As time has moved on in this journey, so have I emotionally.
The fervor and passion has died down in me significantly as other life concerns mount themselves in the way of my infertility.
Back in the private sector on poverty wages, my bills don’t seem to add up to my dreams anymore. I work three jobs, two of which are on the low wage end and it is devastating how poor I am now compared to the prosperity I had at the one job that wrongfully terminated me. I do wish feverishly to have that security back in funds if nothing else but I absolutely do NOT miss the stress of that place. But having these financial issues is so new and unsettling for me it has taken my focus off of trying to get pregnant.
I do work at Starbucks now and have logged about 4 shifts so far, most of which have been training. I have my practice shift tomorrow and I am already considering how I can get more hours so I can speed up the insurance process and probably the few extra dollars it will bring will be good as well but it really does not pay much. The time I an investing is for the ultimate goal of having children. But I must figure out how to survive this realistic low wage existence that I have now. I also have a job in the banking industry that is part time that I hope to turn into a career. I will have to invest time in order to get that to happen I know but I am willing. If I can even get to part time in that area that would help tremendously. Right now being underemployed and underpaid is very scary.
Infertility was once my worst fear and now it has been replaced in line. Don’t get me wrong I am still invested. I did some ritualistic things this cycle and tomorrow I have my IUI which I am nervous about. Everything so far has failed it is hard to hope that this will work. And because money is tight we don’t have much to try it more than once or twice. Probably once. I don’t know if I can handle anymore heartbreak. If from there it doesn’t work then I will make getting the insurance at Starbucks my focus so that we can try IVF this year. That’s all the options I have and that we can likely afford at this point. That is our reality. This is something we are really relying on to work.
I had two 20 CM follicles and I triggered last night. We did have sex and it was a lot of work cuz I was so tired and had to get up at 4:15am to get ready for Starbucks even. But we always give it our best shot. We have for months now. At some point all of this does have to pay off. Somehow.
Posted at 5:12 pm by amayr1984, on February 14, 2019
There is my chart and there is my screaming Big Fat Negative. Perhaps my 10th one or so while trying to conceive as some cycles I did not even test because I got so sick of seeing them. My Reproductive Endocrinologist makes me test now though so I can’t hide from the hurt of the one line staring back at me from that window.
The stark whiteness haunts you when you want that other pink line so badly you dream about it night after night before your test day. You want to be positive but this is where being positive hurts. Because you feel like well maybe you wouldn’t be so sad if you didn’t tell yourself “this could be my month!” even if it was quietly in the back of your mind that you told yourself.
Maybe you would feel less ridiculous if you hadn’t dared to dream about giving your husband a great surprise on Valentine’s Day of a positive pregnancy test since you guys are so broke now thanks to your unexpected job loss that you can’t get each other real gifts. So broke when you were bringing in comfortable incomes and even that job loss feels like an injustice in itself.
What a cruel word we live in where women who want babies wake up on Valentine’s Day to an empty uterus, one line peering back from that white window and the heartache of inadequacy and the fear of how you are going to survive these next months and continue trying to get pregnant.
The one thing that has continued to seem so utterly impossible. The race is almost over again and I don’t see my baby, our baby, at the finish line just as I haven’t months and months before. And I do wonder why that is that I can dream of this baby and these two pink lines but they are never truly there no matter what my husband and I do.
We are both sad today. Sad about so much. The way our lives are changing financially and now the loss yet again of what we both wanted. So sad.
I wish I could say just hang in there and your dreams will come true today. I can’t say that because even though I will hang in there I can’t help feeling that is a lie. I can’t help feeling like I’ve been hanging in here and all I got was a faint line in April 2018 to show for it for all of my hanging. I have way more hurt.
So the race will reset here in the next couple of days and we will try yet again. We will get injectables. I will take new medications and have new side effects and I will hope again no matter the fact that I am hurting so today.
Posted at 9:25 pm by amayr1984, on January 14, 2019
I actually didn’t cry so very much this time. The saddest part is you get used to the pain. A callous forms and you can still feel it but less and less as time goes on. Over a year and you cannot help but harden to the constant disappointment. You cannot help but have the most agonizing negative thoughts after you have faced your dragon and been burned yet again. You cannot help but resent you body, and the people who get pregnant without trying and brag about it, and the people who will inevitably get pregnant before you do in the journey moving forward. Mostly you will resent those who will try in futility to comfort you when they know all you want is a baby, your own baby and not their meaningless words of “rah rah rah! You’ll get em next time Tiger!” Say do you know how many next times I have been through? Even the words lose their impact as the pain creates the callous. They hit the same hard spot and bounce right back off.
