One step at a time

I read this NYT essay the other day. I was glad to see it. The author is moving on to adoption. We may do that down the road.

Last year at just this time, I was ready to go for it. It seemed the only option to me. (And it is a fantastic option, but I will not apologize for continuing to ttc while I reasonably can. I've found that I can't move on to that step until I've done all I possibly can to satisfy my brain that conceiving with DH absolutely won't work.) But then we took a break from all of it. I was deep into a cycle of grief and needed to let that play out. When it did, we decided to consult with a new RE.

Should we have done that right away? No real answer. We can only deal with what we can deal with on any given day. I felt battered by years of failure (50-some active cycles in a row, with another 20 or so at least where no preventative measures were taken). I'd let the first RE's attitude cut me off at the knees. DH was gone a lot, traveling for work. Things didn't seem right. Naturally, though, it's hard not to look back and think that had we gone straight to our current RE, maybe we could have cycled soon after. My FSH was much better back then, as was my AFC. And the fibroids I had removed last fall weren't even showing up on u/s then. It's easy to dream that my chances would have been better then than they are now.

But, there is no way to judge that. This RE suspects that the fibroids were in fact growing then but just hadn't taken hold enough to show up. They were firmly rooted across a long stretch of muscle outside the uterus (she took that too) and probably stretched out that way before popping up and poking into the uterus. I tell myself that it is better to cycle now with my sparkly new uterus, which my RE called "beautiful" last time I saw her. Oh, and of course it is better to cycle while DH is living here full-time instead of traipsing back and forth across the country for months on end.

Back to the article I linked to: I love seeing the adoption ending because I get so sick of every story about fertility struggles ending in a birth story. I know that's what people want to read. But we don't all meet a fairytale prince (didn't need or want one of those anyway), we don't all strike it rich by "doing what we love," and we Infertiles do not all eventually end up with a take-home bio baby. I just like the reality of it. Nobody ever talks about Infertiles who adopt and DON'T suddenly find themselves miraculously pregnant. Nor do they talk about those who end up deciding to live child free.