I’ve been reflecting a bit of late on the times I’ve said ‘we were so lucky’ and not properly understood exactly what that meant. In some ways I’m now gaining an awareness of just what it meant. You see, we’re not so lucky this time around.
When B and I decided we were ready to start a family we thought it would be nice to be pregnant within 6-12 months. Instead we fell pregnant within 6 weeks. Having many friends and some family members who have struggled with fertility issues I was able to say ‘we were really lucky and didn’t even have to think about it’. Yet I blithely rattled off that sentiment without properly understanding.
I didn’t understand the incredibly complex emotions that increase each month; the feeling of failure as the blank white space on the pregnancy test stands testament to your inability to reproduce; the tension of waiting to see if your period turns up, wondering if you should test now and get the disappointment over with early, then realising that it won’t help – every fibre of you will collapse a little on the day it arrives, regardless; the feeling of anger that is directed at no-one and nothing, but is there anyway; and the incredibly mixed emotions that come with each friend who falls pregnant or has a baby.
You see, it’s been almost a year now since we decided we wanted to add to our family. A three year age gap between chublet and no. 2 sounded about right to us, and we blithely assumed we’d get pregnant nice and quickly again, after all we were one of the those lucky couples who didn’t have fertility issues. And yet, Chublet turned 3 recently, and my womb remains empty. To add to the pain, Chublet has been doing a lot of role playing recently, and in most of it she chatters away about her brother or sister. Her brother can be anyone from her friends at daycare, to her teddies or a friend’s dog, and her sister is usually her doll or her cousins, but her inclusion of the phrase in her play sends a little arrow into my heart. How I’d love for her to properly understand the term and be able to use it in referring to her actual sibling.
It is an agony that is so hard to talk about, so strange to share, and yet so deeply a part of me each month now that some days are difficult to get through. But still, I know we are part of the lucky ones. We have Chublet who is a delight and brings us so much joy; we are only just starting down the path of being considered to have fertility issues, so our journey is still young; and we know that we can have children, so there is always that small hope. We are part of the lucky ones, but it is only now that I understand what that means as I start to uncover the other side.