25 Things No One Tells You About IVF and infertility…

Posted on January 8, 2014 by borysSNORC

1. When people say IVF is an ’emotional roller coaster’, they are sugar coating it – nothing will prepare you for the soul destroying cycle of hope and despair/hope and despair like month in, month out unsuccessful IVF cycles.

2.You will find yourself living in two week blocks – two weeks of self injecting hormones and watching to see if you got good eggs up… two weeks of waiting to see if your cycle worked. You will plan your entire life around these two week blocks.

3. Well meaning friends who aren’t aware or have forgotten that you are on IVF, will ask ‘So, when are you two starting a family?’ (sometimes while smugly patting a growing abdomen), which will simultaneously make you want to burst into tears and/or stab someone.

4. IVF totally kills your sex life – after months (for some people, years) of trying the ‘old fashioned way’, you will find yourself being told NOT to have sex at various time while trying to conceive on IVF.

5. After a while on IVF, you will start avoiding baby showers and visiting friends with new babies. – you will even avoid the baby section of department stores and women with strollers in public… anything to stay away from the little emotional time bombs.

6. IVF drives home just how ‘animal’ humans are, and how hard we work to ignore this fact in our day to day lives – being infertile and unable to breed makes you feel ‘less of a woman’… femmascualated, if you will.

7. When on IVF, topics like vaginal discharge, sperm count, sperm motility, testicular aspiration, and fallopian hydration all become perfectly acceptable conversational gobbits, and will be trolled out with alarming regularity, even over the dinner table.

8. IVF patients see a pregnant teenager smoking or drinking, or a new brand new mom smoking near an infant, and do not just go ‘Tut, tut, how irresponsible!’ – they will go into a completely uncharacteristic, blind rage and have to employ all their self restraint to refrain from ripping that person a new asshole.

9. When on IVF, people will frequently say, to ‘Why don’t you just adopt?’ – like there is a magical baby store somewhere that you can just rock up to a counter, place your order and pick up a matching pair of kids for an instant family.

10. While on IVF you won’t want to have sex – your abdomen will be bloated and tender from injecting hormones – so you won’t want to have sex during the follicular stimulation part of your cycle. Waxy progesterone pessaries or Crinone glugging up your vagina like Clag, is so NOT sexy – so you won’t want to have sex during the luteal support phase of your cycle either.

11. You will find yourself unable to be genuinely happy for any friends or family members who are pregnant/having babies/have newborns… you find yourself faking happiness in these situations and turning in an Oscar winning performance. This is emotionally exhausting.

12. On IVF, time ceases to pass in the same way – normally days and weeks and months normally seem to fly, but when waiting to do a pregnancy test, time will creep by the speed and velocity of cold molasses flowing uphill.

13. People will judge you for trying ‘extreme measures’ like IVF. They will say that you will ‘get pregnant as soon as you stop trying so hard’ – this is complete and utter bullshit. No one in their right mind would put themselves through IVF unless they had serious medical issues.

14. While on IVF, even if you have a rare and fleeting moment when you feel up to it, your partner won’t want to have sex with you – he’ll be worried about knocking those precious little embryos out of place.

15. When you’re on IVF, a veritable plethora of absurd advice will rain down upon you with alarming regularity – ‘Just take a holiday and it’ll happen’… ‘You just need to relax and it’ll happen’… ‘Try standing on your head after sex and it’ll happen’ – I shit you not on that last one.

16. At some point when undergoing IVF procedures it becomes perfectly normal and routine to have a big plastic wand shoved in your vagina, sometimes several times each month – regular trans-vaginal ultrasounds become the least of your problems.

17. The phrase ‘Life isn’t Fair’ takes on a whole new meaning – after enduring unsuccessful IVF treatments you’ll find yourself pondering women who get pregnant and don’t want to be and thinking ‘why is it so easy for everyone else???’

18. When you’re on IVF eventually the idea that people can get pregnant through sexual intercourse becomes a concept so foreign to you, as to be completely fucking absurd – conception no longer has anything to do with physical intimacy with your partner.

19. IVF somehow makes your uterus public property – everyone from your mum, your sister, your neighbours, your work colleagues, to your hairdresser will all have an opinion on what you are doing ‘wrong’ and they will be only to happy to share it.

20. After a while on IVF treatments the phrase ‘We are praying for you’, will make you want to commit grievous bodily harm. With the nearest blunt instrument. You will need a chaperone/witness for social occasions.

