Bitter but better

Today I am better.

Yesterday was a bad day. All at once I felt every one of the accumulated disappointments of the last several months — not just the cancellation of this cycle, but the fiasco that was January's and the failure of November's. Most keenly and most surprisingly, I felt the grief of August's miscarriage, a sadness that had, I thought, receded. Not so, not so, particularly as we enter March, when I would have been due.

All of those defeats combined to knock me flat for most of the day. All those things I've lost. I cried in the car. I cried in the shower. I cried for a long time in bed. And this morning, like my friend, I got up.

Despite my fears about moving farther down the path, closer to the end, this isn't over for me yet. I won't get pregnant this month, but I probably wouldn't have, anyway. I won't get pregnant next month, but that was going to be a rest cycle, anyway. And in May, who knows what will happen? Even then, pregnant or not, I'm not out of options.

They aren't what I wished for, but none of this is. I have to work with what's at hand.

In January I had a cyst, too, though it was smaller and diminishing on cycle day 2. We went ahead with no apparent difficulty (at least not from the cyst). This one's different. This cyst is big. I can feel it. It hurts. Although I suppose I could have asked to have it aspirated, and I could have urged my doctor to do the bloodwork on the off chance that the cyst wasn't producing estrogen, I decided against it. I don't see the point of that. I choose to believe that my body is trying to tell me something important.

I can't believe it would work out well to try to overcome my body's objections this month. I don't put a lot of faith in the notion that things are or are not meant to be. If I did, I'd have been able to take my infertility with much more grace and — behold the staggering irony — would likely be a mother now through adoption. But I do believe this: you can only fight your body so hard. I know. I fight it every month. Most of the time it wins.

Instead I'll give it another month to rest. Perhaps I can lull it into an illusory sense of comfort — you know, fatten it up, soothe it with expensive unguents, deck it with shiny trinkets — so that when I mount my assault in May it'll surrender peaceably, with a minimum of rebellion, and a golden age of civilization will flourish thoughout my pelvis.

If not, I'm calling in reinforcements.

Posted by Julie at 04:07:28 PM in I've learned a lot...but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Comments

Bitter but better

Today I am better.

Yesterday was a bad day. All at once I felt every one of the accumulated disappointments of the last several months — not just the cancellation of this cycle, but the fiasco that was January's and the failure of November's. Most keenly and most surprisingly, I felt the grief of August's miscarriage, a sadness that had, I thought, receded. Not so, not so, particularly as we enter March, when I would have been due.

All of those defeats combined to knock me flat for most of the day. All those things I've lost. I cried in the car. I cried in the shower. I cried for a long time in bed. And this morning, like my friend, I got up.

Despite my fears about moving farther down the path, closer to the end, this isn't over for me yet. I won't get pregnant this month, but I probably wouldn't have, anyway. I won't get pregnant next month, but that was going to be a rest cycle, anyway. And in May, who knows what will happen? Even then, pregnant or not, I'm not out of options.

They aren't what I wished for, but none of this is. I have to work with what's at hand.

In January I had a cyst, too, though it was smaller and diminishing on cycle day 2. We went ahead with no apparent difficulty (at least not from the cyst). This one's different. This cyst is big. I can feel it. It hurts. Although I suppose I could have asked to have it aspirated, and I could have urged my doctor to do the bloodwork on the off chance that the cyst wasn't producing estrogen, I decided against it. I don't see the point of that. I choose to believe that my body is trying to tell me something important.

I can't believe it would work out well to try to overcome my body's objections this month. I don't put a lot of faith in the notion that things are or are not meant to be. If I did, I'd have been able to take my infertility with much more grace and — behold the staggering irony — would likely be a mother now through adoption. But I do believe this: you can only fight your body so hard. I know. I fight it every month. Most of the time it wins.

Instead I'll give it another month to rest. Perhaps I can lull it into an illusory sense of comfort — you know, fatten it up, soothe it with expensive unguents, deck it with shiny trinkets — so that when I mount my assault in May it'll surrender peaceably, with a minimum of rebellion, and a golden age of civilization will flourish thoughout my pelvis.

If not, I'm calling in reinforcements.