I was looking at the calendar today when I realized that it was almost June.
Almost June. Which means that in a little over a month, I will be trying to get pregnant.
Does that strike anyone else as totally bizarre? In just a few weeks I will start hormone injections. Then I will be flying to Seattle, having my eggs taken out of me, fertilized with donor sperm, and put back into me.
Sometime in the next two months I will be peeing on a stick to find out if I am going to be a mommy.
WHOA!
When did this happen?
It is just so weird to really think about. I know I have obviously been working towards this, but it’s almost like I’ve just been going through the motions. Doing what needs to be done. Following the checklist in my head to completion, while completely forgetting what the final steps should look like.
When will this become real to me?
I would have thought that it would start feeling more real after buying the sperm. (The sperm that has officially now cost me almost $1000. That’s right, I thought it was done with the $640 vial and $170 shipping, but then yesterday I got a bill from the clinic for $150 for “handling” it. Apparently it cost money just to touch my sperm.) After all the excitement faded though, that was just one more thing to check off my list. It didn’t really make it any more real at all.
I guess maybe I assumed the reality would have at least started to seep in after my first IVF appointment, but that didn’t really happen either. I mean, sure, the financial reality set in, but not really the “I’m working my butt off to be a mommy in the very near future” reality.
Sure, I say the words. I say them almost every day. “I am doing IVF in July.” “I am going to be a mommy soon.” “All I want is a baby in my belly in the next few months.” I say them. They roll off my tongue. They have practically become my very own little mantras.
But when I stop and think about what they really mean?
WHOA.
Logically, I know exactly what is going on. Emotionally though? I have to remind myself regularly of the events of the last year. It’s like they fade. Like I forget I’m not living the same life anymore. I have to consciously remind myself about the endometriosis, and the surgeries, and the prognosis. I have to remind myself that I will never conceive naturally, and that IVF is in my very near future.
I have to have these conversations with myself daily. As if I was some head trauma patient with short term memory loss.
Someone please tell me it’s normal to feel this way. To know what you want and what you need to do to get it, but to still catch yourself off guard when you really think about what’s about to happen.
When does it become real? When will this feel like a totally normal thing that I’m doing, instead of this bizarre alternate reality universe?
Will it be when I start the hormone injections? Or when I fly to Seattle? Will it start when I go in for my first procedure? Or as I’m leaving the second?
Or will none of this start to feel real until I am actually peeing on a stick? Until I am facing the grief of it not working, or the elation of the life growing inside of me.
When will what I’m doing (fully and completely) sink in?
Because it’s not real yet.
ADSPACE
