Trying....

It's strange. I remember an episode at the pediatricians office where I cried and puked and hid in the bathroom when it was time to get shots. (Embarrassingly enough, these were the immunizations necessary to enter high school. Yeah.) I also recall sitting in the mini-van with my dad at an interstate rest stop and watching with horror as an older diabetic gentleman gave himself insulin in the stomach in the parking lot. I remember how queasy it made me feel, like my knees were melting into my ankles.

I could never have imagined that I'd actually be excited, hopeful, and even grateful for the opportunity to stick myself with a damn needle in the stomach on a daily basis. Once you get over the psychological aspect of it, there's really nothing to it. But there is the hope.

The first two days of this cycle were the most depressing days of my entire life. The desperation I felt cannot be put into words, and cannot be understood, or even expected to be understood by anyone not in the same predicament. I honestly felt more sick than I did when my first husband left -- by a long shot. I had hoped to never feel that way again, and I certainly didn't think I'd ever feel worse.

Day One came the realization that this would be our last cycle -- at least for several months. The end of this month will be more than $10,000 spent TTC. We've got to stop the financial bleeding for a while; otherwise we'll end up too poor to support a child, even if we do get pregnant.

Day Two Jason and I were grocery shopping and we saw a little girl coming to or from her soccer game in pink striped knee-high socks and pigtails tied with pink ribbon. Her father was with her as the crossed in front of our car and into the store. I probably would have lost it anyway, but the fact that she had very dark shiny hair (I didn't even see her face) made me picture what our child might look like. It also made me sad for the fact that we may never take a child to soccer practice.

Today is Day Four. I'm trying very much to be happy. That's very hard when your happiness is pinned on something that you don't know if your body can provide. At this point I'm praying for lots of follicles. I don't care if I do have sextuplets and nothing in my life is ever my own again. That's something that a fertile person cannot understand -- that when all you dream of is a baby, your life is really not your own to begin with. Sure I'd love to go back to school, go horseback riding in Australia, spend two weeks in Jamaica, have a size eight body again. But how could you compare that to raising a child?

I have started praying again. I haven't prayed in a very long time for me. I've gone past the point of worrying that God might think I'm selfish for asking for something solely for us. I don't even know if you could call what I am doing "praying" as much as it is "begging." But it's a start.