Losing It...

I had a breakdown on Friday. I think there is no other word for it. I came home from work and all I could do was cry. I tried to do a blog entry on what I was feeling, but I was incoherent. I could barely put two words together, or even see the computer screen through my tears.

I do not know what set me off. Maybe it was the fact I had my period that day. Maybe it was seeing the crowd around the baby set me off. Maybe it is the fact I turn 34 in a couple of weeks, and I feel my biological clock ticking. Maybe it was fatigue. I do not know. All I know is that I had to come home and cry because I felt the lack of a child so keenly.

I just feel empty and hopeless right now. I feel like I may never get the experience of holding my own child. I may never experience childbirth. I may never get to raise a child of my own. I may never get to be a parent at all. All of that seemed to hit me on Friday.

I know that Hubby and I cannot get pregnant without medical help. I understand this. I know that we need $20,000 just to have a shot at getting pregnant with his DNA, and that is not possible at this point. We do not have the money or the resources. From where I am sitting right now, I feel like we may never get the money to have our chance at getting pregnant with our child. It may take us about a decade to get to a point where we feel comfortable gambling with that much money. I will be in my 40s at that point. Seems a little late, but who knows? Not sure how I feel about trying for a child at that age. Not something that was even on my radar screen. (Not that infertility was in my life plan, either. I think I got screwed.)

I think I realized on Friday that we are not going to do IVF. At least not right now, and probably never. That means that we may not ever have a child with Hubby’s DNA. That upsets me. When you love someone enough to marry them, I feel like having a child with them is an extension of that love. I know we will love any child who becomes a part of our family, no matter the source. But right now I am mourning the loss of a child from the two of us.

Hubby has a hard time talking about infertility stuff because he feels most of the problem right now is the male factor. I think he is just starting to work through how it feels to be infertile, and he does not want to talk about it because it makes him feel bad. Men seem to like avoiding unpleasant subjects. I have had a little longer to deal with being infertile, but I still get upset about it. We did discuss infertility for a little bit on Friday. It sometimes feels like it is the elephant in the room with us. We both know it is there, but no one wants to acknowledge it. We talked about how we could not afford IVF, and how it means that we would hot have a child with his genetic legacy. He is still working through how he feels about donor sperm. I think he feels better about donor sperm than adoption. He said with donor sperm, at least the child would be mine. We both agreed that now is not the time to pursue it. Maybe in the fall, when we are a bit more settled, we can look into it. Until then, we can mourn the loss of conceiving our child.