A New York City Tale of Infertility
A New York City Tale of Infertility…..
Infertility is a true Journey. No two roads ever look the same and the path traveled toward a resolution (Baby) is unique for each woman, man and couple traveling on route.
While the dearest of friends and family seek to “understand”, there is no better way to really experience the journey than hearing it from the experts: the real women, men and couples who live it every day.
As a testament to the Infertility community’s authentic journey, I have compiled and array of real Journal Entries which have been kindly shared by women living with infertility in New York City.
All real names and dates have been modified for confidentiality purposes, but the words you are about to read are as real as they get.
The infertility topics in these entries vary, and emotions range from sadness to hope, heartbreak to excitement, overwhelming anger and sheer joy. They are real reminders of the many reasons you could benefit from processing these emotions in therapy and gain the tools to cope with the road ahead.
The Uncertainties
It is the morning of February 20, 2008 and I feel as if someone has taken my heart and crushed it to pieces. Yesterday evening on my way to school- 12 days post my first intrauterine insemination treatment I began to spot. This morning I began my period.
I have been planning on giving myself until this Saturday- exactly two weeks from my IUI to test. Time and time again over the last torturous two week wait I mustered in my head the timing, place and possible result of my Saturday “event”; this morning- it all came crashing down on me, like a brick house tumbling down with force.
My body has betrayed me again. My heart is breaking, and this road is turning too arduous for me to push fourth on. Don’t know if I can take much more of this.
It never ceases to astonish me that no matter how many sophisticated defenses are employed by my psyche to prepare me for another infertile month, when the moment of truth finally arrives they all dissipate into thin air, nowhere to be found, betraying me just as my body has.
This morning’s arrival of my period left me standing all alone in the battlefield. And scanning all around me did not reveal even the most primitive defense. Even a good past friend- Denial, was nowhere to be found. I stood there, staring at myself in the mirror- Me: exactly two weeks away from my 30 year- infertile- crushed- scared shitless that the implications of never having a child will rob me of a life I have always dreamed of.
The tears are now flowing like rivers and the knot in my stomach is tied up in tiny bits of emotions; Anger, sadness, disgust, guilt and most of all FEAR come over me in waves, wrecking my insides. It is month 19 of my journey. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
I had one of the most vivid dreams I have had in a long time last night. In it, I was sitting by an empty baby carriage in broad daylight. The sun was beaming down on me and a smile engulfed my face. In my hand I was holding a home pregnancy test revealing two pink lines. I was pregnant. Finally.
I am awake now- Staring down the barrel of reality. The stroller is gone. The sun is long gone. It is just me and my pain now.
Starting In Vitro Fertilization IVF:
I turned 30 exactly 10 days ago, and as I kissed my 20’s goodbye and blew out my birthday candle, I sent a little prayer out into the world. Dear God, thank you for giving me my 20’s, a time for adventure, accomplishment and love. Please God may the next decade bring with it my one wish these days: to bear a child. As I stared at the ticking clock at almost midnight on the last day of my 29 year, I couldn’t help but pray to conceive in my 30’s, a dream I could not live without, a need I will die inside without.
This weekend, the dreaded period had arrived, relentless and destructive as ever. I will never conceive in my 20’s. As the tears flowed down like a river, and this awful dejavu moment was stabbing daggers in my heart, I vowed to battle till the bitter end in my 30 year.
No more primitive inseminations and once daily injectible synthetics. A new sheriff is in town and it’s time for the big guns! From here on it will be nothing but surgical fertilizations and embryo transfers even under the most aggressive procedural methods. My 30’s are here and this God forsaken biological clock is ticking away.. Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock..
My 20’s are gone and with them is my innocence. Until now, my hope had room to float.
Endometrial surgery and then I’ll get pregnant! Outcome: negative.
Injectible medications for sure will due the trick! Outcome: negative.
Intrauterine insemination 1 and then 2 are bound to succeed! Outcome: negative + negative.
Fear is taking over me like a venomous solution. What If? I ask myself… will IVF be a failure like the rest? And if so, what will become of my dreams, my hopes? It’s surreal to think that I cannot be even slightly responsible for bringing my child into this world, and with this, my fear that IVF too will fail is gut wrenching.
I push these thoughts out of my mind; they now sit in a dark hollow place in my subconscious. I cannot let them defeat me; THE BIG GUNS ARE COMING. And with this thought I breathe a sigh of relief. In the next 4 months I will do my best to defer the fact that my moment of truth may be near. I fill my lungs with air and try
to exert certainty over a sea of unknown..
