Suganya Venkat: The Kindest Thing to Say After a Failed IVF Cycle Is Not “Try Again”
Suganya Venkat, Founder of Fertilia, shared on LinkedIn:
”The kindest thing to say after a failed IVF cycle is not ‘try again’.
For weeks before the result, her life ran on the treatment. The injection went in at nine every evening, wherever she was and whatever the day had been like, and the scans and blood tests came before anything else in her calendar.
After that came a wait with nothing to do in it, and then the result.
When a cycle does not work, the people who love her reach for the kindest lines they know: stay positive, at least you can try again, it will happen when it is meant to.
They say these things with real love, but the lines also move her along gently, as if what just happened were a delay to push past rather than something she is allowed to grieve.
It is a loss, even though there is no date for it, no ritual, and nobody brings food.
By then she has often started to imagine a face, a name, a first school run, and that imagining does not disappear because the result came back the way it did.
She did not fail either, because a cycle is not an exam she sat and did badly in.
She turned up for every injection, every scan and every early morning, and that part was entirely hers.
These treatments help a great many women build their families, and starting one is a brave and hopeful decision. Hope that has been carried for weeks just needs somewhere to land when a cycle ends.
So instead of ‘try again’, try something like ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much you wanted this, and I’m here.’
Then stay with her for a while without trying to fix anything.”
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