Thursday, October 20, 2011

Blowing off some steam...

I read quite a few blogs and lot of the bloggers that I follow are mothers. I love hearing about the silly things their kids are doing and saying and seeing their adorable faces.


While I read blogs that have to do with infertility, too, I don't read as many of those. I sort of steer away from them. I think maybe it's because I've got my own infertility issues that I'm dealing with and I just want to forget about them for a little while, reading blogs about infertility just makes me more mad.


 It's not fair that we all have to go through this stupid thing called infertility. Reading blogs about infertility just makes it more "in your face", to me. At the same time, I want to be there to support my friends that are going through it, too, so I try to visit the blogs that I do follow fairly often.


Infertility is not fair.


I'm tired of having to be strong.


I'm tired of Letting Go and Letting God.


I'm tired of having Faith that everything is in His hands and maybe some day I'll have a child.


I'm tired of waiting.


I'm tired of researching.


I'm tired of just relaxing.


I'm tired of changing my diet to have a more fertile body.


I'm frickin sick and tired of dealing with stupid frickin infertility!


I don't want to Learn a Lesson from all of this.


I just want a family.


I want a mini-me and a mini-Jamie.


You know what? Those teenage girls that got pregnant didn't have to have Faith that they could get pregnant. They just did in a moment of hot and heavy.


Those druggie's didn't have to Let Go and Let God. They just had sex, with drugs in their system, and got pregnant.


And add to that, there's those that get pregnant and decide they don't want "the fetus" and abort it without giving that child a chance to be born and grow up to be someone, whether they kept it or gave it up for adoption. {and I'm sure I just pissed a bunch of people off. sorry.}


There's also those like The Duggar's that just keep on frickin multiplying. I mean. Seriously. SHARE THE WATER! I'd gladly take a sip if I could just have a fraction of the amount of kids they have!


So why is it that I can't just hop into bed with my husband and get up pregnant?


Some of these infertile bloggers that I read have SO MUCH FAITH that they're eventually going to get pregnant and I feel like I've got zip, ziltch, nada. And I don't WANT to HAVE to have Faith. Period.


I don't want a growing experience any longer!


I think 10 years is long enough!


And then I also have an internal fight going on with myself over jealousy.


I'm jealous of those that have children.


I'm jealous of those infertile's that do get pregnant.


I'm jealous of those that have all that Faith.


I'm jealous of those that are actually getting somewhere in their fight against infertility.


I'm jealous of those that have the money to do everything under the sun to have a baby, whether it's treatments or adoption.


I'm jealous of those that have husbands that are totally on board with everything that goes with infertility.


I'm jealous of those that have husbands that actually express their feelings about the infertility.


I hate jealousy.


I hate the feeling of being jealous all the time.


Infertility just frickin SUCKS!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Sometimes I feel as empty as my womb........

This is the first and only picture I have from my last pregnancy.


