dealing with infertility.

We are in this now. We are battling infertility. This shit hand of cards we’ve been dealt is part of our journey to becoming parents.

Before our first IUI (which we discovered Monday was unsuccessful), it still felt surreal that this was our life. That this was happening to us. I counted on the first IUI working and then we’d chalk up our previous inability to get pregnant as a big ruse we’d laugh about over root beer and Martinelli’s sparkling cider.

But this is no mistake. This isn’t a joke. And this is not going away any time soon. It’s all very clear to me now. And while getting pregnant is still the end game, the reality of these treatments possibly not working is dangling like a scorpion in my face.

I’m struggling with all of it, but I know we have to be strong and stay in the fight. I keep thinking of Marshawn Lynch, the Seattle Seahawk whose nickname is “beast mode.” I’m stealing the phrase and putting “full beast mode” in effect here (on my good days).

So I was back in the doctor’s yesterday morning where I was greeted with morose faces. A painting in the office of a mother and child in her arms at the beach made me sick to my stomach and seemed misplaced/insensitive to have at an infertility clinic. I wanted to rip it off the walls and complain. But I didn’t. I laid back and had the ultrasound and left to continue on with my work day like all was normal and fine.

Later I picked up my second month’s worth of Letrozole from CVS: I take a pill for five days in the morning. And I received my refrigerated package of injectables from a pharmacy up in Maine. Tomorrow I’ll start four days of gonadotropin, which I inject myself with at night. Here’s what it does:

And then I’m back at the doctor’s on Wednesday.

How do we stay hopeful when it all feels so hopeless?