ill warn my sister in law (and anyone else who reads this) that this post will most likely be a long one. feel free to skim to the summary paragraph if you want.
this morning i woke up at 5am with a ridiculous urge to pee. i was shocked to realize that i got my period. today is day 25 in my cycle. i typically get my period between days 28 & 31. not sure why the heck it is here a whole 3-6 days early.
NM is out of town for the weekend on a college visit tour with 20 of her high school students. i wanted to call her right away but was afraid that she would be in the middle of some meeting with the kids and would have to figure out a way to keep it together. i decided to wait until she gets home tomorrow night to tell her. then i decided that was a dumb idea. eventually, i sent her a text and asked her to call me when she gets a chance.
for me, telling NM about AF’s arrival is one of the hardest parts of the infertility roller coaster. i want so badly to give her the family that we have been working so hard to create… so no matter how many times she assures me that she is never disappointed in me, i still feel badly breaking the news to her.
as always, she took it like a champ. we both cried a little on the phone, she told me over and over how thankful she is for what i have gone through, told me it wasn’t anything i did wrong and said that she has faith in our future. can you see why i married this woman (twice!)?
my doctor told me to make sure to wait until at least 11 days after the insem to pee on a pregnancy test because the HCG shot can cause a false positive. since it is only 10 days post insem, i decided to pee on a stick in the hopes that it would read “pregnant”. even though i knew it would be a false positive, i still wanted so badly to have the experience of reading that word on a pee-stick. in the end, it read “not pregnant”. *sigh*
im supposed to be working on my graduate research paper today but i cant stop thinking about all this crap. i shift between feeling so terribly sad…. to feeling shocked…. to feeling angry. im not used to wanting something this bad that isn’t within my control.
typically my coping mechanism for disappointment is to find all of the reasons why i didn’t really want something in the first place…
“who cares, that job probably would have sucked after a year anyway!”
or
“screw them…. im too good for them anyway!”
anything i can say or think to convince myself that i am somehow better off. this strategy does NOT work with TTC. my thought process goes like this….
man, who wants a stupid baby anyway?!
they are all loud and poopy and expensive,
i would rather spend that money on traveling the world with my babe.
yeah but traveling with a kid would be cool.
too bad we probably wouldn’t ever travel with a kid.
we would sit home and fight about laundry and chores.
but NM and I rarely ever fight.
that’s what makes our family so cool.
we disagree… a lot… but we never really fight.
we would have so much fun raising a kid together.
too bad we wont ever have one.
we will end up the crazy lesbo cat ladies.
but without cats since NM is allergic.
my self mutilating dog is the closest i will ever become to being a mom.
who cares, babies are dumb.
i told NM that i am nervous about traveling to see my family over rape and pillage day (thanksgiving) because there will be a pregnant lady there. she and i are not related but she is coming to hang with our family because her husband is overseas. they have one kid and are struggling to keep their marriage together because he is a jerk. its hard to be around folks in that situation when NM and i have such a wonderfully stable marriage and a strong desire to raise a child. im not meaning to sound judgy… because i really am happy for her that she is prego again… im just saying that it will be difficult to be around. pregnant women inevitably generate conversations about pregnancy and that’s hard for me right now.
im also feeling so annoyed at my body right now. like WTF is wrong with me?! 9 inseminations and i cant get pregnant?! meanwhile other people smoke crack and have noooooo problem reproducing a whole herd of kids.
my frustration with my body is also knocking up against some of my feminist values that have taught me to stop hating my body. as girls we are raised to hate our bodies… the way they feel, they way they smell, the way they are shaped…. and i spent years working on healing my self-hatred and have come to a place where i am truly happy with my body. and then i encountered infertility. i cant help but get angry at my body for being such a big friggin failure!
its so strange to think that i will be the only woman in my family to not experience pregnancy. and although i have never been the kind of woman who has fantasized about having a baby since the time i was 6 years old.... i still feel such a great sense of loss.
summary: i got my period. i’m incredibly sad. i miss my wife. my body is a loser.
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