Struggles of Infertility

With everything that’s happened with Skyler and Colby this summer I feel guilty about this post. My problems are nothing compared to what these two little boys and their families have gone through. But this blog is about our journey to and through adoption including our infertility. - which means all of the good and all of the bad. I try to keep things light hearted and as funny as I can, but I also don’t want to ignore that other part of this, which is infertility. If I don’t touch on infertility occasionally I feel like I’m doing a disservice to myself and to the millions of other couples going though it.

I’ll be honest – I’m going though a very rough patch right now. The roughest I have been though in months. Since February things had gotten so much better. I had even posted earlier in the summer that I was doing ok, I was pretty content with where we were at in our lives. So this rough patch snuck up out of nowhere and has kind of blindsided me.

In the last three years I’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of analyzing and last year I discovered this time of year was hard. There are several reasons that have contributed to that
· We officially decided we were ready for another baby around our vacation time in 2005. While vacations are nice, it’s another reminder that another one has come and gone and were still dealing with infertility
· We’ve been contacted by our agency that we need to update our homestudy, which includes fingerprinting and filling out financial information. I went to the big Picnic last weekend and saw several girls who were like 5 years old when I graduated walking around pregnant with #1, some even #2. I don’t think they had to be fingerprinted or account for every dollar they spend each month like Jay and I have to.
· Our first miscarriage happened Thanksgiving Day 2006. If I had stayed pregnant that baby would’ve been born in August. I should be having a 1st birthday party, not hunting down the balance of every account that we have. I won’t even get started on what the thought of Thanksgiving does to me. That's another post for another time
· Cade starts school. I always have in the back of my mind – Is this the first and last time I have a child starting XX grade?

Even though I don’t think about all of this on a daily basis it’s like my body knows. Last year it was like my body knew something wasn’t right. I went through a pretty rough time until I figured it out. I don’t know or care what experts in the field of grief might say – my heart knew I should’ve had a baby last August and my heart hurt. This month has also been a little tougher because I’ve had a kidney infection for most of the month and that really had me physically down. When I went to the doctor for it last week he also started talking about my blood pressure (which is high) and the weight gain I’ve had the last three years. I left the doctors office not only with my antibiotic but also a prescription for a weight loss drug and feeling totally frustrated and confused about what I should do.

So here I am – frustrated, depressed, angry, irritable –emotions that infertility brings out in all their glory. I’m back to avoiding every pregnant woman and baby section that I come across. I’ve been at a work conference the last few days and there was a pregnant person there and I completely ignored her the whole time. Last weekend we ran into some old college friends and they had a new baby that I didn’t know about. I physically could not speak to them. I tried, but all I could get out were one syllable words, mostly answers to her questions. I’ve been angry and I’ve yelled to Jay (not at him) that we’re always waiting on it to be in God’s time so why is it time for every one else and never for us? Am I proud of my behavior? Of course not, but I want to be honest to myself and everyone else. This is hard. There’s no way around it. It is the way it is. This whole thing has been a roller coaster ride and there are times I’m up and there are times I’m down. This is a down time. I know it will turn around eventually, but this time it feels a little different. Early on in our infertility I could remind myself of our other options when I got down. Right now we have no other viable options. We are coming to the end of our road and we’re stuck at the bus stop waiting.