Sick & tired

One of the worst things about infertility—and the process of creating/growing a person—is the blame and guilt.  When I had trouble getting pregnant, and when I miscarried, I blamed myself for anything that I possibly did that could have caused it, and felt tremendous guilt over so many choices.  (Did I wait too long to try having children?  Did I exercise too much or, later, not enough?  Was I eating healthy enough?  Was I taking the right vitamins/supplements, or too much? Did I do too much acupuncture, or not enough?  Was I too stressed out?  Was it that cold I got that I should have avoided by never seeing people / going into public?  Was it because I stood in front of the microwave?  Etc.) 

In some ways, getting pregnant on accident just makes that worse, because it’s going to prove to people that I was, in fact, to blame for all of those years of infertility/losses.  Assuming this actually goes on long enough that we tell people (and I am not assuming that), I’m sure someone will say something along the lines of, “see, you just had to relax and it all worked out.”  Yea, stress caused my baby’s organs to grow on the outside of her body and her bones not to harden.  Stress also, separately, caused another pregnancy to fail after my baby’s neural tube didn’t close.  Stress, obviously, caused at least one and probably two pregnancies to implant into my fallopian tube.  It was definitely all about the stress.

Likewise, assuming I end up having a baby with a birth defect again (either born alive or, more likely, passing away/terminated), there’s that voice (either my own or that really shitty friend/family member I tell) that thinks/says something like “too bad you were not on vitamins/not taking folic acid/drinking in the first week/ran that marathon.”  Yea, after at least three other pregnancies failed due to genetic issues (and let’s be honest, probably many more), it’s my actions THIS time that caused issues.  UGH.

And yet, knowing all of this, and being aware that it’s just not my fucking fault that any of this happened, I still can’t shake the guilt/blame.  Nothing has happened yet, so I’m just pre-gaming the blame/guilt, but I know it’s there.  If I end up with a pregnancy with a NTD, I’m going to blame myself for not being on folic acid.  If I have a heartbeat this Friday, but something else goes wrong after I run my marathon, I’m going to hear those little “what if…” whispers in my head.  I have a small cold right now (did I mention my germ factory—I mean little guy—started kindergarten 2 weeks ago?  He brought some a cute little art project and a cold his first week).  I am already running through my head what I read after one of my last pregnancies—colds in the first trimester increase the chances of birth defects.  Dammit!

Okay, so this post is getting away from me.  I am literally sick (cold) and tired (pregnant, for now).  I am also, figuratively, sick and tired of the guilt and the blame.  So I absolve myself right now—whatever happens, it’s not your fault.  You did everything right for almost a decade, and you couldn’t get pregnant/lost a bunch of pregnancies.  The fact that you may not have been perfect now (and who even knows what perfect is??) is not your fault and does not have final bearing on whatever the outcome of this process ends up being.

Just don’t stand in front of the microwave for the next few weeks.