This one has been a real challenge for me. I'm actually shocked I've made it this far. I have always been pretty self motivated and well organized. My parents raised me to be this way, and I believe it has lead me to accomplish some great things thus far in life. I started working at my current company a little over a decade ago as an engineer. About eight years ago I got into a management position, and I have become significantly more stressed out at work ever since. There's a lot of responsibility with running multi-million dollar projects for a large corporation, and you always have multiple layers of management to answer to. So adding the IVF treatments into the mix was very challenging for me, especially because I tend to take everything personally that I am doing on a personal and professional level.
I sat down with my boss one day nervous about what the heck I was going to say about why I needed to work from Maryland for a week straight. I phrased it as "for medical reasons." He was confused, but understanding and agreed to let me do so after checking with HR. How do you explain something like this when its barely recognized as a disease that you can talk about? If I had to get back surgery, it would be easy to explain. However with infertility treatments and doctors appointments, you have to kind of hide behind the word "doctor" as if you're lying and going to an interview or something. Its shaming.
After we got through that process, and my retrieval was complete, that was followed up by more appointments with little to no notice to start a frozen embryo transfer. The other aspect of this process that is difficult to balance between work and infertility, especially when you are going to a clinic out of state, is that we would get assigned a date for a procedure in MD only a day or two in advance. So my husband and I would have to try and explain to our jobs that we suddenly have to be on "vacation." And there's no two weeks notice, so hopefully you've been at a job for a few years or you'll probably get fired. As you can see, this does not help the situation of an already stressful medical process!
For those of you that have to go through this, I strongly suggest making time for yourself a priority when your not doing all this stuff. I don't care what it is, something other than fertility and work or you'll go crazy. Sometimes you need a night in or a full weekend to lay on the couch, binge watch a show on Netflix, and just take care of yourself mentally. And when your not in a two week wait period, a good glass of wine (or several) helps as well :)
Comments