Infertility Awareness

A year ago, I was just starting to get frustrated and worried.  Sure, it had only been 7 months of trying to get pregnant, but it had been a year since I stopped taking birth control - surely this wasn't normal?

When I heard about National Infertility Awareness Week, which takes place in April, I thought to myself, "There's no way I'll still be trying in a year."

And yet... here I am.  Well, will be (probably).  If I get a BFP on this cycle, I'll be a very happy girl and narrowly beat the clock before it becomes NIAW.  However, I still qualify as infertile, even if I become a pregnant infertile.  In some ways, I will always be an infertile.

I will never again think, "That couldn't be me!"  Because it can, and it is.

I'm infertile.  Or rather, we're infertile.  We don't know whether it's my system or my husband's system, or some combination, that is preventing us from getting pregnant.  We may never know, and honestly it doesn't matter.  His semen and my reproductive organs are all part of the same system to conceive our baby, so his problem is mine and my problem is his.  Thus, we are infertile together.

And I can't promise myself that we won't be in these shoes in a year.  Gosh, I hope not.  I hope not with all my strength.  But I can't promise myself that anymore.

For now, I wait to see if this cycle worked.  As an infertile whose optimism has been tarnished.  I don't believe this cycle will work, though I let bits of hope creep in around the edges.  But I've gotten so used to simply starting another cycle that it's just what I expect.  I expect to have to do this again.  I expect to take a 2 month break, and then go back to a few more IUIs.  I expect those to fail, also, and have to figure out how we plan to proceed with IVF.  I can't think past that, though.  I can't imagine IVF working, or not working.  I just can't mentally leap that hurdle yet.

I guess you could call me a pessimist.  I'm really not, though.  I hope so hard, but I just find myself anticipating doing this all over again.  And again.  And again.  My period has been clockwork since before my 13th birthday - I've never missed one (well, except when I knowingly skipped it with birth control pills), my cycle has never varied by more than a few days.  As soon as I went off birth control, my body resumed its normal schedule without missing a beat.  I have now waited anxiously to see if my period would not show for close to two years.  Without fail, it has shown up.

Part of me just expects to get periods forever.  Like my body has gotten so used to having a period that even if I were to conceive, it would just carry on with my period as it has every month for years and flush the embryo right out.  Now I know that's silly, but I'd be lying if I said it hadn't crossed my mind.

I know I'm lucky among infertile women for having a regular cycle.  I know some women struggle with finding the right balance of medication, often lots of it, to have ovulation occur at all.

But I still hate my period.

So now I wait... I'm a terribly impatient person.  It's been 3 days since IUI, 4 days since trigger.  I'll probably start peeing on sticks in 2 days to test out my trigger - it would still be way too early for a real positive to show up, so it's a good way to measure if the trigger is out of my body yet so I know that I can trust that if I have a positive test after that it isn't the trigger lingering in my system.

Waiting... and hoping... and doubting... and hoping...