I'm Still Here...

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since I've blogged. Hard to believe in part because this blog and connecting with all of you has been such an integral part of my life.

We talk a lot of the silence of infertility and not being able to live openly with our truths. But it seems that over the course this past year, I have also failed to speak my truths. So, in order to find my way back into this loving community, I must confess that I went through an experience I never though I would ever go through: I became pregnant, just like that. I'd heard stories of couples trying for years, finally conceiving (or adopting) and then, puff! ... another baby. I'd always shrugged off those stories as fabrications to keep our hopes alive and was infuriated when others (meaning people who'd never experienced infertility) would tell me how so-and-so stopped trying and then they had a baby. Idiots!

Imagine my surprise February 2011 when I found out I was pregnant. The feelings I went through were certainly not what I would have ever expected. I was for the most part flabbergasted. I went about my days trying to analyze how this was making me feel. Happy? No. Over-joyed? No. I suppose I was so convinced that I would never conceive again (we weren't trying, I have one tube, PCOS and MFI) that finding out that there was another being growing inside of me left me dismayed.

I took the next few months (nearly 5!) trying to process that we were going to have another baby. I was thinking of how I would break the news to my circle of women who I'd brought together as part of my peer-led support group. How I would share the news with the rest of you -- readers, bloggers, commenters. After all, this blog is not about my personal journey, it was created to bring you information from the perspective of someone who's made it to the other side. And so, I remained silent {I did obviously come out to my support group}, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. Perhaps also fearing that you would not feel safe anymore to share your stories with me because now I had become the "other."

As my due date approached, I decided to finally embrace my baby and needed some time to disconnect from all that was infertility. And then, in early October, my surprise baby girl was born. I have spent the last few months, mostly in complete chaos, caring for my kids, helping my son adjust to his new life as a big brother and move into a new home. It has been hectic, to say the least and yet, it all seems so "normal." It's almost as though I am living someone else's life -- like the infertile-me is looking through the mother-of-two-me in complete awe of how things turned out. So that's how others were living their lives while I was going in for daily blood work and injecting myself with countless drugs just a few years back.

I have not stopped thinking of all of you and quietly checked in with your stories. I cried for those who lost their babies and lots their hope. And jumped for joy at your birth announcements.

I'm not sure if I have any readers left. I do know that my passion for this struggle has no waned in the slightest despite my great blessings. I will continue to write with the hopes that I can help, if only in a small way, those of you who turn to me for guidance and support.

With love,
The Infertility Doula (SM).