Life After IVF: 3

Trauma can feel so lonely. I look back at the many times in my infertility that I felt alone. I knew I wasn’t, in fact, I had many people who just simply wanted the best for me. But, sometimes that just wasn’t enough. I think about how my infertility haunted my life. As much as I tried to “overcome” it, there it was. In all reality, there isn’t really a way to “overcome” it except to have biological children. I grew a tremendous amount of strength learning to live with an illness yet not letting it dictate my life. It’s some weird balance that somehow I was forced to figure out. Everyday I shed a little bit more of that trauma. And everyday, it hurts a little less. It will never go away, I will never forget what I’ve been through but I am now officially able to move on from it and heal. The healing process can be very enlightening as well. I have caught myself having little thoughts and images of Brock taking the car seat out of the Jeep with the baby in it, or a toddler playing outside with Grandpa. These are the thoughts that I’ve never had before, and it’s in those thoughts that I know the healing is happening. As the days go on and I get bigger, I heal even more because the reality becomes more real. I can tell baby is growing and it’s for real happening. As I see more ultrasounds, I become more attached. Like, I might actually love this little thing and really care about it. It sounds so silly but for me it just never seemed like any of this was ever a possibility so as time goes on, these little moments that may seem natural to some people are just now starting to evolve. It has been hard knowing that everything has been kind of delayed for me. It’s kind of sad to think that I spent the first 13 weeks of my pregnancy feeling hesitant, not happy. I was hesitant to be happy, instead I was cautious. I was hesitant to talk about it with real emotions, instead I was guarded. But I have decided to take this process at my own pace and let myself feel the emotions I need to at that time. And little by little, these walls are coming down, and instead, now I can feel joy.

Here is a picture of me from today! My shirt says, "Well....it's not a puppy."

And for now,

Xoxo