One year. 365 days. 52 weeks. 12 months. 8 cycles. 2 miscarriages.
A year changes everything. I’m blessed. Truly blessed to have two amazing children. I’ve known this since day one of motherhood, but I didn’t TRULY understand how blessed until now. My boys are my world, and now I’m realizing they may be all the world I get.
We’ve always planned on having more than two children. My first son was born when I was 17, Second when I was 20. We were essentially homeless during both of our pregnancies. We were always broke. I didn’t want that for my third baby. If I was going to do it again, I would do it as a responsible adult. So I spent five years watching people make more babies, waiting for when I would be ready to have another. Waiting to be a “grown up”. To be SURE that we could provide for what would might be our last baby. Finally, we decided. July 1, 2014. I would not go in for my depo shot. We would officially be TTC the baby that had been in my heart and mind for nearly five years. That was a year ago.
Today, I am full of emotions, almost none of them happy ones. A year. That puts us in with a statistic I never wanted nor expected to be a part of. 1 in 10 couples are infertile. We are one of them now. In the last year, my husband was been diagnosed with a long confusing name for a testicle problem. There is something wrong with his epididymis which causes pain and inflammation. The only way to fix it, is to remove that section. Which means no more babies. We have been racing that clock. Trying to avoid that surgery. But we are young, we barely had to look at each other to conceive our other kids! We got this. No. We didn’t. We don’t. I don’t know how many sticks I’ve peed on in the last year, but between ovulation tests and pregnancy tests, let’s just say I should’ve bought stock in wondfo when we started TTC.
And we did conceive this year. Twice. And I had two miscarriages. My first miscarriage was during infertility awareness week. I was crushed. When I think about how devastating it was for my baby to die, it was even MORE devastating to see person after person tell stories of their infertility and their losses. And I wasn’t ready to come to terms with being “one of them”, but I was. I lost my baby. My baby I’d been fucking and praying and crying for for months. She’s* gone. I should be in my second trimester right now. Instead I’m still fucking and praying and crying. Only I’m doing those things way too much now. My life revolves completely around trying to have this baby. The second baby was conceived and lost almost immediately after the first miscarriage. I didn’t let myself get excited. I was scared and nervous and had a sense of impending doom from the very beginning. And I was right. I lost that baby just five days after finding out it was there.
Maybe I’m depressed. I don’t know. But there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t cry. I’ve gained 20 pounds since my first miscarriage. That was only four months ago. You know what doesn’t help fertility? Obesity. You know what else isn’t going to help? Smoking. Yep, I picked up smoking again. And I can’t get myself up to exercise. I can BARELY get up for work. On weekends, I sit on the couch and THINK about how I should be getting up and doing things. But it’s so hard to do things with a broken heart. I didn’t know that before this year. I might be the only girl on the planet that made it through 26 years on this earth without ever having her heart broken. I wish I could’ve gone 26 more. The pain is all encompassing. Every little piece of joy that I experience is followed by sadness. Immense deep dark black sadness where all I want to do is cry and go to sleep. I just had to delete my Facebook account. In the last week, I have seen three babies born. Four positive pregnancy tests. And an uncountable amount of pregnancy related updates. Every single one of those is like a goddamn stab in the uterus and the heart. I can’t handle it anymore. About a month ago I started ignoring them, I wasn’t able to type a response anymore. I couldn’t even TRY to be fake-happy. For a very long time I was able to be fake-happy. Which isn’t to say I don’t want other people to have babies. I just was able to be happy for them and say for me. But, like an hourglass, over the last few months, the ‘happy for them’ sand has fallen down into the 'sad for me’ chamber, and I can’t do it anymore. I’ve run out of happiness. And I feel like a total jerk for it. Which makes me sad all over again.
So, back to the beginning. Many doctors and specialists and whoever defines these words says that you are infertile after a year of trying. It’s been a year. And it feels like I’m betraying other infertile people by becoming one of them. Because I have two children already. Just as I was hurt when that girl that was trying for two months complained about how long it was taking then posted a BFP the next day, am I hurting someone by being an “infertile woman” with two kids? In a way It’s like being back in school and sitting at the lunch table that doesn’t belong to your group all over again. Why do I feel like my infertility is less important than another woman’s? It’s so fucked up to feel this way. It’s so fucked up. Everything is fucked up.