I cannot want what I might not get

You’d never know by reading this blog that we’re in the middle of our third attempt at a frozen embryo transfer; this has been my sole post on the matter so far. For the past week I’ve been taking my Progynova on schedule – I’m up to 2mg 2xday – and otherwise not really thinking about it*. I can’t afford to get too hopeful; I don’t think I can afford too much disappointment. In this post Elizabeth makes a great comment on the difference between generic hope and specific hope:

“I have been depressed and angry about my infertility before. I have cried before over how much I want a child and how unfair life can be. But I don't think I have ever been so saddened by the end of a specific cycle. I think it was because I have never allowed myself to have so much hope for a specific cycle. Usually, I cling to a safe, generic hope that eventually I will have a child of my own (and I include adoption in that scenario, an adopted child would be a child of my own).”

I know all about the generic hope. Three years ago this time I was preparing to begin my first IVF. At the time I believed that we would ultimately be successful though I was quite certain that our first attempt would fail. In fact, we were so certain that it had failed that when Frau S from Dr L’s office called R’s cell phone with my blood test results we didn’t take the call because we were about to get on the Autobahn and we didn’t want to have to drive home in the wake of bad news. We were so sure it was going to be bad news that we drove all the way back to Small Village before returning the call. When Frau S gave us the news – a beta of 361 at 14dp2dt: very definitively pregnant – and told us to drive back to the city to see Dr. L we didn’t really quite believe it. I don’t think I believed it until we saw the heartbeat a few weeks later. I’d always believed that eventually there would be a baby, but didn’t have the emotional strength to believe that specific IVF attempt would result in a specific pregnancy. If anything, I talked myself into anticipating a failure. Hope seemed too emotionally risky; it still feels that way. To believe that an FET will eventually work – I can do that. To believe that this specific FET will work, that I will be pregnant at Thanksgiving and that there will be an early December baby, that hope is too specific and too detailed. It opens the door to a specific and detailed pain. I hold myself at arm’s length from myself.

I’m also aware that I’m walking on a border that I cannot afford to cross. I need to stay on this side, in this country I live in. In this country I am happy, I am content, and the shape of my family pleases me, it is warm and comfortable and good. In this country I see the three of us still being a threesome ten years from now and I smile. In this country I would welcome a second child with a happy heart but I also know that today, right now, if we never have another child I’ll still be happy. Not just okay, but happy. But the harder we try for a second child, the more I dream that child into being, the harder it becomes to say that my family feels complete. Then, if the second child never comes I will have played away my contentment and I will always miss somebody I will never meet. Then ten years from now we will be a threesome but I will feel a shadow over my shoulder. Once I cross over into that other land, into that land where we are a family of three but no longer by choice, once I play away this deep contentment I have, what then? I cannot give my heart over to something that may never be, for once I cross over into that other land, I’m not sure there is an exit visa.

For that same reason, this may very well be our last FET no matter how it turns out. If we keep trying and keep failing I will one day find that I’m missing my never to be second child. And that is a country I cannot afford to live in.

* Ultrasound on Friday afternoon to check my lining