And So It Begins

Since it became obvious to me last weekend that becoming parents without the aid of modern medicine was not a real possibility, I went to a new fellow co-worker who recently had twins after undergoing light infertility treatments to seek out a referral. With the phone number in hand, I dialed the doctor's office and held back my tears long enough to request a new patient appointment for the next available spot one month from now. For one month I get to decide what I want to do next. Do we even try to conceive next month? Do I go buy OPKs like I had planned on doing for the past two months? Do I try to get my hands on progesterone so we can try? I still don't understand how this roller coaster has docked back on my front door step after everything we've already gone through. How I can be facing all of this again after my surgery 7 months ago? But here I am.

Its in moments like these that I go into a bit of depression and wonder why people who don't want children can have them. Why people who have children and mistreat them can have them. But people like me, who will go to these horrible lengths to become parents just can't seem to catch a break. I would like to say a big part of the reason I feel this way is because of all of the stress I've been under lately with the move and new job, but God's honest truth is that I feel this way because I can't believe after the last 2 years I am right back where I started. I feel like all of the hope I felt after my surgery has been dashed, and all I want to do is cry. Yesterday at work I holed up in my cubicle with my headphones on and rejected all social interaction. Not because I am bitter, but because I am just plain disappointed.

I can't help but allow thoughts that maybe this all just too much trouble, and that maybe it just isn't worth it. I think to myself that maybe I really need to throw in the towel and call it quits. Perhaps I need to realize that my life will never include children of my own that I will get to raise and watch grow up. There will be no weddings, no grandchildren, no one to pass my grandmother's heirlooms onto. It all just seems so unfair.

At what point do I give up? I'm not willing to give IVF a go because I can't justify spending that kind of money on the off chance I MIGHT get pregnant. I couldn't handle the small potatoes in the infertility world as it was; things like FSH shots, every-other-day ultrasounds to check my ovaries, HCG triggers, chlomid, birth control, etc. I hated who those things made me and the way they made me feel compounded with the monthly disappointments. So do I give up now? Do I go to the doctor here and seek out a third opinion? If I don't like the third opinion, do I seek out a fourth? At what point do I draw the line?

I think this recent setback is going to be the absolute hardest to get over. I could handle it better when I would do the full gamut of treatments and end up with nothing but a hormonal, crazy me. I could handle it when our IUI didn't work. But I don't know if I can handle this. I was never as depressed after those treatments failed as I am about this. I never pulled into my shell the way I did the last couple days at work. I don't even want to talk to anyone about this or about anything at all. Maybe it is the setback compounded by the stress of the past couple months. Then again, maybe it belongs 100% to itself. To top it all off, my close-knit support group is gone. The people who helped me through the past year and a half are now thousands of miles away. The doctor I trusted is thousands of miles away. My smiling, hopeful, helpful, caring doctor. This just plain sucks.

So here I stand, at this precipice, wondering, waiting, thinking, deciding.... What is my next step? What do I want my next step to be? Maybe it just isn't in my cards.