Is infertility gaslighting you, just like Black Mirror?
Charlie Brooker has played a clever joke on viewers with two alternative realities. It all feels very familiar to someone who has been through IVF.
Oh hey guys! Happy Tuesday. So I was watching Black Mirror and reading the latest news about it and it turns out the team did something sneaky which reminded me of a certain part of infertility – the bit where two potential stories co-exist in your head. Know what I mean? I explore this below…
I’ll be back on Friday talking about egg quality – what, if anything, can you do to improve it? That will be for our paid subscribers – hopefully see you all then.
Is anyone watching Black Mirror at the moment? SPOILER ALERT but in the second episode, Charlie Brooker has f*cked with people’s heads even more than usual (if that was possible). Two subtly different versions of the same scene have been released, meaning the story I watched might have been different to the story you watched. It’s genius, the episode is about gaslighting and Brooker is gaslighting everyone. After watching, I couldn’t stop thinking about how infertility gaslights us.
You’ve seen an embryo go into your womb but, whoops, sorry it’s not there anymore. You have sore boobs! You must be pregnant, but whoops, it’s just your period. You’ve paid loads of money for something? Whoops it didn’t actually work.
At any one time when you’re on the jourrrney there are two potential realities being played out. There’s the one where you get pregnant, have a baby and everything is as you imagined. But there’s also the alternative, where you have to dust yourself off and try to build a happy life without children.
When I was going through IVF the first time, both realities were being played out in my head on a loop. Of course, I daydreamed about getting pregnant but I also had to imagine the other version – to make it ok in case it became my story.
It’s the thing that is so hard about infertility. Not knowing how it will work out. Imagine how easy IVF would be if you just knew it would definitely work? All those fears in the back of your mind wouldn’t be there. You would gladly receive the needles, the waxy pants and the mood swings – because your end goal was definitely on the other side of them.
I’m not a control freak by any measure. But I do really love getting excited about things that are about to happen. I love planning holidays and researching which little bakeries we’ll go to for our morning coffee and croissants. Right now I’m thinking about moving house and I’m thinking about which nice new bits of furniture I might get for a new living room. When I was ttc, I was DESPERATE to look at baby clothes and make long lists of names. But I didn’t know whether that would be my story. So I couldn’t run wild.
What happened instead, was I would allow myself time to imagine both. I would say, “ok, Gabby, you’ve got half an hour to go to town on baby clothes, look around, see what you’d want, THEN STOP.” Next I’d give myself time to research dog breeds and how I might decorate the spare room if it definitely wasn’t a baby room. I’d plan the holiday of a lifetime we’d take if it was bad news after my transfer.
As you probably know, I didn’t take that holiday or get that dog the first time I did IVF. I was incredibly lucky. When I came to try for another scientific miracle two years ago, I ended up back in my double life after the first two transfers failed. “If this last embryo doesn’t work either, I need an alternative version that I can get behind.” This time, it was Glastonbury for my 40th and, er, dog breeds again.
I guess life is filled with moments that have two potential endings. Or moments when you think one thing is happening but actually it’s not. But none are as high stakes as TTC and IVF. For me, anyway, allowing myself to build those two different worlds and imagine living them, always helped. That way whichever side the coin landed on, I knew I would be alright.
And another thing…
You may have spotted some new research suggesting giving up gluten, coffee, dairy and alcohol is good for endometriosis symptoms. Dawn O’Porter did a really interesting post confirming the impact cutting out gluten has had on her.
This piece about how infertility caused by pollution affects the Black community is US-focused but really interesting/scary. The author Reniqua Allen-Lamphere’s (quite hard to watch but important) documentary, Infertile Ground, can be found here.
That’s all for today folks! Don’t forget to upgrade to our paid subscription if you’d like to read my piece on egg quality this Friday.