Feeling That Feeling Again

I am back in a place I never wanted to be again. The place where I’m wanting a baby. And this time, I know what I’d be in for if we tried again. Last time at the beginning, I thought I was just playing a waiting game, that we just needed to started drinking wine more often and letting nature take its course. Now I know what would be involved in me getting pregnant again. And while it was not nearly as brutal as what some women out there have gone through (I was successful after two rounds of Intra-Uterine Insemination or IUI), but still the stims are similar to an IVF cycle), it was still hard on me and hard on Jake and hard on our marriage. It was physically hard but the emotional factor was off the charts. I don’t know that I could go through that again.

And yet I find myself really wanting it again. I want to be pregnant again. I want to give birth again. I want to nurse and sniff that tiny baby’s head in the middle of the night again. I know I had a hard time after Bridget was born, but I don’t think I’d have those same issues again, or at least not as severely, because it wouldn’t be the first time I’d be doing any of this.

I had a dream pregnancy. My only complaints were swollen feet, heartburn and toward the end, some upper back pain that went away once I quit my job - it was from trying to reach my keyboard over my very large belly. I was happy, I loved being pregnant, I felt ok and I had no scares over the baby. I know, I was that annoying woman who would sit for hours with hands on my belly and the goofy look on my face as I felt her kick and twirl and somersault inside me. Even my delivery was the stuff of dreams. I think this is all why I seem to be forgetting the hell it was to get pregnant.

But it won’t happen on its own, I’m fairly certain. And if we were to go back to the REI for assistance, we’d have to have some serious cash in hand. Last time, our health insurance covered the whole damn thing for a convenient $15 copay, except for the drugs. Now, insemination is significantly cheaper than IVF - the actual procedure running in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands with IVF. But the drugs are pricey. Really pricey.

Price is really the least of our concerns, honestly. When you stimulate your ovaries, you end up with a lot of eggs. That’s kind of the point. On our last cycle, the one that was successful, there was a threat of having ten mature follicles, which would have caused either a cancellation of the cycle or turning it into an IVF cycle. In the end, only three follicles had grown to the appropriate size so our risk of a litter was eliminated. We spent about three weeks wondering how many little heartbeats we were going to see when we went to that first ultrasound. We were sort of hoping for twins, but were still completely happy to have at least one heartbeat. If we do this again, we have the same high risk of a multiple birth since I seem to respond so well to the stims. But for a second pregnancy, we are not so open to multiples. Multiples are hard, but if you’ve never done it any other way, you don’t have any idea how much harder it is than one. It just is what it is, to use a phrase I hate. I would fall over with all the work involved after having had a singleton.

So honestly, the logistics of it all make me want to smack myself. What am I thinking? Why would I consider this again? I guess for the same reasons I considered it in the first place. Wanting a baby isn’t a logical thing, even in the easiest of circumstances.

I don’t want to be here again, dreaming of babies I’ll never have, feeling the stab in the gut when someone tells me they are pregnant. I don’t know why I thought that I’d be done with this after having my daughter. Before I knew I was infertile, I always thought I wanted a gaggle of kids, so it only makes sense that the dream isn’t completely dead. I wonder what it will take to get over this. I know adoption is an option for us and I think that once I can come to grips with this, maybe we can explore it further. But I’m not going into the adoption process still clinging to the hope of getting pregnant again. I don’t think that’s the right frame of mind to be in as you face what is surely as difficult a struggle as dealing with infertility.

I know the only way to deal with this is to let time work its magic. Hopefully in a few months this will have subsided. But for right now, I’m feeling needy and petulant and jealous and I’m hating myself for it.

Filed under Fertile Myrtle |