The Power of Might

"I wish I could go back and tell myself when I was going through fertility treatments that none of the pain is going to matter and those feelings I felt then were gone the moment I held my baby."  

This is what I thought when I was full of hope to have another baby when we first began fertility treatments again last February.  All the pain was gone when I held August for the first time, but I never knew if I would get to that moment until I held her.  We sailed through the first few months on the high of having a newborn, feeling like our bad luck was finally over.  Stupidly, we listened to everyone tell us my body might just know what to do after the first baby, that I might be super fertile after giving birth.

Well they were wrong and I'm mad at myself for believing them because here we are, all over again and I'm not quite sure if I'll ever get to the other side again.  I'm mad at everyone who told me to go to college, buy a house, wait until I was settled before having a baby because lots of women are having babies in their late thirties and early forties.  None of the women who told me that were ever women who had babies in their forties--they were all women who had children too young and now regretted they hadn't lived, that they hadn't gone to college.  Well how many of those women who go to college and have a career first get babies compared to how many wanted babies and have to be satisfied with just their career?  How many of them had to at some point, face the music and realize their bodies just weren't physically capable of creating life anymore?  I know we might be at that point.  But I keep fighting because I don't want to look back one day and regret I gave up what could have been for what might have been.  Those other women can always go to college.  This is my last chance to have another baby.

 Today at my doctor appointment, I didn't have the useless advice from well-meaning friends telling me to relax or take some ridiculous combination of Chinese herbs and I might get pregnant.  I didn't have the backing of a thousand facebook friends telling me they will pray for me and it might work.  I didn't have people telling me to just adopt or stop trying and it might happen on its own.  What I had was the undeniable blood test and an experienced doctor telling me my estrogen level should be around 100; it was 34.  I had the ultrasound results showing only five small follicles when I should have at least 10 to 20 given I'm on 450 IUs of Gonal-F and 150 IUs of Menopur, an extremely high dose.  I had the doctor telling me she has seen people get pregnant with these numbers, but she might have to cancel the cycle and try again.  I was left with a sinking feeling that perhaps it's time to think about moving on from the idea we might be able to give August a sibling.

August and her cousin

I don't know how I can feel anything but anger right now.  I'm trying not to though; I'm trying to focus on the positive and that all hope isn't lost and we do after all have this incredible little toddler.  But right now, in this moment, I just need to be angry.  It doesn't help that my nightly injections are like feeling chameleons--they can somehow figure out whatever I am feeling and intensify it by a thousand, so if I'm sad, it's Niagara Falls and Duane gets to help put the pieces of my world crumbling on the dirty floor below me that needs to be vacuumed but I don't have time and how am I supposed to get everything done with all this filth and then it all just crashes down as my feelings become a runaway train of darkness. 

The worst part about all of this isn't the side effects of the drugs or how it affects me emotionally, mentally and physically.  It's coming to the realization that we didn't have hindsight in the beginning--we had to go through all of this just to get here.  And now that we are here, we have all this pain, sadness, emptiness, guilt, anger, regret, rage, and the echoing hollow question every single day: why this is our path, why us?  And we still might not get to have another baby.

I realize we might still get pregnant this IVF cycle or during another if we have to cancel this month.  I know all hope isn't lost.  The biggest corner I turned today, though, is that it might be.  It might just be August is an only child.  It might just be my body can't get pregnant again.  It might just be that we are at the end of this part of our journey and what lies ahead for us is accepting it.  I hope it's not, but it might be.  Despite what might happen, I will continue to fight.