the beginning

 

I remember way back, right back at the beginning, when we'd gone through the the excitement of deciding to try for a baby, to six months later getting worried, to six months later still visiting a GP to ask questions. The first step was preliminary testing. The NHS was so wonderful to us, but the process is slow, and information-less when you're desperate to know what on earth is going on. We waited for our yellow letter to come in the post, which told us the next step in this...whole thing. I had to go to Perth hospital for a dye test and ultrasound. There was an intense mix of excitement and terror that came with most steps we took, that and emotional exhaustion. Physical and emotional exhaustion. Just - so much exhaustion. I remember pulling up at the hospital, and messaging the very few people we'd decided to tell, and being so sad that they didn't grasp the enormity of this day for me. But then, I'm not sure I could comprehend it either. The dye test was for me, in general terms, like this. Get into a gown, walk into the room, speculum, dye is introduced...injected...shot?...internally into fallopian tubes, lie this way, lie that way, x-ray is taken this way, x-ray is taken that way, here's a pad, pop your pants back on in that room. Laughing a little because all I could imagine was the ink from a pen dripping from my body, emotionally numb because what the HECK was happening, and would it be a good thing if they found a tube was blocked - surely then they could unblock it? What if they found something sinister? What if what they found already meant the end? The ultrasound seemed like a much more straight forward scenario. What I didn't take into account was that somewhere, somewhere deep in my hopes and dreams, I'd always assumed my first ultrasound would be a moment of joy, one distinctly lacking in trauma and tears which were only sad. 

Bloods were done, everything was clear. I don't remember how quickly the results came, but I remember the waiting room, the blue gown, the change room. How I felt the need to be chatty and polite and funny while my insides were being x-ray'd, and the deep churn in my gut and sucker punch to my heart and throat seeing the black, wobbly screen that showed a picture of my uterus - which was very clearly empty.