Failing Everywhere, or So It Felt

Dear Diary,

If I thought the hardest part would be the diagnosis, I was wrong.

The real challenge began in the in-between. In the waiting rooms. In the silence after appointments. In the days where nothing happened externally, but everything inside me was shifting.

My body no longer felt like something I could trust blindly. It became something to monitor. To measure. To manage. Numbers started to define my days... hormone levels... follicle counts... lining thickness. I learned a new language I never wanted to speak. And with every number came emotion. Hope when they rose, disappointment when they didn’t. It was exhausting... this constant negotiation between science and feeling.

The hormones changed me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Not just physically, but emotionally.

There were moments I didn’t recognise myself. Tears that came too quickly, thoughts that spiralled faster than I could catch them. A sensitivity that made everything feel heavier, louder, more intense. And yet, life around me kept moving as if nothing had changed. That was one of the loneliest parts to be honest. On the outside, I was still me, on the inside everything was different and somewhere in the middle of all of this… my identity began to shift. Not suddenly... not dramatically, but quietly.. almost without permission.

I had been a mother of one - grounded in love, present, certain. I had been a woman building a career across three countries, flying, working, creating, moving forward. And now?

Now I felt like a version of myself I didn’t recognise. A woman driven by fear. A woman measuring time differently. A woman consumed by something invisible to everyone else. I wasn’t flying as much anymore. Work opportunities began to slip through my fingers. TV jobs I once would have said yes to - gone. At the same time, we were spending more than ever. Appointments. Treatments. Medication. The quiet, constant cost of trying. It felt like everything was moving in the wrong direction.

And the guilt… it changed shape. It was no longer just about my body. It was about my daughter as well. There were moments I caught myself being distracted. Not fully present. Thinking about embryos, appointments, timelines when I should have just been with her.

And that thought broke me in a different ways. Was I failing at becoming a mother of two…while also failing at being a good mother to the one I already had? It felt like I couldn’t win.

Like no matter where I placed my energy, something else was being neglected. Motherhood. Career. Self. All of it felt like it was slipping and yet, I kept going. Because what was the alternative?

And then there was us.

I had believed, maybe naively, that this would only make us stronger. And in many ways, it did. But strength isn’t always loud or steady. Sometimes it looks like misunderstanding. Like silence. Like two people trying their best, but not always meeting in the same place. We were carrying the same experience, but not in the same way. I wanted to talk. To process. To feel it all out loud. He wanted to fix things silently. To stay positive. To move forward.

Neither of us was wrong, but there were moments where it felt like we were speaking different emotional languages. Moments where I felt alone in my fear. And yet, underneath it all, there was something deeper holding us. A quiet decision to stay. To try. To not let this break us, even when it stretched us further than we thought possible. "Can we hold each other when we’re both struggling? Can love adapt under pressure?” I didn’t have the answers yet.

I slowly also began to understand that this wasn’t just about my body anymore. It was about identity. About partnership. About surrendering control in a way I never had before and somewhere in the middle of all of this we made a decision. One that felt both terrifying and empowering...

We chose to move forward with creating embryos while undergoing several operations to recreate my cervix. Injections, blood samples and hospitals became the norm for a couple of months. I asked myself several time, if the emotional and physical strain would all be worth it one day and what if not... ?

Little did I know that I was going to be tested more than just once and that that decision marked another beginning. A deeper step into the unknown with a new layer of hope, but that is a story for next time.

Until then,

Your Woman on a Mission