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weezly14 · 11 days

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It’s national infertility awareness week, and I’m still infertile.

It’s been 19 cycles of nothing.

No, not nothing.

Once I was 8 days late before I started bleeding clots.

Once I got three days of very, very faint lines. I told myself not to get excited until the lines got darker. Instead they disappeared, and the blood came. I tried to tell myself I’d just taken seven faulty tests over three days. It hurt less.

(It hurts, still.)

It’s national infertility awareness week, and my best friend has a newborn, and another friend just announced she’s pregnant. It’s a boy.

(What would my lost faint line have been?)

I’m in the middle of my first IVF cycle. Every morning and every evening my husband gives me injections of fertility meds. I’m bloated, fatigued, emotional. I’ve had headaches and nausea. I have bruises from the shots, and every other day we wake at 5:30 to drive to the clinic for bloodwork and an ultrasound. I can’t tell if it’s going well or not. Everything about IVF is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. I haven’t been my best self, but my husband has come with me to every appointment, has held my hand and watched the fertility videos and kisses the bandaid he puts on me after he administers the shots, morning and evening. He buys me a hash brown after every appointment and dealt with the pharmacy for me. He woke up at 6 am today to wait for fedex to deliver my meds.

(My father left when I was a baby, wouldn’t go with my mom to visit me in the nicu. But my husband has gone above and beyond for eggs that may not even become embryos. Potential future sprout, you will never feel unwanted; you will always know the love of a doting, caring father. Before you even became, he took care of you.)

IVF is not a guarantee. It gives us a chance, but it’s still just that — a chance. A better one than we’d had, but it could still fail. It’s hard to hold onto that reality and the stubborn hope, too. Because it’s stubbornness more than anything that’s gotten me here. I don’t know when to quit. As scary as it is to try, I have to at least try.

So, this is trying. It’s four injections a day and bandaids shaped like cats or dogs. It’s a shared audiobook on the drives to and from the clinic, and hash browns on the way home. It’s tears and fear and clinging to the idea of success, holding each other when it gets to be too much. It’s the cats and dogs staying close and giving cuddles, like somehow they know how much I need it. It’s friends and family checking in and offering support.

(It’s the basket in the closet of an empty bedroom, filled with little things acquired over the past year and a half. Little things for a potential future sprout, socks and onesies and a blanket. In the room we haven’t filled, that we still call the nursery.)

Infertility sucks, but it’s more common than anyone wants to believe. 1 in 6 is the stat going around. National infertility awareness week is all about people sharing their stories, helping others feel less alone. It’s still fucking lonely, but it helps, somehow. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. As much as it hurts when friends get pregnant easily, I’m so glad for them, too. I’d hate to see them go through what I have.

So, for whatever it’s worth, it’s infertility awareness week, and I’m infertile. I have two failed IUIs under my belt, and I’m on my first IVF cycle. Everyone’s journey is different, but they all suck. Not all of them end with a take home baby. If this is your experience, too, I’m sorry.

I don’t know how our journey ends. I might not for a while yet.

(Lost faint line, potential future sprout — you were always, always wanted. We’ll keep trying.)

#weezly talks infertility #personal stuff #honestly might delete later

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weezly14 · 5 months

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so i'm not going to respond to any individual asks - this is the blanket response to all the asks i've gotten in the past few weeks asking me when i'm going to update my WIPs, if i've abandoned them, etc. i appreciate the love, i do. i miss dust to dust, and something good and right and real, and i wanna be your boyfriend, too.

i might regret being this honest later, but fuck it, it's my blog and not enough people talk about this shit.

i'm struggling with infertility. emphasis on the struggle. i'm weepy from fertility meds, in the midst of my first treatment cycle, half hope and half fear. we're "unexplained infertility," so there's no reason why it shouldn't work, except it hasn't so far, so hope feels like a dangerous thing.

