INFERTILITY IS…

Infertility isn’t just “We can’t get pregnant”, for me it was and is:

• trading intimacy and passion for shots, ultrasounds, and results
• people minimizing how i feel
• suffering the two-week-wait over and over and over again (39 times so far!)
• “pretending” I am pregnant during that two-week-wait (which ultimately equals out to half of every month!) just in case you really are, because you don’t want to harm your “maybe baby” in anyway
• making myself question my self worth and faith
• avoiding baby showers, pregnant women, and the baby aisles
• putting off vacations because we’re saving money for more treatments
• sitting in a room full of pregnant women while waiting for my infertility appointments
• taking a pregnancy test and never seeing a positive sign
• taking pre-natal vitamins every day for over 3 years, just in case I was pregnant
• taking time off work to go to appointments
• quitting my job to try to reduce stress and so you had more time for appointments
• quitting my job also because it was too heartbreaking to be surrounded by children all day long
• having my period come one day late, taking a pregnancy test, and finding out it’s negative, only to get my period the very next day
• spending thousands and thousands of dollars on fertility treatments
• gambling on treatments that may or may not work
• sitting at home waiting for my specialty fertility drugs to arrive via UPS so they don’t get too hot or too cold waiting outside the door
• finding out my unmarried close friend is pregnant and she wasn’t even trying
• finding out a family member is pregnant from another source
• hearing about yet another abortion of a beautiful, innocent baby (makes me sick to my stomach)
• having my doctor become part of your intimate sex life by telling us when and how often to have sex
• having that scheduled sex month after month
• arguing with my spouse because both of us are so tired and aren’t in the mood, but you’re ovulating so you HAVE to have sex or another month is wasted
• waking up after 3 hours of crappy sleep after falling asleep upset because I haven’t had sex yet like we were supposed to
• taking my basal body temperature daily to find out those peek ovulation times
• thinking that taking my body temp daily is not very fun and realizing that peeing on those ovulation sticks are much more enjoyable. (Because at least you see a positive sign at some point which gives me hope that I might see a positive on a pregnancy test someday!)
• realizing that honestly the daily body temperature and ovulation sticks both suck and deciding to stop doing both!
• spending a lot of time daydreaming about: when that day will be that I finally take a positive pregnancy test, the names of your future children, and where they might go to college.
• imagining and scheming up the most creative way to tell others when I finally am pregnant
• not going to my 10 year high school reunion because I’m afraid of answering all the “children” questions