{Infertility: Parallel Lives}

I read once that going through fertility treatment (especially ones as intense as IVF) can make you feel like you're leading two lives at once. Parallel lives.

You have your everyday life that looks not much different than the next person:
You wake up and get ready for the day. You choke down some cereal while you read your scriptures for the day. You go to work. 8 hrs with a 1 hour lunch in between. You put food in your body and try to make sure it's at least somewhat healthy and try to avoid the m&m's in the desk at work.  Your spouse does the same.  Goes to work and makes money so you can pay your bills. But he goes to school 3 days a week as well and puts himself into it so he can provide a better living eventually.  You both come home from work and try to get some house cleaning done and possibly make dinner. You have your own projects that you're working on to make a little extra cash where you can. You have friends and family and a church calling and responsibilities.

Then you have another life that many people don't know about or understand:
This life doesn't run 24/7. It comes in spurts. I can run 24/7 days, weeks or months at a time but fades to the background every once in a while. But you know it when it's running. You wake up wondering if you dreamt the day before. You wonder if that day in the doctor's office so many months ago really happened and if what they told you was actually true. You get that weight in your stomach when you realize it most assuredly happened. To you. You pull yourself out of bed much too conscious of your physical body and everything that is going on inside of you. Your dresser is covered in prescription bottles, vitamin bottles, alcohol wipes, needles, syringes, vials of medications....a sharps container. (funny thing is that's your 4th one and it's getting full again) Heck, you have vials of medication in your fridge where you would normally keep the jelly.  At work you have 1, no 2...actually 4 different calendars where you can cross off the day before on each one and check off each medication, vitamin or shot you did at the right time. You count. Again. How many days you have left this time. You go ahead and swallow those pills and stick that needle in your stomach or butt. Which ever one you're on currently. You go to the doctor's office way too often and can drive there with your eyes closed. Those stirrups are nothing now. You can't believe how much anxiety they used to cause. No bigs. There's nothing you can't do. You are friends with your nurses. FB friends too. It's official. There's not much about your body that they and your doctor don't know about and nothing is awkward anymore. Yes it's surreal. They tell you what you can and cannot eat. They tell you when you can have sex with your spouse for heaven's sake. Romantic isn't it? On that note, you and your spouse can't even imagine making a baby the way every other couple does. That's not how it happens!! Your babies are made at the doctor's office with thousands of dollars and shot after shot and visit after visit. Of course that's how they're made! Everyone else is just silly..... On your lunch you might head over to the store and wander accidentally into the baby section. Maybe purchase something small for your one day baby. When you get home it'll get stored safely away with the diaper bag and onesies and bedtime stories and quilt you've made. All inside that box where your heart really is.

This is the interesting part to me. During an IVF cycle---There's all that craziness and all that stuff that's just plain difficult---but that's the life that feels real. That's the life that feels most meaningful. That's the life that, when it's happening, could possibly give Bryce and I the thing we want most. To be parents. To have little ones messing up the house and leaving fingerprints on the windows and crying in the middle of the night, waking me up from my precious sleep and then leaving jelly smudges on my new dress. Real life isn't the working and the school and the bills. It's the heart wrenching, soul stretching ..... quest (as my husband would call it) for parenthood that gives life meaning and value.