You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

I bought a poster back when I was in college in 1999 that reads, ‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ It’s a phrase coined by Wayne Gretzky, the ice hockey player. I still have it; I framed it, and now it sits behind my computer screen as a reminder not to procrastinate and to take the shot. With this surrogacy journey my husband and I are on, though, we’ve felt we’re missing 100% of the shots we’re actually taking. The last few months have been really tough, and it came to a head the week before last when our third embryo transfer failed, so I took some time off from work to allow us to process it. I know with IVF we can miss windows of opportunity, or our surrogate’s body doesn’t have the right levels, etc., but I didn’t realise the stress and mental impact of it all.

The few days off work have helped and I’ve been spending all of it with my husband talking about everything and preparing ourselves for the next steps. We’re still moving forward but we’d really like to get a result, a pregnancy, so at least we feel like we’re getting somewhere. Then we can focus our efforts raising little humans.