Shifting Perspective
I went to a yoga class tonight and the teacher started off by asking us to consider how we could shift our perspective about something. For her, she said, that meant not being down about the bummer of a Monday she’d had. For me, it reminded me of a few times when someone helped us shift our perspective about the infertility experience.
The first came in the form of my annual visit to the gynecologist. Side note: thanks to this (awesome) doctor, I had known not to wait to seek additional intervention as my husband and I crept up on 1 year of trying with no success (varies by the woman’s age, but for me it was 1 year, and some argue it should only be 4-6 months).
The conversation went like this:
Doctor: So, how are things going?
Me, very solemnly: “Well, clearly I’m not pregnant, so we’re working with a fertility clinic. We’ve already had a few failed IUI treatments so I think the next step is IVF.”
Doctor, super animatedly: “WOW! That’s so Exciting!!”
Me, internally: “Is she crazy? this is the most terrible-awful-emotional thing I’ve ever been through.”
Me, externally, feigning enthusiasm: “Yeah, I hope it works!”
I left that appointment so out of sorts. Half of me was thinking “how dare she not take this seriously!?!!” and the other half was thinking “hm. maybe its not crazy to get excited about this” The second half won. I called my husband just to tell him that maybe we didn’t need to be so down about this all! maybe it was really exciting! Her reaction made me stop and realize, even if just for the rest of that day, that what we were embarking on is pretty darn exciting.
The second came from my husband. Not long after my gynecologist appointment, we had some appointments at our clinic and my husband had to move his schedule around to accommodate them. He told a few of his colleagues the reason for the last minute schedule change and one, to his surprise, reacted much like my gynecologist: “YAY! That’s SO EXCITING!!” He relayed her reaction to me later and we were both again thinking “do we have this all wrong? should we be more excited??”
The answer for me is that I aspire to skeptical optimism. Despite trying, I haven’t been able to get to the full blown excitement in these two stories, but I try not to live down in the dumps all the time. I am incredibly grateful that for the most part when I’m feeling low, my husband can prop me up, and I do the same for him when he’s at a low. Cheers to skeptical optimism!
