I feel like I’m having trouble adjusting to the miscarriage… because I’m not having much trouble adjusting to the miscarriage. I just figured I would be more angry, more sad. Every time I thought about how there was always the possibility I would miscarry I thought it would be this terrible event that would send me crying in bed for weeks. But it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like another frustration, another setback. Maybe after so many of them you realize it’s rather futile to freak out every time… or maybe you just get a little numb to it. Maybe a little of both.

I was always a little dismissive of therapy of any sort, especially since my first experience with it just made me want to roll my eyes. I need more than someone who just listens – I have a lot of friends, and I have my blog. If I want to just be heard, I can get that without sitting in a chair for an hour recapping my life in brief overview. What I need is feedback. Not just feedback… but observations. Friends are absolutely wonderful for providing emotional support and saying, “Yeah! That sucks!” I need that sometimes. But once in a while I need someone to step back and provide some insight. And that’s why I’m happy with my therapist. She has a way of giving me a different perspective, of pointing something out to me that I just wasn’t seeing. I find myself running over things in my head before my appointment, knowing that if I tell her what’s bugging me she’ll be able to help me figure out why.

And this whole not-grieving thing has been bugging me. Of course the answer is obvious, and my therapist helped me see it a little more clearly: I didn’t allow myself to bond with the pregnancy. Because of the previous loss, because of the very rocky start and continued bleeding, I really held myself back. Cautious excitement at the prospect of being pregnant, yes – but with some very large disclaimers written all over my heart.

I didn’t refer to a baby. Oh I referred to the hypothetical future baby that may result, but at the current time? I didn’t use the term baby in my head. I would say, “the embryo” – because that was something I was comfortable with, obviously there was an embryo since I watched them put it in. I would think to myself, if there’s a heartbeat, if there’s a baby… then I’ll be okay, then I’ll calm down. I just want to see it on the ultrasound first. I just kept picturing an empty sac, or something that stopped growing very early on and had no heartbeat. I am jaded. I know that it’s not a given that there’s a baby in there. I was holding my heart suspended until I was given the okay to start believing in it.

So in the end my fears were confirmed, there is no baby. And to me there never was – just an embryo that implanted in the wrong spot and wasn’t allowed to grow into what it could have. All my embryos were potential babies. I guess that’s another reason I’m dealing with this so matter-of-factly. This is not the first embryo I’ve lost. The first one I’ve lost after it actually implanted… but still. Every IVF cycle is an embryo, a little bundle of cells, a little baby-to-be that never makes it far enough.

The combination of all of it just leaves me feeling very unsurprized that it didn’t end well. I remember last Wednesday before my ultrasound appointment I was at work. I left just for an appointment, everyone assuming I would be right back. But I felt like I should clean up my stuff, close out my work. Just in case.

I know that I am far from giving up on this. The litany of my history has an almost comedic quality to it at this point, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve gotten pregnant twice. It works, damnit. Not every time, but it does work. It’s been dumb rotten luck that both times they didn’t end in a live baby – Devin’s case was such a freak accident, and with the ectopic it was just bad luck that it implanted in the wrong spot. (That part bugs me. If it had just implanted in my goddamn uterus I’d probably have a healthy baby inside me.)

Right now I am feeling extremely thankful that it has been over a year since I was pregnant with Devin. With so much time between the losses my memories of being pregnant are almost dream-like. Me being not pregnant is the “normal” state – I have had a long time to get used to it. I think about how I felt about my body for months after losing Devin, the feeling of disgust and overwhelming anger at no longer being pregnant… if I had gotten pregnant only to lose it again I think hell would have broken loose in my head. At least now I am able to process this loss for itself, and not as an extension of our loss of Devin… they feel like two very separate events.

Today I sneezed. A full sneeze, ahhh-choo! This is noteworthy because for the past week and a half I’ve been holding back my sneezes, little atch..oo… because it hurt my poor belly every time.

I am really feeling better every day this week. Just Wednesday to Friday my recovery has bounded. Today I didn’t have to hold my belly much while walking, it didn’t bother me to crouch down. There are still times when it reminds me it is there – I will not be dancing on a stage anytime soon – but it’s nice to walk and sit normally.

