Mother's Day, pt. 5

We left off where I began to accept we were probably infertile.  

For a year, things went on about the same. 

Hope. 

Dashed. 

Resentment. 

Tears. 

Hope. 

Dashed...  

I got promoted at work.  R did too.  We had everything but one credit card and our student loans paid off.  We had a sizable amount paid.  The new passion became buying a house. 

That next Christmas, we had a plan.  R was going to start a new job (less hours{by which I mean 40 rather than 60}, similar pay, benefits, weekends and holidays off) and we were going to buy a house (that needed a TON of work) and, since he would get benefits at his new job, if we had kids and we could get the finances in order, I could stay at home.  Things were going to fall into place.  This time, we had it figured out.

Wrong.

Through the politics that is the school system and the budget cuts made that year, R was out of a job before he started.

But after he left the old one.

Major decision: beg for old job back or look for a new one?

We decided he should look for a new one.

He got a part time job power-washing for some church friends and, while the hours sucked, with our finances finally in order, it worked.  He asked me if he could apply for ministry jobs.  I agreed but only for ones in Texas.  (You know, to stay close to family.  Did ya'll know Texas is a BIG state? For instance, one can live 8 hours {if you don't stop, mostly on the interstate, legal speeds upwards of 70 mph most of the way} from family and still live in the same state...) 

Somewhere in all this, R went to the doctor because he started having panic attacks (gee, why ever might that be?).  While he was there, he told the doctor about the fact that we were having trouble conceiving.  He came home and announced he was having a test done to determine fertility.  Part of me didn't want to know.  Most of me knew that knowing was the first step to moving forward.  

Sitting here at this desk, over a year later, I cannot describe the night I came home and R had the test results. 

No sperm.

At all.

Come back for more testing.

My world fell apart.  

But it was still a very private fall.  

Few knew.  

The sadness, resentment, fear, and bittersweet hope all got stronger.

More testing sent us to a Urologist.

Who ordered more testing.

Still no sperm.

Azoospermia.

The dirty word.

There was really nothing more to know about it at this point and we just tried to absorb the hit while continuing with our lives.

We "came out" to our Sunday School group and slowly to our extended families.  

People were supportive and tried to say the right things.  

There are no right things to say.

Oddly, it wasn't the people who had experienced infertility that were the most comforting, but the ones who had experienced the death of a child (miscarriage, still birth, later in life). 

By now, RR was well into a pregnancy.  The Sunday School group had morphed to where we were the only ones without a baby. People were on their second and third children. My friends from high school and college were having babies.  Each announcement got harder and harder to hear.  Each "happy face" got harder and harder to put on.

I once threw my phone across the kitchen when I saw a picture of a high school friend's newborn.  (The second the phone left my hand, I regretted it.  It landed face down and I was scared to pick it up for a minute.  Thank you God for covering my in my stupidity and temper tantrum and for giving me the foresight to buy an Otter Box.)

Honestly, how I feel is dependent on so many factors that sometimes I don't even know what will make me sad/mad/smad.  Infertility truly is its own kind of grief.   There are still more twists and turns to our story, and I'm not done living it.  Look for part 6 soon.

Branalyn