Failure

This was originally posted on my personal blog on 27 April 2010.

This post is about endo, periods, and making babies.  Don't read if that bothers you for some reason.  You have been warned.

One of the (many) reasons I put off getting married again for so long was because normally once you get married people start asking when you're going to have a baby, as if it's some kind of natural progression: boy meets girl, boy and girl get married, girl has baby.  And of course, now that we are married, I'm getting that question a lot more than I used to.  I usually give a vague, brushing-off type answer, because it's too painful for me to talk about it and anyway most people aren't that interested.  The fact is, we've  been trying for over four years now with no success.

Man, I tell you, if there's an early pregnancy sign out there, I've felt it, convinced myself that this time it's really happened, and cried over how delusional I am when I fail, again, to get pregnant.  I was so sure this month, I really felt different...and yet I failed.  Again.

Yes, failed.  That's how I feel each month: like a failure, like I'm somehow failing at being a woman.  I've wanted to have children for as long as I can remember - I'm certainly not one of those rare women who has no interest in having children at all.  I love babies.  I instinctively want to help crying children.  I have lists of names or girls and boys.  I have strong opinions about how my children will be raised.  Why is it so damn hard?  Plenty of people make it look easy.  Most of my cousins have already reproduced.  I have one cousin who is 2 months older than me who has five kids and is currently pregnant again.  Why is it so easy for her and so hard for me?

I guess after we get back from Malaysia I should make an appointment to see my OB/GYN.  Apart from an op to try to cure my endo (which failed, I'm sure), we haven't had any intervention so far.  But I've been putting that off for a bunch of reasons, partly because my husband has also been sick, but the most important reason is that getting help with producing a child is so bloody expensive.  Also, once you start down that path, it can get pretty invasive.  My first marriage failed, in part, because we had started seeking help.  I'm also not convinced that paying for expensive medical intervention to have a child of my own, when there are so many disadvantaged children waiting to be adopted, is the best idea.  And if we're paying exorbitant amounts for IVF, for example, how much more of a failure will I feel each time it's not successful?  My husband doesn't really like the idea of adopting, though, and that has its own expenses and privacy invasions.  So I guess seeing my OB/GYN is Step 1.

But now that my husband's illness is under control, I've run out of flimsy excuses.  Also, I'm getting old.  I had it all planned out in high school, you know: two kids, first a boy and then a girl, by the time I was thirty.  Now here I am, looking down the barrel of 31, without either of those fantasy children.  If I don't act soon, it may be too late and too risky.  I think I'll make that appointment in the morning.