While my body is getting better, my emotional state is getting worse. Remember I had mentioned that a coworker is pregnant? She’s starting to show already. And I want to make clear here that I do not begrudge her what she has – she’s a lovely person, and is very sensitive and aware of what I’m going through. It is just very very hard to be reminded of what I don’t have. I know that it would be hard regardless of the fact that I was pregnant, too… but that does make it worse. It’s a reminder every week of where I should be, too. I know it will be a couple of months before I might be pregnant – no guarantees there, of course – months that will be difficult. We haven’t hit the hardest part yet: when customers start noticing. That, above all else, just hits me hard… listening to them chat happily, ask question, and constantly comment on how wonderful it is. I’m hoping it will be another couple of months before we hit that point. Hoping… but doubtful.

I find myself being a lot quieter when around people. I have been in some kind of… well, not state of disbelief, because I didn’t really believe in the first place. But it was a pleasant numbness. I felt fine. I was focussed on my physical state and healing, and just pushing the emotional aside. Not willingly, not conciously… but I knew that’s what was going on. And now it’s creeping in again. Not sadness at the events of the last week, specifically… but the overall depression and frustration at this whole fucking situation.

I am angry that people who don’t want babies get pregnant without trying, don’t treat their bodies right, and never have a single damn problem. And then me and my friends – people in healthy relationships who truly want to be parents, who go to every appointment and eat right and do everything they’re supposed to… we lose. It makes NO sense. I just can’t put into words how freaking angry it makes me to think about. So I try not to think about it.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is the emptiness. When I am pregnant – even when it was 2 weeks of freaking out – I felt more than myself. I felt whole again. There was just something in me that glowed with a happy secret. And now it’s gone again.

The coldness is seeping back in and there is simply nothing else that can fill that hole – not my wonderful husband, my pets, my home, my work. They each have their own space in my heart… but that one still remains broken.

I’ve been trying not to get too invested in this theoretical June cycle, just in case tomorrow my doctor tells me he wants me to take another month off. Even though my incisions are healing very nicely. I just find it hard to trust that anything will happen when I actually want it to happen. Or, at all. Just not big on the whole trust thing in general, really. I’ll just wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime I have been hit by the gardening bug, and I’ve been itching to get out there and start pulling some weeds. Today I managed to do that, and put down mulch around the base of Devin’s tree. It looks far better now. I’m hoping it will also function better, but again, we’ll just wait and see.

I am very excited about my vegetable garden, and trying not to rush it. Since last year was actually successfull – in the definition that I actually kept up on it and didn’t wander off looking for shiny objects – I have decided to improve on it a little bit. Last year it was more an act of desperation and keeping busy hands than anything, so I just cleared a spot of earth and planted things. This year I’m going to build a little raised bed! It will look much neater, and be easier to maintain. I will, of course, be taking photos.

I’m also trying to figure out what trees we should plant around the yard. We definitely want trees, and we don’t want boring, typical ones, but then we have to figure out where is best to put them (have to take into account, the future fence, the future pool, the future house expansion, what lawn area we want to keep open, shade and sun… etc). The next one may just end up being a Yoshino Cherry (Devin’s tree is a fruiting cherry variety), and I think I want at least one Elm tree in the back. Eventually we would like to take down all the stupid pine trees in the woods and replace them with Elms, Birches and other such trees.

I don’t really know where this sudden interest in gardening came from… well, some combination of grief and family predisposition (my dad is an avid gardener, as was his mom and almost all of his siblings and cousins). I guess my interest needed to be kickstarted. Maybe it’ll die off in time, maybe not. But for now it certainly holds my interest.

A part of it, I am sure, is that by doing this I am still working towards our future, especially with the trees. The veggies and flowers are yearly distractions, but the trees are a part of a bigger picture. I can see in my head our children playing ball in the shade of an Elm and admiring the Japanese Red Maples. It’s a way for us to shape this house and land to get it ready. Every month that I am not pregnant I feel this drive to keep moving forward, to keep getting things done and getting prepared for a child we will bring home. I know this house will never be done, but every completed project brings me a sense of accomplishment, pride, and relief.

