Stuff I'm Finally Saying Out Loud

I'm not infertile anymore. Seriously, I don't fit the definition: "not capable of initiating, sustaining, or supporting reproduction." I didn't initiate reproduction (at least, I didn't do it alone) but I did sustain and support it. I need a new label.

The reason I flipped out when I was diagnosed was not because I was infertile. It was because something was wrong with my body. That's not the same.

Giving birth to a healthy baby didn't change how I feel about my body. I still live in fear of it malfunctioning.

During my pregnancy, I didn't identify with other post-IVF patients. I identified with women who got pregnant unexpectedly, and who were struggling with the idea of becoming a mother. I felt awful when I remembered how grateful I was supposed to be.

I feel tremendous, crushing guilt about requiring IVF to conceive. First my body screwed up, and then my over-the-top reaction to it hurt my husband, family, friends, and might even have hurt my son. I should have handled it better.

My fertility issues may still be hurting the people I love.

As I was getting into the wheelchair to leave the hospital after my initial surgery to remove the endometriomas, right after I learned I would need IVF at the earliest possible opportunity, I had a single clear and frantic thought: I am not ready to go home. I can't take care of myself right now. I am destroyed. I got in the wheelchair anyway.

I wish somebody had stopped me from going through with my IVF cycle. Both my Ob-Gyn and my RE should have had the sense to say "wait up, you are clearly not okay, you need to fix yourself before you get pregnant."

Despite the above, I am EXCEEDINGLY, world-endingly grateful for my son. I want to be clear about that. I love him beyond words. His smile is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

The saddest part of this for me is that my "regular" self always looked forward to pregnancy and envisioned having my first child as a happy time. When I stop to think about what I imagined vs. what we experienced, it breaks my heart. Especially since I ruined that joy for my husband, too.

As a result of this experience, I no longer believe that doctors and nurses have my best interests at heart. I don't trust them anymore.

Let's just finally throw this out there: I work in medicine. I deal with this stuff every day in my professional life. Separating the two has become a challenge.

When I say that therapy was "suggested" to me during my time of great unhappiness, I really mean that my loved ones tried repeatedly for months to get me to go. So did my doctors. I refused every single time, because:

I do not trust therapists. I think therapy is awful. I have tried it, and I do not like it. It makes me feel humiliated and dirty and much worse about myself. I rank my few, long-ago attempts at therapy as some of the most upsetting experiences of my life. Top ten, anyway.

This was far and away the worst experience of my entire life.

And I don't know how to move past it.