Hope

Despite all its fans and positive reputation, hope is no longer a welcome visitor to my house - at least not in the infertility realm. I have told people of my aversion to hope and its intoxicating powers and have generally been met with looks of dissapproval and inquiries into my mental state. But hang around any group of infertility sufferers for very long and you'll find that this is a very common refrain. Hope becomes a cruel mistress offering you promises of all your dreams fulfilled only to leave you more hollow and more deeply cut when the inevitable blow of reality hits.

Every time I think I have broken my ties with Hope she wriggles her way back into my life despite my better judgment. Its the classic story of someone who just can't break free of that bad relationship, always giving into the temptation of comfort offered by its familiarity, its imagined potential - however small. I went into my current round of fertility treatments touting the dissolution of my relationship with Hope, agreeing with Randy and my close family that this was best. I would expect nothing and therefor stand to loose nothing besides money when it didn't work. But once again, as happens every month, I was seduced by Hope's charm and now I'm left feeling foolish and deflated.

This was our first month of IUI (intrauterine insemination)- a process in which I take fertility drugs, including an injected ovulation trigger. On the day of expected ovulation they take Randy's sperm and insert it through a catheter into my uterus, thereby giving the sperm and the egg the best possible chances to get together on their own. I told myself it wouldn't work. I didn't believe it would work. I've been failing this conception test for 22 months now and it would take a lot to convince me I could finally pass. We were just doing this as a last resort (we are not interested in In Vitro) - to say we tried - so we wouldn't always wonder "what if we had just done IUI - maybe it would have worked".

But how can you go through all the efforts required to do even a simple procedure like IUI without letting Hope in, just a little? Apparently its not possible, at least not for me, not at this point in my journey. Even dissappointing news about our chances the day of the procedure didn't prove, in the end, to be enough of a deterent to Hope. Uninvited, unwanted, and unhelpful, Hope barged into my psyche to get me worked up with what now seem like totally rediculous thoughts:

Maybe I should take my temperature one more time - a higher temperature certainly means I'm pregnant, right?

I should take my pregnancy test on Thursday, that way on Friday at work I can slip a note to my best friend that says "Don't tell, but you're not the only pregnant person in this room!"

I definitely need to take the pregnancy test by Friday, that way at Dad's birthday dinner I can announce to the family that he's getting a grandchild for his birthday.

I haven't had any spotting or cramping like I normally do the week before my period. That has to be a good sign.

Hope whispers these sweet lies to my subconcious, abedded by another cruel maiden - Nature - who apparently thinks its funny to allow my period to come late. Even a one day lag is like another crack fix to an infertile person. All the rationalizing and logical thinking in the world is no match for its power. I just go along with it, aiding in my own demise like an addict who is his own worst enemy.

In true fashion, Hope had her fun and has fled the scene now that reality has set in and its time for the hard part. I finally took the mystical pregnancy test this morning - the little stick that has so much power over my future. Randy and I thought it would be better to take it, now that its officially been more than 14 days (the two week wait, or 2ww as its known online), than just letting Hope build as more time went by without any sign from Aunt Flo - since my fertility drugs have been known to cause late periods. And once again, I failed the test. Rather than the response of indifference I was naively hoping for when we started the process, crushing despair has set in, inviting a whole new host of thoughts:

My life has turned into nothing more than a series of bad news. I'll never catch a break. What is the point in trying anymore?

Now I'm just fat and rundown with nothing to show for it. If I was fat and rundown with a child it would be excusable but now its just pathetic. I have the side effects of being a parent without any of the benefits.
I hope I don't run into anyone I know from my past. The last thing I need is to see an old peer looking great with her adorable children in tow. What will I say? Well...I have a husband so I'm not a total looser? Looks like we've both been busy.....you have the family you always wanted and I have a part time job that is beneath my educational level and a BMI that is above anything remotely respectable for my age?

Why did I let the doctor talk us into this? He doesn't know if my tubes are even open enough to release an egg. He just wants my money in exchange for the dream of a baby. Money I should be using to adopt a real baby.

What really gets me about all of this is that I had moved on when I though there was no chance of getting pregnant short of IVF. For those beautiful two weeks I gave up the fertility nightmare and felt real hope coursing through my veins. The genuine hope that stays through good times and bad, the kind that doesn't build you up only to watch you fall that much further. The hope that life after the fertility battle does exist, the hope that life can be more than a series of dissappointing and expensive obsessions, the hope that I could be a parent through adoption. Now, back in limbo, I pine for this hope and the freedom it brings. But as long as we are committed to this course of IUI I remain a entangled in my broken relationship with Hope, my old flame, my old enemy.