The Big Secret

There is something no one talks about when talking about starting a family. There's a big secret surrounding the journey towards a family of more than 2.

The big secret I'm talking about?

How hard and heartbreaking this journey can actually be (and often is for a large percentage of couples).

At first you're really excited about going off the Pill, or whatever form of contraception has been used in the relationship prior to this point. You start each day thinking, "This could be it. It could be the last month before we're expecting."

Then you start dreaming about how you'll tell your partner when that test comes up positive.

Full disclosure here: I bought a little book to give Ginger when I get a positive test result. I also may have a box of baby things and a secret board on Pinterest where I post important things for when we have a little one.

Yeah, I'm really wanting a kiddo.

Then those dreams grow to how you'll tell the family after the first trimester (I was planning on a cute Christmas card to both sets of grandparents...rhyming poem and all.) 

Then you start to doubt decisions for future plans. i.e.- Maybe we can't go to Hamner Springs because I won't be able to get into the hot pools. Maybe I'll have bad morning sickness and we shouldn't go on a trip 5 hours away in two months.

Seriously, it just escalates. 

Until you reach the breaking point. That point for me was this morning. 

I was convinced the last 24 hours that this could be it (not that I have any symptoms- I stopped symptom spotting months ago). My temperature was still crazy high, when it should have dropped by now, and I had a really vivid dream about taking a test. So with my temperature still high today, at 13DPO, I thought, let's do this and check. And nothing. That last test I had in the house that I had been holding onto for months now. Big Fat Negative.

Then it hit me, this was the last month where we could have had a baby this year. This was it. There's not going to be a Baby Brooks in 2014. 

I was pretty quiet about it after I went back to bed, but it was eating at me. I told Ginger on the way to church and cried a little bit. 8 cycles without anything is hard to deal with. I just don't know how I'm going to make it through to September if we still can't get this down right. 

Our timing is good, I'm eating better, exercising more and taking my vitamins, but damn, it really sucks that even with all this going in our favour, there's still only a 20% chance of it happening each month. 

So these are my fears. And as every cycle brings me closer to 31 years old, I am slowly freaking out more and more. It's not every day, and not even every other day. But there are days where I am scared this isn't going to happen.

I know my husband's fears here too- I know he is afraid of what infertility might do to our relationship. He knows how much I want to be a mother and how if we can't do it naturally, we won't really be able to afford anything else to help us. So this is it. If it doesn't happen, what happens to us?

I told him this morning, through tears, that even if we can't have a family, I'm sticking with him. I know that helped him.

He then told me that I can have lots of dogs if we can't have kids. That made me laugh. I'll be the crazy dog lady. That wouldn't be too bad.

So what do we do with the fear of how TTC could destroy us? Let it out, speak the words and hold each other a little closer. Because we are in this together and no matter the outcome, we'll still come out on the other side together.