21. At some point on IVF you will try to convince yourself that you have ‘given up’ – but deep down inside you will discover you are unable to… even years later you may find you never actually ‘gave up’ and the pain of it all is still with you.

22. If you are on IVF long enough (too long?) you will find yourself developing deep and abiding friendships with the anaesthetists who keep you company while you wait for your surgeon – you may even end up with a favourite anaesthetist (this is a very sad state of affairs).

23. While on IVF, you will learn more about the female anatomy, the reproductive system, hormones and artificial reproductive technologies than you ever wanted to know… you will become the ‘Girly Swot Guru’ for the rest of your fertile female friends.

24. Early on during IVF your modesty will be defenestrated – about the second or third time you have an embryo transfer with your OB/GYN, a scientist or two, a nurse, an orderly and some strange guy writing notes in the corner of the room while you have your feet in the stirrups you will decide: ‘Modesty, schmodesty.’

25. But the worst thing no one tells you about when you’re on IVF is that a positive pregnancy test is no guarantee of a healthy viable foetus – so much can still go wrong from the point of conception and positive test to actually growing a healthy baby, and a miscarriage after years of effort, pain and expense is absolutely soul destroying.

Plane thoughts.

Posted on November 10, 2013 by borysSNORC

In October 2012, Mr K and I went to see our old IVF specialist. For anyone who has ever read much of this blog, you probably know already that the ten microscopic frozen embryos that I have in storage represent a huge weight hanging over my head. So we went to see Glenn to discuss the idea of using them via a surrogate, in what would be a last ditch attempt to try and have another child. Glenn seemed happy to see us as per usual, remembered every detail of every other patient I had sent to him, enquired after my family – my mother, my father, both of my sisters and even two friends I had sent him, and told us that our embryos statistically have an 80% chance of ‘taking’ if put back in a normally fertile and healthy woman… as compared the <30%ish chance they always had when being put back in me. It all sounded very positive and doable even (though the cost was going to be prohibitive with a rough figure of approximately $30,000 being bandied about). But then again… Glenn always was very optimistic for us, largely due to my youth, which in fertility terms at the time I was seeking treatments was on my side. He told us that from when we decided to go ahead, it would take about three months in legals and counselling before an implantation to a surrogate could take place. And I remember thinking… ‘That soon, huh?’

Anyway, we talked about it for a while and eventually Mr K decided we would ask his sister if she would act as a surrogate for us. Such a huge… HUGE… thing to ask anyone, and while we have had offers from two other women in our lives, who said they would help us out in this way if they could – it was his sister whom we felt we could most trust with the most precious possession we have in this life… our potential unborn child. It’s a very delicate subject all round and so highly charged with emotions. Mr K’s sister has two absolutely delightful children of her own, so understands the enormous impact of what we would be asking her, as well as fully comprehending the import that accompanies agreeing to enter into such an arrangement. So, Mr K said he would talk to her and see what she said, and eventually in July 2014 (with me hovering in the wings for months waiting for him to find an ‘opportune moment’, trying so desperately every day not to push for things to move more quickly… patience has never been one of my strong suits and I was worried he would change his mind), he spoke with her about it. He decided it would be best to ask her ‘brother to sister’, and I could talk with her later if she wanted any more information about artificial reproductive technologies or the emotional side of complicated fertility or indeed, what this would mean to us.

July he broached the subject with her. A week or so later, I visited and thanked her for considering the situation and told her that I felt she was the person we most trusted to help us with this endeavour. I could not describe how this undertaking felt for me, nor could I adequately put into words my thoughts about how absolutely impossible it would be for us to thank her should she choose to go through with this, and give us the gift of another little person to add to our small family… and then we backed off and gave her space to think. July came and went. And then August… I mentioned to her once in passing that if she needed more detailed information, that I could make an appointment with the IVF specialist for her and he could offer her independent advice on what being a surrogate entails. August behind us, September flew past, all the time… every single day… I fretted. I worried about what would happen if she said ‘no’. I worried about what would happen if she said ‘yes’.

