one way or another

Time is healing

Wow what an intense time since I moved to NZ. Falling in love with R. Getting pregnant. R asking to marry me. Life would have been pretty amazing if these had been the main events last one and a half years. Loosing my pregnancies and finding out about my damaged fertility caused more hurt, grief and sadness I ever felt. I cannot even describe it.

What also makes describing the pain difficult is, like with most pain and hurt and grief, it has faded. Little by little the sharpness of the hurt is getting less. The wounds are starting to heal. The first ivf cycle is coming closer, so there is reason for new hope.

I feel pretty good at the moment. Acupuncture, but also herbs, vitamins and diet advice of my natural fertility specialist give me support. My depression is gone. I don't cry anymore. I don't even have PMS anymore. How cool (and long ago!) is that! And how nice for everyone :-) Now just a bit more creativity and zest for work and I'm great.

Last weekend I saw the movie 'The Sea Inside', about a man that is paralysed for 28 years and fights for the right to die. It was an incredible movie. I've never seen a movie that touched the issues of life and death so deeply. Inside the man is full of love and life and passion and emotions. His body restricts him to move, love a woman, to have children, to live. The only way he can express himself is in his poetry. For him, that is not enough. If he can't have a life, he wants to die. And in the end of the film he indeed kills himself with the help of people that truly love him.

When I was finding out that having children wouldn't come to easy for me I once said that 'loosing my fertility would be like loosing my legs'. After watching The Sea Inside I realised what I actually meant. Wanting to have children is such an essential way of my being. It is more than an biological urge. I would be cut of from a very important source of information what (my) life is all about. An essential way of expressing myself would be lost. And expressing my love for R. And my love for life.

I'm not saying I want to die if I don't get children. But at the deepest low of my pain and grief there were moments I felt like I wanted to die. Or at least hurt myself. Bang my head against the wall. Don't worry, I never would. I'm just saying what I felt.

Sure I know that having children is not the answer to the question of the meaning of life, and ofcourse kids are not always fun and ofcourse there are things that will get more complicated once they arrive and god knows what people tell me to convince me that it's NOT ALL THAT NICE to have children. R's teenagers do a great job in emphasising that having kids is not always fun. And als my mum is very good at given hidden messages like that in our phone calls. Ofcourse absolutely not meant to hurt me.

But what is the alternative? Not having children. What kind of a life is that?

Leaves me wondering: Am I infertile or not? Would I call myself infertile, knowing by now that I cannot get pregnant without ivf?
How do you define being infertile?
a) When you cannot get pregnant the normal & easy way
b) When there are no more treatment options?
c) When your money has run out?
d) When you have no hope left?

posted by heleen + rod @ 12:43 PM