Which is really a very good thing. Some weeks it just feels like I’m doing the same things over and over again and getting nowhere. Pregnancy is at least forward motion. Even active IVF cycles feel like forward motion – even though they may just dump you out exactly where you started, at least it feels like forward motion for the duration of the ride. But in between? Stagnant.

We all need something to keep us moving. I guess this is mine.

Today I had the follow up with my doctor. I was a little late getting there, but I wasn’t too concerned because they’re usually running behind anyways. I was called back by the doctor himself and the resident who has been shadowing him for the past month.

The Dr asked how I was, and when we at in an exam room he shook his head a little and said he was very sorry for what had happened, and then said, “You just have terrible reproductive luck.” I laughed at that. Yes… I certainly do.

Then he started talking about my stims cycles and how we’ve done some unusual stims with me. He mentioned the paper he’d read that suggested using straight Menopur as a means to increase the results for people like me whose eggs don’t mature properly, he said it actually wasn’t a published paper, but he had been reviewing it… and that’s what led to the success of my last stims (“success” being 6 embryos rather than 1 or 2). He said he’d actually seen the doctor who wrote the paper at a conference this past weekend and thanked him. How cool is that.

So then he said that I have one embryo still in storage and there is no reason this ectopic should hold that up at all, that I can start whenever I want to… with this coming AF if that’s what I want (yes please!!). He’ll let the nurses know so everything will be ready! I am THRILLED!

He also said, of course, that if the frozen transfer doesn’t work, or if the embryo doesn’t survive the thaw, then we’ll just do another stims cycle. I mean, it IS easier now that I know we have a protocol that works – and he mentioned something about “taking it to the next level,” I’m not sure if that means he wants to improve on the protocol, or if he just meant actually getting and keeping me pregnant. But man, the idea of going through stims again makes my stomach a little upset. I just keep thinking about the crap I’ve gone through in stims… the overstimming, the very poor egg maturity… I used to go through stims with excitement. Now all I feel is dread at more bad news. And that sucks. But hopefully we won’t have to do more stims for a long time.

After that the Resident took out one little stitch that was poking out from my right side incision while the Doctor rambled a bit about ectopics and risk factors (I don’t have any, except now I have the risk factor of “previous ectopic”) and how they removed my affected tube so as to not increase my risks any further. I was kind of more focussed on the person tugging at my incision and missed a lot of what he said, unfortunately. But I got the general idea.

And then off I went, with a smile on my face at the prospect of next month’s FET. I am so relieved, so happy that I won’t be delayed any further.

The doctor said I am brave. That caught me off-guard. It’s not something you really expect a doctor to say. I don’t feel brave. I’m doing what I have to do to get to the other side, that is all. And I am just glad that the people like my doctor are willing to help me get there.

::

I’ve been thinking about my doctor’s comments about bad reproductive luck. Let me recap:

I am infertile. I have to do IVF. That part isn’t all that uncommon, unfortunately. But when I do IVF, my results SUCK compared to pretty much everyone else’s. I have low oocyte/egg maturity. I have now idea how rare it is, but it appears to be pretty damn rare, considering the only information I can find on it are in some medical journal articles. I can’t even find it on google. My clinic, which does a lot of IVF cycles, was supremely caught off-guard and didn’t know what to do about it.

I had a stillbirth, which by itself happens in roughly 1 out of every 150 births. Bad luck, but not exactly “rare”… until you look at the cause of the stillbirth. Cord wrapped around? Chromosomal problems? Nah, nothing so mundane. Oh no, the chorion ruptured, causing strips of tissue… one of which just happened to wrap tightly around his umbilical cord. I previously found an article that cited the odds of amniotic bands fatally affecting the umbilical cord to be about one in 100,000 births. That’s… pretty fucking rare. WTF?

And finally we have an ectopic tubal pregnancy after an IVF transfer that specifically placed the embryo in my uterus. Not entirely rare, some quick searches have shown the incidence to be 1-3% of IVF pregnancies. (I take comfort in the fact that at least this is somewhat “normal” and no doctors were struggling to understand what the hell happened.)

So how in the hell does one person get the rare infertility problem, the crazy-rare stillbirth, and an ectopic pregnancy after IVF… three random, completely unrelated events. I guess I really am one in a million.

I’ve never wanted to be more normal in my life.