August 29, 2010... I was 10 weeks pregnant. I found this picture last night while organizing photos on my laptop and I began to cry. I look at this picture and just wonder what he would have looked like. He would be almost 8 months old, my due date was Ferbuary 28, 2011. Another date in my memory I will never forget. A birthday that I was supposed to celebrate with my child until the day I died, but now it's just a day to remind me of what I lost.
It's been over a year since he was given to us and taken from us. It just seems so unfair to have tried for 10 years to only have miscarriage after miscarriage. Now 10 years later I still don't have a baby in my womb or in my arms.
So many have such an easy time getting what I want so much. I am trying so hard: I watch what I eat, I exercise, I have to take medications. I have to go to the doctor on certain days of the month. I have to spend lots of money on just a slim chance of getting a positive. I  cry every month when I get not one, but multiple negatives. I cry when I hear of someone getting pregnant. I have to hide so I don't take away their joy or ruin the moments. It's hard to be around kids or watch grandparents having such a good time with the kids and not one of them belonging to us. I feel like a failure to my family. At least my Dad has grandchildren, and my Mom got to meet and know most of them before she passed away. I feel it doesn't bother them that we may never have kids because they already have 4 grandkids.
What if I don't ever get another chance? Will I stop crying because I don't have a baby? Will my heart still ache as much as it does today?
The loss of the child I barely had a chance to know and the child I may never have gives me so much sorrow, it's almost unbearable.
Sometimes I wonder how I get through this. If it's hard today, how will it be 10 years from now? As I cried last night, I thought about how it hurts so much today at almost 31 years old, how many years will I have to go through this pain... and what will this pain plus 10 years of more disappointments and heartaches feel like?... It scares me so much.
In my real world (not my blog world), I feel so alone. I feel I am expected to be a perfect, happy, strong, supportive person. The truth is I am not perfect and I don't know one person that is (although some may think it). I may look happy on the outside, but inside I am a mess. I believe I am not strong because I can't handle things as well as others. And support, it's hard to give when I need so much of it myself and get so little in return sometimes.
There's not a day that goes by I don't think about my children and what might have been.
Not a day goes by I don't think about being infertile, but there are days when I am stronger than others and I am hoping tomorrow is one of them.
Infertility and having a miscarriage is robbing me from life.. Almost everyday I feel as empty as my womb.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Road to Uncertainty

Once you start ttc and bring children into your life, you end up giving up an element of control. There are so many things that could go wrong. Before finding myself deep in infertility treatments, when I was first started to seriously think about having children, I imagined all of the changes in my life. How would J and I be able to afford children? How would I manage work and family? How would relationships with family and friends be changed? What would our children be like? Would we be good parents? I didn't really think that much about act of getting pregnant, and was kind of scared of pregnancy--particularly childbirth. When I was pregnant for the first time, I spent some time reading a Lamaze pregnancy book, which included a section on the whole birth experience, including some troublesome cases. It freaked me out so much, that I thought at time, "Man, How am I ever going to do that!" I guess by 30, I've changed my mind, but scary pregnancies haven't gone away. I'm just more willing to risk them.
My above worries are now much farther down the list, supplanted by worries of treatment and managing to have a healthy pregnancy. For people who don't battle infertility, I suppose they might never have any other types of worries. However, I think that I was probably also naive about all of the uncertainties that come with pregnancy. When I first started with treatments, I thought a positive test would solve all of my problems and everything would go smoothly. The advertisement for HPTs make it sound that way: "Look, honey, two pink lines!" {Hugs and kisses all around} I have come to realize now, after suffering four heartbreaking miscarriages, that the first positive beta is but one of many hurdles to jump over in the quest for a healthy child. As IFers, we just get a head start on the road to uncertainty.


I have recently again had the elusive positive beta, but it was low. I helplessly watched it rise, then fall. Although about a week after my last beta indicated an HCG level less than 5, I got a postcard from my clinic with a congratulatory note and instructions for next steps. Hello! As if I'm not already feeling bad enough, can't the office get it's communications straight! But even if I had experienced three positive beta tests with good doubling numbers that's a must before they consider you pregnant (at this clinic), the uncertainty wouldn't end. There's the first ultrasound. Will there be a heartbeat? Follow-up and tests. Will things continue to progress normally? Oh yeah, and if you make it that far, you still have to go through child birth. I cry every time I read about another blogger who loses a pregnancy.


If you do make it to the point where your child is born, all of those initial concerns of mine are still valid. J and I could strive to be good parents, but our children could turn out to sick, we could make bad decisions adversely impact their life, or they could make bad decisions, despite our best efforts. I feel like I had loving parents who did what they could to place my life and my siblings lives on the right track, but things still did not always turn out as planned. It's an awesome responsibility to be parent, to try to raise your children to be ready to go out into the world, and things may not work out as planned, despite your best intentions.


Thinking about the next step in our IF journey: the IVF cycle, makes me scared of all that uncertainty all of those things that could go wrong, just in the process of trying to bring my potential children into the world. J says that he is trying to not think about the uncertainty, about the weight of potential problems, and just go where the cycle takes us. I wish I could do that.