Fertility Friend, my old friend

I have done a good job of convincing myself that my pregnancy was not meant to be. It wasn't healthy. It was a mishmash of genes wrongly combined that would generate tissue but not a living, breathing, or feeling being. It was not a baby. At no point did it develop into a person. There was never a heartbeat. I was not meant to give birth this July so there's no sense in getting all worked up about my rapidly approaching missed due date. I wasn't meant to be carrying a baby right now so there's no sense in getting jealous of my due date buddy's facebook posts and ultrasound pics. My situation is totally different.



Yesterday I was on FF, because while I'm taking intermittent breaks from BBT, I still use FF to record the dates of things like my beta numbers and MTX injections, etc. I don't know why I did this, and I really deserved what I got for doing it, but I hit "pregnancy tracker" - which I started using when I got pregnant. I hadn't even thought about it until now. But there it was, so I clicked on it. And I saw my ticker. It's a line of eggs and egg shells with a tiny yellow fuzzy chick making it's way from 0 to 40 weeks. I remember my excitement as it passed the 6 week mark. Then the 7th. And 8th. And finally the 11th when I was going to get to see my baby. And all the nausea and hiding and lying and not drinking would all be more than worth it.



My ticker says I would have been 34.0 weeks even yesterday. I had even forgotten that Thursday was my "day" - the day of the week that I could call myself one round week closer to having the baby. It made me so sad. And it prompted me to imagine a parallel universe (have you ever seen sliding doors? Kinda like that) where things had gone smoothly. I've been doing that lately. Like during The Big Fight I imagined how my life would have gone had I not married DH. Had I run away that first time he hurt me 8 years ago. I actually verbally warned my eight-years-younger self to forget him when I was at my most emotional and heady a couple days ago. With the baby I imagined we wouldn't have the second dog. I welcomed the increased responsibility and complexity into my life a month ago seeing as how there won't be a baby in the very near future and because I LOVE dogs and really did want a second one at some point. She will be well trained and older by the time a baby arrives, if one ever does. But had we continued to be pg, we would not have embarked on the selection of another dog. It would have been too much chaos. Even for me.



Also, I imagined being pretty big around now. At the stage when people are really catering to my ability to be mobile (or not mobile) and even strangers would be sure I was expecting. And I would love it. I would be done with baby showers, the nursery would be ready, we'd be on a wait list for daycare and would be paying more attention to the schools around here. I'd be closing up projects at work, sterilizing the house, counting the days 'til my 4 month leave. Getting excited about playdates with my friends and their kids. Getting excited about how happy DH would be to have a kid and how much better it would be for him in reality than it is for him in theory.



I don't know if it will ever happen but I wish with all my might that it does. I wonder if I'm going a little crazy and getting escapist about it in the meantime. Is this how split personality disorder develops? One simply cannot stand to live in their own head anymore and subconsciously develops a second existence? That's not quite what I'm doing but it still feels a little crazy. And it is very hard to live in my head.



And is it just me or are a serious number of bloggers in this community announcing BFPs this week? Congratulations to everyone who is. I am so genuinely happy for all of you. And excited in advance for the rest of us.

I am starting to get excited about trying again, even though I don't know when that will be and have no signs that my system will ever work again. Actually, there have been a few hints that AF might be on her way - but I hesitate to even say that for fear of jinxing it - though recall, I don't really believe in jinxing. So mostly I hesitate to say it 'cause I've had a myriad of symptoms over the past 5 months that have proven meaningless time and time again. But every time I notice convincing symptoms that I might be cycling, I think - what a waste. Why aren't we getting back to it? Waste of time, waste of healthy eggs. I just have to keep reminding myself that my head needs this break, my body needs to go through a few cycles, flush itself out. Get through a few months of prenatals. My body has been through a lot. A lot of stress, medications, and hormonal fluctuations. And me and DH need to get back on track after The Big Fight and figure out how not to let that kind of thing happen again (or at least not very often). The dog needs to be trained. I need to seize the opportunity to get better at my job. I need to work at making the wait productive.