anniversaries

Last month was the anniversary of the start of IVF treatment, tomorrow is the anniversary of egg retrieval. As anniversaries come up, there's a lot to be thankful for and a lot to think about. We have had an amazing support network. I have an even more amazing husband.

Much of the time I'm okay and living life. Occasionally I get the sting, the stab. It's pretty rare. One stab was someone posting about their miracle children and how they were infertile. They were not infertile. The children may have been miracles... aren't all? perhaps, but that's another day. But the woman was not infertile, she had a poor prognosis and then got pregnant. Infertility is the act of not being able to conceive. If you conceived, especially without medical intervention, you are not infertile. I'm not negating the fact that this woman may have been told she's infertile, but once you conceive, you are not infertile. It's painful to those who are to hear "oh I was infertile, but I had a kid, you can too." No, you were told you were infertile. It's great that you had a kid, but you are not infertile. Maybe a new word or phrase should be inappropriate prognosis. "I had an inappropriate prognosis that I was infertile- turns out I'm not!" Yes, that may be a long hashtag, but it's the truth and doesn't sting for those of us who are legit infertile and consistently being told to hope for that miracle. Yes, I can hope. I can hope with all my might. But holding onto that hope completely is painful and stupid. And people telling me to hold on makes it painful and them look stupid. I had to grieve. I had to release that hope to allow me to move forward. Yes, I may still have hope. I may still look at my ovulation weeks with some sort of optimism. But to be honest, it's like my pinky toenail. It's just there in the back of my head because yes, I'm still within childbearing years and there's a slight, very minimal, unbelievably minimal chance conception could happen. And if that does, I will change my script to "a miracle happened." Not #infertility. It's a matter of education. It's a matter of recognizing those who truly grieve. I'm not saying these things for accolades or sympathy, just to let you know that it's not appropriate and it hurts someone else. And I don't think that's what you want to do.

I do still get triggered. That probably won't stop, but I just don't attach to the trigger, I move along and grieve as I need to. If I hear that you're pregnant, I am so, so, so happy for you. Trust me. I may be sad for myself, but in no way does that have anything to do with you (there is one person out there who caused me a lot of pain this past year and boy does it have everything to do with her, but I digress). And I'm also likely not sad at all. I truly am happy and hope that I can be a part of your family.

So as I hit the year mark, sure I was sad. Sad that we don't have an infant, sad that things are not what I had hoped for, but you know what... I survived. I carried on. I gained different perspective. Did I get stronger? I don't know. It's not about that. I carried on. We carried on.

Coming up on the anniversary of the terrible, awful day that was egg retrieval... it's so painful to think about. Egg retrieval is so hard on so many levels, especially when you don't get what you want. The excitement of the following day "you have a fertilized egg!" and then the dread of the next day "it hasn't multiplied." The down and up and down... the further down. Driving home the day of the egg retrieval I told my husband I didn't want to go through this again. And I really truly meant it. I know what I can take and what I can't. Do I have regrets? Some, very minimal. What if we tried again? What if I did something different? What if the next egg was viable? Yes, of course there's the what ifs. There's also the high risk of pregnancy. There's also the high risk the child would have severe disabilities. There's so much anxiety throughout the entire process. And I knew that I would never release that anxiety, that stress until I knew everything was perfect. And that would be a LONG year. The much more likely what if is, what if we went through it again and again without any result? And I knew I couldn't handle that again.

I also knew there are a lot of kids out there who need forever families. There's a part of me that always wanted to adopt, to foster, to open my heart to children in this way. So that's the path we chose. And after 10 long months. After classes, after more paperwork than I could ever imagine, after genograms and ecomaps, after home inspections, fire escape plans, baby proofing, interviews, and so much more and especially waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting... we finally got news of our official license to adopt today. I received the email this morning. I find it a bit ironic that it's been 365 days since my egg retrieval. It's such a good book end of the infertility journey and the start of the adoption journey. It's the ability to release tears of joy and excitement and expectation. It's releasing all the tension and stress of the past year (+). It's a new journey. Yes, we do have more hoops, more classes, more waiting. But there's a light down that tunnel, with a kid at the end.