Broken glass

Our last ICSI cycle was full of hope, tinged with an unpalatable dose of realism. We knew, from our previous cycle, it was unlikely to be successful but we still hoped. We still dreamed. We got one stage further in the process, and made it to egg retrieval, and as I waited in the theatre, I could feel myself getting emotional.

To calm myself down, I started singing Chasing Cars in my head. As the drugs took hold I started to hallucinate, I imagined I was in our back garden, playing with our child – I had images of us playing swings and airplanes, climbing a huge apple tree (we had bought a very small apple tree a few days earlier), running around in circles and finishing up lying on the grass beside each other. When I came around, I was very disoriented and the song was still going around in my head.

The following morning, our hopes were smashed. Like a glass bauble, they smashed into tiny pieces that exploded everywhere. They’re still turning up in the most unexpected places, hurting us. I know someday those glass pieces will reform to become a new dream, they will fuse together to become something different and beautiful. But tonight, they are pieces of broken glass.