I realized that this weekend I didn’t think about the weekend being my pregnancy days – I was too busy thinking about work and gardening and watching TV. It just didn’t cross my mind. I guess, seeing how it was my pregnancy days for only 2 weeks, it’s an easy habit to kick. I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with not-pregnant weekends, and so that is what I fall back into.

At work we have to be aware of the date, as we write it on forms and receipts all the time. Today I felt this little tickle in the back of my brain that it should mean something to me, did I forget something? I didn’t think so. Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo – which also means absolutely nothing to me. Tomorrow is the 7th. Nope, still nothing. Oh well.

It wasn’t until the very end of my day, when I overheard my coworker talking about her son being 6 months old. As a habit I thought about how old Devin would be. A year… and two month-ish.

Then I remembered. It’s the 6th. That’s why it meant something to me.. It means nothing and yet something.

But I didn’t think about it. It wasn’t hanging on my thoughts all day, I wasn’t remembering what the 6th brings, I wasn’t thinking about Devin at all other than the usual way he’s in the background of my thoughts. I don’t feel upset about that at all, just observant. Things are changing… time really is making it easier. The reminders aren’t stirring things up with as much vigor as they once did. I’m able to acknowledge, “Oh yeah, the 6th,” and move on.

::

Last night I forgot to take my nightly gaggle of medications, so I took them first thing this morning before work. And so, unsurprizingly, I have a little bit of pink spotting this evening. So predictable! My body is right in freaking tune with these damn pills, isn’t it. It’s like walking a razor’s edge. Light forbid I forget for a few hours!

The pills are NOT my friend anymore. I was on the pill for years before going off for TTC, and I don’t remember any problems with them. I never really had PMS or anything like that. Months on the pill, months off the pill… whatever. I had wicked bad cramps during AF, but that happened regardless.

Well holy hell I feel like it is running around inside my head. Headaches almost nightly (which, BTW, are not responding to ibuprofen). I’m cranky. My boobs ache. I am NOT impressed with this shit. It is way too uncomfortably similar to being pregnant for those first few weeks when your body is adjusting to it all.

But looking at my package of pills does make me smile – it’s a lovely visual reminder of the countdown (without me having to open up my spreadsheets and obsess, that is).

Today I am going to take the time to respond a little bit to a question I was asked: have we considered adoption? It’s not a bad question, especially since I really haven’t talked about our options or how or why we arrived at our decision. The short answer is that yes, we have discussed many times our different family-building options. My best friend was adopted at birth and she has brought the topic up with me several times – she has a special knack for asking questions without ever sounding judgemental, a trait I greatly appreciate. ;) Here in my blog I may have touched on it a few times in the past, but I don’t mention it very often because we are very sure we are doing what’s right for us so it’s not something I needed to work through – which is typically what my writing is used for.

First of all I want to say that I absolutely recognize adoption, surrogacy, donor eggs/sperm/gametes, to be completely valid, wonderful options. I know people who know without a doubt that IVF or other fertility treatments is not for them and that they will be pursuing adoption. I know people who are in the process of adopting, who have completed an adoption. I am completely supportive of them and I just really wish for the best for them – that they will be able to bring home a child. So please know that it is simply what Den and I feel about our own situation, preferences and desires. It is such a personal struggle, and what is right for one person is certainly not right for everyone.

This post is not an opening for debate – I am not looking for explanations or arguments or help in deciding anything. I am simply explaining how we got to where we are.

First of all, adoption is expensive. I have heard from those going through it that it can add up to $50,000 by the time they are through with all the fees. International adoption can be cheaper in one way, but then you have to add in all the travel expenses. We are extremely lucky to be living in Massachusetts, where IVF and other fertility treatments is covered by many insurance companies, including my current one. We are paying very, very little for my medications and procedures, something I am extremely grateful for.

Adoption is also a very long process. You have to find an agency, get a homestudy, create a profile and portfolio type album, and then the very long wait to be matched. For domestic adoptions there appears to be a lot more couples wanting to adopt than there are babies up for adoption. It’s heartbreaking to see my friends submit their info and not be selected yet again.

