Sad. Nervous. Excited?

How are you feeling?

A lot of people have been asking us both how we’re feeling about setting off in a month’s time on such a big adventure.

Both of us have honed down our responses to a combination of:

Sad

Nervous

EXCITED!!

I think most people are getting the gist. It’s not easy coming to the realisation that you’re not going to be parents, after five years of trying and a lifetime before that of assuming you will be. I don’t think it’s an under statement to say that we’re heartbroken and therefore undeniably sad, deep down.

It’s pretty nerve-wracking pulling up your roots, your routines, the little (and big) comforts of ordinary life to get on your bike, with minimal belongings squished into pannier bags knowing that for the foreseeable future you won’t have a home beyond a tent. And that’s before I really start thinking about the inevitable sore bum, tired legs and potential terrifying situations involving dogs (OK, I think about that last one a lot).

But of course it’s incredibly exciting to think and dream about the places we will see, the people we will meet, the food we will eat and all of the lovely time we will have to reflect, recover and re-set.

All the feels

Whilst we only started seriously thinking about this trip towards the end of 2022 it’s been brewing for some time.

We met back in 2003 at officially the best university for finding love, the University of York. Once we’d worked out that we really, really, did like each a lot we haven’t looked back and can honestly say that now, half a lifetime later (it actually is half our lives somehow) we are a pretty good match (despite the height difference).

The next 15 years were spent in the UK working, abroad adventuring and also working, taking on challenges, setbacks and triumphs like so many of our peers.

In our early 30s quite a few of those peers got settled down and the babies started arriving. We thought ours would when we wanted them to, so in 2018 we decided it was time to get pregnant!

As mentioned on our About Us page, we started the normal (fun) way. We then moved onto the less fun (IVF/ICSI) way when we found out that Matt’s sperm count was in the thousands, not millions. Before taking on the painful way (an operation for Matt in the place where operations shouldn’t happen) and finally the really mind blowing way (donor conception with IVF/ICSI) when all of the other ways didn’t work for us.

Unfortunately that way didn’t work either. Nearly five years on, countless injections, appointments, payments, scans, procedures, decisions, soul-searching, thinking, tears and laughter (there’s no avoiding that some of it has actually been quite funny on occasion) we decided that being told that there wasn’t a way that either of us could be biological parents was a sign, for us. To stop.

For us, this ending also needed to bring a beginning. Whilst there is so much we love about our normal lives – work (yes work, most of the time), where we live, our friends and family it seemed inconceivable somehow that after the journey we had been on that we would just carry on with life as we know it.

Some things can’t be willed into being, however hard you try, or however much you apply yourself (we know this now, the hard way). But some things can be. So in the process of recovering from the last round of fertility treatment (the second time the mind blowing way) we switched from letting the tears flow, to letting them cultivate a different seed. An idea that normal life would go on pause for a while and we would set off into the unknown.

Now what?

This seed has grown and is now a gigantic and slightly intimidating tree. We’ve told friends, family and colleagues about what has happened, and what we plan to do (this could probably do with another whole post as a life changing moment, or set of moments for us both). We’ve put hugely fulfilling jobs on pause. We’ve decided to sell our house (our home). And we’ve planned, planned and planned some more with buying new kit and plotting out an (admittedly vague) route. All the while thinking – WHAAATTT THE ACTUAL HECK??

The countdown is now well and truly upon us, taking us inevitably towards this new chapter of our own small story. So yes, we’re really sad – after all if things had been different we might have a nearly four year old now, maybe a second?

We’re super nervous (I really do like my electric blanket at night…)

And of course…

Postscript

We’re conscious that whilst we’ve had a tough time in many ways, we’re also really fortunate. Taking time off work and travelling the world is an option open to us at this point in our lives, having come through the disappointment and costs of infertility. We know this won’t be the case for lots of other people in our shoes.

We’re fortunate that we’ve been able to save to be financially secure enough for this to be an option, whilst (aside from the fertility issues) we are both reasonably fit and healthy enough that a big cycle trip is available to us (albeit still daunting).

We really hope that anyone else who has come to the end of their journey finds their own way to recover, reflect and re-set, and maybe finds a small piece of inspiration if they stumble across this blog, to apply into their own circumstances.