The Scar of Infertility

Okay..I'm sitting here, it's almost 10 at night. Tomorrow I go in for my first ultrasound of my 5th IVF cycle. I thought that I would write about it this time. My mind is in a different place, I'm not so desperate anymore in my heart...and I think that I could effectively chronicle my life. It's hard to believe that it's been 4 years since my last cycle. I still am amazed that there is a little boy sleeping in the next room that is mine. I reflect on pregnancy like it was the first time I fell in love, the same rose-colored glasses, the only difference is that I don't have to take the glasses off because the story only gets better.

What I do think I'll do though is reflect on the scar of infertility. Sometimes it's overlooked, maybe way too often..but when I'm at the store, I swear that I can recognize the look in a woman's eyes. I know the glazed look, the empty stare, the aching of not wanting to go into another store where I might see a pregnant woman. Passing by the maternity clothes in Target like they have the swine flu..and then finally just not walking past that section at all. When I see pregnant women I still feel it, even though the pain of wondering if I'll ever have a child is no longer there-or is it? I think it is. I think that I forget sometimes. Not that I forget that I have a son, but that I forget that I don't have to connect with the pain anymore, that it's no longer part of the story.

But what if it was? What if that's you, and your reading this thinking it SUCKS that it's still part of your story? My only response is that I understand. After the 3rd BFN I stopped living for a while. I took off 7 years from any infertility treatments, long enough to get to a place where I had come to a different understanding. After the third cycle I was desperate. I remember going to church, definitely not believing that God had a plan for me, but still going. I asked a man to pray for me, pray for the procedure to work..but instead he asked me this...if it didn't work, would he still be the same God?

Yes I said, NO WAY I thought. What kind of God lays this on? Puts the desire in my heart to conceive and then withholds it from me?? So, after that BIG FAT NEGATIVE, I waited. I waited for all of those years until I believed that with or without a child, God was still the same God. They were really hard years. I hated myself for some of them, hated what infertility had turned me into, or what I had allowed it to turn me into.


So where am I now? Every so often I find myself going back to that place again. The pessimistic place of thinking that of course it won't work..God already gave me a son, why should I ask for more? But then I remember God is good..he's not like us. I'm sure I'll be disappointed if it doesn't work, but he'll still be the same God. I pray that I can remember that if I need to. Until then, I continue to thank him for the child that I'm praying for, the one that is yet to come.