The screening would also concern me. I know we will be fantastic parents, but I really worry about being judged. Obviously I know why they do it. But it’s hard to see someone viewing your life through a bunch of forms and questionaires and home visits and trying to decide if you are good enough or not. And, umm, we have a big German Shepherd who has issues. I really honestly believe that no agency would approve us without us getting rid of the dog. And, well, he’s family too.

And then you have the human factor. The chance that a placement will fall through, that the biological parents will change their mind last minute, or even after the initial agreement, before it is finalized. There is foster-adopt programs, but the goal of those programs is to reunite a child with their bilogical parent(s) and is even less of a sure thing. Beyond that, there is the issue of how to handle the topic of the adoption and biological parents. Will you keep in contact? Will your child have contact? At what age? No matter how it is handled – and I have seen many different approaches – there will always be someone else out there that your child is connected to.

Now would all of that stop me if I really wanted to? Absolutely not. I know it sounds like a litany of all things evil about adoption, and I certainly don’t think it is all bad! They are just some of the factors that played into our decision. But for us it goes beyond logical pros and cons. There is something within us that says this is what is right for us.

For my husband the biological connection is paramount. To him that is the most important thing, and he said if it did come down to a choice of not getting a child or giving up that link, he’d probably resign himself to live child-free… it would be the end of his journey. That’s not necessarily what I would choose, but I respect his needs.

For me I think it is more the pregnancy. I love being pregnant. There is something so special about that bonding period. When I was pregnant with Devin I dreamed that I woke up with a several month old Devin and I was absolutely panicked, because I missed something beyond important to me… I missed out on months, on milestones. For me I would be more willing to use donor eggs, to give up that biological connection, in order to carry the pregnancy myself.

And the thing is, we know I can get pregnant. We know I can carry a pregnancy. After Devin I think I have become even more absolute and determined…. because we had it right there. We were so close. And there is absolutely no good reason for us to have lost him. And now we’ve even figure out how to get better eggs out of me, giving us an even better chance at success. There is no reason we couldn’t have it again, and have it work out with a live baby… no risk factors, no medical concerns. So for us I think it just reinforced our belief that we are on the right path, we just have to be a little more patient, work a little harder.

For me IVF doesn’t really seem so difficult. Oh I bitch here and there about the inconveniences, because they are inconvenient, but in the grand scheme of things it’s just not such a big deal to me. I see a lot of women having a rough adjustment when they get diagnosed with infertility, or when they reach the point of moving to IVF. I never really struggled with that. I was just like, “Okay, great. Let’s get this started.” People ask if the retrieval is painful, I shrug and say, “Not really. They put me out for it, then I wake up.” I guess the whole process just hasn’t seemed like that big of a deal to me. I throw myself into it, because it’s a Big Deal and a Project, but I just don’t mind it. This is what I do to get babies.

Now if there were risk factors, if there was something recurring that made my doctors recommend we re-think our path, we probably would. Would I personally be against adoption if that became a better option for us, if carrying a baby became too risky? Absolutely not. I have no idea how I would feel if it came to that. I know that I would have to grieve first, though. I know it would not be an easy decision to come to.

So have we talked about adoption? Using a surrogate (because of the stillbirth)? Using donor eggs (because of the egg maturity issue)? Absolutely. We are just completely certain that, for the time being, we are on the right path for us.

The last couple of days have not been easy on me. I’ve been having flashbacks. At work, at my desk, with the images of bad news being delivered replaying again and again in my head. It doesn’t send me into a panic, it doesn’t make me shut down… but after a short while I just want to hide in a hole, hide from the memories that just hurt too much.

My pregnant coworker had her first ultrasound recently. She brought in pictures, of course. It wasn’t hard for me to see them or hear about them – it was an expected thing. But I just keep thinking about how normal it all is for other people. You get pregnant, you get an ultrasound, you see pictures of your cute little baby. And I know it will never be that way for me again. Not since Devin’s last ultrasound. Especially since my very first pregnancy ultrasound since that aweful, heart-shattering one was more bad news.

I had hoped, briefly, that my coworker wouldn’t be getting a pregnancy belly for a while, that I would still have some time to recover and get used to the idea. But I am not – oh, never – so lucky. She is already showing, enough that customers notice. Again, it doesn’t bother me outright – it doesn’t feel like I’m suffocating or about to have a breakdown. But it’s very similar to when my SIL was pregnant – it’s there and my eyes keep being drawn to it. It is sad and frustrating, but I keep looking in wonder and amazement and this such pronounced wistfulness it almost hurts.

