Epitome Anatomy: RESTORATION - The 365-Day Post-IVF Coda
EPISODE SUMMARY:
"I won a lot the past 12 months... Having a community around you who supports you for the way you are or who you're becoming, it's a treasure."
A year after deciding to stop IVF, Wish reflects on the physical and emotional aftermath, offering insights into the often-overlooked post-treatment phase. She discusses the challenges and transformations she faced, from health adjustments to embracing a new life direction. This episode is a candid exploration of resilience, hope, and the power of restoration, encouraging listeners to find strength in their own journeys.
Listen to the Episode
MAIN TOPICS:
00:00 Introduction and Reflection
01:23 The Aftermath of IVF
05:11 Health and Healing
10:18 Embracing Change
18:42 Community and Support
19:37 Looking Forward
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Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (00:00.044)
It's been a year since my final IVF treatment. I went through the journey to wean my body off the substantial amounts of treatment medications and pumps and pumps of hormones. And when I say journey, the past 12 months were an event in their own right. It's not really talked about out there what happens post-IVF, especially when it's unsuccessful. So I'll share with you my experience.
This is a follow-up from my last season when I shared with you my IVF experiences pre, during, and when we decided to stop and what's the aftermath after that. This is the aftermath of the aftermath. I'll share with you my experience, what happened in the past 12 months. And this is not just for the ladies. All the men in this world should also care enough to learn and do better about reproductive health for all genders, alright? Welcome to Human Thesaurus Presents Epitome Anatomy My name is Wish, a retired tech operator, indie author, cat mom, and self-aware life explorer.
Epitome Anatomy is an opinion piece on the power of words and their ethos that I extracted from this life. Ready for the epitome of restoration? Let's go!
Our keyword is restoration. According to Dictionary.com, there are a few salient meanings. One is the act of restoring, renewal, revival or re-establishment. Restoration also means the restitution of something taken away or lost or its restoration as by renovation. In this episode, we'll focus on the word restoration that means a return of something to a former, original, normal or unimpaired condition to add as it
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (02:21.634)
beefs up this word according to vocabulary.com. Notice the difference between renovation and restoration. If you restore a 1950s house, you use period materials and effects. A renovation might include new things. Restoration always means putting back. If you've been ill but get better, you might talk about your restoration of health.
Restoration's etymology was first recorded in 1350 to 1400 It originates from Old French and Late Latin restarationem meaning a renewal or rebuilding. It stems from the Latin restaurare meaning to return to a former condition It broadly implies restoring health, returning to an original state, or re-establishing something lost
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (03:21.26)
Yes, it's been 12 months since we stopped not just paused but stopped trying to have children. We stopped the IVF treatments after four and a half years just to give you a little bit of a background or a review. We tried IVF for four and a half years. We did a lot of treatments. In the end, it didn't really work for us. And that's fine because really our mindset was quite
pragmatic that it's a nice to have for us. If it works, then it's great. If not, then we're going to have to carry on and keep on living life with our cats. I think the post-IVF, post the treatments, what you feel, what you go through is something that is a little bit not talked about out there in the mass media. So I think on my side, I owe it to people.
who tried IVF successfully or unsuccessfully, men and women who's been through it, to share a little bit of my experience and maybe someone can relate to it or someone will be able to understand or someone who's trying to decide to go through IVF would listen and make a better decision for themselves because it's not just about your mentally preparing yourself before you go through this and then you go through the counseling, et cetera.
to expand your knowledge before you get into it and then the post as well. So whether it's successful or unsuccessful treatment, there will always be some sort of post health-wise and mentally and everything like what happens after. So for me on my side, I would like to share what happened.
me in the past 12 months. You know we have not spoken about the real aftermath of the aftermath like when you decide to stop or you decided post IVF. What is the withdrawal from your body health wise, mentally wise, emotionally wise. So yeah I would like to share this with you. In no particular order I think that the major one the past 12 months of my life
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (05:37.57)
without the treatment anymore involves number one is the most important for me I think it's health after the treatment I've decided to of course I need to support my entire body who's been brutally used you know during the treatment so I needed to heal it so I just had this instinct that I needed to get back to something to shape because if I move forward I needed to make sure that I'm healthy enough that
there are no repercussions from the massive amount of treatments and hormones and corticosteroids that I've gotten. So I went through a lot of general checkup, a lot of blood tests and x-rays and even my mammogram and all of these things. So I went through them throughout the months. Last July, last year, I had my blood test, my LDL, which is the low density lipop...
protein which is means the bad cholesterol and triglycerides was so high that they can't even read my HDL which is the high density lipoprotein or the good cholesterol because it's so high so everybody was alarmed I have a good blood pressure I seem to be normal I don't really get bouts of like headaches and all of these my GP just realized that
I was on corticosteroids as part of my IVF treatment. When you're in your 40s, you have to have extra supplements while doing your treatment because mostly when you do IVF, when you transfer the embryos, it's like a foreign object to your body. So your uterus would think that it's a foreign object and it needs to get rid of it, especially when the embryo is not perfect.
