Infertility Sucks

It's really challenging to stay hopeful in the face of infertility. I want to be able to hit a pause button on aging so I have the time to take care of things. Every day that passes chips away at my hope.

I turn 33 on Friday.

My husband has limitless faith. He knows that we're going to be parents. He's so sure of it. I feel like my chances are vanishing in front of me and there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm trying to do something about it. I'm trying to take charge. I'm changing everything about how I eat to make it happen. But my time keeps slipping away.

Everything takes time. Not just trying to heal myself, but even saving money towards procedures like IUI or towards adoption.

Next month marks exactly two years since we started trying to get pregnant. My best friend started trying shortly before we did and she now has a two year old and is pregnant with her second. I love her and she deserves it but the two year old in me is screaming, "Why isn't life fair?"

It feels like a judgement on me. Who I am as a person. My ability to nurture.

I know that doesn't make sense. Plenty of not very nurturing women end up with children they didn't want. Nature doesn't play favorites like that. But it still feels that way. I think my brain needs to come up with some kind of logic to the universe and it's easier to think that it's my fault and I'm a lousy person than to think that the universe is chaotic.

The pain of being childless is immense. It radiates around the deepest parts of my organs. It can sometimes be eased with little tricks like nesting and preparing. I have a baby hope chest and I knit and crochet items for my future child (but also end up usually giving them as gifts to my friends' children!). But sometimes the "biological clock" goes into a rage and tries to consume me whole.

Ads for mother's day jewelry are not helping.

And the last time this grief was triggered was at my job watching a mother and her teenager shop together. I long to go shopping with an eye-rolling teenager that I watched grow from an infant. Perhaps some day that will be me with my best-friend's daughter.