My state of mind in this is kind of like having a yard that has a mole problem. It all looks okay from a distance. It’s not totally turned upside down or destroyed… it all seems okay. You can use it, it’s functional. But there are tunnels underground and every once in a while you step in a hole and nearly break your ankle. And it’s not like you can just stop using the lawn, either. Some of the holes are big enough to see and try to avoid, if possible, but for the most part you have no idea where the holes are, when you are going to trip. You just hope you don’t break something when you do.

Kel has asked me if transferring somewhere else is an option. And, yeah, I guess it is. But I don’t think I want to. The place I’m at now has been really wonderful with me, has been flexible and understanding about the IVF scheduling. They know my story about Devin and now the miscarriage. They have been kind. As much as it sucks to have to deal with someone else’s pregnancy while I’m still struggling, I know that’s a possibility anywhere I am, and I think the personalities and personal connections are more important than circumstance.

When they brought out the ultrasound photos they showed each other. They didn’t shove it in my face in any way, but they also weren’t whispering and hiding it from me either. I was welcome to come and look if I wanted – which I did, and they welcomed and included me – but they left me space if I didn’t want to, and would have respected that and understood if I didn’t.

At one point another coworker turned to me in a quiet moment while the others talked about babies in the back and asked, “How are you holding up?” I shrugged and told her that I’m fine… it sucks, but I’m not going to have a mental breakdown or anything. She said simply, “We would understand if you did.” The comment still sits in the forefront of my thoughts, days later. There is much contained in that one simple sentence. They understand that this is hard for me, they understand the magnitude of everything that has gone on. There is no judgement for how I “should” be dealing… not just with the miscarriage, but with the stillbirth that happened over a year ago.

It’s always going to hurt – but they didn’t cause it, the shit that happened to me did. As long as I am given a little space, a kind word here and there, then I will survive it.

Den did a huge amount of work today. I drew up the plans this past week, calculated how much soil we’d need, how much wood to buy, where I’ll be planting everything. I figured Den would help me buy the big stuff, and then I’d spend a weekend putting everything together. Nope! Den hardly let me raise a finger! I was the mastermind telling him how it was all supposed to fit together, where it was all going to sit. He raked and levelled the ground (which wasn’t simple, considering the yard slopes away from the house), constructed the box frames, and then filled them with the million bags of soil.

Last year I went really bare-bones… just bought some seeds, cleared out the grass and weeds, and planted. It was just mostly to keep myself busy – I have never had any inclination for gardening before, so I didn’t want to throw money into it only to lose interest. But I proved to myself that I actually did follow through, and the fact that I actually am excited to do it again speaks volumes. So I figured this year I would do a little bit more – not fancy, just taking it up a notch.

I decided to use 1x4s to contruct the boxes – anything taller would take even more soil, and we were spending enough as it was. All I wanted was some new soil, and some defined beds to plant in. It looks much more neat and organized. I’m going to put a 2′ fence around the outside to keep the dogs and wild bunnies out. We’re going to mulch between the beds. I even bought a soaker hose to wind through the garden (though the water spout on the side of the house leaks like crazy, not good). I just have to be careful that I don’t aim too high… it’s easy to plan too big.

And mother’s day? I just don’t care. I’m glad I was whisked away that weekend last year, as I was rather raw, but this year I just couldn’t care less. Oh, I am touched that my friends took the time to say something to me, recognizing that I, too, am a mother. Trust me, for a stillbirth mama that means a hell of a lot.

But the whole day… it just irritates me. I can’t help but think of all of my friends who aren’t yet mothers, but want to be so desperately. And I think, why are they not deserving too? It feels like such a fake day, a day that men rush off to stores to buy a card. I just can’t see myself getting all that excited, even when I have a child at home. I don’t need anything extra, I don’t need some set-aside day.

Personally it means far more to me for my husband to spend his entire day building me a garden just because he knows I want one.

When people mention their allergies they usually shudder when talking about spring and the accompanying explosion of pollen. So ever since I was diagnosed with allergies (not a cold, like I thought it was) right before last Halloween I’ve been a little bit nervous. I only got allergies after Devin was born, so I had no idea what to expect.

