Category: Long Road

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A Realization

Yesterday I had a brief glimpse into what it might feel like to see those long-sought-after double pink lines.  I’m not pregnant, although I thought I may be, regardless of the cramping, spotting, and warning signs of AF.  I swear looking at my pregnancy test that I could see that second line.  I looked after the 10 minute window, which was probably the first mistake.  Did I stare at the single pink line for so long that a second one “appeared”?  I brought it to the window, under different lights, both upstairs and downstairs, but still, I didn’t always see this phantom second line.  I was in disbelief – I talked to myself – I exclaimed “There is a second line…there is a second line!”  Yes, for a good portion of the day I was on the fence as to whether or not I may have finally fallen pregnant.  I got excited, relieved, over either an evap line or my eyes playing tricks on me.  I took another test this morning, first thing.  No doubt, there was no second line.

It’s been three years this month since we decided to start a family. We’ve been at that starting line for three years…

I look at my husband and I feel awful.  Here is a brilliant man, so loving and affectionate, someone who would make an amazing father and I can’t help but think I have taken that away from him.  True, our journey isn’t over, but as the days pass by and one year has turned into three, we now are understanding that there is a possibility that we may never become parents.  His boss just had a baby girl – now my husband will hear about and see all that he is missing.  He will see the barrage of Facebook updates and probably sit back and imagine what it would be like for him.  I am petrified that now he will start to resent me and will question his decision to choose me as a wife.  I write with heavy hands today.  All I want to do is go back to bed and cry.  I want to hide, I want to cover my face.  Today, I feel beat down. 

When life gets tough and you feel you can’t get through, people will often say that God has bigger plans.  That everything happens for a reason.  That in the end you’ll learn something and come out a stronger person.  Well, for the life of me, I don’t understand why we were dealt this hand.  I don’t understand what God’s bigger plan for us is and quite honestly, I think it’s really messed up.  I thought perhaps it was patience that I was trying to be taught.  I think three years is long enough.  Maybe there is no reason – maybe, as the saying goes (which I absolutely hate by the way), “it is what it is”. 

This weekend we are supposed to go over our IVF packet that we received several months ago.  Fortunately, I have my severance that I can use towards treatment (there’s that silver lining).  I don’t want to really do it to be honest, but I know that if we don’t try it once, then we’ll always wonder what if.  Perhaps it will work and we’ll be parents afterall.  Perhaps it will be useful as a diagnostic tool and we’ll have an answer to our “unexplained infertility”.  Perhaps it will just be money down the drain only to tell us that things didn’t go in our favor.  We won’t know until we try and I think we will. 

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The Room

“What will you use this room for?” My mind quickly responds nursery, but mouth says “guestroom”.  A lot of change has happened recently – we moved into our new home (!) and then the same week I was laid off due to restructuring.  To be honest, I’m not so worried about the latter and there are plenty of things to keep me busy while I decide on my next career move.  It’s also a great distraction from the absence of little feet running throughout our new home.  OK, now I know how bad dealing with infertility has been given I just called my lay off “great”.  Talk about perspective and relativity.

Our house has four bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and a full basement.  Plenty of room to grow into, plenty of room for a family.  Of course, the ‘what ifs’ linger in the back of my mind – What if it’s just going to be the two of us? What if we don’t need this space? What if we’re planning for something that may never be?  I have not uttered any of these what ifs to my husband, but sometimes I think I can hear the sauntering of a big elephant throughout these rooms.

We have our rooms mapped out and two will be guestrooms.  I feel like having two guestrooms is just being PC in some sort of weird way.  The first bedroom next to the master bedroom my heart has marked as the baby’s room, only there’s no baby…yet. As my husband and I start discussing bed options, there’s a voice in my head that asks “But, what if we get pregnant, shouldn’t we just leave this room a blank slate for now?”  and then it’s followed by a louder voice of “Just leave this room alone – you have others!”  I don’t say any of it though.  Part of me was a bit surprised that my husband was quick to call it as a guestroom, but he’s more practical than I am and he does have a mother and brother who will visit.  Even if I were to get pregnant this cycle, I suppose we wouldn’t create the nursery until the third trimester anyway.  Yellow, light wood furniture, and elephant décor – that’s how I see this room.  I’m very happy with my house, I’m happy decorating and making each room our own, but there’s something about this room in particular that makes me uncomfortable, I suppose that’s the right word.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just being stupid and naïve at this point.  Does it make sense to continue to make decisions based on someone we don’t have? I’ve done that for three years now.  Stayed at my job longer than expected, took hormone therapy, visited my specialist 2 – 3x a month, sometimes a week, you know the drill.  And now with the house, I find myself doing a little bit of the same.  For example, we went out and bought new blinds – cordless please, as that’s child friendly – and stalling on buying furniture for that guestroom.  I guess the best I can do is make our house a home, decorate for us and our current situation.  I’ll make the “future nursery” into a beautiful guestroom, mind as well make it something nice to use while we wait for its future occupant.  I think I’ll still choose a yellow paint though, it’s versatile anyway.