for anyone who hasn't experienced this, it's a complete and total mindfuck. i don't feel like the same person i was a year ago, before all those negative pregnancy tests. i thought i'd have a baby by now, or at least be pregnant. instead, i have a shitty not even diagnosis, and Options that are both a blessing but also invasive, and expensive, and in no way a guarantee. every month i calculate when the due date would be; think about the events we have planned for next year in terms of where i could be in a pregnancy; and every month, my period arrives right on schedule, if not a day early. i have yet to see a positive pregnancy test. it's "only" been a year, and i'm "so young," but it feels like it's been ages and like i'm running out of time.

we've been forced to have conversations about money, about how far we want to go with treatment, about when we might call it. "it's too early to think about that," you might say, but one cycle of ivf could cost $16k. we have good insurance, but are we willing to undergo more than one egg retrieval? how many failed transfers before we decide the emotional toll is too high? it's better to have those conversations now, before we have to, when we can maybe make clearer decisions. would we consider donor eggs or sperm? surrogacy? what about adoption?

meanwhile, i'm watching friends and acquaintances get pregnant with no problem, as i try not to completely isolate myself and try to track ovulation, as though timing might be the problem.

(it's not.)

i'm not the person i was before all of this, and it sucks. i'm a sadder, smaller person, i think. i'm trying my best. i'm "practicing hope" or some shit, i'm doing my best to keep my head up and stop isolating, stop avoiding my pregnant best friend, stop wallowing in the grief. because it is grief. if i get pregnant, it will be because of fertility meds and doctors, it will happen in a sterile exam room, hopefully with my husband holding my hand, if he can get the time off work. there will be no spontaneous pregnancy, no surprise. there's grief in that, in letting go of what i thought this might be like, how i thought it might go.

so yes, writing fic has fallen by the wayside. not because i want it to. i just have a hard time finding the energy to do even fun things. i miss the person who could write a lot in short spans of time, who had the energy for fic. i'd like to believe i can still be that person again. i don't consider any of those fics abandoned. i've written, i've worked on things.

but, right now, it feels like my entire life, my entire being, is consumed with this struggle to get pregnant. like my life is measured by where i am in my cycle. i look at my calendar and think, that's when i'll get my period or a positive test, so i should be mindful in what i plan. i might be very happy, or i might have a very bad day.

sometimes, the bad days feel eternal.

but i'm doing what i can. i'm trying, anyway. my therapist said i should practice hope, and i'm trying to. i'm trying to let myself believe things might work out. even though the fucking meds have made me weepy as hell, i'm trying to stay positive, and envision that this cycle could work. that on christmas day, instead of my period, i'll get a positive pregnancy test.

(because going home for christmas isn't loaded enough.)

there's an old wives tale that if you wrap a baby blanket and put it under the tree, you'll have a baby by next christmas. i'm jewish, but we're an interfaith household, so we bought a baby blanket, and we're going to wrap it in hanukkah paper, and put it under the tree. we have a hope basket in the nursery - because when we moved into this house we set aside a bedroom to be the nursery, and it's empty except for that little basket of baby things we've collected over the months, in the hopes that one day we'll have a baby to dress in the little onesies or socks. we have a running list of names. this is our version of practicing hope.

this is only our first treatment cycle. things could work. or maybe the next cycle. and then, there's always ivf. some days, i feel like it'll work for us, and we will have a baby, one way or another. other days, i wonder if i shouldn't just spare myself the pain and call it now. it's exhausting, infertility.

so, to everyone who misses my writing, and wonders when i'll update again - i don't know. i miss my writing, too. i miss being the person who wasn't so consumed by fertility shit, who could indulge in hobbies. i'd like to believe i can get back to that. but not this week.

the holidays are joyous but they're also really fucking hard, so let me be your friendly reminder not to ask people when they're having kids, or why they aren't pregnant yet, and to not tell people struggling with infertility to "just adopt" or "just relax."

happy holidays.

#random life post #weezly talks about infertility #weezly talks writing

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