I thought I would be pregnant again by now. I'm not and it hurts.
The story of us trying to conceive the first time around really isn't much of a story. After 15 years, I went off the pill and I never got my period. I was pregnant, end of story.
I remember the first month we tried for a second. I wasn't prepared for the wave of emotions I was going to feel when I got my period a couple of weeks later. I was devastated. I took some time to sit with my feelings and started to drown in guilt. How could I possibly even begin to feel this way after just one failed attempt? There are women out there who struggle to conceive for years. Can't I just be be grateful to have one happy, healthy baby? Some women aren't able to have one at all. I couldn't wrap my head around the way I was feeling. I held it in. Scared of speaking up, scared of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. I couldn't unload my pain on someone who had been suffering through this for far longer than I had.
After spending some time with my guilt, I reflected on why my single failed attempt at conception hurt me so deeply. I had never dealt with this kind of pain when trying to conceive with my first. I never had to cope with seeing the blood, or the negative pregnancy test. I never had to wait and wonder whether the symptoms I was having were due to pregnancy or my upcoming period. Don't get me wrong, I am overwhelmingly grateful at how easy it was for us to conceive with our first, but that doesn't make this hurt any less. Each month, each failed attempt, I'm struggling more. There are tears, heart ache and anger. Why isn't it working? There is constant worry, the inability to turn off my thoughts. What am I doing wrong? There is regret. Why didn't we start trying sooner?
The worst feeling I've experienced, is the jealousy. It consumes me. It turns me into someone I'm not, makes me act like the kind of person I would hate -a living, breathing green-eyed monster. Why them, why not me? Everyone and their sister happens to be getting pregnant when you're the one trying and failing. I'm learning to cope with it, the jealousy. I don't have control of it yet, but it's something I'm working on.
For the women out there struggling with grace, supporting their friends with open arms and endless encouragement, I commend you. My respect for you is indescribable. You are the kind of person I want to be, I need to be. I want to be more present for my friends the way they were present for me. I want to be their cheerleader and their biggest fan. I want to be the person they can lean on through the highs and the lows. My friends put their struggles aside to be that person for me and I will continue to strive to do the same for them.
And for the women like me, ashamed of feeling grief after a few short months, you are not alone. Grief has no timeline, it has no specific destination. We don't know when it's going to flood us with its presence or who it will target next. There is no set amount of time you need to struggle before you have earned the right to hurt, to feel the sting. You don't need to apologize for grief choosing you before you were willing to accept it.
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