30 Days of Truth: Day 28

If I got someone pregnant, I would be rich.  The first female to ever get someone else pregnant… can you imagine what Oprah would pay for that story?

If I were pregnant, I would be over the moon.  More than over the moon, I’d be in shock.  So much so that I probably would have a hard time believing it was true.

When I started this 30 Days of Truth, this question stood out to me.  I’ve spent the last 28 days trying to figure out how I would answer.  Would I brush over it and try to be funny or would I be honest?   Brushing over it would be pretty easy, the funny thing isn’t that difficult.

Being honest?  That’s another story… because it means getting really personal.

I know, you are thinking that getting personal really isn’t an issue for me seeing as I always just sort of lay it all out there, but there are some things I haven’t been talking about.  This is one of them, the baby issue.

Ok, I admit it… it’s been killing me not to write about it because I’m quite an open book and my blog is like a friend to me. A friend I can talk to who never answers, just listens.  It has no emotional investment or need to try to say something to make things better.  It’s just there.

The problem is, I know that standing behind this ‘friend’ are hundreds of other people.  Some friends, some not, some that  I’m not entirely comfortable with sharing something this personal with.  So I’ve held back.

I need that outlet though, I really do… and that’s why I’ve decided to go with honesty on this one.   Also because I think it’s sort of fate that THIS question came on THIS day.

Today I had an IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination)… what you’d probably know better as Artificial Insemination.  This is the fourth that I’ve had, the first three not being successful.  This has been a long day for me and having this question come at the end sort of makes me … roll my eyes and sigh.

My husband and I have been married for almost 11 years, together for 12.  We have never tried to prevent pregnancy, and long time readers may remember a period of 3-4 years a while back where we were trying to conceive.  I was more open about it back then as I was younger and wasn’t really aware of what was in store for me when it didn’t work.   I had every test imaginable, my husband was tested, we tried everything we were told to do from charting to temperatures, ovulation tests… the whole works.  Nothing happened.

After four years, I was completely defeated and broken down mentally.  This didn’t improve when my doctors told me I would probably never have a child naturally and before they would agree to help me with any procedures, I would have to lose a significant amount of weight as the risk factors with all the hormones were too great.

I was very sad and wasn’t at all up to the task.  My husband and I decided it was time to step away from the baby issue to give me a chance to get my head back together.  That we needed some time just for US, as having spent so long with our lives revolving around trying to have a child took it’s toll on us as a couple as well.

The last three or four years I’ve basically spent trying to convince myself that I didn’t want children anyway.  What other choice do you have when something seems so far out of reach?  When I’d see someone with a screaming child I’d tell myself Wow, glad I dodged that bullet!! and I reminded myself again and again how happy I was to still have my freedom.   It was what I had to do to make myself ok with it, and I almost had myself convinced.

Unless you’ve ever lived inside the brain of a woman who suffers from infertility, there is no way to understand what we need to do to get by… there’s no real point in trying.

Anyhow, fast forward to last summer, I’m sitting in my doctor’s office on a totally unrelated matter.  I had lost 50lbs and he was congratulating me… then the conversation turned.

It’s been a while since we discussed the baby issue, where do you stand with that?

Well, we’ve just sort of been leaving it alone for now…

Ok, if you don’t want children that’s fine, but if you do TICKTOCK GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR!

He may not have actually said tick tock, but he did make comments about how I was 35 now and if I ever did want to get the help I needed to have children, I had to get the rest of the required weight off and get back to my fertility specialist and sort it out.

Hello, hard cold slap of reality.  Nice to see you again.

Xander and I went home that day and we talked.

We continued to talk the next day.

We talked for a lot of days, figuring out what we really wanted, how we felt about GOING THERE again… to that place that had nearly broken me before.  Trying to get pregnant.  Did we really want all that stress in our lives again?  Could I handle the disappointment?  Do we really want a child?!

Here’s what I knew… I couldn’t NOT try.  I knew that the thing that had been holding me back was fear.  The fear of it not working and spending the rest of my life without a child.  The fear of what that would do to me mentally and how it would affect our marriage.

You know what scared me more than that?  How I’d feel if I one day found myself 45 years old, with my childbearing years gone past and wondering what if…

Xander agreed, and that is when we decided to go ahead with it.

So, I continued to bust my ass to lose the rest of the required weight.  and in August I saw my fertility specialist again for the first time in almost four years.  We made a plan. I would continue to lose weight and try to get to the goal they had set for me, and I would come see her again in three months to catch up, then maybe after that appointment they’d consider starting fertility procedures around six month after.

Three months went by, and in late November I went to see her for the checkup.  I was much closer to my goal weight and much to my surprise I didn’t have to wait another six months as she had originally thought.  She told me that she had made an agreement with the rest of the team of doctors that because I’d lost so much weight (85 lbs) and was so close to the goal, they would begin with IUI the following month.  If that didn’t work after 6 cycles, they would move on to IVF.

I broke down in tears in her office.

I cried while making the next appointment with the receptionist.

I cried the whole way home.

I was so proud of myself for losing the weight, making the effort and finally getting the help I need.

Oh, and I was scared shitless.

My first IUI was a week to the day after my gallbladder surgery.  It was incredibly stressful having the surgery, trying to recover from that, organize Christmas, get presents sorted and ready to be shipped out, stick to my diet and have all that came with the fertility treatments on top of it.  December was a write-off for me and I’m still not sure how I made it through.

January and most of February have revolved around these treatments.  Doctors visits, multiple hospital visits each month for ultrasounds and injections and even having to start giving myself daily injections this month.  It’s been a major roller coaster ride for me emotionally, mostly due to the hormones but also the stress, anxiety, frustration, disappointment and a multitude of other emotions all flooding me at once.

I’ve kept this all quiet over the last three to four months mostly because I felt I needed to get my own head around it first.  Also, it’s not something I always want to talk about.  I don’t’ want people always asking if I’m pregnant yet, how I’m feeling or what’s going on.   Not that I don’t appreciate people’s concern but I live so much in my own head at the moment that sometimes when I actually manage to do something else or think of something else, I don’t like to be pulled back into talking about it right at that moment.

That’s why I’ve decided to start blogging about it… because I come here and talk about it when I want to, in the way that I want to.  There are things I would write on this blog that I wouldn’t say to friends or family, because it’s one thing to sit here in the dark, crying and writing something on my blog… it’s another to sit there sobbing in front of people, regardless of how close we are or how much I know they love me.

My family and friends that I’ve shared this with over the past few months have been incredibly supportive, and I love them for it.  I know that none of them really understand what I am going through and often aren’t sure what to say to make me feel better, but that’s the thing… there’s nothing anyone can say.  It’s something I have to go through and get through and there isn’t anything that will make it feel better unless it actually works.

That is when I will feel better… the day that I see that + sign.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I live in a funk every day of the week, all month long.  I have been getting out with friends, having a good time and trying to go on with life like normal. I can’t deny that the majority of my thoughts are completely entangled in what we are going through at the moment though.

So, what if I was pregnant?  Ha… I can’t even imagine it.

No, that’s a lie… I imagine it every day, a million times a day.  I just can’t imagine it ever being real.

That is my honest answer to this 30 Days of Truth question.