So that's why it doesn't work sometimes. So you need to have a lot of assistance, know, reproductive assistance from through medication to make sure that your reproductive system is conducive to receive embryo, to implant and make babies. So that's the kind of a low level explanation, not absolute scientific, but yeah, more layman's term. Yeah, so.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (07:53.846)
Part of it is corticosteroids. I really needed it. Without it, I did get muscle itch. You know when you're itchy? When you have an insect bite or when you're just itchy? Muscle itch is underneath your skin. So no matter how much you scratch, you're not gonna be able to scratch it. And then when that happens, I get anxiety attacks because I can't relieve the itch because it's in the muscle. So that's why I have to be on corticosteroids apart from...
other scientific explanation why I needed that as a part of the treatment assistance for IVF. Apparently, the scorticocereus, because I've been taking it for quite some time, made my triglycerides so high it looks like high cholesterol. Having known that, the doctor still gave me some statins to take. It's the lowest dose of statin that he could give me and I needed to take it for six months.
I need to watch after, you know, I love pork, I love rice, I'm a Filipino. I have to kind of watch a little bit of my diet, which actually I eat well and I love fat so I just needed to cut it down and needed to make sure that I don't drink a lot. I don't really drink a lot nowadays but anyway, I just needed to do that, have a better kind of like I walk a lot and I needed to manage. So after six months, I need to go back to the GP and have my blood test again.
from there, my blood test is normal. Everything was normal. And then after that, I took the statin for another three months and I got tapered off it. I'm off it now because everything seems to be normal. I just had my latest blood test, another one, just to review whether I needed to continue the statins or not. Lasts, yes, last January, just this year, and everything is completely normal. So I don't need to go through the statin.
It's quite brutal, isn't it? Whatever is happening in your body with all of these modifications to help you carry a child or make a child. But yeah, that's the way it is. So another thing would be this past few months, I've lost a lot of weight. I'm naturally skinny, but to be honest with you, I don't want to go back to size zero, like extra, extra small. I used to be that size. But getting to know this body,
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (10:18.306)
this bigger body that I've got to get familiarized with and become friends with and now my body changed again. So it went back somewhere in the middle of super skinny and this I think it's US 6. Getting to know her and getting to know these two bodies and now I'm in the middle which is the ideal thing for me. I think this is the healthiest optimal weight for me.
And it just went naturally. didn't really need to do anything but just, you know, you keep on moving and keeping busy and eating the right things. Well, not all the time. I still indulge myself with other shit food, but really just living my life and observing myself outside looking in what's happening with me.
And I'm losing this weight gradually. I just needed to make sure that whenever I lose it is that it's not because of any other health condition. I'm just being hyper aware because I'm also curious what's going to happen to me after all of that, right? And then my GP said all of my symptoms before of perimenopause, like I had really, really bad hot flushes during the treatments. Sometimes I get brain fog.
after stopping IVF. I've lost all of that. And then my GP said, you're probably not perimenoposal yet. But you have to observe because apparently I'm really just tapering off all the treatment, all the chemicals in my body that we've put in for years. I can't really say whether I'm perimenoposal or not, but I'm preparing myself for it because I really had an overview of it. My...
IVF symptoms is the same as perimenopause. It's quite helpful because yeah, I'm getting mentally prepared, what I needed to do, et cetera, because we're already talking about hormones. I'm also observing what is changing through my hormones because I had the myomectomy. I took all of the cysts and polyps in my uterus throughout this treatment process. I wanted to observe my menses.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (12:27.694)
Am I going to still be regular? Which I did but there are some tiny changes that's happening in there. My cycle is quite shorter. I'm normally three days but now sorry it's TMI. My menses nowadays is just two days. It's really interesting. My PMS symptoms is still the same from before the treatment, during my treatment and after now. The same caliber actually all throughout. So that one did not
really change. Recently, I'm beginning to have the hot flushes and once I was at the opera when it happened and I had to step out 15 minutes into the opera and I have to excuse myself and I can't enter until after intermission but really it was bad and that's when I knew my gosh okay I'm on perimenopause now so at least I'm prepared
what to do, what needs to happen next, etc. I'm now at this point of the 12 month mark that my hormones is my real hormones. I've expelled all the treatment, medication, etc. in my body and this is me. So the changes is not overly drastic but I still believe that it's all about each individual. We all carry different hormones and different stress levels and different
diets, et cetera. So there's no one answer here, but I think it's still a good generalisation of what happens after you stop all of your IVF treatments. And then in terms of energy, I think this is more mental for me, more than physical. My mental carry my energy levels. I have the targeted multivitamins. I don't just take one multivitamins that will target every single multivitamins.