I was scared shitless by the enormity of what we were considering entering into – giving our precious embryos into someone else’s safekeeping in a legal environment that gives all rights to any child born to the birth mother, and not the biological parents. I worried away at it every single day, to the point where I have found it difficult to think cohesively on other things. October came and went and I could feel myself starting to get sick to the stomach every time I thought about it. Convinced that this wasn’t important to her. Convinced that we aren’t important to her. Convinced that our happiness doesn’t matter to others at all. Worried that she had forgotten all about it, or that she felt we shouldn’t have more children or, even worse, when my imagination ran away with me, felt that we didn’t deserve more children.

Then November rolls around and on a weekend while I am out of town, Mr K’s sister tells us that she can’t help us. She doesn’t want to be a surrogate for us and immediately I felt like the very air around me was being sucked out of my lungs. I could not breathe. I was at an event surrounded by friends and strangers… some of them very dear and very close friends, but whom I didn’t feel I could confide in about something so personal or so explosively emotional, without completely breaking down in front of 140 people. There was no where to go, no where to hide, no where to let my pain out. I didn’t have (and still don’t) any details as to why she has decided she can’t undertake this for us or doesn’t want to. In part, I am not sure it really matters what the reasons are behind it – the outcome is the same regardless, but I’d like to know all the same. I am thankful that she even considered doing this for us and by all accounts she seems to have considered it long and hard… but I can’t find the words to describe how unbelievably devastated I feel. Like I have been waiting for the last four years for things to come together for us to be able to consider surrogacy as an option only to find that it’s not an option after all.

I was surrounded by people and yet I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. I am not sure how I held it together in the hours that followed – I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, I wanted to run away, I wanted to hurl myself into freezing water, I wanted to tear at my flesh with my fingernails and wail about how unfair my whole fucking life has been… I wanted to feel something, anything other than the deep and unrelenting sadness and crushing disappointment that gripped my heart and my mind. Instead, I smiled and carried on with my day… pretending to enjoy the company of my friends and hoping that no one noticed anything was amiss because I certainly didn’t want to explain this to anyone.

And now I feel like a huge bottle of angst waiting to explode. What am I to do now?

Surrogacy minefield.

Posted on November 4, 2013 by borysSNORC

I was out to lunch yesterday and saw a good looking young couple come into the restaurant, with their two beautiful children – a toddler about three and an infant about two months old. Nothing remarkable there I guess, except that the couple was gay and the children obviously became part of their family either through adoption, or via surrogacy and adoption, or through some other ‘non-traditional’ means. Seeing they don’t have a uterus between them, it’s a fairly safe assumption. Encountering them caused me mixed emotions… I was glad on the one hand that this loving couple could have a family and on the other hand, it made me feel so sad all over again because I’ve never managed to have the family that I wanted.

Surrogacy has been something that has been on my mind since oh, about 2006 when I had my last egg collection and have been agonising what to do with my ten little frozen embryos ever since. There were three major hindrances to attempting to extend our little family through surrogacy though…. 1) it was illegal in Queensland, 2) we were considered ineligible in other states due to the fact that I already had one viable live birth and was deemed by some doctors as still potentially able to have another viable live birth (and this in spite of four miscarriages and several years trying), and 3) it would have been hideously expensive even if we were eligible.

Then things sort of changed. Queensland was slowly getting in step with the rest of the world and legalized altruistic surrogacy via the Surrogacy Act in 2010, and by that time I had been involved in another car accident rendering my incapable of carrying another pregnancy, which would mean we were eligible now. However there still remained at least two fairly hefty obstacles.. 1) finding a suitable surrogate we could trust – how do you even begin to ask someone to do something so monumentally huge for you? and 2) the nearly $30,000 in medical and legal expenses we were told it would cost to go through a surrogacy procedure. 🙁 The stars were never destined to align on this one, I fear. And yet, I still have those ten little embryos in the freezer, and I would give my right hand to see even one of them grow into a little person.

Recently I saw an article on the BBC news website about commercial surrogacy in India, and it has raised the whole surrogacy thing back up again.
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Living inside the house of surrogates – Lucy Wallis BBC News

Commercial surrogacy is estimated to be worth more than $1bn a year in India. While pregnant, some surrogate mothers live in dormitories – which critics call baby factories. They give childless couples the family they have longed for, but what is it like for the women who carry someone else’s child for money?

