what now?

R and J on our way to figuring it out 25 • she/her

[onepinkline]

I’m still only 17, not 26.

My parents are still in their 50’s, not 60’s.

I don’t have to worry about the way my dad’s feet shuffle as he walks, arthritis coating his joints from decades of providing for my family.

I don’t think I said thank you enough.

I remember my husband’s grandmother dying at 71. I do the math, that gives me under ten years.

I want to burn that thought. Losing my parents before my mid thirties?

Suddenly, I’m jealous I’m not the oldest child. It isn’t fair that my brother will get more time with them, especially because he’s him.

My uncle just died, he was 89. That’s closer to thirty years.

It still doesn’t feel like enough.

I realize that I’m more than likely half way through knowing them. That I will, in all probability, live longer not knowing them than I did knowing them.

How do you lose someone you have known every second of your life? I don’t want to know.

I worry about what they will miss.

Will they get the chance to meet my children? To really get to know them?

Thoughts like these make me wish I had a Time Machine, just to peek. To make sure I savor every piece.

But even then, it wouldn’t have been enough time.

I make peace in having the time.

[onepinkline]

I don’t know when pregnancy loss stops hurting.

It didn’t at their due date, or the one year mark of having their presence in my life. It didn’t at the first “birth” day, or second, or fifth.

It didn’t when I got pregnant with their sibling. It didn’t when I lost them, too.

It hasn’t on those random Tuesdays, when I’m hit with the sudden grief that I never heard them cry.

It hasn’t every Mother’s Day, every Christmas wondering how different it would’ve been than the last, when the school year starts and I realize they’d be off to Kindergarten.

When I pass the children’s activity center in the museum, and I wonder if they’d be eager to go in or shy because of the other kids.

I know it shouldn’t stop hurting. I tell my friends, your baby matters, I support other loss parents by reminding them your baby existed. I convince myself that mine do not. I close my eyes to see the images of the positive pregnancy tests and pretend that they never existed.

Coping, avoidance is (negatively) coping.

Someone, who was barely a something, can’t hurt this much. Maybe they never got to be my baby, but they were my dream. My future, love personified. Never anything tangible to attach it to, a vision of someday.

Someday left too soon, too soon to be tangible. Too soon to grieve. Too soon to understand. I was still processing that they existed, when they did not anymore.

I don’t know when pregnancy loss quits hurting.

I hope it never does, because it is the only reminder that I ever had them at all.

[onepinkline]

Practicing positive affirmations every day until we do fertility!

Day one:

this time next year, I will have a newborn!

The perfect excuse to spend summer inside with the AC 🫶🏻 sorry fam, no cook outs for me, baby won’t have their shots!

[onepinkline]

Day two: I am ready to accept pregnancy into our lives.

Day three: for the sake of baby toes 🫶🏻

Day four: the time we have waited has ensured we will be grateful.

Day five: waiting had enabled us to do so many things to make sure we can give our child the best life.

[onepinkline]

Practicing positive affirmations every day until we do fertility!

Day one:

this time next year, I will have a newborn!

The perfect excuse to spend summer inside with the AC 🫶🏻 sorry fam, no cook outs for me, baby won’t have their shots!

[onepinkline]

Throughout my infertility journey, I’ve often felt like there was a “lesson” I was meant to be learning. I hated it, it made me angry, but the thought was always there.

I had a realization today that I think I was meant to heal, from many things, but specifically learning communication skills and developing my own sense of self importance that depends solely on me and what I have achieved.

The universe knows how special motherhood will be to me, how important it is to me. I don’t think it was open to letting me begin that chapter until I was ready, because it knew that I would be so disappointed if I had any regrets from my own immature, unhealed actions relating to my journey of motherhood.

I’ve worked hard to heal. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. I know that I’m ready, and maybe the universe does too… either way, I think I’m okay with waiting my turn for now.

[onepinkline]

I’ve been spending time connecting with nature recently 🌱

Religion has always been very difficult to navigate for me, but calling on the universe feels like home.

Do no harm, take only what you need, help others, and spread the love.

[onepinkline]

Nothing raises my confidence like working with older office ladies.

I haven’t really updated what I do for work in a while, so hey! I’m a case manager at my company now, I travel around to the different schools in my area and see kiddos.

Walked into my favorite school today, and the collective literally gasped. It was my first time wearing a dress in front of them and they loved it.

Feeling fancy and beautiful and honestly a bit silly, but it was a good day!

[onepinkline]

✨exciting news✨

Letrozole cycle April 2024 is happening!

I have so much hope for this cycle, everything feels like it’s lining up perfectly and I cannot wait to share every detail of what’s to come 🩷

We’re following a really strict diet/exercise/supplement regime this time around and I’ve been carefully reviewing all of my products for hormone imbalancing chemicals and replacing things as needed. I plan on doing a total detox before we start progesterone.

Good vibes, I feel it!

[onepinkline]

Everyone BOO my professors and internship program.

