An affectionate confession from a dad who experienced IVF: It took 4 years before I officially become a dad ! God knows what I have experienced!
Becoming a father is a sacred and solemn thing for a man. When he becomes a father, he has completed the transformation from a boy to a man, and his life becomes more complete.
Dear baby, it’s the first time I play the role of dad, please bear with me.
"There's a cool guy in my family."
He is invulnerable to almost everything
His palms are a little rough.
He led me to learn to walk.
Thank you for coming to my life
You are the most beautiful love letter I have ever written.
You are the happiness of a family.
Love you,no matter what.
From Mango Channel
The life of every IVF baby starts with joint efforts and expectations of parents.
For these moms who have done IVF on a tough journey, when the physician informed us that they have "good news" to share, the joy and excitement to those moms are beyond words. And how does it feel for the men to know that they are going to become dads?
On this Father's Day, I will share with you the true confession of a dad who has experienced IVF himself. Happy Father's Day to you all!
Happy Father's Day
We had been trying to get pregnant for almost four years before our IVF journey. At that time we have been married for three years. We didn’t have a house by then, and a child is out of our plan either.
For us, child is still an imagination about the future. In the rental house, we would imagine what life will be like in the future, and whether we will struggle for a few more years to welcome the arrival of our child.
Sometimes, fate likes to make fun of ordinary people like us, making us suffer quite a bit on the way forward.
Although the sufferings bring us joy in the end, we feel that it’s unbearable pain at that very moment. Even now, when we think of it, we still feel it painful.
For those four years, we had been wanting to have a child, but we couldn't. At first, we thought we were still young, we had regular habits, and we never thought it would be a physical problem. We thought it might be due to the busy job, and the body was not well taken care of, so we looked for traditional Chinese medicine to recuperate. However, the longer this drags on, the more stressful it gets. In particular, we are aware of the stress that parents bring in silence.
Until one day in winter, my wife suddenly said that she would like to get fallopian tubes checked. She went for the appointment that day alone, and we received the diagnosis confirming that fallopian tubes were vertical. According to the physician, it would be impossible for us to conceive naturally.
I asked for leave from the employer and headed home directly, and I was relatively calm on the way back, checking what vertical fallopian tube is and stands for.
"Tubal rigidity is a manifestation of abnormal tubal development. It will affect the oviduct cilia swing, which will affect the timing, speed etc for the fertilization process of sperm and egg, further resulting in infertility."
I was thinking if that’s really the case, we would accept and try IVF treatment. However when I got home and saw my wife crying, I cannot stop crying with her too. Why is it so hard for us while so easy for others? We couldn't figure it out at that time.
However, when we know that it the only way out, we felt relieved, as we didn’t know the reason for more than four years, and we had been feeling suffocated, feeling like living in a black narrow tunnel where there is no light at all.
At the baseline checks in June 2016, the physician evaluated that the uterine environment was very good, and uterine fibroids were found in a relatively lower position, which would have little impact on pregnancy.
After the IVF treatment begins, I couldn’t really feel the pain from those injections. However, I do know that’s the growth of our love. After egg retrieval, laboratory insemination, embryo culture and embryo implantation, we started a new journey.
From the seventh day upon embryo transfer, she checked every day to see if the little life had settled in that small “house”, but there was no "good news".
The embryo didn’t take, and my wife cried very hard. Her classmate who is a doctorate in psychologist had a long talk with us. She analyzed that we had not really accepted the difficulty of having a child psychologically. At that time, I was also under great pressure at work, and I really felt that the string of the nerve in my head might be broken at any time
I accompanied my wife for the second transfer. Before heading to the clinic, we went to worship the Buddha. I said some words on that date which touched us even to now: "Our baby is watching us in the sky, and we will manage to be the type of parents that she likes". My wife wept silently.
At the night before the transfer, I couldn't sleep at all. I went over all kinds of bad results that might happen in my mind. The next day, my wife told me that she didn’t feel good, and I pacified her that everything was going to be alright. In fact, my heart was perturbed as well.
On the tenth day post transfer, there appeared two shallow lines on the home test kit. Her excitement exceeded my imagination, until then I didn’t realize that she was so looking forward to the arrival of our baby. From that day on, she was excited to verify each day to confirm whether there was a little life in her uterus. Looking at her busy with the confirmation test, I feel that she is the most adorable person in the world.
On the twentieth days after transfer, we saw two fetal sacs nestled togethe via ultrasound, and my wife began to look forward to the moment of officially confirming two heartbeats. When that day came, we realized with regret that we would end up with only one baby (one of them had stopped growing). We have worries, yet with more being happiness from expectation.
In fact, all this happiness comes from the pain that my wife assumed alone. She had to give herself an injection of progesterone every day for three months in a roll, and her buttocks really could not find a place for another injection anymore.
Although that kind of pain is not on my body, my love to her made me shed tears for countless times.
Early morning sickness caused my wife malnutrition, even bleeding was seen from it. We were scared at a loss on that night. Fortunately, my mom came to take care of her and things got better gradually.
After we are graduated to our OB, we are full of joy being new to this. We strictly comply with the requirements of the physician, and do regular antenatal examination. Blood draw and ultrasound are always necessary for every appointment.
As the due date was approaching, we began to prepare our maternity kits, and ask friends and colleagues for advice, to be well prepared for the new life!
My wife gave birth through vaginal delivery in a public hospital, and the whole process lasted more than ten hours while I was not allowed to go in and can only sit on the bench anxiously waiting for her to come out. When I was called in, I was completely blank the first sight I landed on our baby. Then, my wife said she wanted to have a bowl of porridge, so I went out of the hospital and rode my bicycle to find a porridge shop.
My tears came down while I was riding on the bicycle looking through those people and trees in front of me.
I just cannot help thinking how magic life is that the little angel just came to me like this. She is a girl, and she will grow up to be a teenager and then get married and has children of her own. This is how life goes on and on.
We actually never thought that we would have to look for IVF treatment to have a baby as we always think that we were still young. However, things happened. Some of our friends felt this was an easy journey, however, I told them that many steps along the way were like waiting for the lottery result, full of surprise.
When my wife was pregnant, I hope our baby could come to the world quickly. Later on, I realized that I should enjoy the moment, read stories to our baby and imagine what she will look alike. Now she is just one month old, and sometimes she will cry and make us upset. Every stage has its own meaningfulness, even though sometimes we feel upset and not happy, it goes away. Take each step of the process with our beliefs.
This is a happy journey, the happiness after suffering is the most grateful.
I have always been grateful for that I am able to be a father.
Today is the eighth Father's Day that we have accompanied families who have experienced IVF, and we hope to give some support and encouragement to the fathers who are still going through IVF treatment. We want to express on behalf of babies: Dad, you have been doing a good job!
