FAIL x 6

Before I head into what the next 8 months of our lives looked like in 2015 I have to share a link to a phenomenal article I read online today called, "Why Am I Not Supposed To Tell You I’m Trying To Get Pregnant?" If I could write in this blog the way my head replays our story it would be written like that article. I don't think that you could hit the nail on the head better than the following two paragraphs.

I need to talk about this because I need to get it off my chest, but also because I need people to talk to me about it. Of course, my husband and I discuss it all the time, but I need something from outside the bubble of our relationship, too. And when I think about the mind-spinning I’ve gone through when I’ve revealed it in the past, I realize my concern wasn’t actually about me. So someone’s going to know my husband and I are having semi-scheduled, tactically-timed sex. Who cares? They’re going to know I’m not 100% happy all the time. So? They’re going to find out there’s some potential that something strange is going on with my luteal phase or with my husband’s sperm count or something. I truly don’t give a fuck.

What I have been giving a fuck about, I think, is how everyone else feels. I’m concerned not because they’re going to know a secret about me, but because that secret might make them uncomfortable. I’m freaked out that they’re going to have to experience my sadness secondhand, or that they’ll feel awkward not knowing what to say, or that they’ll start worrying that this might happen to them someday. This isn’t about protecting my feelings — it’s about protecting everyone else’s.

Can I get an Amen?! That is real you guys, that is as real as someone can get to trying to describe the messed up thinking that we go through when you are trying to do something you have absolutely no control over. Good stuff. But enough talk about that let's talk about the horrible year that was 2015.

As I mentioned in my first post, 2015 was punctuated with loss for Greg and I. I have never attended so many funerals in a year and I have never experienced grief the way I did in 2015 before. It was a slippery slope indeed. So keep that in mind as you read everything else that was going on as well. Now I am not asking for a pity party, we got through it, but man it was a rough patch.

After our appointment in February we decided to move forward with the process of intrauterine insemination (IUI) or as most people have heard it referred to as artificial insemination (AI). I jokingly refer to it as the "turkey baster" method, so you can put that all together mentally on how it works. Very glamorous indeed. So February was our first shot at the AI and it didn't go so hot. For most people this is a 3 minute process or less start to finish. Ours included at least 30 minutes of poking and prodding, or should I say stabbing because that is what it felt like. Finally the nurse called in a back up who thought I might have a bend in my cervix that was causing the issue. I responded with, "Great, so now there is a brick wall that is preventing the goods from getting to where they need to go?!", she told us it was more like a sharp 90 degree turn they needed to navigate. #annoyed. After that debacle you wait two weeks and take a test, ours was a negative and I was of course bummed out and proceeded to drink a 1/2 bottle of wine.

March was an instant replay of February, and April went a bit better because we had a fantastic nurse who navigated the maze of my cervix with ease. We were super hopeful with April .... only to return with a negative test yet again. After 3 failed AI's I was really down. We met with the doctor again and talked about what comes next and why the AI's weren't working. I described the troubles the nurses were having but the doctor didn't think he needed to be present for any of it which was incredibly frustrating. He suggested moving on to In Vitro Fertilization but since we had two bad AI experiences we decided to go for another round of three.

We took May off as a mental break from it all and resumed three more AI's in June, July and August. I'll just cut to the chase and tell you they all failed as well.  June, July and August were all ugly months. Lots of anger, tears, questions, fears but most of all for me the looming feeling of failure. The summer my heart was heavy with the loss of my dad's best friend and Greg's grandpa. I could wrap my head around Grandpa but Gary was a different story. I'll do my best to talk about the dark and uncontrolled feelings I had in my next post.