A guys view

I thought it was about time that blokes had a part in this forum where we can have some kind of input and perhaps try to discover what the hell is going on during this whole roller coaster of “Fertility Treatment”.

I would encourage guys to submit their experiences and how they have dealt with all the varying aspects of the process (as I'm sure there are plenty). I would also encourage girls to ask questions of guys and participate in helping us deal with the treatments together.

Personally my wife and I have been trying for 2.5 years with various courses of Clomid, and also three failed attempts at IUI. Our next step is the full IVF and we are waiting for funding for that. We are also having a few months off fertility treatment to concentrate on us again. No matter what treatment you are going through they all have a very hard and trying emotional path, so from experience “don’t take it for granted!”

While us blokes only physically play a relatively small part in the overall treatment process, we are still feeling the same pains of loss and grief every month that pregnancy does not occur.

Following the last failed IUI we as a couple hit the proverbial “brick wall”, my wife was always sad, we started not wanting to go out and visit friends, we ate rubbish food and didn't exercise, we questioned our relationship, and I was becoming withdrawn and anxious that my wife would leave me. We were really in a very big hole and we couldn’t see anyway out of it.

I’ve found it extremely difficult during these treatments to understand what my wife goes through, and how she deals with the grief every month. I have so desperately wanted to help her through this experience but I’ve had this real sense of being on the outside and really only there as a swimmer donor when required. I’ve had huge feelings of guilt, frustration and sadness that I can’t get the woman I love dearly pregnant. It’s a huge blow to your manhood and your pride.

Luckily we sought some counselling together to see if we recover some of our sanity. Now, I know most guys would balk at going to see a counsellor and spill your guts to a stranger, but I have to say it was one of the most liberating and worthwhile experiences. It not only started to get us back on track but it also made us aware of all the pressures involved in Fertility Treatment and put everything into perspective. Some of the sessions were very hard and incredibly emotional, and there were plenty of tears from both of us. But at the end of it we now believe we can survive the Fertility Treatments (what ever the outcome) and it will not get the better of us. We are not expecting it to be an easy ride but we are now going into it with our eyes open and armed with much more knowledge than we had before. Keeping the lines of communication open during every part of the experience seems to be the key.

Hopefully this might be a catalyst for improved communication between couples during the fertility treatment process.

Good luck to everyone who is going through this journey!!!!

Dwoodle I think its awesome you have opened this thread. I'm a female so no help - but I fully salute you - and hope your thread helps other guys to express their thoughts and feelings.

Best of luck to you and your wife with the IVF.

I agree with the others, it's fantastic that you've started this thread dwoodle. This journey is not one that's taken individually, but takes a couple who experience both different and similar journeys, physically and emotionally. Big kudos to you for coming on here and being so candid, and like Frankie and Asics have said, all the baby dust in the world to you and your DW with your IVF cycles.

I'll add to the chorus of 'good on you's I know DH found the whole TTC thing really hard - being expected to perform on demand (and probably having to cope with the fact that the 'demand' was much higher during that time of the month, which would surely make any bloke feel a bit used), and coping with the fact that I was counting on him for support, and his feelings often got kind of sidelined in the process, because he had to be the 'strong' one. I'll see if I can get him to post - obviously, it's a bit after the fact for us now, but I'm sure he'd still have some good input.

Edited by tal

We need some more guys to come forward and share their views and feelings. I know my DH felt better once he was able to share what he was feeling when we were going through it all. Well done Dwoodle for starting it all!

No advice, but thanks for sharing!

Hi Dwoodle - well done for kicking off a place for us guys to share stuff.

It's saddening to read of the stress you and your wife are going through. Our own fertility journey is somewhat different to yours (more about that later), so I can't say I know all of what you're going through, and don't want to come across as claiming to have answers to problems I can't relate to.

All I would say is: Don't lose sight of the things that you loved/enjoyed about each other before you started TTC. I do know how easy it is to be consumed by this clinical, unromantic assisted-fertility process, and that maintaining the relationship you both had as newlyweds takes a lot of work in stressful times - just as it does for those of us with kids. But sharing things together, making each other laugh, and feeling safe/comforted in each others' company must have figured in the things that drew you together in the first place. As difficult as it may seem to keep that up, that's exactly the glue you'll both need to get each other through this - and the basis for the relationship that you'll be wanting to role-model to the child(ren) you one day will have.

Uugh, that did come across like a sermon from a know-it-all. But I do wish you both all the best in facing all that the future holds.

The issues my wife and I face aren't on the same scale as yours - but in the hope of encouraging other blokes to share their own feelings (however serious they may be), I will tell our story to date in a separate posting later today...