Put a Baby in Me: Part 12
It was 4 am, the rain was coming down outside of my window. Usually, I love the sound of the rain in the dark hours of early morning, but this rain wasn’t bringing the usual soothing feelings. I don’t know why I woke up, but as I laid there, I started to get that feeling that I’ve become familiar with, the “I’m not pregnant” feeling. I started crying. At first my pillow was getting the brunt of my emotions, but I soon turned over onto my back and let them freefall down the sides of my face. They were still landing on my pillow; that thing has caught a lot of my tears in recent months. I was obviously not going to be able to fall back asleep, and the rain just kept on pouring.
At 6 am, my alarm went off. I stayed there for about 20 minutes, wondering what the point of even getting out of bed was. I turned on one of my podcasts to get me moving, and contemplated calling out of work, but I knew that I couldn’t. For one, I’m trying to save my sick days. In case I do get pregnant, I will need to use them to extend my maternity leave. America really hates families. But, the real reason why I got out of bed was because of finals week, and I couldn’t miss the day because my students were doing presentations. After thinking about how pointless everything is, I finally threw the covers off of my legs, and started my day.
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When I was in the shower, I thought about how much it sucks to be human. There’s so much pain, so much disappointment, so many letdowns. I wished that I could just be an emotionless sociopath so I could escape my slowly dying heart. I was still a week away from needing to take my pregnancy test, but I was already preparing myself for the eventual letdown. Thinking about having to text my mom again with more disappointing news almost brought more tears to my eyes, but I didn’t allow them to pass because I had just applied my mascara; I rationalized that I didn’t want to have to redo my makeup.
It was a frigid day, and as I walked down the hallway to my classroom, I shivered and thought the moody weather was fitting. I’ve opened up to a couple of work friends about what I’m doing. One friend in particular had a baby with his wife over the summer. I didn’t know that they had gone through IVF. It’s been nice being able to commiserate with someone who went through a similar process in recent times, someone who can understand the highs and lows besides the usual people I talk with. As I counted down the minutes until the first bell would ring and I would need to let students in the room, I mustered up as much energy as I could to get through the day.
My actual period arrived two days earlier than anticipated by my app. In fact, I had weird spotting for a couple of days prior and thought that maybe, just maybe, it was implantation bleeding. I was trying to keep a tiny sliver of hope alive, looking for any signs that it could actually be a pregnancy, but I was wrong. All of my prayers and “gut feelings” that I had when I got this last IUI were a fucking lie. Am I just breaking my own heart? I had a thought this morning that this whole process has just been a test to see how much I can torture myself, how much I can squeeze the life out of my own soul.
This, BY FAR, has been the hardest part of this whole thing. Getting myself physically and mentally healthier, making the decision to even go for the IUI process, all of the testing I had to do, all of the doctors appointments, and anything else I’m forgetting about have been massively easier to do than this part, this part that has the highest highs, and lowest lows. I wake up at 4 am almost every morning now, and if I’m lucky, I can fall back into a restless state until about 6 am, but many times, I just lay awake with a mind that refuses to stop. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for a woman who has tried for years to make a pregnancy happen. Only people who have gone through this will get it. I can’t even put into words how gut wrenching these last three months have been. I just feel so…
