Emotional Rant.

The next person that tells me to stop trying, and to “just relax and it’ll happen”, is seriously going to get a fist in the teeth and a boot up the ass. I don’t care if that’s what worked for your friend, or your cousin, or you, or anyone else.

It. Doesn’t. Work. That. Way. For. Everyone.

September marks four years that we’ve been trying. Ok, minus the sixish months he was gone on deployment…so three and a half years. We didn’t even really start out trying…we just figured we’d let nature take its course. Well, apparently nature has decided to take the scenic route, because nothing’s happening. After a year, it’s an annoyance. After this long, it’s stressful…it’s frustrating…it’s maddening. Having a baby at all truly seems like a surreal, foreign concept now. Everyone keeps encouraging me that it’ll happen eventually. Yeah, maybe it will. But with each passing year, I have my doubts. Sure, I’m being pessimistic…but I haven’t exactly had cause to be optimistic about this, have I?

Every cloud has its silver lining, right? I guess in some ways this has had some positive impacts on my life. It’s made my marriage stronger – this is one of those things that either makes or breaks your relationship, and we’ve only become closer after going through what we have (Eddie, you rock). And had we never encountered fertility problems, I never would have started going to my acupuncturist, which means I’d still have problems with fibromyalgia and shit like that.

But even with all of that in mind, it doesn’t make the infertility issues any easier.

Having a baby is just basic human biology. It’s so easy, teenagers do it. All the time. Some couples decide to have a baby, start trying, and within a couple of months, she’s pregnant (SHE…not THEY…nothing gets under my skin more than “we’re pregnant”. Sorry, bub, if you don’t have a little alien playing trampoline on your bladder and making you puke up anything that isn’t Saltines or water…YOU are not pregnant. SHE is. But I digress…). It’s just something that’s taken for granted. You get married, you have kids, and life is dandy.

Everyone worries when they’re having a baby. Will you be a good parent? Will you screw up your kid? It’s just part of life. I just wish someone had given me a heads-up about what it’s like to try to have a baby after you’ve already lost one (or two…). Not that it would have made much of a difference…but I had no idea that when you get pregnant after a loss, there’s a deep, core-rattling fear of losing the baby again.

About 2 weeks ago, I was certain I was pregnant. I had to be. The symptoms were all there, and I just had this gut feeling. I have never been so certain that a test was going to be positive. At the same time, I was terrified. Completely and utterly petrified. And that pissed me off…because we’d been trying for so long, and what? Now I don’t want it? Quite the contrary…I want it, but I’m so scared of losing it again. I knew that a positive meant at least 3 months of not breathing easily, not until we’d made it through the precarious first trimester…a milestone that usually means the risk of miscarriage goes down significantly. It’s not gone altogether, and it still happens…but once you pass 12 weeks or so, the odds are in your favor.

I remember last year when I got a positive test, I was, briefly, terrified. I mean, after three years of trying, an actual baby had become a distant, abstract concept…I kind of felt like the dog chasing the car…I’d spent so much energy chasing it, I never thought about WTF I was going to do if I actually CAUGHT it. Then I caught it. There it was: the positive test. Holy shit. Now what? Wait, it’s REAL? There’s no turning back? What if I changed my mind? Of course this momentary panic was just that: momentary. The reality of it (as well how it would be making its exit in a few months…) was still rather jarring, but panic gave way to excitement.

Even then, I was never 100% convinced I was pregnant. The reality was just…I don’t know, I just couldn’t get it through my head. I took four home pregnancy tests in the space of 24 hours. It had just been out of my reach for so long that I couldn’t believe it. The reality was finally sinking in…and then I miscarried.

I suppose where some people would seek comfort in a god at this point, I found comfort in my atheism: I found a certain comfort, a certain amount of peace, in realizing that it was just a biological event…I wasn’t being tested, I wasn’t being punished, it was not some wicked cosmic joke…it just was. For me, that made a difficult event a little easier to swallow. It was still devastating, but realizing it was nothing more than a biological accident, not a deliberate part of a divine plan, was surprisingly comforting.

It’s been just shy of a year since that miscarriage, and almost three years since my first. Finding myself looking down the barrel of possibly being pregnant again was no longer the surreal, thrilling feeling while anticipating the test result. It was that paralyzing fear that goes straight to the core. I was CERTAIN it was positive….and that scared me to death. For the first time since the miscarriage, I was possibly pregnant…and the positive result, in my mind, meant a repeat of last year. Another miscarriage. Another month of physical hell followed by the months of depression and constant reminders. And I truly wasn’t sure if I could handle going through that again.

In the end, it was negative. Seeing the single line where I’d expected dual lines made me pause and exhale with a kind of relief I never before imagined: not the relief that I wasn’t pregnant, but the relief that I was no longer heading down a road towards an imminent miscarriage…a miscarriage that may or may not have happened, but seemed all too inevitable to me had the test been positive.

Once that momentary relief had passed, it was replaced by anger. Absolute rage. I was frustrated beyond words…I had been so certain. Finally, I had thought, four or so years of infertility might be paying off. But no… we’re back to square one. I just want to throw up my hands. Actually, I want to throw a lot of things right now.

We’re running out of options as far as treatments. I refuse to take the Clomid/Provera route again. No way. I would rather remove my own left eyeball and then eat it. Without ketchup. I’m not comfortable with IUI or IVF…and even if I was, I doubt we can afford it. Seriously…who has upwards of $20,000 to drop on a medical procedure that very possibly won’t even work? Nevermind my aversion to artificial hormones – which very likely play a significant role in why we’re having problems in the first place. So, even if I wanted to go back to the traditional medical route (which I don’t), there really aren’t many options left.

My acupuncturist was reassuring this morning. He thinks some of the symptoms I’m having indicate that my body is changing somehow…healing from all of the problems it’s had for the last several years. He sees some positive changes, and has a plan of attack for the next few months. So, I’m sticking with the acupuncture route. I think even if I sought out other fertility methods, I would still keep going to him…he’s made a tremendous difference in my health in the last year and a half.

Emotionally, I don’t know where I am right now. Part of me wants to throw in the towel and call it a loss. The stress has been exhausting, the uncertainty completely consuming. Four years is a long time. I hear people talking about trying for 5, 10, or more years…and I don’t know if I can do that. I know I’m a strong person, and I can handle a lot, but at what point is it time to just say “Enough”?

All around me, I’m watching couples have babies, watching their babies turn into toddlers, watching their toddlers grow into kindergarteners. When I first started going to the iVillage boards in 2003, some of my friends were pregnant with or had just had their first baby. Those babies will be starting kindergarten next year, and some already have one or two younger siblings. Some of the other women were dealing with fertility issues as well, but now their signatures are full of baby pictures and pregnancy tickers. While I rejoice whenever I see an announcement that someone is pregnant, part of me just wants to cry. I’m so happy for them…but I can’t help but feel envious.

Anyway…there it is. Another lengthy rant. There isn’t really much point to it…I just needed to get it off my chest. I don’t know what the future holds for us, or how many more years we’re going to flunk Applied Biology 101 before we finally get it right…but maybe there’s some hope. If nothing else, I have a husband who is a saint through all of this, tremendously supportive family and friends, and a midwife and acupuncturist worth their weight in gold. So…we’ll see.

If you’re reading this, and you’re a parent…go hug your kids.

And if you’ve made it this far, well…um…this is the end. So…you don’t have to sit through it anymore.