Left Behind.

April 13, 2012 at 10:02 am | Posted in Heartbreak, Infertility | 9 Comments

So another close friend of mine called me a few days ago to tell me that she’s 12w pg.

She and my best friend are due within weeks of each other.

They were both in my club of the one-kid holdout.

It took her more than a year to conceive this time around. So it’s not like it was easy, or she’s super fertile, or whatever. Or that she was even mean about it; she knows about our failed cycles and after she told me, she asked me if I was okay.

And, you know, I AM okay.

It hurt nonetheless, though.

Because being left behind is so hard. Out of my close friends, I am the only single kid mom.

That I want a baby so very badly right now doesn’t help, either.

And I’m seeing in practice what I’ve always thought: that secondary infertility is a very different kind of hell.

I feel a lot more alone this time. Which is probably my own doing; I have a hard time reading about people TTC #2 right now. I know that they’ll likely be pregnant in the near future, and I’ll be left behind yet again.

It’s really, really hard.

But also, I’m seeing that sometimes, when it’s easy, it’s not easy. My best friend’s sister in law was on hospital bedrest with her third this time around due to placenta previa; one night she started bleeding uncontrollably and they had to deliver the baby 10 weeks early. She called her husband, who was home with the kids. 10 minutes later, doctors had delivered her little girl via c-section under general anesthesia, her baby was in the NICU, and her husband didn’t make it in time to be there.

Everyone’s FINE now, thankfully. But man, that sort of birth is hard to process.

And then the guy on FB with the little boy who JUST started walking, who a couple of weeks ago posted a picture of him in scrubs, saying, It’s go time! Two boys, a little over a year apart. Clearly no fertility issues there.

Except the baby is in the PICU right now because he caught RSV. And though he’s progressing, and getting better, I can only imagine how terrified they are.

Sometimes it isn’t easy, even when it’s easy.

I don’t think these things to diminish my own feelings on trying again, of wanting a baby so badly. Honestly, I don’t know what happened, but seeing my best friend’s u/s pictures awoke this deep NEED.

Which makes me acutely aware of how much my BODY longs for a baby. I dream almost nightly of nursing, the slightness of the weight in my arms, warmth against my body, the scent of baby. It’s a physical need, rooted somewhere deep inside me, but outside of intellect and logic.

And though I don’t understand it, I know that I feel it really deeply.

I can tell that therapy has really made a difference in how I deal with emotions. I’m less apt to get angry at myself for feeling something, or be angry with someone else because they made me feel bad. Somehow acknowledging the pain makes it so much easier to deal with.

So much easier.

But sometimes it isn’t easy, even when it’s easy.