It has been some time…

I am a unicorn. And so is she.

Hello there friend.

It’s been some time since I’ve written – almost a year in fact.  And that’s not because I haven’t had a million and one Hawaiian adventures to share, but because sharing meant that what’s happening now is real – and this whole dreamy (yet somewhat miserable) story is hard to believe in.

Since my last post, which was about as honest as I could have been about our full fertility journey, so much has happened.  I went to Singapore and left my gall bladder there.  I got to see the Big Island, Kauai and Maui.  I got to hike across a lava lake, take a plane over the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, and experience the remarkable Cloud Forest.  I’ve been to Guam, where the snorkeling really is the best in the world, and moved into a new house much closer to town.

But the biggest news of all is something that I’m horrified to type:  In July of 2014, I got pregnant.

Pinterest Couple

You would think I’d be jumping for joy.  You would think I’d be yelling from the rooftops because we’d spent so many years of our relationship trying to make this happen.  You’d think I’d be happy…  But you’d be wrong.

Don’t read this cruelly, because I don’t mean to say that I wasn’t happy to be pregnant.  On the contrary, there was a piece of my heart healed by the news.  But after spending years going through infertility treatments, chemical pregnancies and miscarriages, it was (and still is) really hard to imagine.

It’s kind of like spending your life training to climb Mount Everest, and now, you’re finally there, you’re finally getting to take on your dream and it’s terrifying.

You see, people who suffer from infertility and undergo years of treatment can end up with PTSD.  Yeah, yeah, you can dismiss it outright, but I can personally tell you it’s absolutely true and the scientific evidence backs me up on that one.  There’s an article on Medscape that says it well…

“Subsequent to the trauma, victims experience feelings of intense fear, helplessness, or horror…  The inability to conceive can catapult some patients into a state of shock, disbelief, and helplessness.  Infertile couples must grieve 2 losses simultaneously:  the loss of their ability to procreate as well as the loss of the hope for children…  They [patients] may re-experience the trauma as nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive thoughts about distressing procedures or pregnancy loss…  Giving birth to [a baby] seemed, at first, like heaven to her, but this quickly gave way to feelings of severe emotional distress…  She could not plan for the future or think beyond conception.  Her life was on hold, indefinitely…  She continually blamed herself for the ways in which she imagined she had caused the infertility…  On her visits to the gynecologist, she became tremulous, sweaty, short of breath, and highly irritable.”

When I took my first pregnancy test, I got two lines.  So I took two more the same night.  Then I took one or two every day for weeks.  I saw my family physician, who drew blood and tested my urine.  Positive!  Off to the OB.  But, I wasn’t very excited.  What was my beta?  Could I take another test the following day?  I needed to know if it was doubling or not.  But, they’re not an infertility clinic.  They don’t do that.  Instead, I had to wait a couple weeks to get in to see the OB, and I had about five panic attacks in the days subsequent to being told that I had to wait.  It was so bad that I actually considered taking a Xanax.

Every day.

In the meantime, I cried almost every day.  I dreaded going to the bathroom, and I went more often waiting for that tell-tale sign that I’m not pregnant.  Every single day I knew – I just knew – it wasn’t going to stick.  Every single day I waited, analyzing every single pain, every single symptom – double-guessing my own instincts and behavior.  Do you know what it’s like to constantly think, “Am I overly tired because it’s sticking?  Or because I slept two hours?”  “Am I really feeling nauseous, or am I making myself nauseous from the anxiety?”  Pregnancy after infertility is hard sucks.

The night before Keith arrived home from deployment, I was spotting and it wasn’t light.  I knew – I just knew – it was over.  I put on a brave face at our event, and at homecoming the next day as I sadly told my husband I was so sorry…  That my body yet again failed us.  But, together we decided to go see the OB anyway.

That Thursday, we sat in the office.  I was probably the most miserable-looking person there.  The nurse took my vitals and congratulated me, to which I replied, “Please don’t congratulate me.  It only makes it harder when you have to say you’re sorry.”  I was that rude, miserable woman.

The doctor came in the room and asked to do an ultrasound,  I didn’t look at the screen.  I didn’t want to see that big, empty void again.  I didn’t want to know that I’d wasted another couple of hours at a doctor’s office pleading for a miracle that would never come.  Yet, there she was.  This tiny little bean on the screen.  Keith squeezed my hand.  The doctor said everything looks good, but let’s hear her heartbeat.  That moment was the most frightening moment of my life.  I was so happy inside to hear that thump thump thumping, but at the same moment, my brain took over and said, “Don’t enjoy this too much.  It will only make you feel worse when you have to come back to an empty screen.”  I barely reacted.  Keith cried and held my hand.  I think he had a little bit of PTSD too.

Every week, we journeyed into the doctor’s office.  Every week, I was convinced that some spotting or some pain meant that the baby was gone.  Every week, we saw her wiggle wiggle wiggle on the screen and I just couldn’t open my heart to the possibility.  Talk about pessimism – except this was quiet acceptance that we would never make it to the finish line.  I couldn’t enjoy these moments.  I wouldn’t let myself, no matter how hard my heart tried.  I kept up with the bathroom anxiety.  I went probably once an hour, or every other, waiting – expecting – actually seeing that it had failed, even when it hadn’t.

