Game Face

Three of my friends had babies yesterday. Three.

What are the odds of them all giving birth on the same day?  I don't know, I've never been good with statistics, but I'm pretty sure the odds are slim.  It just felt like a cruel cosmic joke. A slap in the face. A reminder (or three) of my failure.

Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled for each one of my friends.  I don't begrudge them their beautiful babies in the least.  But every new baby is a stark reminder that my arms are empty; there is not even a baby on the horizon for me.  I can't just get off my butt and fix this for myself.  There is a process I must follow to have one of my own. A really, really slow one.

Meanwhile, I stand on the sideline and watch as my friends play the pregnancy game.  Bringing home their trophies in the form of a soft, warm bundle of beauty wrapped in receiving blankets. 

And I wonder when I'll finally win this hard fought battle? When will I have a triumph of my own?

Labelmaker

Infertile (adj): Not fertile; unproductive; barren

Barren (adj): fruitless; destitute; bereft; lacking

Such ugly words, right? For months, I've done everything possible to avoid applying those labels to us.  That's why I want to write about this here, rather than on my 'real' blog.  We (and by "we", I mean me) have told only a handful of people that we are actively TTC: my parents; my sisters; a friend who has three IVF children; a friend who's currently going through IUI.

At first, we kept it a secret because we wanted it to be a surprise. We'd been married several years, completed grad school, established careers, built a home. It was time. We were one of the few couples without kids and I hoped we'd quickly join the ranks. Imagine everyone's shock and elation when we announced!  No one would see it coming.

But the months passed, and there was nothing. And now I kept quiet because I didn't know what was going on. Was it me? Was it him? He wasn't quite ready to spend the big bucks to figure it out. He also wasn't the one crawling all over the internet, worried about how many months it had been and what that could possibly mean.

Soon we'd been trying more months that we had fingers left to count. Announcements came left and right, new babies at a rate of at least one a month. We are now the only friends left from college without at least one. Some have two or three. One even has six.  

And now I keep quiet because I don't want everyone to know.  I don't want to be labeled. Different. Unproductive. Barren. Bereft. Lacking.  

 

Infertile.

To [Womb] It May Concern

This is my place to document my infertility journey.  A place to get my feelings out. Somewhere that my family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances don't read my every word.  A place where I don't need to censor the thoughts, feelings and words that come with infertility.  A space where I won't feel judged or labeled for something that is only a very small (albeit consuming) part of me.

This is that place....