Not like I haven't mentioned it in a zillion places on this forum, because it's on my mind constantly, but some days are still tougher than others and today is one of them.
I am 33, and have been trying to conceive for about 2.5 years. I was ready to have children a long time before that, but my husband didn't feel ready until a few years ago and so we waited. I had an ectopic pregnancy back in June that no one recognized as ectopic at first, and after the worst 3 weeks of my life I had an emergency laparotomy that went pretty badly. I kept the most critical organs, but the surgery revealed that I have severe endometriosis, and my only option for a pregnancy is IVF (low chance of conception otherwise, high risk of another ectopic if I did conceive, and another surgery would be dangerous for me). I did my first IVF cycle in November/December, and while I stimulated well (over-stimulated, actually) and we produced plenty of high quality embryos, we did not get implantation after embryo transfer. We cryopreserved 6 embryos, and went through a frozen embryo cycle in January/February. Again, no implantation (actually, I think we did have implantation, as I had - pregnancy tests followed by + tests for 4 or 5 days, but then it disappeared and my beta was <5 by the time of the blood test). I took a month off from the hormones after that, and we have recently started another frozen embryo cycle. We'll be transferring two embryos this time, on May 21.
I am trying to be hopeful, but it is so difficult some days. This is such a long, difficult, stressful process. And everyone - EVERYONE - around me is getting pregnant and having their 2nd, 3rd, 4th child in the meantime. My best friend had her 2nd two weeks ago, and I spent the weekend taking care of her toddler while she was at the hospital. It took every bit of my strength to hold back the tears when we took her son to the hospital to meet his brother. A week before that I found out that my other closest friend is pregnant with her 3rd. And tonight my husband's sister told us that she is pregnant with her 2nd.
I am happy and excited for my friends and family, truly and sincerely so. But it's so d*mn hard not to feel incredibly sad when I want so desperately to be pregnant and have a baby myself. I don't have a whole ton of friends, but I am literally the only one without children. And not only do I want so badly to have what they do, I often feel like I can't relate to those aspects of their lives at all, and it's difficult and painful to have those conversations with them. Their children are very understandably the center of their lives, but I've never breastfed, I've never been in a mommies group, I've never made play dates, I've never potty-trained, I've never picked out a pediatrician or a nursery school, etc. and it hurts to talk about those things that I may never do or experience.
And they can't relate to what I'm going through. I don't expect them to be able to do so, and I don't expect them to know what to say (there's nothing to say that will help the situation), but sometimes I wish they'd just say "I know this is really hard for you, and I'm here to listen" instead of filling the space with well-intentioned words that frustrate and hurt more than they help. They say things like "You just have to stay positive! Don't underestimate the power of positive thinking!" as though that will make all the difference. Or, "You just have to have faith and pray, and God will take care of the rest." *cringe* Please - don't tell me what I should do and how I should feel!!!! And because they (and my mother) are trying to 'stay positive' for me, they say things like "when you're a mother you'll understand XXX" or "when you have a baby, then we can do this together!". When I'm frustrated with someone at work, my mother will say something to me like "This is just practice for the patience you'll need when you have a baby." I feel like yelling at her, "It's quite possible that I will never have a baby, and it makes me feel worse when you say those things!!!!" I've TOLD her that (without the yelling), and her response was simply "But I KNOW you're going to have one, and so I'm just going to keep thinking that." And so she keeps saying things like that. My best friend has repeatedly told me the story of how she was talking about her struggle with breastfeeding with another mother, and how the other woman said to her, "yes, only those of us who have gone through IVF would try for that long to make breastfeeding work". My friend didn't go through IVF (it took her 3 months to get pregnant with her 2nd, and she thought that was a long time!) but this seems to be her way of telling me that she has had to struggle as hard as someone who has... or she knows what's it like and can relate... or something. I want to scream every time she tells me that story, but I just nod my head and change the subject. I know she means well, I know my mother means well, I know they all mean well... but f***. It makes it WORSE.
And then there's the "well, are you thinking about adoption?" question. I hate that one, because a) it always seems to come with the assumption that it's almost just like having your own child, and so is just a natural alternative that would make everything ok, and b) it makes me feel like others think it's time for me to give up. I have nothing against adoption, not at all, but NO. We're not talking about it yet. I want to be pregnant and have a child and I'm not ready to give up hope on that yet.
*deep breath*
I know I have a lot to be grateful for, chief among them that IVF is even an option, both physically and financially. I know I am lucky that certain aspects of the IVF work well for me, as that's not the case for many women who have to do it. I know I am very lucky in many ways, and I try very hard to remember that. Things could be much worse, and what I have to deal with is small compared to the difficulties that others have to face in their lives. I know this, and I try to keep it all in perspective. But, it's really hard not to feel very, very down and very alone some days.
And I'm sorry. I've probably said a bunch of things that will offend people in this post, and I'm sure I sound like a horrible, ungrateful friend when people are just trying to be kind and helpful. I just need to get some of this out. And keep myself away from the eating to soothe thing that I seldom do but am fighting not to do tonight.