Mother's Day, pt. 4

We left on a suspenseful cliff hanger: was I pregnant?

I wasn't pregnant.  

I was so emotionally worn out and physically exhausted that I had a very uncharacteristic argument with a coworker.  A serious argument.  We considered not working together anymore.  Now, she's one of my best friends.  (I know, it seems like I have lots of those.  Right now, I'd say I have 3.  3 amazing friends I can tell just about anything and know they will still love me.  And they all live 8 hours away.  All 3 are very different and none of them know each other. But this story is across many years, so it may seem I have more friends than I do.  People come and go in life.  That's a free life lesson for you right there :) .)  My mom was convinced I'd had a miscarriage because I had such an emotional response to...well, everything.  At the time, that seemed totally logical.

But I could not blame hormones for my own craziness.  I had set myself up BIG TIME with hope and dreams and making plans and budgets and when it all came crashing down, I handled it rather poorly.   

It has taken lots of similar occasions (though none so drastic or dramatic) to make me see what happened.  In fact, it all just came to me now as I'm typing this novel.  I do some sort of backwards bargaining with God.  Somewhere, mostly unconsciously, I am thinking "what is the step I need to take so that God knows I trust Him and will reward me with a baby."  Like somehow, I can trick God into knowing I trust Him, and I do.  Except for with this whole baby thing.  I mean, its been years of disappointment on the baby front, so obviously, God can take care of me, but this baby thing?  That's on me.  But if I can trick God into thinking I trust Him, even with the baby thing, then all I have to do is figure out which step of faith I have to take in order to get the baby-reward. Right?  (I know all the right answers.  I know this is theologically crazy.  I know, I know.  But its there.)  (Also, even to me, the person having this train of thought, it seems a little sick and wrong to see a baby as a reward, as a prize.  I know that.  I'm just laying out all the crazy here.)  I'm going to continue the story now, but this comes up again...

I had been tracking my cycle for awhile when my annual came up.  I lied to my gyno and told her we were just letting it happen.  Which was what we had agreed the last time R and I talked, but I was beyond that.  She looked at my charts and did my exam and said things looked good.  Even though we never talked about it, I kind of think this is when R started to get serious about having a baby.  

Somewhere during all this time, for sure by this Christmas, it suddenly seemed that everyone was having a baby.  Our church in CS seems to go through cycles of everyone getting pregnant at once and then there's a lull.  By Christmas time, there were only two couples (that I can think of) in our core Sunday School group who didn't have a baby (some were still in utero) (or slightly older children).  With R always working, I was beginning to feel very alone.  And very sad.  And I started dreading baby showers, pregnancy announcements, and I started resenting anyone who complained about pregnancy or their children.  Didn't they know they had what I couldn't have? (Well, no, they didn't, because I put on a brave face and told nearly no one.)

I slowly began to accept we were going to join the ranks of infertility.  I knew several families who had dealt with one type of infertility or another.  They all had children.  I know families who had formed through private adoption, through-an-agency adoption, foster-to-adopt adoption, miraculous pregnancy, and infertility treatments. These are people I know relatively well, people who I can (and have) ask (ed) questions.  (I know two families that did international adoption, but I don't know them well.)  I think God was telling me He had it covered...  I still have trouble believing that.  

So this is where we decide to go get tested, right?  NO! But that's coming, too.

Branalyn