I haven't been thinking of my current cycle very much, or the possibilities it holds, even though it's looming. I begin stimming in two weeks. It's a different sort of 2ww. It feels kind of like Sunday night, when you know you have to go back to work again soon, and you know your free time is coming to a close. It doesn’t feel quite like Saturday, or even Sunday morning, since I’m on my diet and taking BCPs and going to acupuncture visits and having a hysteroscopy tomorrow.
I’m starting to realize that after IVF Failure #2, I really did resolve myself to the fact that this may not happen. The thought really doesn’t make me as sad as I sometimes feel it should. I’ve never been one of those women who HAS to have a child. It’s something I want to experience in this lifetime, yes. I know it would bring richness and dimension to my and my husband’s lives like nothing else would. But the thought of living without a child doesn’t cause major fear or depression. Sadness and disappointment, yes. But I now have other plans for my life in my back pocket.
In this respect, I feel a bit alienated from the IF blogging community. I haven’t spent most of my life yearning for a child, and I don’t feel like my life will be tortured without one. I didn’t really even want a child THAT bad until I met my current husband and fell in love and admiration in a way that made me want to reproduce with him. My maternal instincts come in waves – one day, I’ll see a baby and will feel lost and empty thinking I may never have one, but the next day, I’ll see one and casually think yeah, I could see having one. Or not. Either way's fine.
Maybe it’s because of my life experiences.
With my first husband, I went through a major disappointment. Not even the marriage so much as how long it took to get to the marriage. We met when I was 17 and a freshman in college. We dated for almost 9 years before marrying. When my college friends were having weddings and babies, I still had my own apartment and was waiting for a ring. That's when I first truly learned how to live with uncertainty and disappointment. Maybe too much so. When we first started dating, in college, I’d talk about having kids often, way far in the future, but with excitement. But as the years passed and a proposal didn’t come as expected, I pactically stopped even thinking about kids.
Then, divorce changed me in a lot of ways -- it made me feel strong and independent. It made me realize I didn’t need to be married to be happy, that I could make my own way in life just fine. I found new friends, new hobbies, a new home, all in a city that was new to me at the time. I’m not an outgoing person, so to me this didn’t come without effort. But I did it.
After the divorce, I dated someone long-term, but wasn’t ready to enter into a relationship serious enough to lead to marriage for another 4 years. My clock was not ticking very loudly.
It started ticking loud when I met my husband, though. Regardless of my wavering maternal instincts, I am 110% confident that if this IVF works, I would be joyous and ecstatic beyond my wildest dreams. I know we’d make great parents, and that any child we had would have enormous amounts of love poured upon it. We would both do our parental duties without regrets. On this point, I have no doubts or uncertainties whatsoever. He or she would be a very lucky, very loved human being, for sure.
