Chapter Twenty Six: Waiting out the Storm

I often hear comments from friends and family telling me not to give up. I’m almost ready for my forth embryo transfer and they are trying to encourage me to keep on going with treatments, and comfort me by saying one of them will surely work out. We are definitely going to use all four of the embryos we have left, but there are no guarantees or assurances from the doctors. I don’t know what we will do if they all fail to implant, but we will be forced to try something different. 

I can understand why people “give up” trying to conceive a baby, even when they have the financial means to keep going and a strong desire for pregnancy. That’s something I didn’t understand about infertility when I started this journey. Giving up sounds like a bad thing but stopping infertility treatments can actually be a really good thing. 

Why? I think everyone has a breaking point (although I’m not there yet). Infertility is a massive tornado of shittiness that breaks people. With infertility, you spend your life consumed with it and it can swallow all your joy. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to stop imagining that a rainbow will come. The thin strand of hope at some point becomes so unlikely that it’s no longer worth chasing. 

Instead of chasing what seems unattainable you can choose to stop where you are and make the best of the life you already have. Why would you stop when you’ve been trying for years and success may be just around the corner? Because life is short and you don’t want to spend it waiting out the storm. There’s no doppler radar to tell you how long it will last. Stopping shuts the door on rainbows which of course is sad; but it does bring a patch of sunny sky. After a long storm, that option starts to look ok. It’s not good to spend your days trapped inside, gazing out the window for a rainbow to appear. Dreams for your future change and that’s healthy.