I had therapy this morning, and I’m going to try to write after each therapy appointment so I can have a written record of our sessions. Therapy is so useful and beneficial and I want all of her thoughts to be recorded so I can re-read and re-analyze them.
I have dinner tonight with my pregnant friend. I’m uncertain whether I should go or not, as it is so uncomfortable and painful for me to even see a pregnant woman, let alone speak to one. Susan feels that going tonight will not hinder nor help my coping ability with my own infertility. She feels I should determine, based upon the circumstances, if this is something I feel I should do. I’m afraid to not go, I’m afraid if I say to my friend that her pregnancy is too much for me to handle, that we will no longer be friends. I wouldn’t blame her if that happened, I wouldn’t wnat to be friends with someone who wasn’t completely estatic about my kid either! However, I’m afraid to keep being her friend because her pregnancy causes me so much pain. Regardless, I am going tonight. Susan asked me what I will tell myself tonight as I sit there and struggle with the event…I started to tear up, because every thought that ran through my head at that moment was negated by the fact that she is pregnant and I never will be. I don’t care that I have more childfree time in my marriage, that we have more money, that we own a home and she doesn’t, that we are finished with our formal education and they are trying to balance finishing their bachelor’s degree while raising a baby, that she had 1 failed marriage already, that she struggled with her ex-husband’s infidelity. She is pregnant and I will never be. That single thought is what dominated my mind as Susan was expecting a response. I simply said “I don’t know”. I don’t know, I don’t know how I will think or what I will do to stop the tears from falling. I don’t know how I will look into her eyes when she speaks and not at her baby-filled belly. I don’t know how I will ever get the image of my pregnant friend out of my head. I wonder….10 years from now, will I look back and see my friend’s pregnancy as a blessing? Will I see it as the means by which I healed? Will I thank her for being in a position that challenged my strength and encouraged me to face my enemy?
As all those thoughts were flooding my mind, Susan spoke. She said I should think about me….about how I didn’t choose the easy way out (by staying at home and cancelling dinner) and how I should be proud of myself for being strong when I feel the temptation to be weak. Actually, that provided me relief. I should be proud for being the strong one (although, sometimes I really want to say-I’m done being the strong one, I don’t want to be strong anymore if this is what being strong feels like. I want to be the weak one. I want to be the woman without an opinion who stays at home with her 5 kids -all conceived naturally, by the way, and scheduled each to all be exactly 365 days apart. I want to surrender my strength, forego the tough times, and just be a weak little woman who is free of the pains of infertility). But, I know that is not possible. That is the tricky thing with personal strength…you can’t really get rid of it once you have it. Sure, I could choose to stay at home and make the ‘weaker’ choice….but then I wouldn’t be happy with myself, thus, the strength never goes away forever. It just hides every once in a while.
So, back to therapy. Susan remarked that she felt if I pushed my dh hard enough, he’d eventually give in and say we could adopt (she was not suggesting I do this, it was just a comment in the midst of the conversation). I told her that I tried, I pushed as hard as I could. Sidebar: A week or so before we started therapy, I received a phone call from an adoption agency in TX. I had requested information on them several months earlier and spoke with one of the social workers at the agency. They were calling because they have a birthmom who was asking the agency to select the family and her only requirements were that the adoptive parents be married without any kids and live out of the state of TX. Since this agency is very small, they did not have any out of state couples that met that requirement, so she was asking if we would be interested. Basically-here’s your baby… Well, dh said no. He wasn’t ready to adopt and when I pushed as hard as I could….he said if I wanted a baby right now, he wanted a divorce. So, I told Susan about this. I told her that I feel I’m back into a corner (no baby corner) and I’m not asking for divorce…I’m trying to struggle through it adn work on my marriage and emerge as a stronger couple, but when my dh was backed into a similar corner, he was too weak to work through it, he just wanted out. She noted (and this was a big aha moment for me), that I’ve had all of my usual coping skills taken away from me. In any event in my life, when I’ve been presented with an obstacle, I make a plan and then put that plan into action. That is how I cope. I had never considered it a coping skill before but I now understand that is exactly what it is. In this situation, I do not have that option. I’m infertile. There is not a plan I could devise that will make me pregnant. So, I moved to plan B, adoption. Dh stopped plan B. Now, I dont’ know what to do with myself. My options have been stripped away and I’m just supposed to live? How? I don’t know how to go through each and every day, partially because I’m overcome with grief, anger, and saddness related to my infertility and (now as I understand it), because I do not how to cope without creating a plan and putting it into action. No wonder life is so easy for dh, he has his coping skills everyday: PROCRASTINATION! Dh is a huge procrastinator. I’ve always considered it a characteristic trait, not a coping skill, but now I understand it to be both. When he has uncertinity, he procrastinates. He’s uncertain about being a parent right now, so he’s employing his coping skill. And when he was presented with uncertinity and I was asking him to face the uncertinity without his coping skill, he wanted out! I’m angry at him for that. He’s not going through the grief and depression of infertility…of all times, this is the time I should be granted my coping skill! Why does he get to retain his and I don’t mine?
