Infertility is...

In this week's  Resolve of New England member email, I noticed a blog contest.  The title "Infertility is..." reminded me so much of an assignment I asked my students to complete that I had to write about it.   During our poetry study, I ask the students to write abstract to concrete poems.  They need to take an abstract concept like happiness, friendship or confusion and create a poem using concrete examples of these ideas.   Well I'm not going to write a poem, because I care way too much for all you to make you read it, but I do want to write on the idea.  I have to say that this comparison came from a friend on an infertility board, but since she brought it up, I cannot picture infertility any other way.

Infertility is...winter.  It may come on slow, a few flakes on an October day, or it may hit you all as once, a nor'easter that follows a day of warmth.  No matter how it starts, winter quickly begins to drag.  The long nights and cold short days often make it incredibly difficult to stay positive.  It isn't long before you begin wondering if you will ever get to feel the warm sun on your body again.  However, deep in your heart, you know that spring will come, followed by summer.  The problem is you truly know when the cold and snow will be gone.   Will Mr. Groundhog give you relief and make spring come early, or will he enjoy the torture and run and hide, keeping winter longer. 

Sean and I were lucky in that we were able to hold out hope for many months that our winter would never come.  There were snowflakes of warning here and there, but we both hoped we could bypass that darkness.  But as every New Englander knows, you cannot avoid the cold and snow.  It will come and there is nothing you can do about it.   When we started testing and treatment, it was all new and slightly exciting.  Every treatment gave me hope that this would be an enjoyable and quick process, but even snow days get old after a while.  At this point, we are in depths of winters.  The snow is burying us.  The roads are icy.   The nights are long and cold.   No amount of warmth can take the chill fully out.  All that being said, I still hold out hope that the end of our winter is out there; I just don't know exactly how we will find it.  Hopefully we can wait out this winter right where we are, but if we need to make a change and move we will do it.  There will be an end to our winter, but exactly where we will be when it ends, I do not know.   We are waiting for insurance approval for another (most likely our last) IVF which can hopefully occur, or at least begin, before the end of the year.   We are also signed up to go to an infertility & adoption conference in about a week to get all the information we might need on adoption.   At this point in time, I am really unsure about how our journey will end, but it will end and our summer will begin.

I want to leave you all with my new favorite quote.  I carry it around in my wallet with me; I repeat it at least once a day.  It truly keeps me going.  I hope you can find inspiration from it as well.
"The moment you think about giving up, think of the reason why you held on for so long."

This post is part of the Infertility Is Blog Contest sponsored by RESOLVE of New England. You can find links to all of the submissions online at their website. For more information about RESOLVE of New England, like them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.