Disclaimer: We all have our own journeys, and everyone is impacted in their own way. My story won’t ever belong to someone else, but I hope it can help further the acceptance and willingness to speak about one’s life, mental health, and find a supportive community who listen and care.

Infertility #4: Breakdown

So what do we do next?

Obviously we have discussed this quite a bit. We started talking about it right from the first night, where I suggested that we look towards getting a sperm donor, not that I knew anything about that at the time.

One of my favourite things that we did, was two months after getting the initial news. The first part of the day involved doing my second semen analysis, and I was feeling rather emotional and unsure about how to feel. Andrea took the day off work to help support me as I was feeling like it was an incredibly pointless endeavour, yet trying to hold onto small shreds of hope. I wasn’t expecting a miracle by any means, considering the first test results showed absolutely no sperm.

It’s not like I magically expected that this would suddenly change, but I will admit there was still a part of me that held onto that hope that maybe there was a mistake the first time. Maybe someone screwed up the test, or maybe the lab courier invalidated the first sample by taking a detour and getting stuck in a drive-thru. I think perhaps this is the equivalent of grasping at straws…

After the test was complete, Andrea and I went over to a small cafe and had a reservation to go for HIgh Tea. We spent about an hour and a half together, happily snacking on our fancy foods and discussing all the questions that we had for the doctors, and just general fertility questions that we had.

We took this time together to really figure out what we wanted to know. We had been dealing with emotions for 2 months already and were finally ready to actually deal with all those questions that kept popping up randomly throughout our days that we hadn’t had time to discuss. We came up with a list of things to ask our family doctor, the urologist, and then questions about fertility clinics.

Although we always randomly talked about things as they came up, I think it was extremely important for us to take this day together and do something fun on a date while intentionally figuring things out and moving us both forward together one more step along the way.

We learned a lot together that day. We researched fertility clinics, learned the names of a couple that are closest to us, and then were able to learn what some of the initial process looks like once we get to that point. This is also when we really decided which paths we were interested in exploring, and which ones we don’t want to pursue right away.

After this, one of the first things I needed to do in order to help myself make sense of things was to talk to my family doctor again about my second test results, and then ask her those general questions that we had come up with. It took me a long time to have that appointment though. I thought the office would call me in a couple weeks, but they didn’t. This is also the time in which I was going through my heaviest emotions and my emotional breakdowns.

Throughout all of those weeks, the questions and confusion about all the things I didn’t know kept flying through my mind, day in and day out. At random moments all day long, they would pop up in my mind and I would quickly bury them away. I kept waiting for the doctor’s office to call me like they did after the first test. I was trying to hold off on letting all the questions overwhelm me; I was trying to be patient with all the things that I couldn’t research on my own.

Eventually, as you have already read in the previous post, the questions did indeed overwhelm my mind and after my second breakdown, I finally made an appointment to talk to the doctor on my own. I figured I had been patient enough and now I absolutely needed to know some answers.

Isn’t that what we all want for our lives? Answers?

I know that there are many events that can tear up a relationship and make everything more difficult, but I am so glad to have a partner who is committed to maintaining the happiness and togetherness that is so important. I spend my life seeking answers to all my questions, but when it comes to her, I don’t question anything. She’s my favourite person, and I would never want to do this with anyone else.

Part 6: Breathe