I’m angry…stop telling me not to be
I’ve been on vacation - indulging in a much-needed disconnection from everything.
But when I got home, I had to deal with a call-back after my very first mammogram. I had to go back in to do more thorough boob tests. It all turned out fine but stressed me out, to say the least!
Then I had to do another vaginal ultrasound to see if the estrogen I’ve been popping like TicTacs has plumped my uterine lining; which provides an ideal environment for an incoming embryo. Had to hand over $150 for the experience and go over my entire painful miscarriage saga with the nurse. Then we find out that, no, my lining is not where it should be and I have to take more estrogen and repeat the ultrasound in a week (yes, shelling out another $150). Why are simple ultrasounds so expensive??
It makes me think of when a good friend told me that she simply refused to have a vaginal ultrasound while she was pregnant, which is fair, but it’s something I’ve had to endure a hundred times. And she has a child and I do not.
I’m angry - is the simplest way to describe how I’m feeling lately. I have to do all this crap, put these drugs in my body, and pay tens of thousands of dollars in the HOPE that we get a good embryo and then HOPE that it will implant and result in a lasting pregnancy. I’m not good with hope, especially when I keep being let down.
We wish and hope and pray for a pregnancy that most people can have at the snap of their fingers after simply having sex. I keep seeing more and more women I know becoming pregnant and remembering when they first MET their husbands when we were already trying to have a baby. My one solace is that soon there won’t be anyone left - everyone will be a parent (who wanted to be) and have all the children they ever wanted. Literally everybody I know.
People who haven’t gone through infertility so often try and relate by sharing things that they’ve experienced. But they cannot understand the relentless, isolated hell this is and, the thing is, nobody is asking them to. This is the same as me not being able to really understand a pain that I haven’t experienced. I wish we would all just accept that this is ok.
Anger and jealousy are not “pretty” looks. These emotions make a lot of people feel uncomfortable because they just want to fix the situation. They want to see you smile in the face of adversity because somehow that means you’re okay (but you’re not).
Maybe there’s a bit of guilt that things were easy for them and aren’t for you. But regardless, they don’t realize that the most wonderful thing they could do for you is to allow you to feel those uncomfortable feelings, accept that you’re down in the mud, and maybe even sit down there next to you and hold your hand.
On a positive note (and only because I feel like it, dammit), I am trying to have hope because now we’re using someone else’s egg, a younger woman’s, so maybe, just maybe it will actually work now. But maybe it won’t. And then we will try again (IF we have another embryo). Infertility determination is real.
I am grateful to our donor that we get to try with her egg. I know that some people don’t even get to try this. Some people have to accept that they can’t have children and that’s that.
I’m angry for them and I am angry for us. And I’m going to let myself feel that, even if it’s ugly to look at.