As soon as the warmer weather came we rushed around opening all the windows in the house. Air! Yay! It just felt great.

And… my allergies all but disappeared. I can still feel something, I’m still sneezing all the time, but I don’t feel like I am sick. It’s great!!

So apparently they are almost all dust and pet dander related. I did notice during the winter that I felt better after thoroughly cleaning the bedroom and washing the bedsheets, but it’s really hard to keep up on when you have 4 pets like we do. You can vacuum and vacuum and vacuum and there is still fur floating around. And the dust! Oh I don’t even know where it comes from!

Next fall I’ll probably try to invest in an air purifyer for the bedroom, and we’ll have to keep up on the pet grooming better than we have been. Even… scary… bathing them.

But damn I love spring. Excuse me while I go prancing through the fields, smelling the pretty flowers while music plays in the background. Aaaahhhhhhhhh… spring.

Frequently I have been catching myself thinking about how I have to get pregnant this coming cycle. Because so-and-so is pregnant… or because this is our last embryo in storage… or because my 27th birthday is this year… or because the due date would be the last one before Devin’s second birthday. So many reasons I could list out, and in my heart it feels so real. This need. Like I may just have a breakdown if I don’t.

But then I remind myself, no. If I don’t get pregnant, I will be sad and angry, then I’ll pick myself up and keep going. Because that’s what I do. It’s the only thing TO do. Being pregnant sooner rather than later would be a wonderful thing, but it’s not going to make or break my life. I need to stop putting these ultimatums on myself. This is obviously going to take its own time and unfortunately there is only so much I can do to help it along. Stressing does not help.

In one way infertility is worse than grief: instead of getting progressively better, it gets progressively worse. Every failed month you lose another chunk of your sanity and trust that it will somehow work out, and then you ask yourself, how far down the hole will I fall? Because that’s the scary part. Not that it failed this time, but that it might fail next time, too, and the time after that. When will it end? Will it end?

At least the loss is a loss no matter which way you spin it. Granted it’s the worst kind of pain I could possibly imagine, but you know it is the bottom of the well and it can only possibly get better from here or I will die. And it does. Every month it gets a little easier to bear. After a while you start realizing that you’re feeling better every month and you actually start believing that it will continue to feel a little better.

But that irreversable permanence is the dagger in the heart, isn’t it. Going through infertility treatments you’re hoping that this will be the last month of this crap, the last time sitting, praying on the bathroom floor over a little magic stick. There is hope that it will end. With grief the only hope is that one day it won’t hurt as much.

I know which one I’d choose, if I had to. But they both suck royally.

::

I hear from people all the time, “I could never handle what you have.” The thing is, no one thinks they could survive a tragedy. No one really thinks to themselves, “If my baby died, I could deal with it.” It’s just that when it happens you have two choices: live or die. Living requires getting back up and moving. Maybe slowly, maybe in the wrong direction, but all of us end up getting back up at some point.

I will mention that there are some people who believe that it happened to us because we are strong. I don’t. I venture to guess most people don’t. It’s just plain bad luck – which means it could have been you, or her, or me. And, with very few exceptions, we all survive it. Just like people survive losing a spouse, survive fighting cancer, survive house fires and tornados.

We are in an entitled age, where we think nothing bad will happen to us. People get a positive pregnancy test and start planning the nursery. Not saying that it’s wrong – I sure did it, and I don’t regret it. But we just expect things to go well. That wasn’t always the case. Babies used to die a lot more often. So did children and adults. It was a shitty, but normal, part of life. We don’t often see people handle this kind of grief very often anymore – and when it does happen it’s not public. There exists a hush over the topic. A fear of this horrible thing that happens only to the terribly unlucky.

I am very glad it happens less often. I am so very glad for the advances in medicine. I am much less impressed with the resulting confusion in society. No one knows what to do – our rituals are oftentimes outdated and confusing. And nobody thinks that they are strong enough to get through it.

Humans are tough. We can survive a whole lot of shit thrown at us. Thankfully many of us will never have to deal with a terrible tragedy like this, but that doesn’t mean you are any less capable… just lucky.