Wednesday, July 02, 2014

A Silent Battle Within

Discovering that you have a fertility problem is like a slap in the face.  One of the most natural things in the world and you find out that you can't achieve that on your own is a devastating blow and a tough pill to swallow. Enter the self doubt, resentment, anger and misery.

There is nothing that anyone else can say that will make it better.  Those that haven't experienced it haven't a clue as to what you're going through.  There's a gaping void inside of you and a sense of loss that you can't quite shake. You become angry at yourself, the world, and your husband.  

Nothing will make sense.  You will play the blame game. You start creating charts and alarms on your calendar and reminders on your phone.  Your sex life becomes one big scheduled science project.  There is no romance to it, it becomes a mechanical act.

You get to the point where you cannot be around pregnant women and babies.  You cannot speak to your friends that are pregnant, you cannot talk to them about their pregnancies or their children.  

There is this emptiness you feel.  This hollow aching pain that seems to consume you every single month that you start your period.  Gone were the days of praying that you would start.  You've tried everything in the book and still nothing seems to be working. 

Finally, when your marriage is on the verge of crumbling you sit and talk and decide that you need to seek assistance at a Fertility Clinic.  And while you are diagnosed with unexplained infertility or whatever form of infertility you're going through, they give you hope. 

The past two years has been a long silent battle for my husband and I.  We're still struggling with it.  After our first unsuccessful round of fertility treatments we needed to take time off.  As a side effect of the Clomid, I had Ovarian Cysts on both of my ovaries. It was at this point that we decided to take some time off.

It was not an easy decision to make.  It was something that we wrestled with for quite some time before choosing to put more of an effort into our relationship again. After being a human pin cushion for nearly 5 months I decided that I needed a breather. We took the past two months to get back to basics and focus on us for a bit.  There were no charts, no tests, and no stress.  We took time to be just us again, which was exactly what we needed at the time. 

In roughly three weeks, we should be going in for our first IUI and I'd be lying if I said we weren't extremely nervous.  While I want to be hopeful, I don't want to set myself up for more heartache. I kept quiet about what I was going through for so long. It was a constant struggle every single day to pull myself back together and paste on a smile for others. 

I'm in a better place now.  I can see a pregnant woman and smile wistfully. I can look a baby and not burst into tears.  While there is some resentment and bitterness towards certain aspects of my life, I can recognize that I need to get over it and be a better person. 

Life is what you make it.  This past year in particular has shaken my faith. I was so angry. I couldn't get past that.  I do have a blessed life and have learned and come to understand that I need to have a lot more faith that in the end everything will happen the way that the Big Guy Upstairs intends it to. 

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