As for my job – I put my career trajectory on hold long enough…making decisions in the present based on future expectations…and that is a regret I have.  This time around, I am aiming high, getting myself back together, and pursuing the career and professional life I aspired to.  I seemed to have forgotten who I was during these last three years, but I feel like the woman I was is coming back stronger than before.

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Has Our Fertility Ship Sailed? – part 2

The hope remains that we’ve take a different course that can still lead us to our destination, it’s not like we’ve struck ground and started sinking.  To be honest, sometimes having that hope annoys me, I think it would be easier to give up, take it for what it is, but funny the resiliency of the human spirit…resiliency, persistence, stubbornness, naivety, call it what you will, but it’s there.

After trying to conceive for two and half years with unexplained infertility, I often wonder how much of a relief it would be if I could just push the idea of having a family from my mind.  Ignore the biological desire, forget the fantasy I’ve put together of our family Christmases, first birthday parties, being pregnant.  If only my husband and I could just throw up our hands and say “Well, we gave it a good run!”  The unexplained part gets me – there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to conceive, we just haven’t.  That open ended sentence that just continues into oblivion.  Will we or won’t we?  Could our time be next month or next year?  It’s the holding on to what might be that keeps us…I don’t know, stuck?  Motivated?  Hopeful?  I guess you really can look at the glass half full or empty, depending on your mood.

Is it possible to just put this on hold?  Can I go a few months where I lose track of my cycle or have I been doing this for so long that it now becomes second nature?  It’s sort of like saying “Don’t think of a big pink elephant” and then that’s all you think about!  I’ll admit, I’m scared to even “waste” a few months where we aren’t trying.  Neither of us are getting any younger, but at the same time, I can’t see us continuing this song and dance without taking some sort of break.  I guess each month has been mechanical, and perhaps that is a sign to take a break.  See what I just did there?  I referred to a month of not trying to conceive as “a waste” – YES, time to change it up!  We are supposed to be human ‘beings’ not human ‘doings’.

I don’t think anyone should feel they need to “get over” infertility – not at all.  You don’t get over it, do you?  These experiences, just like any other, will stay with you forever, no matter if you have a child or not.  Our experiences shape us regardless of how little or how much thought we put into them.  Perhaps a better piece of “advice” and hopefully what she was trying to say, is “don’t let it stop you from doing other things”.  Whether that is developing your career, being intimate for fun, or just enjoying life.  Fertility-challenged doesn’t have to become a road-block or never ending obstacle course that keeps you from the rest of your life. 

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Has Our Fertility Ship Sailed? – part 1

We just hit our two and a half year mark of trying to conceive.  The hormone therapy started in the fall may have produced “juicy” follicles (direct quote from my fertility specialist) and stopped my luteal phase spotting, but it did not produce a baby.  This weekend, after four negative pregnancy tests (I went a little overboard hoping I might see that double line or plus sign), my husband and I had to come to the realization that if we wanted to have children, conceiving “naturally” just wasn’t going to cut it.  To say I was emotionally distraught and felt physically sick is an understatement.  An insensitive phone call with my mother, who felt the need to say more or less “get over it” and “move on”, was the icing on the cake.  I saw the future we planned sink right before my eyes.

The devastation I felt Saturday made me realize just how much I thought we would be able to conceive within these 2.5 years.  I thought this was the month – I felt energetic, positive, and at 12dpo I thought there was a faint plus sign on my CVS pregnancy test.  Apparently it was an evap line (something new I learned).  Saturday evening I completely broke down – it felt as if my world was crumbling right in front of me and I no longer had the strength to keep rebuilding.  The thought of our inability to conceive overwhelmed my mind – I just didn’t understand why this was happening.  Why, in order for us to possibly have a family of our own (because there are no guarantees), we will have to pay?  Not being able to accomplish biology 101 blew my mind.  I felt anger, bitterness, depression, disbelief, sadness.  All these emotions, all at the same time. I was exhausted.

