SÉVERIN MILLET
Six years spent enduring the laborious process of assisted reproductive technology – and two hours to bring it to an end. This is what Véronique recounted. (She requested anonymity, as did all the women who shared their stories for this article.) "In two hours, my partner and I went from a state of infinite sadness at the thought that yet another embryo transfer had failed, that there would be no pregnancy, to the certainty that we would stop trying," Véronique said.
For the writer, then 45 years old, it was the end of a long journey punctuated by "false hopes." "You go through an emotional roller coaster with each new attempt, and it's even harder when a pregnancy begins and then ends without anyone being able to explain why," she said, an experience she went through two times.
So, on February 19, 2015, a date she does not want to forget, she decided to stop. "That day, I felt there was nothing more to expect from medicine, that we had tried everything: ovarian stimulation, IVF [in vitro fertilization], egg donation… That we couldn't go any further, unless we wanted to miss out on our lives." The couple then moved from Montpellier to Vichy and changed careers. "I had been a guidance counselor for 15 years. I went back to studying, started teaching, started writing… That helped me through the grieving process."
