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Friday, May 31, 2013

Truth.

It comes in waves. Seasons. Good days & bad days. There are times when you are okay, and times when you are just NOT. For me, well, it's been difficult for the better part of 2 years. Then i caught a hold of peace or something. And I was okay. It was my longest stretch of being in a good place about this whole thing. But now, the fear, the anger, the bitterness... the jealousy... I can feel it returning. And the sadness. The heartache. Mostly that.

I am talking, of course, about the pain of infertility.

It took forever to find my husband. FOREVER, y'all. I thought he would never come into my life. And then he did... when I was one month shy of 30. So, yes, I watched all my friends get married at a "normal" age, and here i was single. So very single! It was not easy! But finally Brad came into my life, and he was & is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am just as happy with him now as I was on the day I married him. God is good & He is faithful. I finally got my person, and being married to him is everything I hoped it would be, and MORE.

I assumed we would have kids by now, though. But it seems that God would rather me go through a long waiting period for this, too. And just so you know, I am not mad at Him! When all is said and done, i trust Him, fully. But I am human, too. And my human mind just does NOT GET IT. At all.

I do not get why the women who are not trying, get pregnant so incredibly easily, while those of us who ARE trying cannot get pregnant no matter what. I do not get why teenagers get pregnant when they have sex with somebody on a whim on some random day of the month, and yet someone who is married & mature & in a loving stable relationship can have sex every other day for two weeks around ovulation, and still not get pregnant. It is infuriating to me. INFURIATING.

I do not understand how I can tell 3 girls that we are going to start trying, and then for them to get married, get pregnant, have a baby, see that baby turn 1, and get pregnant with Baby #2 - all while I am STILL TRYING to conceive the Baby #1! I mean... REALLY, God?!

(This is not to say that I am not happy for people getting pregnant. I am. I have learned that it is okay to be genuinely happy for them, even if i am sad for me at the same time.)


So here it is, nearly 5 years after marrying Brad. I am a woman. A daughter. A wife. A friend. A sister. And these are all beautiful things. But not that one thing I want to be more than anything: A mom. Brad wanted to wait to start trying until we'd been married for 2 years. I agreed, but then was ready a year & a half into our marriage. We finally started trying... in April of 2011. The baby fever was intense back then, I wanted a baby SO BAD. But it's different now. That was a baby fever filled with anticipation and excitement about what was in store for us, for our little family. It has since dulled into an ache. The desire is just as intense, but fear and worry and hurt have replaced the feelings of excitement and joy. 

We have gotten some answers. And it's not a life sentence. Honestly, i don't want to go into too much detail, but I will say that it has to do with things like my health, my weight, my insulin resistance & how that affects my cycles. (You already know all this if you read my weightloss blog.) So i am on a strict diet. And I am doing my best to follow it. And yet, sometimes my best isn't good enough.

Still, the weight is coming off consistently. But i am so very afraid that i ... well, so many things I am afraid of. But there is no sense in hashing and rehashing all of that!

When I started the diet, i stopped worrying about babies. I just did, naturally. My mind began to focus on this diet (which in the end would, hopefully, bring about a healthy pregnancy), and i that brought me a sense of peace, because I knew that eventually all would be well. But now, it's painful again. Probably because i am really struggling with the diet. 

My heart is heavy and aching and empty, all at the same time. It hurts.

I am now 35. And as all women know, since we are told many times, once you hit 35, your fertility chances decrease. As one woman said to me last Thanksgiving (oh, the things people have said to me!), "Well, you better hurry it up!".

"Well, THANK YOU! As if i didn't know that, lady! We're WORKING ON IT!" (I actually did say exactly that... minus the sentence in the middle, ha!)

(I also should add that - as a 35 year old woman experiencing infertility - not only do i have friends who have babies and toddlers and children... but i actually have friends with TEENAGERS. And this is also awkward for me!)

Yeah, see, I used to hem and haw when people would ask when we were having kids. Now, I'm just out with it. I don't volunteer the info but if i get the question ... I answer. Sometimes vaguely sometimes detailed, but always honest! Because I just don't have it in me to act like everything is okay and as it should be, when it's not. If i am asked "so when are y'all having kids?" I will likely say, "I don't know. Ask God." Because it's the truth. I HAVE NO IDEA, people. Maybe never.

Honestly, dealing with what people say is really the toughest thing. Newlywed couples... I am talking people who have been married less than a year... it is okay with me if people pester them constantly about when they're having kids. It's almost a rite of passage, because it's SO RIDICULOUS how many people ask these nosy questions when a couple has been married all of 5 minutes! But once a couple has been married a year, just stop. It's NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. I am not saying that to be mean, but there is nothing that makes this journey more difficult than TRYING to get pregnant and having people asking you WHEN. (I am not talking about dear close girlfriends who put your age & length of marriage together & realize something is amiss & ask you about it. I am talking about acquaintances and other nosy people. People that do not know you well enough to have the right to ask you about your sex life... because that is basically what they're doing!)

Now when people ask, it puts me in an awkward position. Some are people I don't want to know the details. And it's NEVER people that are sympathetic. It's usually people who follow up with something stupid like, "Well, just relax. It'll happen!" (Y'all. That statement is for people who have been trying for all of 3 months. When you've been trying for 2 YEARS, it goes a little bit deeper than "just relax"!

I once had a couple tell me they felt sorry for my parents because I hadn't made them grandparents yet. They, of course, had NO IDEA what i was going through (if only they had looked in my grocery cart, they would have seen an ovulation kit! I mean, come on!). But that didn't help. I went home SOBBING. I couldn't breathe. It is a grief that you cannot understand until you go through it yourself.

So, that's it for today. And sorry for such a downer post! I mostly need prayers that i will get back 100% on this diet and stay focused on it - it seems to take my mind off of trying to conceive for awhile! And then... maybe while my mind is off of it... I actually WILL conceive. One can dream, right?

I feel so awkward now. And i will probably hit publish & then quickly scurry to UNpublish it. I don't want to write this post. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want the comments telling me that it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change (but even a lifestyle change is changing your diet. DUH.). I don't want the comments telling me to just believe, because it will happen. I don't want the comments saying to relax, or trust God, or have faith, or any of those stupid pat answers that are said when there is nothing else to say.

But I do want to put this out there because i have met so many bloggers who blog openly about their infertility journey. And i appreciate it, because their posts help me. And help others. And i believe that in sharing my story I can somehow help others too. So here it is. (And yes, I have shared some of this in snippets before. Just not this long or this detailed - at least not in a long time!)

I'll be okay. Thanks for listening. Have a good weekend.
xoxo

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