A Fork in the Road

August is finally over! Hip, hip, hooray!!

August is not my favorite month. It is miserably hot and humid and school starts back, which is insanely stressful.

This August also had two other negative factors. When I took Clomid for the first time last November, I of course looked up when the due date would be if I conceived that month. The baby would have been due on August 9th, my mother-in-law's birthday. The idea of that made me so happy. I adore my mother-in-law (she is the most amazing, loving, kind hearted, encouraging lady I have ever known), and nothing would have meant more to me than to have had a baby on her birthday. I hated giving her her birthday present this year tucked in a gift bag when I wanted to give her a gift wrapped in a soft, little blanket. In addition to that, the negative pregnancy test earlier in the month has not been easy to get past.

However, we're to a new month, and it felt good to flip that calendar page this afternoon. As I skimmed the new page before me, my eyes went to next Monday's box. In big letters was "NO SCHOOL!!!" and right under that was "Dr.'s appointment for progesterone shot." That shot would induce a new cycle, and we would return to our scheduled treatments. Hmmm...

I seem to have lost a bit of my fighting spirit. As the months of continuous treatments have gone by, I don't think I realized the courage that's needed in each step. Now that I've had a month's break, I find myself sinking cowardly away from this battle. Don't get me wrong; my desire to have a baby has done nothing but continue to grow. I want a baby, with all my heart, but the idea of beginning another round of infertility treatment is scary. Well, terrifying. Needles have not bothered me since I was a very little girl, and you would think the more you got stuck, the less you would care; however, now I cringe when I smell rubbing alcohol! The pills, the shots, the appointments, the blood work, the ultrasounds...I don't know if I can do it. Honestly, I don't know if it's those things that overwhelm me or if it's knowing that you can go through all that and still fail that is getting me. I can't imagine getting that phone call again that tells me I'm not pregnant. I don't know if I can handle that again. I've always been told that God never gives you more than you can handle, but I feel like He's really starting to push those limits with me. I feel like a house that's been through an earthquake and could collapse at any moment.

So, I find myself struggling to once again decide what to do. Decision making isn't one of my strengths, but I have had a lot of practice in this journey...Do I go to the doctor about my irregular cycles?...Do I take Clomid?...Do we switch to a specialist?...Do I take estrogen to make my uterus grow?...Do we move on to injectibles?...Those other decisions came pretty easy to me. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes! Whatever I have to do to get that baby growing! But I can't make that baby start growing. No specialist, shots, drugs, IUI's, or anything else is going to bring that child I so greatly desire to me. If we are meant to be parents, God will make us parents in His time. So is there even a point in going to a specialist? At the same time, why were we so obviously led to this doctor if we're not supposed to be with her? I have reached that fork in the road once again, and I just don't know which way to go.