Due to some fucking bullshit that these idiots totally could have avoided minor inconvenience, letrozole cycle April 2024 has been pushed back until July 2024. I have redone our calendar for prospective dates, but this will make us due end of April/beginning of May 2025.

I’m bummed, but trying to find the light in this. I’m only a year from giving birth at this point (and we’ve already been doing this for almost 7, so what difference does that really make?) This also puts me in the position that I will be out of my internship, so my maternity leave will fall over my final (!!!) summer break, so I’ll have 3 months of navigating (earth side) motherhood and developing a routine, then I’ll have two more months to get used to Mom Mode While Working, and then I’ll finish my LAST semester, graduate, which in all will be quite a bit less stressful.

(it also gives me a chance to start actually working out and getting my body in better shape before getting pregnant but we’re ignoring that part)

[onepinkline]

Practicing gratitude and mindfulness from my comfy chair in front of a window today (because Ohio says April is too early to warm up).

My darkest paths have lead to some of the brightest lights. My longest friendship-turned-family was met through an incredibly toxic friendship during the peak of an eating disorder that almost killed me. For whatever reason (probably because he is one of the most stubborn people I know) he stuck around, and gave me the most supportive sister I could ask for.

I have met so many wonderful people through Tumblr, many of whom have had their babies and long since moved on from the world of infertility I’m trapped in, but still check on me from time to time.

From my first miscarriage, my “Pregnancy Pack” mainly moved on with their lives, but one soul continues to keep in touch daily and never makes me feel uncomfortable about my infertility, to the point that I didn’t even remember we had become friends to compare pregnancy notes in the first place. Despite losing my own, and her going on to bring her’s earth side, we have maintained a close friendship.

I have encountered more than my fair share of disaster and heartbreak in my short life, but so much of the joy I have now was brought from it. Never mind the growth I got from the experience, I came out unscathed and loved.

It has been hard, but I’m grateful for all of it.

[onepinkline]

Me: “You do not have to be particularly beautiful, or thin, or feminine. You simply must possess a fucking vagina for a man to think that he has the right to view, own, and treat your body in whatever horrifying and derogatory manner he sees fit.”

Professor: “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the words “fucking vagina” so eloquently spoken.”

[onepinkline]

✨exciting news✨

Letrozole cycle April 2024 is happening!

I have so much hope for this cycle, everything feels like it’s lining up perfectly and I cannot wait to share every detail of what’s to come 🩷

We’re following a really strict diet/exercise/supplement regime this time around and I’ve been carefully reviewing all of my products for hormone imbalancing chemicals and replacing things as needed. I plan on doing a total detox before we start progesterone.

Good vibes, I feel it!

[beetaylora]

i hate you birth control i hate you irregular periods i hate you insulin resistance i hate you pcos i hate you multiple miscarriage i hate you infertility i hate you pcos i hate you weight fluctuation i hate you metformin i hate you trying to conceive i hate you

[onepinkline]

Picked up some exciting things from the pharmacy today…

I’ve lost a ton of weight, and I’m seeing a lot of improvement in PCOS symptoms (hell yeah!) so we just want to see where my body is right now.

Fingers crossed, trust, and baby dust!

(images cropped for privacy, if you know me IRL we aren’t announcing this and I want it to be as low-key as possible so please don’t bring it up ♥️)

[onepinkline]

I mentioned a while back about a few members of my family passing.

It’s a custom in my family to cut out hair after someone passes. I think it’s left over from my mom’s side as we have a lot of Native blood through there (up until two generations ago, they were pretty well full-blooded Cherokee, though you’d never guess it from looking at me… thanks to my Dad’s Irish bloodline).

I typically don’t participate, but I needed a haircut already and I’m taking a culture course in school that’s had me participating in some other customs I’ve discovered and am enjoying, so I decided to do a chop when my mom did hers. It was really liberating, and quite an emotional experience which I didn’t expect.

Anyway, here’s my hair transformation or whatever.

[onepinkline]

Did I just download an app to ask a psychic when I’d have a healthy pregnancy? Yes I did, and yes, I think I’m too deep in this TTC stuff but who isn’t at this point.

[onepinkline]

C’mon, App Store psychic. Don’t fail me now.

(This post was originally from March 19th, 2019. I remember thinking to myself I’d have killed myself if I didn’t have a baby by now. At the worst, I can say my mental health has improved. At the best, maybe I’ll finally get pregnant?)

[onepinkline]

If you’ve been following for any length of time you know I used to struggle badly with an ED.

I’ve fought with it off and on through adulthood. It’s been dicey sometimes and nonexistent others.

Due to all the stress in my life (see: death, family illness, school, my brothers arrest - update on that soon) I haven’t had the mental energy to make it to the gym.

BUT I have been eating 3 full meals a day and I’ve lost 15 more pounds from that. Nourishing your body correctly really does make such a difference in your weight and I hope I can keep this up because I know that I feel better and look better while I’m doing it.

[onepinkline]

he is attractive TO ME