one more thing

One of the things I truly love about my husband is his ability to stay calm and be thoughtful while I am an emotional wreck. Coincidentally, this is also one of the things that drives me insane about him, as generally I respond to his calmness in my wreck-ness by wondering WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, DON'T YOU HAVE ANY EMOTIONS AT ALL, WHY AREN'T YOU FREAKING OUT LIKE ME, ARE YOU A ROBOT?

Fortunately he stays calm during most of that too.

A few years ago, my mom was having a lot of trouble with sleep deprivation related to menopause. The woman did not sleep through the night (hardly slept at all, actually) for, like, four years. She tried everything. She was on those "oops, these cause cancer" drugs for awhile and then, naturally, stopped taking them once the whole "oops, these cause cancer" thing came out. She tried sleeping pills of various kinds, but didn't want to get addicted. She tried sleeping in a different bed, at different times, black-out curtains, white noise machines...everything. Her last resort, she said, was to try acupuncture.

So four years go by, and she still hasn't tried acupuncture, and at one point I asked her, "why haven't you tried that yet? It can't hurt, it's worth trying - don't you want to give it a shot?" And she said, "the only reason I haven't tried it is because it's my last hope, and if I try it and it doesn't work, I have nothing left to try. As long as I haven't tried it, I can still hope it will work."

She finally tried it. It worked. Completely.

I sort of got it at the time, her slightly crazy logic. But now I really, really get it. In-vitro is our last hope. As long as we haven't tried it, we can still hope it will work. Once we try it - well, what if it doesn't work? What if we try it all the times we can afford to (which will be, probably, twice), and it doesn't work? We are probably not interested in adoption, for various reasons. (I'm working on a post about that for later). So, in these two weeks of waiting for our IVF consult with the doctor, I am starting to consider the very real possibility that we will not have children. Ever. That I will never be a mother. Never. That this might not work. And that, if it doesn't, we will have nothing left to try.

(If, by the way, you suggest that there might be a miracle, I will kick your ass. You will be right, of course, but that will not stop the ass-kicking. So be careful.)

This realization is causing some serious emotional breakdowns for me, in which my husband - coming around to the beginning here - has remained his usual calm, collected self. Last night, my emotional wreck-ness finally collided with his calm-ness, and there was a blowup. We came through it okay. I feel slightly less wrecked today.

But just when I think this whole infertility thing can't get any harder, it does. Infinitely so. And that really freaks me out, because I cannot even begin to imagine how it will feel if IVF fails. Our chances are quite good. But they're never one hundred percent. And, until now, I have been able to tell myself there was always one more thing we could try. We could try getting tested. We could try the lap surgery. We could try an IUI. We could try one more IUI.

Now, we're down to our last one more thing. And I am terrified.