“In India families are close. You are ready to do anything for your children,” says 28-year-old Vasanti. “To see my children get everything I ever dreamt of, that’s why I have become a surrogate.” Vasanti is pregnant, but not with her own child – she is carrying a Japanese couple’s baby. For this she will be paid $8,000 (£4,967), enough to build a new house and send her own two children, aged five and seven, to an English-speaking school – something she never thought was possible. “I’m happy from the bottom of my heart,” says Vasanti. She was implanted with their embryo in the small city of Anand in Gujarat and will spend the next nine months living in a nearby dormitory with about 100 other surrogate mothers, all patients of Dr Nayna Patel.

There are up to 10 surrogate mothers in each room. The women have their meals and vitamins delivered to them and are encouraged to rest. Vasanti, however, cannot help feeling restless. “At night I wander around because I can’t sleep. As my tummy is getting bigger and the baby is growing I am getting really bored,” says Vasanti. “Now I want to go home really soon to be with my children and my husband.” The rules of the house forbid the women from having sex during the pregnancy, and emphasise that neither the doctor nor the hospital, nor the couple whose baby it is, are responsible for any complications. If the mother is bearing twins she receives a higher fee – $10,000. If she miscarries within three months, she receives $600. The couples are charged around $28,000 for a pregnancy that leads to a successful birth.

Dr Nayna Patel (front centre) has delivered hundreds of babies in the last decade

Dr Patel, who runs the IVF clinic and the dormitory and delivers the babies, acknowledges that many people find her work offensive. “I have faced criticism. I am facing it and I will be facing it, because this, according to many, is a controversial subject,” she says. “There are a lot of allegations that this is just a business, this is just baby-selling, a baby-making factory, and all these phrases used to hurt.” Some say that the surrogates are being exploited, but Patel argues that the worlds of big business, glamour and politics are harsher. “I feel that each and every person in this society is using one or the other person,” Patel says.

In her opinion, the mothers are getting a fair deal. “These surrogates are doing the physical work, agreed, and they are being compensated for that. They know that there is no gain without pain,” she says. While they stay in the surrogate house, Patel says the women are taught new skills such as embroidery so that they can earn a living after they leave.

The women are taught new skills such as how to become beauticians

And the money they earn is huge by local standards. Vasanti’s payment, which she receives in instalments, dwarfs her husband Ashok’s monthly income of about $40 a month. Some mothers come back again after giving birth once. Three times is the maximum Patel allows. There are a number of reasons why India is “the surrogacy hub of the world”, she says. Good medical technology is available and the cost is comparatively low. But the legal situation is also favourable, Patel argues.

“The surrogate has no right over the baby or no duties towards the baby, so that makes it easier. Whereas in the Western world… the birth mother is considered as the mother and the birth certificate will have her name.” Not having the surrogate’s name on the birth certificate can make it harder for the children to find out about the surrogate mother who gave birth to them if one day they want to gain an understanding of their past.

India has one third of the world’s poorest people and critics argue that poverty is a major factor in the women’s decision to become a surrogate. “There are… many needy females in India,” says Patel. “The food, shelter, clothing and medicine, healthcare is not free for all in India. People have to fend for themselves.” Patel says she encourages the women to use their earnings wisely. Vasanti and her husband are building a new home.

“The house I live in at the moment is a rented house, this one will be much better,” says Ashok. “My parents will be pleased that their son and his wife have managed to build a house. Our status in society will go up, which will be a good thing.” But the new house comes at a price. It will not be built in the same area as their old one, because of hostility from neighbours. “If you are at home then everyone knows that we are doing surrogacy, that this is a test tube baby, and they use bad language. So then we can’t stay there safely,” says Vasanti.

Vasanti and Ashok with their daughter

As she nears her due date, Vasanti becomes more anxious about the birth. “I don’t know anything about whether my couple will come and take my baby straight away, or if it will stay with me for 10, 15 days, 20 days. I might not even get to see it,” she says. Vasanti is moved to hospital and after a protracted labour, Patel decides to give her a caesarean section.

It’s a boy – usually a cause for celebration in India, but Vasanti is concerned that the Japanese couple had originally wanted a girl. The baby is taken directly to a neonatal hospital where his parents will be able to collect him and take him to Japan. Vasanti is tearful as she remembers the moment she caught a glimpse of him. “I saw him when I had my caesarean. I saw my son, but then they took him straight away. I must have seen him for five seconds, so I saw that he was living. “The couple wanted a girl and it’s a boy. It’s good whether it’s a boy or a girl. She’s got a child at least.” As the tiny baby boy she has carried for the past nine months starts his new life, Vasanti is beginning hers. She lives in her new house with her family and her children attend an English-speaking school. “My children are growing day by day and we want a good future,” says Vasanti. “That’s why we [did] this, and not in my entire life do I want my daughter to be a surrogate mother.”

