When it seems as though some of your closest friends don’t share in the joy of your pregnancy?
I guess there really is no easy way to answer that question. For the parents who’ve never struggled to get pregnant, to the one’s that haven’t yet conquered that quest, my problem probably will sound trivial at best.
Getting pregnant wasn’t an easy task. It was met with years of heartache and distress. Very little answers strewn among the plethora of tests and treatment plans. It so happens that I got lucky and found a wonderful group of people to share my sorrows and joys with, whom were going through almost the exact same thing. Problems ranging from PCOS and unexplained infertility, to treatments as “minor” as Clomid to ones’ as meticulous as IVF. Regardless of our childbearing status, we all had one thing in common.. we were labeled infertile and had the “blessing” of watching everyone around us get pregnant.
It took me three long agonizing years of hell before I got pregnant with my son. I wasn’t online at that time and I was very naive. Though the word “clomid” had been thrown around, I didn’t even know what it was. I found a doctor whom I thought was a fantastic answer to my prayers, very adamant that we jump straight into diagnosing MY problem. I should have known something wasn’t right when he never did bloodwork. He jumped straight into getting an HSG done on me. It was 6 months after the HSG (which we got an all-clear on) before I was finally pregnant. We started TTC as soon as Tanner was 8 months old because I had this nagging fear that it would take another three years, or longer. I found an online charting software website to help me understand my cycles and after 17 cycles and 2 miscarriages, I got pregnant with my daughter. That pregnancy was met with a very rough first trimester that included awful cramping and enormous amounts of bleeding. Finally, after 38 long weeks, my perfectly healthy daughter was born.
We had decided C would probably get a vasectomy as having more kids just wasn’t really in our future. We had started to read up on the procedure, searched out the best doctor in that field and discussed when to have it done. Then the unexpected happened. I got pregnant. How is that possible? How.. after so many years of unexplained infertility, after tests and failure, timed sex and utter despair. We are pregnant on accident? Is this real or a joke gone bad?
I know that having three kids probably throws me out of the infertility subgroup, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have feelings, or that what I went through wasn’t a real part of who I am today. It just means that I have a past that makes me sympathetic and understanding to anyone who is going down the rough road of infertility.
Something in my life finally happened that I’ve always wanted. A surprise pregnancy where I didn’t plan my entire day around whether or not I was going to pop an egg that day, or whether his sperm would be smart enough to find their way to my tube. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still think of how it felt to be the only infertile among my friends and family and it doesn’t make the pain of my miscarriages any less.
So here I am, my third baby on the way, only this time it was unexpected. I sometimes wonder if all of those friends will be discounted once they have their second or third, or even fourth. I wonder if they will still feel as though their feelings and past struggles really do matter anymore.