So no I didn’t cry so much this time. I woke up at 4:30 am after having gotten a fairly decent night’s sleep (which should have also been a warning sign because I sleep terribly during the Two Week Wait when my temperatures are up). I checked my Ava against my better judgment and there was another temperature drop. It was still above the cover line but low enough that I knew that it wasn’t a promising sign. I lay there wondering should I just take the test now or would I even be able to fall back asleep with that looming over my head. After a while of laying there I decided to get it out of the way.
On the long, but actually ridiculously short walk to the master bathroom I lived a thousand different moments of pregnancy test anxiety and reflection. I thought about all the times I had come to this same bathroom to get my heartbroken repeatedly this entire year and a couple of months now. I thought about the one chemical I had and how it had later been undone in that same bathroom hours later. I still hoped, because you always hope.
When you grasp that package of First Response Early Response and you begin unwrapping it you can’t help but to hope. You want someone, anyone, or in this case anything to tell you that what you have already told yourself will be is wrong. You deserve that. I mean haven’t you suffered enough? You pull the stick out and pop the pink plastic top off and you think for a moment that there are so many people in the world who don’t even WANT those two pink lines who are going to get them this morning. There are so many people who are in the middle about what they want who will get them. Then there are those who absolutely are dying to get them like you this morning. Who have put on hold drinking, and coffee, and trips to Zika islands and have taken pills and vitamins and their entire sex lives have become timed intercourse…the fertility soldiers. We have put in work for it. And you pee on the stick and you dream that no matter what your temperature and your body is telling you…this time you are going to get what you deserve.
This time you will get those two pink lines. You recap the test.
You watch it develop. You watch as the moisture slides into the window and across that oval and you wait for that second line to fill in. You wait and you think of the look on your partner’s face when you tell him or her. You think of the joy you will feel and the time you will spend decorating the nursery as the moisture reaches the end of the window. You think of the baby shower and the surprised looks from friends and family when you tell them. And you think of the Facebook announcement and how you will recount your success, finally, to all the people in all those trying to conceive groups and message boards you are on. You remind yourself you will be sensitive that other people are trying so you will never start out bragging about how simple it was or it only happened in one cycle! Not you. You will remember that you were once them and you will write the most thoughtful recap of how YOU got YOUR very own…
Big Fat Negative.
And excuse me because I don’t know how to flip it around. That second line never colored. The last line, it always does. So you stare at it some more and you think maybe you see something. You trick yourself that those moments are still so very possible.
You don’t see anything. Because there is nothing to see. There is nothing in your uterus. There will be nothing in your nursery. There will be no Facebook announcement.
You hold the test up to the light to make sure you don’t see anything.
Then you throw it in the trash because you want to get far away from it. Months previous you might have dug it out to just make sure there was nothing on it. But YOU, you are a veteran of infertility now. You know looking 6 more times won’t change anything. Besides you have to wash the deep conditioner out of your head that you wore over night so you can get back to your bed and have the good cry that is always in order and terrorize yourself with anger, self doubt and resentment.
I texted my husband soon after. He called me from work and he is sick. I feel bad for him because I know he cannot help me and yet he wants to help me. I know he doesn’t even think about how not being pregnant is effecting him at all. But I wish he would. I wish he would say he is so disappointed too and thought we really did everything right and he will just be miserable if we don’t get pregnant some time soon as well. He doesn’t. He feels he has to be strong for me and listen to my feelings. But my feelings about my infertility have eaten our relationship whole. I don’t even know that he really likes me anymore because I am just so miserable all the time, who could? But that’s just me taking this out on myself isn’t it?
It’s not my fault I am not pregnant. Logically I know this. I lay in the bed for a couple of hours after talking to my husband and I just go over in my mind all the what ifs and scenarios that would somehow make me even more miserable. If his brother and sister in law got pregnant before us after being married for a much shorter time. If we don’t get pregnant in the next 6 months. If we never get pregnant.
What if I never get to be a mother? Why I won’t be happy. I won’t. I don’t know if I will never be happy because I can’t be if I do not become a mother or if I won’t allow that for myself because I keep repurposing this struggle into a personal failure?
When I do finally wake up again it is 1:33pm and I cannot believe I slept so late. I had nightmares I can’t recall but none of them are as scary as the reality I face. Another month ahead.
Another race. Will I ever catch Baby Mayr? Will it ever not hurt to get a negative pregnancy test.
Will I ever smile and think…”well we got this next month!”
I don’t know. I just know I don’t like riding this ride or running this race much at all. I don’t like knowing the hurt over and over and over again. I want to know victory.
And why for me, potential victory means so much suffering.
Chasing Baby Mayr 