The guilt of secondary infertility

I am a wife, a mother, and a full-time student, accepted to enter the nursing program at one of the best nursing schools in the state in the Fall of 2010. But I have a problem.

I am really struggling with this whole secondary infertility issue. Each day it feels like it gets a little harder to breathe, and the times that we get bad news just makes it worse. I'm afraid that people will think I'm greedy, or that I should be thankful that I have a happy, healthy, almost-two-and-a-half-year-old. Well, I am. I thank God every day when I wake up that He let me have another day with her. She is amazing. She has my heart forever and I would walk across fire if it meant she could always be happy and healthy for the rest of her life.

But I want another baby. I feel like there is something missing in our family; better, someONE missing in our family. I love my husband with all of my heart, and when Avery was born, I thought my world was complete. But I am ready for another baby. Since we started trying 19 cycles ago, each month that I got a negative test got harder and harder to bear, until I stopped taking pregancy tests because I couldn't deal with seeing the "Big Fat Negative."

This was our 5th round of Clomid. We had our mid-cycle scan last Wednesday, but I just knew there was going to be bad news. Sure enough, the follicles that should be at 18-20mm in size for that day in a particular cycle were only at 6-8mm. My heart sank. At that point, no medication in the world was going to make me ovulate in time for this cycle. Another month gone before it even started. All along, I had a feeling that the Clomid wasn't working, but they still wanted me on it anyway. When I would do each cycle, I had a progesterone draw on day 21 to see if my levels would support a pregnancy. Where they should at least be above 10, but ideally up to 25, my came back at 0.1, 0.7, 1, and 1.1, which lead my doctors to believe that I wasn't ovulating.

As I left the Fertility Specialist's office, I realized that my daughter would at least be over 3 now before she had a sibling, if at all. Though I'm sure she doesn't mind keeping us all to herself, I really want her to have a brother or sister. I couldn't imagine not having my sisters in my life, even though they drive me crazy sometimes, and I'm sure vice-versa.I find that I'm also getting frustrated with how people, especially my family, reacts when I tell them the disheartening news of each failed attempt. I guess it's hard to understand unless you've been through it. To know that there is something wrong with your body that is preventing you from doing something that you so easily acheived 3 years ago, is mind-boggling. What happened?! I got pregnant on birth control with Avery. The irony is almost laughable.

I guess from here we leave it up to the Big Man. Somehow, I haven't lost my faith in all of this. I really don't know how that happened, but it did. I think it actually renewed it, really. I am surrounded by pregnant people at the moment, and I keep thinking to myself that if God gave them another baby, surely He hasn't forgot about us, right? Maybe our stork got lost. In that case, I'd be happy to give him a GPS, so that this kind of thing never happened again.

So how is all of this affecting my marriage? It is and it isn't. What I mean by that is, I have an incredibly supportive, loving husband, who can't stand to see my cry. Unfortunately, that's what I've been doing since we were diagnosed with secondary infertility. Each time some test I had been subjected to came back with unexpected results, it got a little harder to deal with. Sometimes, I would just want to be left alone. Obviously that doesn't happen with a toddler, and a husband who won't leave you alone because he wants to make sure you're okay, and can he get you anything in the meantime? Sometimes I worry that I leave his feelings out in all of this. We have a pretty open line of communication, and I share all the nitty gritty details with him, because, honestly, there isn't much we don't talk about. He likes to be able to talk things through and find a solution to things right away. I would rather steep for a bit, then decide what we are going to do. I wish I could be more like him sometimes.

I created this blog to give me an outlet. Maybe sharing my feelings with my laptop will help me put things into perspective. I don't necessarily want advice; I just want to unload.This blog offers me the opportunity to do just that.