House of Surrogates will be broadcast on Tuesday 1 October at 21:00 BST on BBC Four. Or catch up later on BBC iPlayer

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I managed to find and watch the documentary, and have to admit, I was quite surprised by it. I expected to be confronted by extremely desperate self serving western couples who were completely taking advantage of the poverty of these Indian women – because I know what that particular desperation looks like, and it’s not pretty, so I could understand entirely how and why this could end up being the case. However, these women who choose to be surrogates were not exactly lacking in agency. Yes, they come from poverty stricken backgrounds and are generally not very educated, but they making a conscious decision to enter into surrogacy to improve their personal family situations, knowing what they are doing and, very importantly, why they want to do it. Most of them are doing it for the money, though some of them mention they want to help the childless couples too. The surrogates receive health monitoring, financial counselling, room and board, vocational training, and while I personally think that they could benefit by a less ‘hard love’ and more Western approach to counselling about the emotional side of giving up a child, I’m not so sure you could definitively say they are being exploited.

The surrogates have all had their own families and understand the import of what having children means in someone’s life. These women want to better their own lot in life and decide to carry a baby for a childless couple in order to gain a huge increase in quality of life for herself, her husband, her children and frequently for her extended family also.

I haven’t actually made enquiries… but it makes me want to contact Dr Patel’s clinic and find out how to transfer my embryos to India. Scary and risky prospect that that is.

THINK before you post.

Posted on September 19, 2013 by borysSNORC

A heavily pregnant friend recently wrote the following Facebook status:

Yep. This is someone who about to go through one of the most amazing and rewarding experiences that life on this planet offers, and this is how she chooses to express herself to the world at large – well, to her 490+ Facebook ‘friends’, but you get the idea. I’ve ranted with incredulity at the overuse of the the ‘FML’ tag/concept in the past, but this one really takes the cake – “Everything is so horrible, I have a partner, a healthy child, another one on the way, and my entire life is made so miserable by the miraculous life growing inside my belly, because I can’t lay comfortably in the bath tub, so I shall rail forth and say ‘Fuck My Life’ to all and sundry to make them feel sorry for me and offer me meaningless platitudes.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Are people so wrapped up in their own little lives and inside their own little heads that they
seriously don’t realize the impact that their words can have on the people around them? Do they truly not realize how many people on that 490+ list of friends, would give their left arm to be uncomfortable in the bathtub due to being heavily pregnant!?! I don’t even know this person terribly well, she lives over 1500kms from me and I see her barely a few times a year, but I do know at least five mutual friends on her friends list that are affected by infertility, who probably found that comment as immature and insensitive as I did. And, given that Infertility affects up to one in six couples in this country, I’m guessing that there was at least triple that again, who read that status update and had some sort of emotional reaction to it, ranging from incredulity and disbelief, to pain and disquiet.

It reminds me of an occasion when I was sitting around the waiting room at my gynaecologist’s rooms, waiting for an appointment – probably just another ultrasound to check on follicular development, there were lots of those. Anyway, the Dr had been called off to another part of the hospital to perform an emergency c-section, and so there was about six women waiting for him and he wasn’t even back in his rooms yet. The women grew bored pretty quickly of the trashy magazines and started nattering, as they do. One after another, they complained about their sore backs, their bloated bellies, their uncomfortable bladders, their swollen feet, their increasing weight and their despair at
missing coffee and wine. After about fifteen minutes of my purposefully staying out of this conversation, one of them eventually turned to me, smiled and said, ‘You’re obviously really early in and got all this to look forward to! How far along are you, dear?’

There was a brief look of horror from Suzie, the medical receptionist whom I had gotten to know quite well over the preceding months, as she contemplated how to rescue me, and it took me a moment to answer. I was mentally weighing up whether to lie and say ‘Oh, x number of weeks’, and let them continue in their collective dismay over stretch marks; or to fess up with the truth and hopefully make these women feel lucky that they don’t fit into
anything in their wardrobes. I opted for the later – ‘Actually, I’m not pregnant, I’m one of Glenn’s IVF patients. As it happens I am infertile, and have been undergoing assisted reproductive treatments for a bit over a year now.’ Well, you could have sliced the room with the shocked and slightly panicky looks that I got from these complaining expectant
mothers. Suddenly they didn’t want to complain over their collective misfortunes anymore. I got a few mumbled, ‘Oh’s and some ‘I’m so sorry’ type comments accompanied by some very sheepish looks from round the room… but no one had anything else to say, and they eventually turned back to their trashy magazines.

