The Eternal Guest Room

Sometimes it feels like there’s this big club that we’re just not invited to. Even though I know it’s not true, it honestly feels like everyone else has children.

Several months ago I ran into my next-door neighbor only to get a surprise announcement and hear her bemoaning the poor timing of #3. Shortly after that I walked outside to see two yard signs in the diagonal neighbors’ yard: one said “It’s a girl” and the other “It’s a boy.” I met the across-the-street neighbors sometime later and the subject of kids came up. After telling her that we’d been in the process of trying for several years, she of course felt the need to tell me that their son had been conceived in the first month of trying.

It’s like an endless assault.

The neighbors congregate and chat on the sidewalk and I have no reason to join them. I’ve tried in the past but I’m out of place without kids running around. We have nothing in common.

In the past 24 hours I’ve gotten 2 emails from the church list telling me that yet another happy couple has had their wonderful, perfect, healthy baby. I can’t bring myself to go to church; it’s too devastating and isolating. Over the years I’ve felt more and more that the church (in general) is 100% focused on families and the rest of us are left out in the cold.

I’m surrounded by people with kids, people who don’t want kids, and people who plan on having kids someday.

I feel broken in the midst of them.

Not only do I feel shut out of the “moms’ club”, I feel like I’m losing touch with the “girls’ club” as well. It’s this basic, given thing, having children. You decide you want it or you don’t. And either choice is fine.  But I’ve lost the ability to make that decision, and I don’t fit in on either side, and the gap is enormous in my heart.

I feel most alone when I’m in a group. But after removing myself from almost every group situation, I don’t feel any less alone. I don’t know what to do.

Lately I keep having dreams that I’m pregnant.

They make me sad, because I wake up and realize it was just a dream.

But I cling to them – because in my dreams I’m happy, and content, and so excited that it has finally happened, that my dreams have come true.

I close my eyes and replay them. I try to hold on to the thoughts, the feelings.

I remember them so vividly. Not always the circumstances, but always the feelings.

They feel so real.

The waking life feels less real, sometimes.

This might sound really silly to a lot of you – or even just plain horrible. I debated about posting about this, because I know it doesn’t make me look like a good, mature, rational individual, but I’m going to share anyway.

I had a goal. My goal was to be pregnant by my sister’s wedding. My youngest sister (I have 3) is getting married June 12. The thought of going to a major event like that – and a huge gathering of family and friends - while still going through this fills me with dread. My middle sister got married 3 years ago and I had planned to be pregnant by then. And that was 3. Long. Years. Ago.

This has taken over my life. It’s almost all I think about. I don’t feel happy. And that’s not the way I want to be at my sister’s wedding.

I picture my younger sister’s adorable 2 year old daughter throwing flower petals down the aisle, and I know I’ll be thinking “why isn’t my child walking down the aisle with her?”

I wanted to have happy news to share with everyone. I wanted to be full of joy. I wanted this to be behind me. I wanted to be looking ahead.

I feel out of place with my family. That’s not their fault, but it is what it is. It’s one of those things that I can’t really explain – I just feel like the black sheep or something.

I know that I will not make my goal. I will most likely be in the process of having injections every night for a week. We’ll (probably, hopefully) be in the middle of actively doing something, but I won’t be pregnant. I know this.

I’ve been setting goals for years. I won’t list them here, because even thinking about that list makes me tired and teary. But I have spent the last 3 years saying “I will definitely be pregnant by (insert holiday, event, trip, month, someone else’s baby being born, etc. etc. etc.).

Back in January when we were starting our 3-month break, my therapist encouraged me to think positively and assume that I would be 2 or 3 months pregnant by June. That really helped get me through the beginning of the year.

But it didn’t happen.

I have 4 weeks to get it together and suck it up. Mental preparation goes a long way with this. I have 4 weeks to accept it and get ready to not think about it on the big day. I know it will be a hard day for me, but it will be a happy day, full of joy, and I want to fully participate in that joy. So I’m getting ready now.

This was my last goal. I have no more. I will make no more plans.

This is our last year of this, either way. But there will be no more goals.

Not much to report these days. Mother’s day came and went. I felt mostly forgotten, but I survived. We went away for the weekend and it was really, really nice to get away from evertything.

It’s the busy season for my photography business, and that’s helped keep my mind off things. When I think about the infertility side of things, I feel pretty helpless, because there’s not a whole lot I can do. So staying busy is a good distraction, and one I’m thankful for.

We actually came really close to being able to start the IUI process this week. If we’d already had the drugs, if the nurses had gotten back to me sooner, if we were going to Hawaii 2 days later…but of course, with all those “ifs” it isn’t going to happen. My body decided to be really weird and reset itself either 2 weeks early or late – not really sure which. As a result we came really close to being able to move forward, but on the bright side we’ll (hopefully) be able to do an IUI a little earlier than originally planned. On the not-so-bright side, we may have to juggle wedding events during the process.

Figures, right?

So that’s where things are right now. Nothing much.

I often wonder: What would life be like?

If things had gone according to plan. If we had conceived when we expected to. If we had had a child when we intended to.

We would have a 2 1/2 year old. We would probably be working on #2. We would have never known this struggle. We would have been blissfully ignorant. We would have thought that life went like it was supposed to, like it was intended to. We would have followed the path of “how things are supposed to be.”

Would we be stressed out? Would we think that a child was a burden? Would we realize how blessed we were? Would we take it all for granted?

Would we be as close as we are now? Would we have known each other as well as we do? Would we appreciate any future children as much as we will after all of this?

I can’t picture the “other.” I look around our house and try to imagine a child here. I can’t do it. I look in the guest room and try to visualize a crib. I can’t. It’s just an extra room full of junk. We recently discovered a cat threw up in there, and it went under the radar for days, because we never go in that room (boo for cats sometimes, really…gross…please don’t think less of me).

What would life be like? Would it be full of joy? Would our house be full of laughter? Would we cherish every moment? Would we be truly happy?

Would it be full of stress? Would it be full of whining about how hard it is to be parents? Would there be regret? Would we have wish we had waited?

What would it be like if there were 3 of us? How would the days go? How would life play out?

I have no idea. I really don’t. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that we can never predict the future. We never know how we would act in a particular situation. We can never say for sure what we will do, how we will feel. There is dreaming, there is wondering, there is planning…and then there is the now, the here, the real.

The “now” for us is that we continue to wait, continue to wonder, continue to hope, continue to fear. We don’t know how it will end. But the sun comes out every morning, even if it’s hidden behind the clouds, and we get up and go on with our lives.

The future will always be the future.

The challenge, right now, is living in the now.

Ladies, just a friendly reminder from Pepsi…

This was an actual captcha I encountered signing up for something completely unrelated this morning.

Have a great day!