When I was 15 I announced what I would name my child, ‘irrespective of who the father is’, I would joke around. It never occurred to me that I could be childless one day. Never, until the day I swallowed a lump in my throat when the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) test results came negative.
I don’t know how I managed to sleep the day before the blood test. Time hung heavy, the heaviest from the time my blood sample was drawn till the result appeared online. And it came negative. After one full year of medicines that set my hormones on a wayward spin, after spending hours at the hospital, after a zillion scans and blood tests, and injecting myself, I didn’t expect to hear that my IVF had failed.
The first time I entered this hospital, it felt like a railway station. If you have been to Chennai Central, there is a display screen in front of which hundreds of commuters sit and wait. The hospital was the same, hundreds of couples, typically not smiling. You are on the one hand thinking you have a huge problem and then this overcrowded fertility clinic makes you realise that you are definitely not alone.
There is stress in the air, but I refused to take it into myself. I was positive all through the ordeal of this chemical overdose.
We women who waited in queues shared a camaraderie over the common problem of fertility that we shared. Stories and experiences were shared with concern and an undercurrent of anxiety. One told me how a laparoscopic surgery had caused damage to all her good tissues, another told me about a woman who underwent the IVF procedure as many as eight times, and one told me how she had tried for years to conceive and this was her last hope.
I had wondered where I would stand at the end of it all. I was less emotional and less stressed, though my case was complex according to all those doctors I had met. My surgery and my cysts had done quite a bit of damage. Actually, I was still not ready to think that I might never bear a child. It would be difficult, but not impossible, that was my thought.
The day it all unfolded to stamp me as ‘IVF Failed’, a lot of things changed. I cried behind a closed door for maybe 15 full minutes. But once I was done crying, I had no heavy heart. I stood up with the conviction that child-bearing is not the be all and end all of my life. I have no clue how it feels to be a mother. It was an imaginary joy that I had gathered in my mind from the experience of other people. Why should I fret about not having a certain happiness that I don’t even know how it feels?
I told my husband I will not put my body through an IVF procedure another time. He, for whom the procedure was equally taxing, though not physically, accepted my decision.
I’m 36 today, nine years into marriage, and no regrets about not having a child. Women around me, younger and older than me, are becoming mothers. But there are no melodramatic tears that appear in my eyes seeing other mothers. I am genuinely happy for them. I’m happily married and happy about life. My husband and I have all the love to give to the children borne by others. We are not jealous, nor do we pity ourselves.
Many people who I meet for the first time ask me about children, and I nonchalantly say ‘we don’t have children’. Most people respond with ‘I’m sorry’. I smile it away; we can’t quite expect everyone to be mature enough to know it’s not a terminal illness. There are only two people who need to know it’s not a terminal illness — that’s you and your partner.
If you happen to face the probability of being childless, trust me, it’s not life- shattering. It’s perfectly fine to not become a mother or a father. It could be the best- rated happiness on earth, but please, isn’t it stupid to sink in the sorrow of an imagined joy? Your life can’t possibly be wrecked by something that never occurred.
ranjini.sivaswamy@gmail.com
