Today is extra special not only because it's my first Father's Day as a dad, but because of how it compares to Father's Day two years ago.
This time 2 years ago I went in for the biggest operation of my life. The procedure was a Micro-Tese biopsy, a 5 hour exploration to find sperm to start a family. One year earlier we had found out that I was infertile due to a condition I was born with called Klinefelters Syndrome, which pretty much means I can't produce as much testosterone as normal and therefore produce little or no sperm. Growing up it was always fertility equals masculinity, so finding this out about myself was a lot to come to terms with.
They were able to find a very small amount of sperm in the procedure, and create one embryo which we transferred. We were pregnant for nine weeks but ultimately the embryo wasn't viable and we had a miscarriage. Because of the low number of sperm found there was no option to repeat the operation, which meant that I would not be able to have children that were biologically related to me. It was a devastating time and I was heartbroken.
We spent the next year accepting the fact that we would need to use a donor to start our family. Going through the process of finding a donor was at times exciting but also reminded me of what I lost. I worried about how not being biologically related to my child would make me feel, and if they would reject me.
We eventually found a donor that was right for us and got pregnant through IVF.
When I held my daughter for the first time I instantly knew I was her dad. To Jane and me she felt like the same little person that was trying to reach us in our first pregnancy; she just needed a couple of goes to get here safely.
If you'd seen me during that time before we got pregnant you wouldn't have known that I was struggling because I told very few people, and I put on a mask to hide my grief.
I'm sharing this because many people struggle silently with fertility and I hope in putting this out there it helps people to know that they're not alone.
If you're going through something similar or even just have questions, I'm happy to chat.
