Here’s to Hope!

It has felt like smooth sailing on the IVF front in our household. We have had only positive feedback about my ultrasounds and blood work. It has been wonderful. We have a Transfer in 3 days. I’ve been contemplating for days what to write on here. There are so many feelings. Mostly, I feel unbelievably grateful. For my health. For my husband and daughter and all of My People. I’m grateful to be in this place on our infertility journey. It’s surreal to be so close to putting an embryo into my body.

I have an overwhelming amount of joy in my heart when I reflect on the strength it’s taken to get to this point. So many tears. So many setbacks. So many difficult conversations with doctors, family, and friends. So much education. So many ultrasounds, blood draws, needles, and procedures.

And I overcame my greatest fear three days ago when I began Progesterone In Oil injections. The needles are longer and wider and they make me want to jump out of my skin. Or they did. Now they don’t and I actually don’t mind doing them. I tell myself that it’s food for our baby (per a nice recommendation from a friend and fellow Infertility Warrior) and I jab those babies into my left and right back side with surprising ease. Me. The woman who used to lay down to have her blood drawn can give herself intramuscular injections with a 22 gauge needle. I’m going to toot my horn because my horn deserves to be tooted…or something like that. Toot Toot! Seriously, I have never felt braver in my entire life. If I am lucky, I will be giving myself these injections for 12 weeks.

If I am lucky.

Do I believe in luck? Intelligent Design? Fate? I don’t know. When loss is so prominently in one’s face for an extended period of time, it’s impossible not to search for answers in order to move through the grieving and into recovery. Each time I’ve hit the ground hard and then gotten back up again it seems linked to hope and to the massive amount of love that surrounds me by friends and family.

I’ve watched two women in my life separately and privately go through miscarriages this past week. My heart broke. And my hope wavered. It is a great challenge to stand with someone I love in their pain and not adopt it as my own. Can I be devastated for them and excited for myself? Will I be luckier? They both hope so. I hope so. What we all know and learn through tragedy is that we are not guaranteed anything. We can want for things, but that will not make them so. I suppose that is why it does feel like luck to me. I can prepare to the best of my abilities and do everything ‘right’, but it does not guarantee a baby. Only right now, the present moment…so cliché, I know…truly, that is all that is guaranteed.

Somewhere in my life I learned to believe that if I just tried really really hard, I could have whatever I wanted. I never knew until this year that so much of what I have in my life is a result of plain dumb luck. At least that’s what I believe. I’ll give myself some credit and say that I put myself down certain paths to be more likely to achieve the things that were important to me. And I’ll always appreciate how hard I worked to keep my eyes and heart open. That’s the part that felt like my responsibility. Otherwise, I could have missed some of the gifts that crossed the road I was on. Meeting my husband. Completing graduate school. Making lifelong friendships. Conceiving our daughter. Living close to my family. Just to name a few…

We are preparing for this Transfer and my body is responding well. I may or may not be pregnant in a few days. And we may or may not fill that fourth chair at our table. To lose that dream will be an impossible pain. For a long time. I will grieve and then I will heal…it will be messy and raw…and then I will rise again. There will be a new dream. I am afraid of loss, but I will not be destroyed by it. I used to think that I would be, but I have been educated. It turns out, I am a hell of a lot stronger than I ever knew myself to be. It only took me 34 years to figure that out. Here’s to hope and love and a little luck on Tuesday, September 5th (which just so happens to be my husband’s birthday!)…and lots of sticky baby dust!

*I am grateful for my body. It has impressed me beyond my wildest dreams with what it can withstand.