Sigh. Yes, I know my friend’s status update was an off hand comment designed to elicit ‘poor you’ type responses from her acquaintances – and yes, evidently it performed it’s designated task admirably, judging by the ensuing commentary. But, is it too much to ask that people think, just a little bit, about others before they post?

Congratulations. I’ll go home and stab you in effigy later.

Posted on September 8, 2013 by borysSNORC

What a roller coaster of a week. Between all the political brouhaha going on left, right and centre, and the sheer idiocy and chaos of Australia’s political landscape as evidenced in our mainsteam media… it’s been all up, or all down, and not a lot of in between.

So many of my friends seem to be in mourning today… our would be bright and shiny future, is somewhat less bright and shiny this morning as we contemplate the nation’s selection of a complete chicken fucking moron to: represent us on the international stage, throw welfare money at the nation’s wealthy and elite, destroy our environment and ignore the challenges of climate change, stunt our nation’s internet and technological future, destroy our rail infrastructure, treat cruelly with asylum seeking refugees and a tonne of other shit no one really wants, and a lot of people obviously haven’t really thought through! Alas, there’s nothing to be done, but just sit back and watch it all play out now… in six months time there will be nary a soul in sight who will admit to voting for the idiot, just like Campbell bloody Newman. C’est la vie.

But also sadly this week I find an familiar and decidedly ugly foe raising its head for me, yet again and much closer to home… Jealousy. A friend of Mr K’s, whom he worked closely with for the last five years has just had a third daughter. A uni friend of mine has just announced on Facebook that she’s just found out she’s having a baby and is laughingly refusing to give up coffee… and a very, very dear, and once very close, friend who is currently managing at home with her beautiful, nearly toddling, baby girl; has just announced that she 14 weeks along too. I want to congratulate them and hug them and wish them all well… and the other half of me wants to go home, scream into a pillow and stab them all in effigy, because it comes so easy for everyone else! 🙁

In all fairness my dear, once close, friend hasn’t had the easiest run to breeding either. First child took her a long time, some painful endometriosis surgeries and assisted reproductive treatments. I see myself thinking and saying, ‘once close’ friend because I know I have not been a very good friend to her these last few years at all. I was supportive when I knew she was trying to fall pregnant, and sympathetic and understanding when things weren’t working as well as they should be. But once she announced that she was having a baby, I found myself slowly and inexorably putting distance between myself her imminent happy family. I know that it is a sort of self preservation mechanism, the less involved I am, the less I end up being faced with the huge emotional time bomb that the tiny precious babies represent. And even though I know that this is hideously self involved of me, at a time when she probably really needs as much support from her friends and family as possible, I can’t seem to help myself, but retreat.

It’s the Horrid IVF Hangover. Years have passed – six or seven years since I was forced to give up – and apart from the time spent repairing the financial wreckage that long term IVF causes, and the relationship damage that IVF leaves you with… I am also left with a bitterness and jealousy that renders me completely unable to be truly happy for the people around me who are having their own gorgeous little children. Intellectually I am happy for them and I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I went through… but somewhere deep inside, I’m still a huge bundle of pain. I have distanced myself from one of my dearest friends because I simply don’t know how to be there for her and participate in her happiness and joy, without constantly feeling the sorrow and sadness of my own losses. Such conflicting emotions never sit politely together – great happiness and relief for them, and deep sadness and grief for me.

End result is that I feel I have become the worst possible friend imaginable. Once there for the fun times, but not able to be there to share in her early motherhood trials. There in the past, but unable to reliably be there in the future. I want her to be happy. I want her to have a huge family of five or six beautiful children if that is what she wants… but more than that, I want to be genuinely happy FOR her. And for some reason, I just don’t know how to shake off all my emotional baggage in a useful way that allows me to be present and genuinely joyful for her, and with her. So instead I have found myself staying away… to spare me the constant emotional pain and her, the expressions of pity.

I feel like such a coward, but I just don’t know how to deal with my emotions and so what do I do? But continue on with the avoidance. 🙁