This article originally appeared on Mom.com on October 21, 2014. Read the original article here.
Trying to have a baby is stressful. Anyone currently with children who say they are tiring should try having a baby through medical intervention. This week has been awful. Remind me never to travel out of state for a transfer again.
Ever.
I left off last week telling you that our flight had finally been booked and my medications were purchased. However, getting the time off work for the trip and all the appointments leading up to it has been a bit difficult to finagle with my supervisor. In fact, I have to say, this is by far the most stressed out I have ever been in all the years of infertility treatments. The last few days have consisted of working myself to death at my job, coming home, rehashing the day to Chris until I am in tears and ultimately falling asleep at 8:30. I’ve gotten so emotionally and physically run down that I now have a bad head cold and basically feel like complete poo. Oh, and I realized that for four days now, I have been wearing two estrogen patches on my stomach instead of the prescribed one. I’m stressed, I’m exhausted. I should be excited for this trip, excited for the possibilities and hope that this could bring. But all I want to do is sleep.
I am really starting to wonder what the effect of all these hormones will be on my body. Though I am happy to be doing another cycle again (the 7th cycle since starting inseminations, but who’s counting?), I am happy that I am no longer on expensive injections to grow my follicles at alarming rates, but still, I feel like a hormone factory.
“I just hope this will all be worth it,” I told Chris one evening, while struggling to keep from drooling from the estrogen pill melting under my tongue and absently scratching at the estrogen patch itching on my stomach.
It is hard to believe, though, that we are flying to Dallas in a week.
Dallas.
I’m going to be so pissed if I get Ebola. That’s all I would need. The ability to not have a biological child and get a deadly virus. Ugh.
I digress.
It’s strange to think that by the time this post is published, I will be heading on a plane to go get pregnant in another state with donor eggs. If I could get in my time machine and go back to when I first was trying for a baby…well, I never expected this.
I just need to get through this week. I feel unorganized, unprepared for this trip. I don’t know how I am going to travel with my needles and syringes and vials and medications. I don’t know when I am going to get over this sickness. This was not the way I envisioned it right before leaving.
At the time I am writing this, it’s October 15: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. And amidst all this chaos, I allowed myself to stop and light a candle for my baby in heaven. In taking those few moments to study the candlelight, I took a deep breath and tried to remember why I was doing all this. Why I was going through so much, why I was putting my job on the line, why I was fighting so much with my husband, why I was crying so many tears.
I am doing this because of family—for the baby that is out there, waiting. I think I lose sight of that sometimes, with all the medications and appointments and coordinating between clinics.
When I am in Texas, I will get to visit my little sister. I will get to see my beautiful friend whom I have only known through an online infertility group and her miracle baby. I will get to watch my husband eat his body weight in Texas barbecue.
Damn it, this is my trip and this WILL work. Join me in a tribal baby dance, won’t you?
