Pre-Pregnancy - Acceptance

Written by Tink, friend of BINSI

Grab a cup of coffee, maybe an apple, or better yet some chocolate, and have a seat. It's gonna be a while...

I left you promising myself to remain positive. I did not fail however it has not been easy. The pregnant women, cute infants dressed up in little snowsuits with animal ears on their heads, or a fierce toddler with a mohawk, come out of the woodwork. Awesome.

Every month, for the past 14 months, I have been grieving. I either got shoved back or pushed forward in my grief process. There was no question I got jerked around in the middle. There were some moments when I felt like nothing was my fault and I was just a victim of infertility in this whole thing. Most of the time I could maintain emotional ownership and would scream at myself to get up off the floor and live on. The dichotomy of pure joy for someone else and pure hatred of your own body's inability to conceive is a very unstable place.

The 5 steps of grieving are simply:

1. Denial and isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

It was around August when I truly began to deny that fertility issues would be my problem. Test after test, nothing was ever physioloically or biologically wrong. Then, for a very long time, I was just angry. (I should apologize to my kickboxing class for killing them during my anger phase.) I frequently shifted from anger to depression; an easily triggered jump. In November, I began taking Clomid, I began to feel hopeful. I began to bargain saying I would carry 3 babies if it meant having 3 healthy babies. It would be a LOT of work but I have nothing to compare it to, right?

I believe I finally arrived at Acceptance on Friday, February 19, 2010. Something happened last week that brought me to a place of genuine peace. In one day I ended up talking with three different women/friends on three separate occasions about their baby-making experience. One friend has done IVF 3 or 4 times with no success. Another friend had a couple serious ovarian cysts and knows that now is the time if it's gonna happen. The 3rd friend I talked with said she did IVF to get her twins. Her fallopian tubes were destroyed and even an IUI wasn't an option. We all agreed that it is devastating to endure and rhetorically questioned where do we go from there? All of these women possess a strength for which I have been searching. I drew energy from their experiences and found my own reason to be patient. Because that's just the way it has to be. I don't know how else to explain it. If you knew me as a child/teenager, patience was NOT a virtue of mine. My impatience cost me a lot of precious energy and my parents a lot of money. Sorry, Dad.

A couple weeks ago, we bought a Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor. I was hoping I wouldn't have to use it because I'd get pregnant. (But I knew because I thought that, I wouldn't.) Cycle 15 rolled in Monday last week and I was so done. I didn't even want to use the monitor. Back to Step 4. My health insurance at my job picks up on April 1st so I thought that's it. I'll wait until April then go back to the doctor and go from there. Then the next day I was training a client (who had babies on Clomid) and she said I couldn't give up now. She said "You tell me to not give up when we workout so you can't either!" I laughed and couldn't argue with her so I called my doctor that afternoon to see what she recommended. Doc called me back with news she recommended a 4th round of Clomid at 150mg for 5 days and to call the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. Back to Step 1. *Sigh* Maybe I do. And if I do, I vow to be prepared as much as I can. Step 5. I won't be sad anymore. I can't be sad anymore for the time I'm here on earth without a baby. I decided to start taking more advantage of the time alone with my husband and our friends. A baby will come and then our lives will never be the same.