Why not me?

My best friend is pregnant.  My sister is pregnant.  My good friend, the one I taught how to use ovulation tests, brought her baby home from the hospital yesterday.  I want to be happy for them.  I know I should be happy for them.  But the truth is that I'm jealous.  And I'm mad at myself for being jealous.

Gut feeling, ignored

I've always had a gut feeling that I would never have biological children.  When I was a teenager (admittedly not interested in reproducing) I remember thinking one day that I was never going to be able to have children.  Crazy.  I ignored it.  The feeling popped up several times over the years and I just ignored it because I thought it was silly and I wasn't at a place in my life where babies were even on my radar.  Then I met the man who would be my husband.  We fell hard and fast for each other.  We decided early on in our relationship that we were going to get married, have babies, and live happily ever after.  I confided in him early on that I had a gut feeling that I'd never be able to get pregnant and we both agreed that it was silly.  Three years later we got engaged and four years later we got married.  Hubs wanted to start trying to conceive a couple of months before we got married.  I said no because I couldn't face writing a dissertation, interviewing for jobs, and being pregnant at the same time.  So we waited.  I finished grad school and told him I wasn't ready yet.  I landed my dream job and told him I wasn't ready yet.  We moved half way across the country and I told him I wasn't ready yet.  I was scared that my gut feeling would be right and wanted to save us from the heartache. Finally, I ran out of excuses and we started trying to have a baby.

The first six months or so was fun.  We figured that we'd just have a lot of sex and I would get pregnant.  Nope.  At about six months I started to get worried.  I started temping.  Hated it.  But kept doing it because I thought it would help.  It didn't, and I hated it.  Then I started peeing on OPKs.  They didn't get me pregnant either, and hubs HATED the pressure of being expected to perform as dictated by a peestick.  I started to get worried.  I saw the writing on the wall and started to get really worried that it wouldn't happen for us.  Hubs reassured me that it just hadn't happened yet.  Around Thanksgiving of last year my period was late.  I thought that this was maybe, just maybe it.  It wasn't.  My period came on the day that we hosted Thanksgiving for both of our families.  Fun.  Then it came again on Christmas Day and I lost it.  When we got home from being out of town, Hubs said that we should go get tested because it would make me feel better.

In January of 2014 we started the testing process.  Meeting with doctor and complete medical history.  Physical for me.  Semen Analysis for him, blood work, HSG, and ultrasound for me.  I was nervous, but excited to get answers.  We knew that that there could be several different outcomes: unexplained, something wrong with both of us, or something wrong with one of us.  His results came back in before mine and I had him call and get the actual numbers.  While I'm no RE, I do know enough to know that as soon as I looked at his numbers that we could cross something being wrong with him or something being wrong with both of us off of our list.  We scheduled an appointment the doctor on March 7th to go over everything.  The night before the appointment I had a dream that the doc told us that the only way we were going to get pregnant was to use donor eggs.  We met with the doc.  My fears were confirmed.  My gut instinct was confirmed.  We left in a daze, our world rocked.  I was broken and it wasn't easy to fix.

I'll probably write another post about the emotional parts but I wanted to get some background written down.

New to the Blogging world!

Hello and welcome to my blog!  Despite being pretty technologically forward thinking, this is my first blog.  I guess that the purpose of this blog is to be able to say the things that I can't (or won't say) to people that I know in real life.  It will probably be filled with a good deal of sarcasm and some profanity too.  If you can handle those things, please read on!

So this blog is going to be about infertility.  Or, more specifically, healing from the scars that infertility has carved into my heart.  My blog title comes from a Pink song (Just Give Me a Reason), which actually has nothing to do with infertility, but the words really spoke to me because for a long time I've felt broken, but the reality is that I'm just bent.  (And still Fuckin' Perfect, according to another Pink song)

Even amongst infertility people, I don't really fit in.  We're not pursing treatment and we're not really trying anymore either.  My husband and I decided that we wanted to start our family two years ago, which doesn't seem like that long, but this past winter we went through infertility testing and I received a diagnosis of Diminished Ovarian Reserve (missed a POF diagnosis by thismuch), a partially blocked tube, and probable endometriosis, so suffice to say that our chances of naturally conceiving are roughly equivalent to being struck by lightening.  We've also elected not to pursue any fertility treatments.  A number of factors played into this decision, and I'll probably get into some of that at some point on this blog, but I am confident in our decision not to pursue treatment and so is my husband.  So where does this leave us now?  I guess you could say that we are still trying (in the loosest possible sense of the word); we're having regular, unprotected sex, but I'm not temping, charting, peeing on things, seeking treatment, etc.  We'll be thrilled if it happens but understand that it's not likely to.  I'm also working on coming to terms with a child free life, which is probably going to be the biggest part of this blog.

If you've read along this far, please leave a comment.  I've silently followed a few living child free after infertility blogs, but now that I have my own blog I'll start un-silently following.