Love heroin

There's a scene in Notting Hill where after Hugh Grant has fallen in love with Julia Roberts and they've fought and she's left him, he tells his friend "I feel as though I've been given a shot of love heroin and I can't ever have it again."

That's what comes to mind when I think about this whole baby-making business.

I struggle not to sound ungrateful - there are so many who can't even get pregnant at all.  However, the pain of trying to conceive after having been pregnant is almost too much to bear.  Infertility is horribly painful on its own, but maybe it's more bearable if you've never known pregnancy - only in the way that you don't truly miss what you've never had.  I feel like something has been taken from me and I'm trying so desperately to get it back.  Would it be easier to bear if I'd never had it in the first place?  Each month I feel that this could be the month that the nightmare begins to go away and each month, with each slash of red on the toilet paper, it's renewed.

The joke is that early pregnancy feels a lot like PMS.  Mood swings, breast tenderness, feeling full in your belly.   I was bawling my eyes out last Thursday, but even through my tears I knew it was plain ol PMS, not The Worst PMS Of My Life - the kind I felt when I found out I was pregnant.  I can pinpoint each time in the past three months that I've been nauseated.  I didn't used to get nauseated - that started in December.  I also didn't used to cramp before my period and both times I was pregnant before, I felt the Implantation Cramp.  Now I cramp before my period all the time.  In fact, that's why I'm up at 6:40 in the morning - I was supposed to start on Sunday and I've been on edge, waiting to start, hoping not to.  I just started.

Each month, each twinge I think 'Is this it?  Will I finally begin to heal?'  And each month I get a big fat NO.


I try - maybe God is making me stronger for the battle ahead.  I've entered a pregnancy research study that perhaps will help.  Our neighbor told me about it - ClearBlue Easy is developing a pregnancy device that will not only tell you if you're pregnant, but how far along you are.  It's for three months and it's just a pee study (no needles, thank God) and if you get pregnant while in the study they pay you $175 and you get a free ultrasound as part of it.  Of course I'm not doing it for those reasons, but it's a bonus.  They gave me the ovulation sticks to pinpoint my fertile days (even though I have an app on my phone that I check obsessively) and if I don't get pregnant after the study, I get three months of ovulation sticks as a consolation prize to help me conceive.  


If I don't get pregnant after the study, we're going to see a doctor.  My 34th birthday is in two weeks and I don't want to lose any more time - maybe God is doing this so I can be stronger for the potential journey of IVF.  I don't know - I just yearn for a reason for my tears.

...

I was due on April 19.  I wanted to be pregnant on my due date - in my mind, being pregnant again would make that day hurt less.  When it was further away it seemed possible, that the pain of the miscarriage would sting less if I got pregnant again within that nine months.  That the loss would be more of a hiccup than a situation.  Now with it a little more than two months away, my confidence is faltering.  I know it's still a possibility, but my cycle is becoming irregular.  I used to be able to set a clock by my cycle, knowing within hours when I would start.  The days between them now are no longer regular - hopefully the ovulation sticks will help with that, but an irregular cycle is just another obstacle to conception.

I know there's no measuring stick when it comes to infertility - all of our pain is valid in it's own right.  I just can't help but wonder if it would easier to bear if I simply couldn't get pregnant at all.  If the door had never been opened to me, if it just weren't an option.  Then it would just be off the table and we'd go down the adoption road, or whatever other path.  But it was opened to me - twice.  I closed the door the first time and still don't regret that.  But the second time.  The second time was right, it was wanted and it was taken away.  

I don't shake my fist at the sky and I don't say why me.  I truly know better than that.  I just wish I knew the purpose of my pain - what does it serve?  What am I supposed to learn from this?  If I knew why I was feeling this way, why I was going through this, maybe the pain would be a little more bearable.

And yet, I know better than that too.  I may never know the purpose of my pain.  I know that it's not for me to know, it's simply for me to have faith.  But honestly, I want to say You really don't have to take away my children, I promise I'll be good.  Can You teach me in another way?  Can I become a better stronger person by different means?  Please?