Estace Day 6Is There Such a Thing as a Safe Space?

I'm starting a new job this week at a really neat company. It's close to home and the group seems very friendly, upbeat, and I am so so so excited to join them. I had a telephone call with my new supervisor today and we tried to hammer our my schedule for the upcoming week.

Well, I'm starting a new IVF cycle this week and I was hemming and hawing about whether to tell her about it or not. She confided in me that she was having to leave town for some personal business and then shared the reason for her absence with me. I felt, in that instance, that I really should just tell her what J and I are up to.

So I did and she without skipping a beat, wished us success and didn't seem the least bit weirded out by it all. Some people think that us IF folks are "out there" in our quest to have a child. That we're extremists. I've had a few friends say that they'd "just adopt" if they ever met up with a similar situation in their own lives.

In my heart, I don't know how they could say that they'd "just adopt" without having walked in our shoes for even a few feet. IVF is hard, physically and emotionally. Granted the first cycle was the hardest for me. The subsequent cycles have been easier and easier. My expectations aren't high and should we meet with success, I think I'd be in shock. Utter shock. Disbelief. I'd need a sequence of ultrasounds and bHCGs to convince me that it was real.

And then I still wouldn't believe that a baby would really come of it.

I'm no longer naive. I know, now, after reading all of my sister IF blogs, that miscarriage is the next worry that will pervade my consciousness. If the immune issues don't get to my baby, then it will be a subchorionic hemorrhage. A blighted ovum. A trisomy. I won't sleep well till the nuchal transluscency scan and amnio tests (or chorionic villus testing) are done.

But will I sleep well, relax, exhale when I've passed through these tests with flying colors? I'm not sure that I will. God, haven't we all heard of women who lose their child in the last trimester? I know that I have and the devastation that ensues is earth shattering.

There are women out there who get pregnant and then carry to term without a care in the world. They view the amnio as just something they have to take time off from work for, that is, if they even do one. They might feel so confident in their nuchal scan that they skip it altogether. The issues that we go through, as the "IF", are completely unknown to these women. At first glance, it feels unfair, but honestly...isn't it great that there are women that can carry to term and truly enjoy and relish every minute of their pregnancies? It's beautiful, yet I am jealous of them, but I don't wish for one second that they walk in our shoes. But when they are in our presence and they speak about their pregnancies with such abandon, taking the joy for granted as many of them do, I can't help but die a little inside.

But it's mostly because I wish I was in their shoes.