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ALEgg retrieval is sold as a procedure. A step in the process. Something you go in for, come out of, and then wait.
What they don’t fully prepare you for is what it actually looks like on the other side of it.
Watching Eleanor come round after each retrieval, seeing what her body had just been through, the discomfort, the exhaustion, the way she’d try to reassure me she was fine when she clearly wasn’t, that never got easier.
Not once.
And I think that’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough from the partner’s side.
You are not going through it physically. But you are watching someone you love go through something really hard, round after round, and there is almost nothing you can do except be there.
That helplessness has a weight to it.
You want to fix it. You want to take some of it from her. You want to do something useful.
And mostly you just sit there and hold her hand and tell her she’s incredible, because she is, and because it’s the only thing you have.
Eleanor went through this more times than anyone should have to.
Every single time she got back up and did it again.
I will never stop being in awe of that 🫶
#IVF #EggRetrieval #FertilityJourney #IVFSupport #aloomah
@aloomahfertility
