, when we made the decision to pivot, it was not an all or nothing deal. We were nearing the end of a calendar year, so while our plan was to attempt reciprocal IVF using my partner’s eggs and my uterus, we didn’t think we would manage to fit that in before the holidays. I had also just started a new full-time job and wanted to get my feet under me before another grueling round of treatment.
But we also didn’t want to completely waste a few cycles’ worth of time. We we figured well, IUI has worked for me before. Why not try a few rounds? It’s a lot cheaper than IVF, and who knows, we might just get lucky. Neither of us felt overly confident, but we agreed it felt better than doing nothing until the New Year.
The Result
After one unsuccessful round of IUI, I fell pregnant with the wonderful being who would eventually become our daughter. To this day, I have a lot of mixed feelings. Not about our daughter of course, she is (in my not remotely biased opinion) a pure and precious cinnamon roll.
No, the thing I still struggle with is the guilt of it all. Despite people sometimes treating the folks in a two-uterus relationship as if they are interchangeable, it’s not remotely that simple. My partner had wanted desperately to be pregnant. She’d gone to hell and back for it. And here I was, pregnant after only two IUIs with a pregnancy that often felt like it had been stolen from the woman I love.
Now that our daughter is nearly five months old the guilt has gotten better to some degree. I watch my partner snuggle our new squish, often joined by our five year old who absolutely dotes on his sister, and I am grateful for the result at least as often as I struggle with how we got here.
The Post-Plan Analysis
What, then, can we take away from this, if anything?
Check-In With Your Partner: I’m very glad that we made the time and space to check in with one another as treatment progressed. Especially if you are a Type A, ride-or-die planner, it might feel unnecessary because there’s a plan dammit so what is there to discuss? But the fact is that a plan that seemed great when you were just starting TTC might not look so bright and shiny six months or a year or five years in. In hindsight, one thing I do think we could have done differently is scheduling these conversations. We only tended to talk about our TTC plans when one of us was really struggling, and I think that gave our check-ins a heavier weight than they needed to carry. If we’d agreed to chat only when we were both in a decent headspace, I think the conversations would have gone much more smoothly.
Know Your Priorities and Express Them: At our first check in, mine were starting to shift away from my partner carrying and toward having our second child ASAP. My partner, however, was not in the same place. I feel quite confident that had I insisted on changing our treatment plan at this point, that would have spelled the end of our relationship (and therefore our TTC journey)—not because either of us would have been wrong, but because our priorities would have become fundamentally incompatible. At that point, especially because my own priorities were still somewhat in flux, we chose to put the health of our relationship and the desires of my partner as the one who had been through treatment and not gotten to experience something she had always wanted for herself over what I might have chosen if I were making the decision in a bubble.
Don’t Expect the Pivot to Feel Comfortable: Much like Ross stuck on those stairs holding that heavy couch, pivoting didn’t feel great. Not in the moment and not, as I described above, in the aftermath. That doesn’t mean it was the wrong decision for our family. What it does mean is that in addition to grieving any losses you may have experienced, you also need to make space to grieve the loss of whatever dreams and plans you are letting go of when you pivot. Just because they do not serve you anymore, just because you need or want to walk down a different path, does not mean you can’t miss them and wish things had been different.
For some of us, TTC is a long and winding road—and unlike in our cars, there’s no Siri or Google Maps. (How annoying!) If you do want a guide as you try to determine whether to pivot or stay the course, the support of a fertility doula can be extremely valuable. Feel free to reach out with your questions, share your experiences, or to simply continue the conversation. Wherever you’re at in your journey, I’m here. And in the meantime I wish you courage, resilience, and the unwavering belief that your path is uniquely yours.
