Hard Times

I have so many things that I want to post about and not enough time to write it all out. That's what happens when I take over a week off from blogging. For now, though, I want to write about my hard time I've been having.

If my IVF had worked, I'd be a mother of a newborn right now. I would have had the baby the last week in March. March 30th would have been my due date. I'm having a hard time with this. It breaks my heart every time I walk past bedroom #4, or even look in the room.

Our neighbors (S & K) came over to get their son one night and we gave them the official tour of the house since they hadn't been in since we moved in. The guys were in the play room and I was showing K my scrapping room (bedroom #4). She asked me if BJ and I had thought about having one of our own. And I told her a very brief "yes, we've tried and I tried with my ex and I just can't get pg." She inquired about fertility treatments and I told her we'd done both IUI and IVF. And then I told her that I would be giving birth next week (this conversation was a couple of weeks ago, obviously) if it had worked. She seemed sympathetic. And she gave me the line of at least time is on my side since I'm only 33. And then she told me that she and S have been off BCP for about a year and nothing has happened. They aren't trying but they aren't preventing, either. She said that she really hopes we get to have a baby. I had to agree with her on that.

It's so hard to know that I should be on maternity leave right now. I should be entertaining many visitors and accepting baby gifts on behalf of my little one and showing off a newly decorated nursery. Instead, I'm sitting here thinking about what should have been and what probably never will be. I still hope that it can happen for us, but I'm also a realist. It's been so long and we've tried so much, that I don't think there is a way for it to really happen. Especially since BJ is just about at the end of his rope with this. And I don't blame him. There has to be a cut off time. And I will have to accept it when it comes. I just hope and pray that I get my miracle before his rope, and my time, run out.

I'm 8DPO today. AF will be here by Monday or Wednesday at the latest. Of course, the hopeful side of me hopes she will just stay away. But the realist in me knows that she's just gearing up in there to ruin everything for me. I don't like to be so negative but sometimes I just can't help it. Everything about IF has been negative for me and sometimes it's really hard to find a silver lining. I don't even know if there is a silver lining for me. I'd like to think that we all have silver linings but I just don't know.

I read a blog the other day by someone that graduated IF with a healthy pregnancy. She said that she wanted the rest of us that were still waiting to not give up hope, that one way or another we would become mothers. It struck a chord with me to read that. I started thinking about the Little Guy. Is he my answer? I'm a step-mother to him. Is that my 'motherhood'? Is that the only way I get to have a child in my life? I wish I knew the answer to that. I'm grateful for him, for sure. I'd be a miserable human being if I didn't have him in my life. I'm actually going to do some posting on how hard being a step-mother really is in normal circumstances but especially while TTC. I wish I knew the answers. I wish I knew if my only chance at motherhood was being a step-mom. And maybe God has already answered me and I just wasn't listening. I'm hoping that He gives me the chance to be a mother to my own child...a full mother...with a child/mother bond and everything glorious that comes with that.