Baby...

This is one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen.

Yes, I will admit my bias. This is my precious niece, Ivie. She is 9 months old, and perfect in every way. When I look at her, I feel all mushy and lovey inside. I hold her, and I melt. Oxytocin floods my brain. I bond with her beautiful eyes, amazingly intoxicating baby smell, and smooth skin. Her giggle sends me over the edge and I cannot stop fawning over her. She has recently learned how to play peek-a-boo, crawl, take a few tottering steps, clap her hands, and wave goodbye to people. I love her so much it hurts. I love all of my nieces and nephews, deeply and truly, but right now, Ivie is like a chemical addiction. I spend time with her, get my fill, hand her back to my amazing sister-in-law, go home, and feel like I will not survive until I get another fix. I wish this were me just being melodramatic. Unfortunately, it's pretty much the real deal.

I want a baby. It is all I can think about. It is all I want. I have been trying to have one since September of 2011. Every month that passes, I lose more hope that it will ever happen for my husband and me.

I thought I knew what it felt like to experience loss, disappointment, heartache and hurt. I spent nine years in and out of crazy relationships, and then obsessing over the prospect of never getting married. Then, this amazing man came into my life and changed everything. We have been married for a year and a half, and are so happy. He is truly the cornerstone and rock of my life. But without a baby in our lives, something is missing. Something is unfulfilled. And each day gets harder.

It's not all doom and gloom on the baby front. We are taking some important steps to figure out what the problem is and pursue a variety of approaches to correcting it. My appointment for a baseline determination of what is going on is next week. That is something that really gives me hope. My husband and I know that children are in our future, in one way or another. But getting there is a journey that is proving to be painful and trying.

Each month of trying to get pregnant is this truly manic roller-coaster ride. The anticipation is exciting, thrilling, and scary. The letdown and free-fall to the bottom are gut-wrenching. And there is no recovery. I feel like I am on a constant loop of being jerked around, thrown over the edge, and coming up short. 

Living as an active participant in a faith-centered culture is the most amazing blessing. Sometimes, though, it exacerbates my anxiety and heartache about fertility challenges. People in my church have large families. They have them young. I am not naive enough to believe that everyone has their kids without any bumps along the road, but to spend the majority of your life floating around the edges of a community focused on children is exhausting in every possible way. I am 29. My husband is 31. People younger than us have multiple children. I am simultaneously jealous of them and in awe of all they have been able to create and handle. I spend most of my days envisioning my eggs drying up and crumbling away into dust. Or building the expectation of being a perpetual aunt or mother to only a furry golden retriever. I am so tired. My heart is tired. My spirit is tired.

As hard as it is so be surrounded by people with children and hordes of exquisitely pregnant women, the loneliest and hardest place to be is in my own mind. I feel like a massive failure, because I am not able to do the only thing that really matters to me-to be a mother. I used to think it hurt because I was basing my value on a label of being a mother. It isn't that. Ultimately, this heartache comes from knowing that the only desire of my heart is to have a baby and dedicate my life to raising, caring for and loving that little soul. 

There are days where I just feel angry. Yesterday, I was cruising through some pretty awful afternoon television, and landed on the Dr. Phil show. The husband and wife on the show made me want to put my fist through a wall. The wife has been pregnant twice, is a bulilimic, and was purging through her pregnancies, and drinking to the point of being arrested for assault on her husband after her first child was born. There is a part of me that is compassionate toward her personal struggle and addiction. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand why someone is given the gift of a child when they are not a fit parent. It is everywhere, all around me, as I watch parents swear at their kids in the store, or complain about their kids being a hassle. I walk around every day wishing that the child who is pitching a fit in the grocery store, or getting in trouble for sassing their parents, were mine. I am not under an illusion that children are nothing but sunshine and rainbows. It is that I am ready for all that comes with motherhood, the good and the bad, and yet I can't have it. In my hormone-infused and heartache riddled body, all that I can feel is the injustice of not being able to have the most righteous desire of my life.

Whenever I talk to people about these challenges (and there are not many that I have opened up to about this, so this blog is sort of shining some daylight into a dark corner of my life), I am greeted with "be patient" or "have faith" or "timing is everything." People tell me to relax and that it will happen when it is supposed to happen. I can't relax. I can't think about anything else. When people say these things, I want to burst into tears. Or punch them in the face, but just for a moment. It is lonely and a little irrational here in the world of childless heartache. 

So today, I am making a promise to myself that I will stop pretending everything is okay. I will be more open and honest about the way I feel. I will accept that there are days that I just want to curl up and cry. I will be alright with handing my niece back over to her mother, and going home to soak my pillow with tears. And I will get up the next day with a new resolve to pray to my Heavenly Father for strength, faith and guidance. I will continue going though this insane and pretty hellish roller-coaster ride, whatever the outcome. I will even keep spending money on those annoyingly expensive pregnancy tests and peeing on them to the point of absolutely hating them, which I really already do. The first step to dealing with whatever my outcome will be is being vulnerable. So here is to vulnerability, and to not knowing for sure, and to being okay with the fact that it hurts and makes me shed lots of tears. 

I want a baby. It is all I can think about. And that is okay.