A Box within a box within a box

How are you dealing with infertility?  At what point did you sit down and say to yourself:  “I can’t have my own baby; I need help”?  When you’re lying in bed at night and your wife is asleep do you think about the process and how it impacts upon you as a couple?  Do you ever think about the consequences of failure and how the pair of you will cope with the pain?  What goes through your head when you discuss IVF procedures with the doctors and nurses and do you ever think about the day when you have to say enough is enough, accepting that you simply cannot have children?  What will you do when you have to consider other options such as adoption, egg donors or even surrogacy?  How will you cope with a life without children of your own?  Are you strong enough to get through this with your marriage intact?  Are these questions making you uncomfortable?  Have you ever asked yourself any of the above?
 
I have and you will.
 
Throughout this process I have, totally unbeknown to myself it seems, dealt with all these questions without realising it was happening. Beth calls it ‘blocking out’ whilst the Therapist calls it ‘compartmentalising’.  You see, I deal with the here and now whilst keeping a very, and I do mean very, close eye on both the short and long term future.  I can’t, it appears, deal with the here and now only.  I tend to look ahead and, in order to prepare myself for the worst case scenario, run things through to their natural end, regardless of the consequences.  This, as you can imagine causes its own set of problems as little green demons often lurk in the corners of these scenarios and are quite capable of creating havoc whenever the opportunity presents itself.  
Whereas Beth is able to visualise the entire process, where the eggs become embryos and are inserted back into her womb and are therefore living, multiplying cells - a baby even - I apparently, cannot accept she is pregnant until her pee turns the touch paper blue.  Why not?  Because I have already run the scenario where the test fails and I was able to prepare for the fall-out such a failure would create.  I don’t know why this is; it simply is.  I therefore know the moment she shows me the blue paper I will become the proud father to be.  Until that time I am on standby to help in a medical procedure that may, or may not, be successful.
 
This is where we had our difficulties following our failed attempt at IVF.  I realise now, once the embryo was inserted back into her womb, why Beth was totally engrossed within the entire process and was actually talking to our child, offering soothing thoughts and interacting with it.  I would often catch her stroking her stomach and, occasionally, singing.  Whilst I could understand her actions I was slightly sceptical as, in my mind, there was, at that stage, nothing there.  I also realise that I was wrong and, having felt so helpless in the aftermath of our IVF failure, I now know that if I had opened the father-to-be box just a little earlier my feelings and reactions would have been in line with the mother of my child, the child we had both just lost to Mother Nature.
 
How you deal with your feelings will only come to light when you are faced with the issues I have tried to explain here.  I cannot prepare you for them or tell you how you will react; that’s your stuff.  The one thing you must do is talk to your partner at every stage of the process.  I am not talking about the obvious things like the shopping or whatever; I am on about the things that scare you both; the stuff only the pair of you know about.  By doing so you will go a long way in preparing the ground work for what lies ahead and the many experiences coming your way.