National Infertility Awareness Week: My Story

Created On: April 26, 2013 | Updated: April 26, 2013 | 50 Comments

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(my husband being the best uncle in the world)

I’ve felt the need to write about this for a while. I’ve wanted to but at the same time I didn’t. So this is going to be a bit disjointed because while I’ve learned to become open about my baby making troubles in real life, on the blog I’m stuck. I don’t know everyone who will read these words. I can’t read your expression and stop and walk away and I’m not going to lie I’m usually not a hyper-sensitive person At.All but with this stuff just the littlest bits of insensitivity or ignorance can get to me.

So let me first ask. IF YOU ARE GOING TO COMMENT ON THIS POST OR TALK TO ME ABOUT THIS PLEASE READ THIS POST IN ITS ENTIRETY BEFORE DOING SO. This post is going to be pretty personal. I know it’s not usually how this blog is so if that doesn’t interesting you I totally understand just check back next week and I’ll be back to my crafty bookish self.

So this is my story.

We got married. We worked hard. We were happy. We finally moved into a house big enough for us and to start a family. I was winding down with my grad school stuff. So we started trying. I was on prenatals, I charted faithfully, temperature every day and other fertility signs (if you haven’t read Taking Charge of Your Fertility it is quite great).

And then we had a baby. We saw a heart beat. And then we didn’t.

I was about 10 weeks along when I miscarried. We hadn’t told our parents yet. I had bought picture albums and scheduled a dinner with all of them since all four of their birthdays are around the same time. So I sat through this awkward dinner knowing I had lost the baby that was the whole point about the joint birthday thing. I took the medicine that was supposed to help the process finish but my body just wouldn’t and after watching a close friend go through months of waiting for her miscarriage to be complete we decided on a DNC.

But that was real surgery and I flipped out and decided we HAD to tell our parents and our sisters. How would it feel if they found out, how would I have felt, what if something worse happened? And it’s not that we didn’t want their support. Both our families are GREAT I just felt like I had robbed them of a happy couple of months and was just going to spring “dead baby” on them. Plus I was a mess to begin with. So Daniel went on his own to tell my family and to tell his family. I just couldn’t. But it’s not like he wasn’t rocked by all of this also, he was.

And I knew that miscarriages were common so as awful as it was, being a worrier I was as ready as you can be for that. I threw myself into my work and became obsessed with reading getting lost into other people’s stories. These dystopian tales where the kids dealt with such unfairness and such horror. If they could make it through so could I, right? It was still horrible and hard but I was coping.

And we started trying again as soon as we got the okay. I was still charting. But nothing happened. I got on vitamin D and that helped with the depression that had crept up. Months and months passed but still nothing. I told the doctor something was wrong but she said I was just being impatient and we knew everything worked already and just to give it time. I gave it a few more months and then basically said either we start testing or a find a new doctor (it had been over a year).

We did lots and lots of tests. And I was normal. He was normal. The doctor wanted to put me on fertility meds. So I found a second opinion. Apparently there was one test she didn’t run a Post-Coital test. Basically they swab the woman after sex to see if the sperm are still going strong. And low and behold I was a sperm killer. So glad we switched doctors.

So with some intervention we should be able to easily by pass the issue. But here we are on round 4 of intervention. The second level even. And I’m here waiting to see if that feeling I suspect is me about to get my period is real or just my paranoia.

And that’s we’re I am. I’m mostly okay. Really. But those first few days that I get my period I’m a mess. But it’s hard because I know it’s okay for me to be sad but then I learn of a friend who’s sibling or parent has just died or an acquaintance who’s kid is extremely sick and I feel like an ungrateful, selfish, jerk for hating my life in those moment.

Because I don’t hate my life I have a good life. But it does have this huge sucky part to it. And I just don’t know how to feel. That moment when the doctor told us she couldn’t find a heart beat is one of those freeze frame moments that pops back up and attacks me out of no where. And when I get my period each month it’s like torture. Conveniently after the miscarriage with every cycle I get full on pregnancy symptoms as PMS. You can see how I could commiserate with my YA heroines. I don’t wonder why this last try didn’t work. All I can think about is why I couldn’t just have that first baby. We had one! But it is what it is.

I think the hardest part (at least today) is that I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FEEL. I’m scared to hope. But scared not to. I’m a very religious person but I don’t believe that this life is fair and I know I have been blessed far far beyond what I deserve already. It might sound crazy but really I don’t know how I feel.

What I do know is that I can let this sucky thing consume me and rob me of everything else that is great or I can walk through it continue to try and figure it out and focus on the things that I have. My family, my nieces, my business, my amazing friends, this wonderful online community, my books, and my husband who is more perfect for me than I could have ever dreamed, and much more. And so while sometimes I feel schitso -in one moment so sad and in the other so happy- this is me right now. Most of the time I genuinely enjoy my life, I’ve learned to relish the little things like the triumphs and loves of my silly books. And when it’s a rough day I let myself feel it. I call my friends I hug my husband and nieces. And we continue.

I hope that I will be able to share good news on this front some day but PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME FOR UPDATES EVEN IF YOU’RE REAL WORLD FRIENDS AND FAMILY that’s something I just have a really hard time handling. I have a few people that I found can ask and I can go to without falling apart and that’s just what works for me. When there is news worth sharing don’t worry it will be shared. And I trust that we will have a happy ending. Whether it’s that I can finally be content not having my own children and just being an aunty or that we do eventually have kids (however that may happen) I don’t know. Even with that uncertainty I really do have a lot and I know it.

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