After my anencephaly pregnancy, I was a mess. (And still am, but doing better.) One of my motivations to terminate instead of just carrying until the baby passed or delivering and then having her die was I really do want a second kid, and I did not want to push that off for a year+, which, with my age being what it is, could mean never. (Other motivators included not wanting to put myself through the physical and emotional challenges of pregnancy just to have the child die, or to have to explain/confront that level of death to my son, or to take on the additional risks of such a pregnancy, etc. etc. etc.)
Anyway, after our termination was complete (end of May), one of my first questions to my doctors was—when can we try again? They all said we had to wait a minimum of three months, so we could start again in September. I thought that was good because my due date was in October, so if we did a cycle in September and I got pregnant, I’d be pregnant before my due date. Then, my reasoning went, I’d at least have something happy on my due date. Maybe I’d even think, it all had to work out this way….
No dice. On my due date, all I had was another failed IVF cycle.
I’ve reflected on my borderline irrational desire to be pregnant on my due date quite a few times since then. What I find most interesting is that I think A LOT of women feel the same way after a much-wanted pregnancy loss, especially if it was a little further along (but not so far along that it would not be an option). A woman I know who lost a pregnancy at 13 weeks expressed the same desire to me. (She also did not end up pregnant before her due date.) And I’ve read a number of blogs where women express the same desire after loss. (Just google “pregnant before my due date”.)
I think it’s understandable to want to look for a silver lining when something terrible happens, and the desire for a child does not necessarily decrease just because of a pregnancy loss. (I think we’ll all agree that for most women it has the opposite effect.)
Anyway, I wanted to be pregnant before my due date. I rushed into my next cycle as fast as I could. That cycle did not work and so I rushed into the next one, taking no break in between. (My current cycle.) If this cycle does not work, I will take some time off. I need to get my head together. Of course, while my frozen embryos might not be aging anymore, my lining and hormones are. Plus, my little guy will be starting kindergarten before he has a sibling at this rate. No reason to make it middle school….
If this does not work, my original plan was to do another cycle in February (giving myself a full month break before starting anything). And if that cycle did not work, and I had anything left to thaw, I’ll do my last cycle in May. And if that did not work, we’d be done.
But my husband and I have been talking recently, because it looks like this cycle did not work either (that’s a post for another day), and we’re re-thinking that plan. My emotional state has become more and more fragile, and during this cycle in particular I have been really, really fraying.
Part of it is that I reached my limit a while ago, so pushing on has been hard. Part has been, obviously, the termination, which will be something I struggle with for a long time. Part of it is because it looks like this really is not going to work. After six failed cycles, well, the odds are really not good. And after having gone through so much—the drugs and the hormones and the time and the stress and the sacrifice and the cost and the loss—it’s just hard to accept that it was for absolutely nothing. As I told my husband, if someone could have told me two years ago, it’s not going to work, I would have been sad but fine not having a second child. And I would have been happy the last two years. As it is now, it has been all-consuming, and it has made me a bad mom and a bad wife and a bad daughter and a bad friend and a bad employee. Of course, my husband says, don’t let it do that. But it’s impossible. I’ve LITERALLY been doing fertility treatments or recovering from miscarriages or terminations for two years of my life SOLID. The entire fertility nightmare has lasted seven years. I spent my thirties in this insane vortex, and while the light’s at the end of the tunnel one way or the other, I’m worn out. I’m fucking tired.
Of course I have my wonderful little boy, and I am so so so lucky and I know many women go through as much or more than I do and have no biological child at the end. I know that. But it still really sucks. And I hate it. And I hate what it’s done to me—what I’ve let it do to me. I don’t like myself right now. Up until this point, I always was able to separate myself and my unhappiness from what others experienced. I was never jealous. I always loved on my friends’ babies, happily threw them baby showers and knitted them little hats. But I feel that creeping sensation—jealousy, anger, frustration. Why them? Why not me? Friends who got pregnant so easily they didn’t even know for months. Friends who have had three children in the time we’ve been trying. I cannot STAND to hear women talk about pregnancy. The site of a pregnant woman is physically painful to me.
All of this makes me hate myself. I’m not that person. I don’t want to be that person. And yet, that’s who I am. That’s who I have become. A really shitty and jealous infertile asshole. It does not have a great ring to it.
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