Hi, I'm back!

Well, I decided that I miss blogging!  I miss having that place where I can express how I'm feeling without keeping it all bottled up inside of me. Very seldom do I verbalize my feelings and concerns to someone. I think there's a part of me that feels like I'm burdening people by having then listen to me rant and rave, cry and yell...you know, all of that good stuff that hormonal women go through. Especially hormonal women with infertility.

Being away for this short time has done me some good though. It helped me to step away from all of this IVF madness and take a look at my life as a whole. I have done a lot of soul searching over the past month and a half and while I'm still not totally OK, I am better than I was. Much better.

My final IVF was going to be this month.  In fact, today would be my 4th day of stims. As much as I wanted to push forward and go through with it, I just couldn't. I knew in my heart that while a positive beta would be the most wonderful news ever, a negative beta would be too much for me to handle. I have some more work to do on myself to get to the place where I can handle a negative beta. That doesn't mean I am not hopeful that it'll work. It just means that I want to be in a place where I can accept endure all outcomes...good or bad. I'm not quite there yet. Although, can we ever really prepare ourselves to be OK with an outcome other than the one we want?

I spent the first 3 weeks of January back home in California. It was nice to be home again and to have my friends to visit with. I missed my husband like CRAZY, but I had a great time. It was fun to be busy socializing with everyone I left behind when moving away. Right before I left there to come home, Sean got word that his job was going to be crazy for a while. I came home on a Sunday, and starting Monday he had to begin a 6 day/week, 12 hour/day work shift. As soon as I found out about this schedule, I now had a good reason (in my mind) to delay my IVF. I was dreading starting another cycle. I was so torn about moving forward or delaying. While I knew that emotionally I wasn't prepared for another cycle, I kept thinking about my aging eggs and how every day they get older and in worse shape than the day before. But, as soon as I got home, I got in touch with my nurse and told her to take me off the calendar! Then, I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief! I knew that it was the right decision.

My plan for the time being is to take a couple of months to keep working on my mental state through all of this. While I'm not sure I will ever accept that I'm not meant to be a mom, it could very well be my reality. I am trying to find ways to accept this, and to stop focusing on the fact that everyone else seems to have passed me by or made progress, while I'm still stuck here in the same place I've been for so many years. I'm trying to find ways to be more grateful for the life I DO have. To be more thankful for the incredible things and people that I HAVE been blessed with in my life. I have such a wonderful man by my side that I get to spend the rest of my life with, and I wouldn't trade THAT for the world....or a baby. I just hope that I have the opportunity to have both in my life at some point!