Skipping the Hurt*

This past Sunday, I started my injections for IUI 2.0. We decided since our time was limited and we didn't have many chances to try with this RE before our move, that we might as well take the chance. My protocol is the same as it was last time, almost two years ago -- 75 IU of Gonal.f. My first monitoring appointment will be this Thursday morning. My cycles are always pretty regular so I am anticipating smooth sailing through this as well. I triggered on either CD 12 or 13 last time, with the IUI being done on either CD 14 or 15. I didn't write it down, so I don't remember, but I know it was fairly standard. Obviously, I am hopeful that this works out like it did last time. However I'm also trying to be realistic in the fact that it might not. Will we be that lucky twice? I doubt it.

There was something very difficult about choosing to do another IUI at this point. I never went back on birth control after having Lucas, and we were always of the mind set of "if it happens, it happens." But we weren't TRYING per say. We weren't preventing, but I wasn't charting, temping, counting cycle days. There was no heart break every month with negative tests. So I am going into this with so many different feelings than last time. I don't feel broken or beat down. I am not depressed (anymore -- thanks Prozac!) and I don't feel completely hopeless about our situation. It's different. There are absolutely still some remnant feelings & hurt from our first trip down baby alley, but our journey has been different this time.

So in a way, I feel like this is cheating a bit. Jumping to treatment without having to go through the pain that we went through before. For me, however, this was why we chose to move to treatment. I am not sure that either M or I could handle months on end of negative tests. Neither of us wanted to go through another year of trying naturally only to constantly have our hearts broken before making the choice to do more infertility treatments. Would it have been the same? Not necessarily. We will never know if I would have been able to get pregnant on our own. Maybe I would have. It happened once before, and though it ended in miscarriage, it very well could have happened again. And, as I'm only three days into my injections for this cycle, there's no way of knowing at this point if this will work again. There very will still be some heartbreak left for us down the road.

But, we've skipped a lot of it. Again, it feels like cheating. But also smart. If you can avoid having your heart hurt, would you? I've had that hurt before and I feel it every day for others, and the option to skip that, this time around, was appealing. For both of us.

But what if these IUI's do work on the first try? Or even the second? Am I then that person? The one who decides to try to have a baby and POOF ... is pregnant? Am I a traitor to my community? Am I suddenly that girl we all hate? Or is it different? I don't know.

Of course, there is always the option that these won't work for us. Then we have to live with the reality of being a one child family. We cannot afford IVF, and we are so blessed with one truly amazing child that if that ends up being our fate, we are OK with that. Then the hurt will happen, I think.

So maybe it's not avoidable at all.

We will see. I want to be as positive as possible, but protect my heart at the same time. I'm starting to feel like those two things are mutually exclusive; I see too much positivity end in pain, and I don't want that again.