Fooled Again

Today's entry on this blog o' mine is going to consist pretty much of a lot of whining and venting. And--heads up--there will probably be a lot of feminine details. Feel free to skip it, and don't say I didn't warn you.

So--I am having a really, really hard day today. Despite my determination to lie to Jacob and insist I'm fine (which he can see right through), I am not. I really want to be fine, I hate feeling weak and vulnerable and I loathe the lump that has formed at the back of my throat which will not go away despite repeated attempts to distract myself with other things.

Today I just don't know if I can handle this infertility thing. I mean...I can, I have no choice. I just really don't want to at the moment.

Recap--I went off the clomid a few months ago when my doc referred me to an infertility specialist. I haven't taken anything since. To my pleasant surprise, I had a period the month after I went off the infertility drugs...I was thrilled, and figured maybe the clomid had "reset" me so to speak. I hoped that perhaps we could get pregnant without medical intervention. The next month I had a period again. Go me, my body was doing what it's supposed to! I really believed that maybe, just MAYBE I was "cured" so to speak of this...after all, I used to ovulate regularly, I never in my life had a problem (other than the occasional skipped month) until I went off the damn birth control pills. But anyway...

...this month I was late. I did NOT get my hopes up...even when I ovulated every month, my cycle has never been what you'd call regular and I've never known exactly when my period will come (not even when I was taking clomid). I remained unconvinced that it was anything other than me being late--I learned very early on in this process that even entertaining the possiblity of being pregnant only results in devastating heartbreak (when I actually was pregnant last year, it took 2 tests for me to believe it). So I waited.

At the beginning of the 2nd week, I got an overwhelming feeling that I was pregnant. I immediately tried to discard it, thinking there was no way--but the feeling lingered. No matter how many times I screamed at my brain that I was NOT pregnant, I couldn't shake the feeling that this time, I was.

Then I was two weeks late. I resolved to wait at least another week before even considering taking a test...then I started feeling overly emotional. After that it was, "Am I peeing more?" Ever the skeptic, I did my best to NOT read into anything. I guess I did a pretty poor job.

Finally, I picked the date I'd take the test, and that day was today.

After I got home from work last night I put the test on the bathroom counter and went to bed. I tossed and turned and couldn't stop thinking about it. "What if I am??? No--I'm not, I don't really have many of the symptoms. But they say every pregnancy is different, so maybe this one feels different from the other one. Some women don't feel any symptoms at all..." And on and on and on until I was ready to go insane. Then that stupid, awful feeling came back, stronger than it was before--"YOU'RE PREGO, DUMMY." Exhausted and at my wit's end, I said what the hell, I'll trust it. That did the trick and I drifted off to sleep...

...only to wake up at 5:45 when my stupid cat decided she wanted to eat (normally she waits until at least 7:00 to start her incessant meowing). I stumbled into the bathroom, saw the test sitting there and immediately went into what I like to call heartbreak prevention mode--which consists of repeatedly telling myself, "It's negative, it's negative, it's gonna be negative." It helps ease the sting of when I'm right. So I took the test, went and paced in the living room for 3 minutes, and came back...the whole time saying to myself that it was negative, the damn feeling still telling me it'd be positive.

"Not Pregnant" was clearly displayed on the digial screen. "See? Told ya so..." I thought to myself.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, utterly and completely stupid. I cannot believe I somehow deluded myself into actually trusting the feeling--believing that this was finally gonna be it. How big of a fool am I? SERIOUSLY...I know better. Where the hell did that feeling come from anyway?? And even now as I sit here, part of me is thinking..."well, maybe I ovulated really late...maybe it's still too soon to tell"...even though I KNOW that I've just gone back to not ovulating. And now I will need to take the provera to medicinally induce a friggin period so I can go back on the clomid so I can get the ultrasound my infertility specialist wants me to have to check the uterine lining or whatever (it's a long explanation, and not really relevant to this post) and basically I'm back at square one. I am almost exactly where I started, except I do know that Jacob's sperm is fine and my tubes aren't blocked. And those things are good to know--but I still have no idea why this isn't happening for us--I really hate not being able to diagnose and fix this problem. And after what happened this morning, I feel so beyond dumb it's not even funny. I feel like total shit.

Ok well, that's not really a nice or eloquent thing to end with, but I need to leave for work soon. Sorry for being so negative. Most days I'm good. Today though, it's too much. I hope I can do this.