u/Decent_Ant_6429

I don't even know if this is the right subreddit, but I just needed to get this out somewhere because I don't really know how much more I have in me.

My husband and I started trying to have kids in 2022. We tried on our own for about a year with absolutely nothing happening, so we finally went to a fertility clinic as we're on the older side (36F, 41M currently). Since then, it's been what feels like an endless cycle of appointments, medications, procedures, hope, and disappointment. We've gone through multiple IUIs, a miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, and after finally making it to our first IVF cycle, we got four eggs fertilized, but none of the embryos made it to freeze. We transferred our only blastocyst, and the transfer failed. After months of injections, monitoring appointments, surgery, and so much hope, we're right back at square one.

Around the same time all of this was happening, life outside of fertility seemed to completely fall apart too.

My dad died completely unexpectedly at the end of 2023. He was an only child, so as the oldest kid, I ended up handling everything after he died while also helping care for my elderly grandparents. My mom (my parents were divorced by then, so she wasn't involved with any of that) then had two heart attacks. Thankfully she's okay now, but now she's waiting for her second hip replacement.

In 2024, my goofy pit-mix potato of a dog—the one who was absolutely my world—died suddenly from lung cancer. Losing him absolutely wrecked me.

I think what has worn me down the most isn't any one thing—it's that there has barely been time to breathe between any of it. Every time I start to think maybe life is finally going to let up, something else happens before I've even had a chance to process the last thing. Sometimes it feels like I've been living from one appointment, funeral, hospital visit, or fertility procedure to the next for three years. It feels like I've spent the last three years just surviving one crisis after another instead of actually living my life.

On top of all that, I work as a clinical neuropsychologist. I genuinely love what I do, but it's emotionally demanding. Much of my work involves evaluating people who have experienced significant trauma, neurological illness, or other major life challenges. Every day I'm helping people through some of the hardest moments of their lives, and by the time I get home, it often feels like I have very little left to deal with my own.

I'm just so incredibly tired. Emotionally, mentally, and honestly physically too. It feels like I've been grieving someone or something almost continuously for years. I keep getting up because I don't really have another choice, but lately I've been wondering how people keep finding the strength to do it over and over again.

I don't really know what I'm looking for by posting this. Maybe I just needed to say it somewhere to people who don't know me. If you've ever gone through a stretch where life just wouldn't stop throwing punches, I'd love to hear how you got through it.

The actual doctors and nurses were great (Colorado Shady Grove). This isn't about them. It's about everything leading up to the transfer.

I went in trying to do everything "right", you know....stay calm, keep my stress down, and get into a good headspace before one of the biggest moments of this whole process.

Instead, a patient's family member was sitting literally right next to me having a loud FaceTime conversation about her daughter's egg retrieval—how many eggs they retrieved, how everything went, all the details. In a fertility clinic. While people are waiting for their own, often anxiety-filled, procedures.

After listening to it for almost ten minutes, I finally had to ask her to end the call because no one from the clinic did.

She hung up...and then immediately started blasting an audiobook on speakerphone. And not quietly enough that you could tune it out. I honestly couldn't believe someone thought that was appropriate in a fertility clinic waiting room. As if that wasn't enough, she also had a pretty nasty-sounding cough and kept coughing while sitting right next to me. Between the loud speakerphone and the constant coughing, I finally got up and asked the front desk if I could wait somewhere else because I just couldn't take it anymore.

I really don't think patients should have to be the ones policing basic waiting room etiquette, especially in a fertility clinic where people are already anxious and emotionally vulnerable. I was trying to stay calm before my transfer—not manage someone else's behavior.

As if that wasn't enough, I had pre-transfer acupuncture scheduled because I wanted to be as relaxed as possible before my transfer. My husband and I ended up sitting there for a full hour wondering what was going on before anyone realized they'd simply forgotten about it.

So instead of a quiet, calming hour before my embryo transfer, I got loud FaceTime conversations about someone else's retrieval, a loud audiobook on speakerphone, someone coughing continuously right next to me, and then found out my acupuncture had been forgotten.

The transfer itself went well, and everyone medically involved was great. But the hour beforehand was the exact opposite of the peaceful experience I'd hoped for, and it all felt completely avoidable.

Am I overreacting, or would this have driven anyone else absolutely insane?