Disheartened

That's the most accurate word for how I've been feeling the past few days. In spite of the hope provided by modern medicine. In spite of Dr. R's and Ms. Bird's reassurances that many, many women carry to term with immune treatments. In spite of a part of me that still has abundant hope and will keep plodding on, I feel disheartened by this third loss.

The odd thing is, I keep skipping ahead in my mind. I can picture myself with a toddler, pregnant again, with my second healthy pregnancy. So I must have hope for a first healthy pregnancy (since it's not a vision of pregnancy after adoption). But I can't let that hope in right now. I think I am afraid of what it will do to me to be hopeful that our next pregnancy will end in anything but loss.

It is as if the first healthy pregnancy is, in my mind, the ultimate hurdle. Some part of me believes that once I get through that, once I have a living, biological child, the rest of my dreams for myself and my family will fall into place. I can picture myself some unknown number of years in the future with one living child and another on the way, so I must have hope that these immune treatments will work, but I can't allow myself to feel it.

The hope is there. It's sneaking in through the cracks, finding sly ways to enter my heart. Invading the territory of fear with dreams of a far future. It's only when I try to picture myself 6 months or a year from now that I draw a blank. Then I come up against the fog of self-protection that won't allow me to dream of anything so tangible as a baby resulting from our next attempt at pregnancy.

The push and pull of hope waring with fear for space in my heart leaves me disheartened and dull. So I plod on and pretend there is no immediate future. I live minute to minute and try not to think about trying again.

P.S. I hope you don't think me greedy for still wanting more than one child. So many people with primary infertility narrow their focus to that first child, but I cannot yet let go of my dream of a large family. I know that I may not get to fulfill that dream, and even if I do, I certainly cannot dictate how and when each child will come into my life, but I need to allow myself some hopeful dreams. It keeps me going on this painful path.