So, we returned home to L.A. and I lolled about praying that the tidal surge that was my giant, bloated belly would recede and those nine pounds of non-baby weight would drain away, leaving me something like myelf again. Two weeks after the IVF storm, I do feel somewhat normal, although I am still strewn with the inevitable post-storm debris in the form of bruises all over my stomach from the hormone shots I took and the blood-thinning shots I'm still taking, as well as a few extra, non-water-weight pounds from the lack of exercise and the doctor's explicit advice to "eat lots of salt: chips, Gatorade, popcorn, etc." At least that was a perk!
But here I am with 8 great-looking, frozen embryos chilling (pardon the pun) in a lab in Colorado--anyone in the IVF would would call that number of healthy embryos a success--and I still feel like a failure. I can't seem to get my hopes up anymore, because every time I do that someone I know gets pregnant on accident/easily and reminds me what a loser I am for going through all this BS and spending $30,000+ and still not being pregnant. Okay, I know they're not getting pregnant just to spite me, but I'm the kind of bad person who takes it personally and feels like every announcement is a slap in the face, no matter how gently it's conveyed. And, yes, I know it's true that we haven't actually finished the IVF process since they wouldn't transfer the embryos when I was hyper-stimulated last month, so I should at least get through the whole process before I give up, but I honestly can't get myself to believe it will work. I'm so used to failure now that it seems inevitable.
What a bad way to go into the process of nurturing the life that's going to be put inside me! I need to reclaim the f-word: to get "failure" out of my head and heart and to get "fuck" back in there:
Fuck whining about how unfair this all is!
Fuck feeling jealous!
Fuck imagining yet another lonely blue line on a failed pregnancy test!
Fuck not being allowed to fuck my husband during treatment cycles!
Fuck failure.
If I'm ever going to be a mom, I need to stop whining and start fucking--well, you know what I mean. I need to find my inner bulldog-in-lipstick or mama bear or whatever that archetype is that allows women to lift cars off their squashed children. But how?
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