This too shall pass

I need to have some hope. I need something to look forward to. It is hard for me right now because I am a do-er person. I don't sit around and hope for things to happen. When I feel stuck (and boy do I feel stuck right now) I look around for something I can do about it. Which is how I got into this mess in the first place. Since there is nothing I can do about my current situation, I have decided to look back. There were so many times I have been down-in-the-ditch-low with seemingly no way out...and yet I'm here. I'm not in that ditch anymore. I may be in an equally nasty ditch of my own making, but if I made it out then, I can make it out now.

January of 2003 was a nasty spot. We had been ttc for 3 years, and had been undergoing ART for one of them. 2002 had been a whirlwind of doctors, tests, piles of medications...but only two actual cycles attempted. After the second cycle failed, a FET, my RE told us that he would not go forward and pursue any more treatments until I had my nasty fibroid removed. The only thing was that the fibroid was of a sort that had many tentacles reaching outward. There was a good chance that I would lose my uterus from blood loss. There was also a chance that it was cancerous because it was growing so fast. I wouldn't be able to go through the surgery until May, and then there would be months of recovery after that...if I had a uterus. I was already 33 years old. I didn't want to wait anymore. I didn't want to have surgery. I was a mess. But here I am now! I've still got my uterus, and it still works. I lost my job, I spent a whole summer pretty much an invalid, but it was worth it. I can say that now with my 20/20 hindsight.

January 2005 was equally depressing. After finally being allowed to do another round of ART, I was finally pregnant. But it was short lived, and I ended up using cytotec to end the pregnancy after 8 weeks because there was no heartbeat. I was terrified because I thought that the surgery had rendered my uterus totally inhospitable. We had some embryos frozen in storage, but I was afraid to try again. I began looking at our state's foster care website, and I began to have hope again...even if it wasn't the road to parenthood I'd been expecting. We had awesome insurance which paid for a limitless amount of cycles...and we had embryos in storage. We couldn't pursue adoption while leaving that chance up in the air, so in March we did a Hail Mary FET. It was both frightening and depressing, there wasn't much hope or happiness in it. But needless to say, it worked. By the end of 2005 our twins were born safe and healthy, and after 6 years I considered our TTC journey DONE. I was wrong, of course, but at least the hardest parts of the road were behind me.

There have been many other hard things than infertility to deal with along the way. Trying to buy a home comes to mind...it was really tough both times. Looking around at my house now I still can't believe it that we could afford this place. (I won't talk about all the frightening possible paranormal activity, or the mice, which are annoying but at least cute). And I haven't mentioned January of 2006, in which I was totally, utterly miserable from PPD with a dash of PTSD thrown in for seasoning.

I am here. I don't know what to do about my current state of unhappiness and helplessness, but this too will pass, and if it works out the way that I wish and hope for, how amazing will that be? Maybe next year I will be able to look back on this time and smile.