Eventually, we didn’t have to go every week and she grew and grew and grew.  But pregnancy has been awful for me.  I was vomiting so often that I actually lost weight.  Poor Keith spent the night awake taking care of me while I cried and vomited and took baths to calm myself down.  I did nothing but sleep.  All.  The.  Time.  I slept day and night, because there was no other alternative to the nausea.  And my self-doubt only increased with every twinge and doctor’s appointment.

I was so sick that I could barely function.  We had a dinner event to attend and thirty minutes beforehand, I was bawling into my husband’s chest that I couldn’t even stand up straight.  But I couldn’t complain – not after we’d tried for so long.  I couldn’t complain.  I couldn’t say this is awful.  I couldn’t tell anyone how I was feeling, that there were moments when I wondered if I was still being punished…  If, for some reason, the universe had to make sure I really wanted a baby.

The nausea got better, but has never gone away 100%.  The discomforts continued to pile up.  Complete exhaustion for one, and restless leg, insomnia, heartburn – you name it, I have it.

What I also have is the inability to enjoy this pregnancy.  I still cannot imagine what it will be like to have a real little infant in my arms.  I’m still detached from the images on the screen and have trouble relating that what I’m seeing is what’s happening inside my own body.  Even her movements make me nervous.  If I haven’t felt her for a while, I’m convinced that something is wrong – to the point where I refuse to take Benadryl to sleep because it reduces how much she moves and causes me extreme anxiety.

The pregnancy has progressed as it should, with a few hiccups.  I’m still high-risk and there’s a potential for an early induction due to personal circumstances that I won’t discuss here (despite how open I am, there are some things that can’t go on the internet).  Every visit to the doctor’s office is stressful still.  The other day, I couldn’t find a parking space.  When I finally did, and I was five minutes late, I couldn’t stop crying.  I could not stop crying.  I was a lunatic and my blood pressure showed it.  I couldn’t answer questions, got angry when asked things that I thought were dumb, and became convinced that something was wrong.  Alas, all is okay and after spending the remainder of the day napping and in bed, I was able to function once again in the morning.

Keith and I have finished the nursery, which has been a welcome distraction to the other concerns.  Somehow, it’s easier for me to plan for a new room than it is to think about the person who will be sleeping in it.  It’s easier for me to find a safe carseat or pick out the perfect shade of pink than it is to imagine her wrapped in that perfectly pink blanket.  It’s easier for me to be concerned about who’s going to mow the lawn and how am I going to get my hair dyed than it is to be concerned about caring for her.

It’s also taken me a long time to feel okay with sharing her photos or videos.  I blame myself for the infertility and I blame myself for how hard the pregnancy has been.  I blame myself for being a bad friend to the other infertiles by sharing anything joyous.  My heart breaks to think about the people who are still going through this journey and I feel isolated and alone in surviving it.

Yep.

I know that our little girl is a miracle.  I know that we beat the odds.  Don’t be an idiot and tell me it’s because we stopped trying.  That only throws me into a rage.  So, if we hadn’t been trying, would our babies have survived?  Would we not have had to endure the pain of a miscarriage just before Christmas if only we hadn’t been trying?  Or my other favorite – it’s because I lost weight.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I lost weight.  But that’s not why I got pregnant because I couldn’t get pregnant when I weighed the exact same amount in the past.  Surprise, surprise – I’ve been this weight before and we still were enduring chemical pregnancies and an inability to conceive.

I’m angry a little bit.  Angry at what we had to go through.  Angry that it took so long to work.  Angry that I’m 34 and pregnant and not 30 and pregnant.  Angry that it’s happened now, when Keith will be gone so much.  And I’m afraid.  Keith and I spent so much time just trying to make a new life that we never stopped to think about the impact that new life would have on us.  I’ve been so fixated on infertility that I never thought about what parenting looks like.

Infertility is a disease and it’s in some ways a lifelong one, even if you can overcome it.  It strips you of the ability to feel all that joy and excitement that every other pregnant woman seems to experience.  The glow that you have might be there physically, but it’s not inside.  You love your baby.  You probably even love your baby more than those who haven’t fought so hard for life’s little miracle.  But the fear is so overwhelming and paralyzing – the fate so already ingrained and accepted – that it is simply impossible to have a “normal” pregnancy.

Right now, we’re still awaiting some decisions about whether we’ll be inducing or holding out (we’re hoping for holding out, as is the doctor, but it’s not really in our power to make that decision).  And I’m still working hard to manage my prenatal depression (there’s another topic no one wants to talk about – even including me at this moment).  We’re in the home stretch, passed all the important dates for ensuring her survival, and can see the finish line coming up fast.  It’s still such a dream to me, like I’m going to wake up without this big belly in the morning and go back to what my life was meant to be.  I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and, day-by-day, becoming a little more hopeful that there isn’t one.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.  To my infertile friends, I love you and I will never forget the pain of that process.  What it felt like to finally give up…  But I will also never know what it’s like to never succeed, and I won’t claim to.  There’s no magic formula that I can give you.  I don’t believe in those dumb things people say about relaxing and taking a break and getting okay in your own head.  That’s not why we’re pregnant.  We’re pregnant because of some fluke, and despite the negativity in my post today, I will be forever grateful for that fluke – for although I am struggling to see it, I know – I know with all my soul that this is about to be the greatest journey of my life.

Our baby is a rainbow baby because she’s conceived after a loss.  And she’s a unicorn baby because she’s the rare miracle after failed infertility treatments.  So, our baby is already being born with unicorns and rainbows, and if that’s not positive enough for you, I don’t know what is.