No Man's Land

You know when you hear or see a lot of something and then all of the sudden that something becomes a part of your life? 

I feel like after having Brooklyn I started hearing a lot more about infertility and finding out a lot of friends and acquaintances had or were dealing with infertility.  

Previously I was never really worried about it.  My mom and sisters were all really fertile and we got pregnant with Brooklyn as soon as we started trying. 

We always talked about having three maaaayyybe four kids and having them spaced three years apart.  

Brooklyn is now 3.5 years so obviously that hasn't happened. 

At first I thought that maybe we just weren't timing sex right.  So I started tracking my cycles on an app on my phone and tracking my temperature.  I noticed that I was ovulating later than the standard day 14 of my cycle but usually around day 18 or so.  

After three months of trying I started to be concerned. Was I ovulating too late in my cycle? 

Started taking all kinds of natural supplements that were supposed to help with ovulation and fertility.

Month 5 of trying my period was a few days late.  I took a pregnancy test each day that passed after my expected period day.  Finally three days passed and I had a slight positive home pregnancy test.  I was wary because with my pregnancy with Brooklyn the test line was much more defined and came positive a couple days before my expected period.  Sure enough the next day I started bleeding.

I went to see an OB/GYN.  His advice was to take a baby aspirin each day and keep trying til January and if I wasn't pregnant by January to come back.  

Thomas went in for a checkup and had his testosterone levels checked and they were fine.

In March it will be a year of trying. Right now with no income we have Medicaid as insurance which obviously doesn't cover any kind of fertility treatments. 

I've stopped tracking my temperature or charting on the fertility app, stopped taking all the supplements (besides a prenatal). I just couldn't do it anymore.  It was becoming too all consuming. 

We've talked about our next step and will go ahead and pay for a sperm analysis once we hit our year mark of trying, not necessarily because we think it has to do with the sperm but because it's the least expensive and least invasive test.

Here are the stories I sometimes tell myself and the questions and feelings I have about the whole situation:

- Am I only supposed to have one child? Not something I ever imagined but there are perks to just having one child. Travel more, less expensive, more time and attention given to her, etc.

- I'm depriving my child of a sibling. Brooklyn wants a sibling SO bad. She constantly asks me if there is a baby in my belly.  Or she will randomly say "my baby's coming soon right?"

- People here in Utah all have lots of kids.  They don't want to hang out with us because we only have one kid.

- God must think that I can't handle more than one child.

-  I'm sincerely happy for my friends and family who have announced pregnancies and just had babies. It doesn't bother me to talk about their pregnancies or babies at all.  I know that they know what I'm going through and they love me and wish me the best and I wish the best for them too. Bizarrely it's the acquaintances or strangers who I see with four or five kids and I start to get bothered.  I think things like "wow they don't even know how lucky they are to be able to get pregnant so easily".  And maybe they do, I don't know their story and they don't know mine.  So I also assume that they are judging me for only having one kid.  In Mormon culture you are supposed to have lots of kids to "multiply and replenish the earth". People say things like "So you just have one kid huh?" That word "just" makes me feel so bad for Brooklyn. Yes, we have one child but she is the BEST child in our eyes! 

- Not knowing when or if I'll get pregnant again is challenging because I don't know if I should plan for races in coming months, vacations, etc. I've realized I can't put my life on hold waiting.

- I've started training for a marathon the beginning of June. I've thought of just stopping trying during this time.  One reason being because I think it's worse having the hope that *maybe* I could get pregnant this month and then having the hopes dashed.  I'd almost rather just use birth control so that I don't get my hopes up even a bit just to have them destroyed each month. But then I feel like if I did birth control that I'm saying I don't want another child.  That's not it at all. I just don't want to be teased month after month with the hope. I guess I just want some control back maybe? 

- I think I'm being punished by God for not wanting to have another child sooner. Lots of friends had their kids two years apart.  I still wasn't over the trauma of pregnancy and a colicky baby at that point to consider another child. But maybe I should have been and this is my punishment. 

So this is what I've been experiencing lately. I haven't wanted to write about it because I think of people who struggle with infertility who don't have a child like we do, or ones who have been trying a lot longer than we have and I think maybe this post would be insulting.  So I feel like I'm in between two groups. Not necessarily in the infertile group because we have a child and have only been trying for 11 months, and not in the fertile group either cause we only have one child. I'm kind of in no man's land over here.