Tuesday, October 2, 2007

I'm Not Infertile...And Other Recent Revelations

Revelation One:
I've been thinking about it. I'm not infertile, despite my struggle with infertility. In fact, I think I'm very fertile once I get past the obstacle of ovulation. I CAN get pregnant, and I have been pregnant in the past. And even though I miscarried that pregnancy, there is no reason to believe that I will miscarry again in the future. All tests showed that it was just "bad luck".

I've been putting myself in the category of "infertile" for so long; which isn't necessarily true. It makes me feel much better to take myself out of that category, as it puts me in a more mentally/emotionally optimisitic place. PCOS can be a hinderance to fertility, but it does not necessarily make one infertile, per se. Lots of women with PCOS go on to have perfect babies. So here I am, declaring myself to be fertile, despite my ovulation challenges.

Revelation Two:
I am old. Now I realize, by stating this, I am insulting everyone who is older than me and for that I am sorry; it is not my intent to offend. What I'm trying to say is that my feeling old has only a little to do with my age - I mean I AM only 30 for goodness sake - I guess I am feeling like now, more than ever, I am an adult. Really and truly.

Until very recently, I thought of myself as young, childish, like a kid. When you're in your 20s, you can get away with it, but a 30 year old "kid" is just sad. I am the oldest of my peers at my work, and one of the oldest in my circle of friends. And I guess I'm really feeling "my age" lately, especially in the context of everything I'm going through to try to get pregnant. Fertility is an "adult" issue to have to deal with and I can honestly say that I feel I've grown up so much through this process. I'm just not the kid I used to be.

Revelation Three:
It's OK to get excited. I have spent so many months and years holding myself back from getting my hopes up about getting pregnant. I don't know why, I guess I didn't want to "jinx" myself, as silly as that sounds. And I guess I thought that if I let myself get excited, then I would be that much more disappointed when things didn't work out. I have spent so much time protecting myself from being sad, but when I look back at the last year, all I did was feel sad. I can only conclude that whatever I was doing didn't work. I think back to those months where I would really try not to get excited, and I didn't dare let myself get carried away in the beautiful notion that I might be pregnant. But seeing that negative pregnancy test didn't make me feel any less sad than those months where I felt sure I was pregnant.

It comes down to this: I am not going to deny myself the excitment, hopefulness and fun of creating a new life any longer. Damn the ups and downs - I'm just living. Life is too short, and while this process has not worked out the way I planned it, it WILL still work out eventually, and just as it should be. How can I expect to make a baby without embracing it, mind, body, and soul? I AM EXCITED to hold my baby. I AM LOOKING FORWARD to raising a child with D. I AM OPTIMISTIC about the future. I EXPECT that I will get pregnant sooner or later, and I'm SURE it will happen. I'm done being scared and cautious. I'm through with protecting myself. It's about damn time.

I think I just discovered something grand.

1 comment:

Katarina Jelly Beana said...

HooYAY you!!!

So very freeing to realize that you can choose how you deal with all the craptitudinosness that is infertility. So freeing to realize that who you are isn't all tied up in that one word.

Now get out there and make a kid!!