This will take time to come to terms with, to understand and accept.  I am nowhere near understanding and acceptance.  My husband and I are scheduled to meet with our fertility specialist on Feb 12 to discuss our options when it comes to IUI and IVF.  I don’t know if we’ll move forward with either of those options…the way I feel this week I’m ready to hang up my hat for a bit and give my body and mind break.  I suppose the “bright side” is that we can even consider doing Assisted Reproductive Technology, that financially we may be able to try it out one time…I know to even have this option is a blessing.

I suppose just like with each cycle, we enter a new phase of “wait and see”.  We’ll gather our information on IVF and IUI, do our research, and then most likely put that information aside for awhile.  I don’t think either of us can jump into any other treatments right now.  There are times when I can’t imagine us not having a family of our own, but now I’m thinking perhaps it’s just not meant to be and that is a hard pill to swallow.  As you all know, it’s exhausting, the constant appointments, ultrasounds, bloodwork, tracking.  I would lie if there isn’t a glimmer of hope inside me that this “time off” will in fact get us pregnant – you know the stories I’m talking about, the ones where “a friend of a friend stopped trying and got pregnant right away.”  I really don’t believe those stories, I think they are exaggerated.  After going through these two years, there is no way a couple can “stop trying” or “just forget” – isn’t it always in the back of your head?

Has our fertility shipped sail?  Are we at the end?  I think it’s too soon to tell, clearly our ship has taken another direction and only time will tell whether we hop aboard or decide to stay on land.

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Odd Woman Out

What is it with this fertility struggle that brings you back to feeling like you are in grade school?  As a 34 year old woman, I sometimes can’t believe the thoughts that enter my head when it comes to having a baby.  I sit with my two friends, one already has a 2-year-old, the other has just mentioned she and her husband are going to start trying, and the first thought that enters my head is “Oh F#ck, now I’m going to be left out”.  It’s reminiscent of not wanting to be last picked for a team, or making sure you have a seat with the girls in the cafeteria.  You don’t want to be left out…left behind in life.

The fact that I felt fear of being the only one without a child, well before my friend has even started trying, makes me feel that I have really gone off my rocker.  As we sit there and talk yet again about kids, (I suppose the topic will continue to come up when you’re in your mid-thirties), I try my best to hold back cynicism.  Sometimes I feel like a fool – sitting there, thinking to myself I’m the only one who can’t have kids.  I feel like I shouldn’t be part of the conversation, like I have no business chiming in and faking my smile. 

Just before Thanksgiving the girls and I met for dinner.  A week in advance I started preparing myself for my friend, we’ll call her ‘P’, to announce that she was pregnant.  She is the same friend who over the summer said she and her husband just started trying.  I just had a feeling this was coming.  As we order martinis, she goes for a ginger ale – this is a girl who drinks martinis whenever we get together, so immediately I knew.  She was cute with her announcement, it was very nonchalant, and after the congrats and hugs, the next 40 minutes (which seemed liked hours to me) was filled with baby and pregnancy talk.  My other two friends talked about their pregnancies, when they found out, and what it was like, meanwhile, my hands grasped firmly to the bottom of the tabletop; I literally had to keep myself from running out of the restaurant.

I’m sad to say that I couldn’t wait to get out of there.  As soon as I got in the cab, the tears swelled.  Arriving home, I could not look at my husband – I felt so worthless, ashamed, broken, as if there was something fundamentally wrong with me as a woman.  It’s as if we’re waiting on the platform and everyone else is getting on the train while my husband and I are still waiting for our ticket.  I wave happily and wish all the soon-to-be moms well, but I wonder, will we ever get to board?

I want to be encouraging and supportive to all my friends, but I’ve noticed these days I have to hold my tongue from “warning” them about waiting too long or putting your career on hold for something that may not come.  When I hear them talk about having a second baby by year’s end, immediately I want to warn about secondary infertility, but I don’t.  I hold myself back because my story isn’t their story, and chances are, it won’t be God willing.