A Golden Ticket

Like Charlie, I am given only a few chances to find my Golden Ticket. Actually, in two years and 10 months, I have been given 24 chances. Yes, my luck is horrible compared to Charlie’s. But that is also why I am not a gambler.

So, for the last two years and 10 months, I have been searching, yearning, coveting, my golden ticket, a baby. After all the doctors pretty much told me that my problem is ovulation. And I’ve ovulated at least 13 times that I know of, therefore it is safe to assume their might be more going on. But, after two years and 10 months, I feel emotionally, mentally, and physically spent. Enough is enough.

This cycle, I let hope in. And again she is reminding me that she is stronger and meaner than I. My hope was coxed after I exhibited “different” symptoms, well isn’t that always the way? Now, AF is knocking on my door since yesterday. Knowing too much, I know that it could be a good sign, because it started DPI 10/11 – could it be implantation bleeding? My luteal phase has never been shorter than CD 14 (I checked my records. And I've only "spotted" once before, and that well was followed by my worst period ever.). If anyone else would be presenting me with these facts, I would say don’t throw in the towel yet, not until the fat lady sings. But, I feel defeated - which leaves me to something that has been on my mind.

See this is our second to last IUI, only one more. I am sure that cycle will start in just a few days, and will end much in the same way as the previous 24 in August. After that, T and I will go into the new world of living child free. I will be back on the pill, and I will stop my prenatal. You get the point, we will be closing up shop.

And I still won’t have a Golden Ticket; nothing good to show for all of my efforts. I want to mark it. Part of me wants people to see it. To know what it means. So that I no longer have to be silent to the outside world about my infertility struggles. I want people to know that I am not selfish, that I yearned to be a mother more than I can actually say; that I have spilled and still do spill many a tear over my husband and my predicament. We were just unlucky. Him even more than I, since he married me and into this predicament.

I feel like I will need to continuously need to validate our reasoning. Because we have stopped doesn’t mean we didn’t want it bad enough, it means that we had enough. And bite my lip, instead of asking how long they would do something that they obviously were not going to be successful at. How long they would keep trying, when all they saw were negatives for 24 cycles, 7 medicated, 3 procedures – when the only thing wrong with them was “fixed.” If they would keep going on an endless rollercoaster that only made them more broken.

My secret is that I am jealous of people who have had a positive pregnancy test. Even of the ones who have lost their babies soon after. To me, they had the Golden Ticket and more validation to grieve. They are the war veterans with an outward wound. I have been grieving for something I never had. In many people’s eyes, not yours, I don’t have a right. I don’t want to have to justify being sad over this. I just need to get over it. To do just that I need to acknowledge, and grieve the situation. Mind me I know that I will have more than a scare or two, on my soul and heart.

So, do you have any ideas of how I can commemorate the last three years (I’m rounding up.)? Because August is coming. This will no longer be an infertility blog, instead it will be a woman coping getting off this rollercoaster and going into the unknown of a conciliation life. Who doesn’t want to forget where she came from, but needs to move on.