I'm a Pregnant Infertile

***For those of you fighting the fight, you're probably not going to like this post or some others I have up my sleeve. Do me a favor, though, please. Tuck it in your back pocket for when you've found your sticky bean and are stumbling around a bit. I'm going to label applicable posts as "IFPregnancy". I suspect these posts might be helpful when you need them, as I've found a few that have made me feel less alone and frustrated with myself.

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I've been silent lately because I've been undergoing an internal wrestling match. It's not often I can't find the words, but until late last week, they had vanished, gone from thin air. The emotions are full-force, but squeezing the words out of them? Impossible.

There are many moments of happiness. Baby (pre-natal) yoga makes me beam. When TH saddles me up for belly pics on Sunday nights and then puts the first TWO into a movie so he can watch me grow, my love for him and Baby bursts through my chest. When I hold the little polk-a-dot onesie I bought in a pack of three, a few for the babies we lost, and the one with the dots for this new baby I hoped we'd get to meet, I am happy in the way I longed for. I imagine wriggling Baby, who just a few weeks ago was the size of one of those dots, into this seemingly HUGE cotton number.

But there are other moments when I am a pregnant woman walking in the shoes of an infertile who cannot leave her soul. I *knew* I would never be the same after all the trauma we just went through. What I didn't know was that the feelings I had would continue to come up even once the fight was over. I thought my attitude toward things would be different, unable to return to some of the carefree aspects I enjoyed before we began trying. But it's not just that. The feelings of infertility can arise so quickly, so remarkably, that I become The Angry Infertile in a matter of seconds. But aren't I pregnant? Aren't I supposed to be relishing in every moment, the way I dreamed it would be to get me through the tears of disappointment that I shed for so many months?

It's wonderful, but it's not all the sunshine and roses I hoped I could make it. When I think of little, individual pieces of the baby I love so dearly, I am happy. When I think about the big picture, how many weeks we have to go, what will happen at our first OB appointment next week, how to handle the NT scan, etc, etc, etc, I start to panic. I feel like a fraud, living the life of a pregnant woman. I revert to my IF trick of shortening my timeframe, and things are magically better. If I only have to worry about today's nausea and tomorrow's homework, I don't have a reason to focus on all the things that could go wrong or might be taken away from me.

I also get overwhelmed by the happiness of the baby as a whole, and this took a very tearful therapy session to draw out. She helped me realize that I experienced over two years of sadness, deep sadness. How can I expect to let in all this happiness after only 9 weeks? I need to be patient, but it's HARD to be patient when you just want to let all the happiness in. Bizarre, no? I don't know that I'll ever get to carry a baby again, and I want to enjoy every single day that I can. I find myself frustrated when the fears make an appearance because I don't want them here; they are no longer welcome in my heart. But I'm re-learning that there are things about yourself you don't get to choose, no matter how much you want them to be true, and that includes simple ideas like feeling happy all the time, even though you want to be.

If I sound like I'm all over the place and my thoughts aren't very focused, it's true. I'm at war with how I'm feeling and how I *want* to be feeling, and it's a harder place to be than I expected. There's also this crazy hormonal aspect that can make normal things that would normally be fine blow wildly out of proportion. (Seriously, TH is a Champ. How'd I get so fabulously lucky with this man?) I've learned that sometimes you just have to let it all flow out, even if you don't want to be feeling a certain way...you ARE.

The more I write this, the more I realize that expectations seem to have been my problem lately. I thought I had cured myself of expectations, but I'm apparently still faulty in some aspects. I'm continuing to "be where I am", regardless of whether or not that's happy, sad, hormonally raging, or tearfully full of love. When things get a little crazy or "unexpected", I need to remember to focus on this little one growing inside me. That's the one thing that can always bring the turmoil back to calm. And it can all change in an instant, and I mean that in a good way.

My mom just emailed me, "Dear Kim and baby". And there the happiness is, abounding.