Posted at 2:33 am by amayr1984, on February 13, 2019
I came home from working out and I set two of the closest to expiration date pregnancy tests in the top drawer and closed it up.
I have studied my basal body temperature chart religiously for the past few hours and already I have felt some twinges in my stomach that have made me feel that Aunt Flo is on her way. There were brown specs when I wiped which I don’t know what that means but I assure you when you have tried as long as I have everything in these last few days seems like a bad omen.
Glow says my next period is scheduled to begin in 3 days and Ava says in 5. I think it is actually somewhere in between based on my chart (the spotting I used for the days I got the brown specs):
As you can see I got my dip a day after Glow claims I should have ovulated so I think that dip is the actual spot so about a day off I would say. This means I miscalculated and I can test on Valentine’s Day which would be so wonderful to get a big fat positive then. I always want to be wrong as I start to have those fears that this is again not my month.
And I have so many other fears to consider at this point as well with my impending job loss on Friday. I had great insurance and benefits so I am losing my greatest weapon in this TTC journey in that alone. My husband will move me to his insurance but I will have to come up with the money to pay for the medications myself somehow and they only get more expensive from here and my income is going to evaporate until I secure another job. I have an interview on Thursday as well as some pre interview stuff tomorrow so I am moving in the direction to make sure I won’t have a gap in wages but time is not on my side as a 34 year old trying to conceive and neither is money or my luck as it has been. I continue to have hope even in these strenuous times. I continue to work out and to meditate and to take my medications. I better go pick up all the refills I can before Friday (note to self).
I do not feel as devoid of hope as before because of course now there are other trials in my life that have overshadowed this journey so it is odd to have something else to worry about and does remove the focus off the thing that was the center of my life for quite some time now. It would honestly mean everything for me to find out I was pregnant coming up as so many new beginnings are on my horizon. I will try to stay positive because so much negative is going on in my life. I suppose no matter what that test says on Thursday there has to continue to be hope for us. I have to believe I will be a mother.
I only have to wonder what more it will cost me emotionally and now financially based on where I am at. But I should try my best not to count myself out of this thing before it’s even over.
Let’s wait for the empty window or the angry blood before we give up but let’s hope for 2 pink lines and 9 months of pregnancy instead.
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 