Project IF 2010

Category: How infertility impacts your emotional health.

What if I have to learn to live childfree with a smile….forever?

This used to be my fear and still is in many ways. Every once in a while I find myself chanting, I can't have children, I can't have children, an imaginary response to the question "So do you have kids?". It's often as I pass the elem. school on my way to work that I find myself doing this. Five years of TTC with 7 miscarriages under my belt has made me have very little faith in myself. In fact there is little that I don't doubt myself on anymore. I question my ability to achieve anything. Five years ago we started to TTC, I stopped taking the pill and just knew I would be p/g in 3 months. And I was... only to lose the baby six weeks later. Back then I thought by 2010 I would have two kids and considering a third in two years.

My life my plans my view of myself have drastically changed in so many ways. IF/RPL will push you to your very limits. Make you question your will to survive. After my last miscarriage in August I found myself thinking about driving my car into a tree. While in Oregon I envisioned throwing myself off the cliffs and into the Pacific. These terrible thoughts gave me peace during that time. It is macabre. It is sad and disgusting. It is true.

I'm more than aware that these are symptoms of major clinical depression. Over the last six months those thoughts have gone away. I never really wanted to die I just wanted to stop, escape the pain, suffering, guilt, sense of failure and disappointment on repeatedly losing my child, my hopes, my dreams. Quite frankly losing whole pieces of myself to where I couldn't recognize me anymore.

This experience has stripped my husband and I down to our very cores exposing the ugly parts of our souls. It has pushed our marriage to the edge.

Through prayer and sheer determination and will power, I feel we have clawed our way through to the other side.

The thought that we may live childfree does not scare me anymore. Sometimes it makes me sad, but sometimes I think it might be fun. It will hard to not belong to that club all our friends belong to, but we can have very full lives without children. No matter what happens IF/RPL has forever changed me, but finally I can start to see glimpses of myself again. I am still here and I can still love. That gives me strength for another day.

To see more of this project go to:
Stirrup Queens, Bloggers Unite

For more information on infertility go to RESOLVE

Please help spread the word and educate others:

National Infertility Awareness Week