What The Wombmate Thinks

A couple of you have been asking after the Wombmate. After her first IVF she has had to wait for a follow up appointment - which won't happen until the start of July.  So at the moment she is in that particular purgatory that the NHS specialises in. 


Here's a little post from her nevertheless:

How am I? The answer is not so good. In much the same way as Liz, I function well at work during the week but spend most weekends in a puddle of tears.

[Ed. Family gatherings are, as you can imagine, a barrel of laughs nowadays.]

Not being a natural blogger I look instead to my area of work to see if that can help. I'm a psychologist and although I don't directly work in the area of grief/bereavement counselling I know a few who do. One of them recently gave me a short paper on grief which I thought might be worth a post if any of you out there are feeling like WFI and me.

Psychologists like to create models of how people react to things: to my mind these are only really useful if they help us to understand ourselves and others and maybe suggest ways of coping. There are lots of models of grief. The older ones suggest that grief is a process of different stages where people feel, at different points: disbelief, sadness, guilt, anger etc. Although appealing these models don't really seem supported by experience, but they are useful in helping us understand that, at different times we can experience very different emotions, and that is completely normal. In fact, one of the psychologists I work with says she has seen so many different grief reactions over the years that her perception of what a normal reaction is encompasses just about anything.

A newer model of grief suggests that grief is a 'dual process', where part of the time grief is avoided and part of the time it is acknowledged. This model says that there are times when avoiding grief is helpful as well as times when it is detrimental to well-being. Like anything in life the trick is getting the balance.

So, if you have thrown yourself into work and are not allowing yourself time to process what you have been through, you may need take some time thinking about your experience to help you assimilate it. If your reaction has been to sit in a darkened room with several boxes of tissues and opt out of life then you need to give yourself a break from the grief and focus on some of the mundane things in life. Both are of course easier said than done and won't miraculously make you happy in the short-term. But at some point it will become easier - you're human and ultimately as such you have a fantastic ability to come to terms with the hand life has dealt you even if it doesn't feel possible now.

So what about you? Does this ring any bells or does it just sound like psychobabble?


For my part I have to say I feel much better. Thanks to being throughly rallied-round with emails, texts and invites to meet up with friends. And the amount of times the "Womb 'I hate phones more than anyone in living history' -Mate" has been calling me I am starting to think I'm on suicide watch.