There are two very worst things about trying and failing to make a baby.
The first is waiting. I've written about waiting a lot. Waiting makes life go so very slowly, and speed by in a blur at the same time. Time feels endless and unfillable, and you feel as though you're watching life whir by without you in it.
The second very worst thing is the complete lack of control that you have over the situation.
Last year I had two emergency surgeries and suffered a brain injury in a car accident. My cat's bladder got blocked and he nearly died but the internet saved him and then he died this year anyway. I am used to things being out of my control. I am superbly uncoordinated and impulsive and my job is pretty unpredictable and despite this, I thrive. I have married one of the most stubborn people I have ever met, but I'm cool with that. I don't need power or control to feel safe and stable.
Or so I thought.
It turns out not being able to control whether or not we get pregnant is driving me fucking insane.
I think the difference is I'm used to things going wrong without my consent, but I'm also used to being able to make things go right when I want or need them to. My body might collapse in various ways at various times, but I can take myself to the GP and take my medications and eat right and if I do all of those things, I can mitigate the bad. When I can't mitigate the bad, I take time away from work to hide and rest and recover until I can. When I didn't get into clinical psychology the first time I applied, I worked my ass off and slept four hours a night for a year and got straight A's in honours and got in the next time. Things go wrong, but I set them right.
The first time we didn't get pregnant, it was a blow. We know a lot of people who got pregnant the first time they tried, and we knew our odds of being in that group were good, but we weren't. I'd done everything right, I'd worn my lucky undies and my favourite shoes on insemination day and there were good omens everywhere, but none of that helped. I was sad, and had a lot of thoughts about how I wish it had been different.
The second time we didn't get pregnant, I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I'd worn my lucky undies but they'd failed me yet again. I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to do. Luckily, next time we were trying Something Different. We were adding a magical medication to our treatment, which boosted our odds by a bunch. At the scan, we saw two wee eggs growing and waiting and everybody told us that it would surely work this time and I chose a different pair of undies to be my NEW lucky ones and even the medication and my Hogwarts undies with their magic powers combined couldn't get us a positive test result.
The failures compounded. Failure then failure to rectify the failure followed by another failure. There is nothing I can do, study, believe, or buy that could make a difference. I have to keep getting up and going to work and every two weeks it's an insemination or a pregnancy test and then we're back out in the world again, carrying on even though the cracks are widening. We're on the right medications, they just aren't changing the outcome. We have the full force of science behind us, but we aren't going anywhere.
For the first time in my life, I feel truly helpless. I've started trying to control ridiculous things that have no chance of affecting the outcome of the next test. "Maybe if I..." pops into my head with increasing frequency. I make bargains with a universe that can't hear me, promising things I can't deliver. No matter how tightly I hold on to the things in my grasp, the things I cannot catch remain out of reach. We can book holidays and buy kittens and I can do as much online shopping as I like, but we're still just watching the dice skid across the board, hoping it lands on the number we need.
The first is waiting. I've written about waiting a lot. Waiting makes life go so very slowly, and speed by in a blur at the same time. Time feels endless and unfillable, and you feel as though you're watching life whir by without you in it.
The second very worst thing is the complete lack of control that you have over the situation.
Last year I had two emergency surgeries and suffered a brain injury in a car accident. My cat's bladder got blocked and he nearly died but the internet saved him and then he died this year anyway. I am used to things being out of my control. I am superbly uncoordinated and impulsive and my job is pretty unpredictable and despite this, I thrive. I have married one of the most stubborn people I have ever met, but I'm cool with that. I don't need power or control to feel safe and stable.
Or so I thought.
It turns out not being able to control whether or not we get pregnant is driving me fucking insane.
I think the difference is I'm used to things going wrong without my consent, but I'm also used to being able to make things go right when I want or need them to. My body might collapse in various ways at various times, but I can take myself to the GP and take my medications and eat right and if I do all of those things, I can mitigate the bad. When I can't mitigate the bad, I take time away from work to hide and rest and recover until I can. When I didn't get into clinical psychology the first time I applied, I worked my ass off and slept four hours a night for a year and got straight A's in honours and got in the next time. Things go wrong, but I set them right.
The first time we didn't get pregnant, it was a blow. We know a lot of people who got pregnant the first time they tried, and we knew our odds of being in that group were good, but we weren't. I'd done everything right, I'd worn my lucky undies and my favourite shoes on insemination day and there were good omens everywhere, but none of that helped. I was sad, and had a lot of thoughts about how I wish it had been different.
The second time we didn't get pregnant, I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I'd worn my lucky undies but they'd failed me yet again. I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to do. Luckily, next time we were trying Something Different. We were adding a magical medication to our treatment, which boosted our odds by a bunch. At the scan, we saw two wee eggs growing and waiting and everybody told us that it would surely work this time and I chose a different pair of undies to be my NEW lucky ones and even the medication and my Hogwarts undies with their magic powers combined couldn't get us a positive test result.
The failures compounded. Failure then failure to rectify the failure followed by another failure. There is nothing I can do, study, believe, or buy that could make a difference. I have to keep getting up and going to work and every two weeks it's an insemination or a pregnancy test and then we're back out in the world again, carrying on even though the cracks are widening. We're on the right medications, they just aren't changing the outcome. We have the full force of science behind us, but we aren't going anywhere.
For the first time in my life, I feel truly helpless. I've started trying to control ridiculous things that have no chance of affecting the outcome of the next test. "Maybe if I..." pops into my head with increasing frequency. I make bargains with a universe that can't hear me, promising things I can't deliver. No matter how tightly I hold on to the things in my grasp, the things I cannot catch remain out of reach. We can book holidays and buy kittens and I can do as much online shopping as I like, but we're still just watching the dice skid across the board, hoping it lands on the number we need.
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