"Here I am, drinking a cider, eating a sandwich and waiting for my miscarriage to start."

Life isn’t unfair, it just really sucks sometimes.

Here I am, drinking a cider, eating a cheese sandwich and waiting for my miscarriage to start. I’ve been to the supermarket and have stocked up on heavy duty pads to soak up the impending rush of blood and cramping that I will endure for days, maybe weeks.

A bit of background. I’m 40 years old, healthy and happy. I’m a wife to an amazing man and a mum to an adorable 4 and 3/4 year old little boy. Life’s not so bad. From the outside looking in we have it pretty good. We own our house (well, the bank does but hey, that’s standard), have good jobs, lovely families and good friends.

For the last eight years we have been battling with the ups and downs of the beast that is infertility. It took four years for us to have our little boy but we got there in the end. It’s been four years since we started trying for another child.

People ask why we don’t just give up and be happy with what we’ve got. Fair point, but you’re not living our life. We’re not finished. Our family isn’t complete. Our son is such a beautiful little soul, he is always saying he wishes he had a baby brother or sister.

We want another person in our family for us but more so for him. We want him to grow up with siblings. He has that right just like anyone else does. So no, we won’t be giving up until there are no more options for us.

We started on the normal route, happily married, trying for kids, nothing worked for the first year so we went and had some tests to check all was OK. And our results… perfectly fine. AKA there is no reason that we shouldn't be falling pregnant. Eight years on, three specialists later, 19 IVF cycles under our belt, and finally, just from doing a standard blood test, our new doctor has found the problem, or should I say problems, for our infertility and they’re all totally fixable.

What do you say to someone who’s lost a baby? 

To say that we were frustrated when we found out what our issues were by doing a STANDARD blood test doesn’t quite cut it. The years and years of waiting and hoping, the embarrassment and the bucket loads of money spent on cycle after cycle all add up. Even this eternal optimist has dark days and wants to throw it all in and go live on another planet where no one asks questions or looks at you with pity.

Most people are good and have your best interests at heart, I get that. I understand IVF is another language to those not going through it. I never looked at IVF as a “poor me”situation. It’s almost the norm these days. In saying that, you learn pretty early on who you can lean on and talk to about your IVF.

I distinctly remember one of my friends saying ‘you mustn’t be doing it right’ inferring my husband and I didn’t know how/when to have sex to fall pregnant. Really? That’s your response? Seriously? I guarantee you 100% that I know more than you will ever know about fertility, cycles, ovulation, blastocysts, genes, sperm and every other intricate detail about how to get pregnant.

Then there are the ones that have a morbid fascination with your failure. These people are right there, happy to be by your side when you’re going through a treatment but have a break from IVF for a while and they drop off the face of the earth.

So as I sit here and finish my cider and wait for my miscarriage, I am positive. Our new doctor has given us hope. He has found our problems and CAN fix them. We have an egg on ‘ice’ that has been genetically tested, we just need to get through the next few weeks, have an internal ‘spring clean’ and go again.

This post originally appeared on Medium and was republished here with full permission.