It's more targeted to what I really, really need and I have to talk to a nutritionist on what exactly I need. Here is my complete blood panel test. What is deficient? Actually, there's no deficiency in me, which I'm grateful about. But yeah, what do I need to support myself as a 46 year old woman who's beginning to be perimenopausal? So it's more targeted for me and I think, yeah, it's more mental. So when it comes to mental and emotional
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (14:50.424)
post IVF treatment after 12 months. I think the last time I said during my aftermath episode in my last season was I was still, I don't know what to do. I'm trying to figure out what will I become next. I'm still doing that right now after 12 months, but I've accepted the fact that I have so many interests in life and I'm going to pursue them one by one or all at the same time.
I'm doing multiple things right now and it's making me feel alive. It's making me feel more hopeful about my future. And it's making me feel more invigorated about what happens now that we're childless. Where are we going to dedicate our lives moving forward? And also we moved during this process, we moved to London. So there was a six-month period
within this 12 months that I was just planning month on month what to do, what to move and what to retain and all of these things, all the intricacies of moving which is highly complex but I love that so much because it gave me a new direction, it gave me a purpose, it gave me something to do to give myself that grace and figure out
a new direction for my life and for my life with my husband. I am just so lucky and grateful to have this opportunity to do so, to be in this position to allow myself to choose. In the practical terms post 12 months of the treatment, at present I'm still focusing on health.
I think I will focus a lot on health but I'm not a wellness or fitness follower type of a person that I obsess about influencers and what they say about health or people doing pilates and I don't have anything against those. It's just not my thing. I am beginning to know more about my body post IVF and entering perimenopause. I am happy to tailor fit the things that I'm happy about and how to maintain
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (17:13.006)
an optimal health for myself. I should not say, oh, but everybody's running or why is everybody hiking and I can't do that. I don't want it. I'm going to do something on my own. I walk a lot now. It does fantastic work. I think my legs is beginning to form. Yeah, I'm going to do it gradually. Whatever I feel I wanted to do in terms of my health. Next would be still
My self-improvement with every aspect of my life. I will focus on different things, not just one. I have lot of interest. I'm still doing my genealogy, my travels. I wanted to explore more of the historical Europe since I'm already here. You know, who knows what happens in the future. My past 12 months has given me so much reflective grace to become who I am at present.
And I would like to thank my entire experience of IVF because I think I've been extremely more grateful than ever having given all of these chances in life with or without children. But yeah, I've spoken to you about Godchildren, so I didn't lose anything. I won a lot the past 12 months. I would also like to give credit to my family.
my husband, my best friend, my friends who just supported me along the way. Having a community around you who supports you for the way you are or who you're becoming, it's a treasure. Absolute treasure. And that's more than enough for me. So, wow, I became more emotional there, but yeah.
And another thing that I'm going to tell you, I just saw a poster of Hamilton here in the tube station. I was thinking to myself, am I ready to watch Hamilton again? Because again, am during my miscarriage. I was on the first half of the show and I had to go back home having that miscarriage in the middle of Hamilton in Singapore. But I didn't know what happened in the second half. So am I ready to watch it?
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (19:37.76)
am i ready to finish that? not yet i'm not grieving the child that we lost during the miscarriage but i just don't want to go back to that feeling yet but i will be i will be i will be ready at some point and i will finish Hamilton, so ladies and gents, I hope that this didn't scare you at all. I hope that I've given you enough hope that life happens. So I wonder what you picked up from this episode. For the ladies, I wonder if you have the same symptoms or same movements after your IVF. You can share them with me and for the gents who are supporting their partners, how do you feel and what did you go through post IVF treatments? Please share all of them with me. I would love to hear from you. Until next time, Ciao!
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (20:47.886)
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Epitome Anatomy is produced by me and Jeremiah Ronquillo. Music by Ketsa UK. All rights reserved via Wishbliz Media. Thank you, and see you in the next episode!
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