Really low lows
You know that song… it goes “we’ve got… really high highs… really low lows…but I still love you…even though I don’t like you right now” (if not: listen here) . Well that’s been stuck in my head a lot lately. Whenever I’m going through a particularly tough time I seem to gravitate towards a song or two that becomes my anthem for the time being - see below for a few examples. This will both tell you something about my musical taste and pump you up for the really low lows I’m about to recount - and what pulled me back up.
Boy drama in college: Independent
Other tough stuff in college: Started from the Bottom
Apartment break-in and fallout in grad school: Roar
Infertility: Shots (more on this in a future post…) and the song I linked above
I don’t think I was prepared for the roller coaster of emotions that I would feel as we began seeking treatment. Filed under “sort of high highs” was when we got all of our test results back and learned that I had “beautiful fallopian tubes” and my husband’s swimmers were pretty darn good. Basically, they couldn’t find anything significantly wrong with us. They call it “unexplained infertility”…and it is fairly common. But our ‘type-A give me a problem and I’ll solve it’ tendencies didn’t know what to do with this diagnosis.
The lowest low came about a month later, when we were nearing the end of the “two week wait” after our first intrauterine insemination (IUI) + Clomid (drug to stimulate ovulation) cycle. In the week we were to find out whether this first assisted attempt worked we also found out that three friends and two friends-of-friends were pregnant. Unlike the times when we were trying naturally and found out about pregnancies, at this point we’d admitted we had a problem - and somehow finding out about these pregnancies hurt way more.
Up front I want to say that despite it hurting, we are still SO excited for our friends, we can’t wait to meet their little ones, and we want nothing but healthy, easy pregnancies for them. Also, they (and all of our amazing friends and family) have been unbelievably supportive of us throughout our struggles. We love you guys.
It was a Friday, I had gone in for a blood pregnancy test and was to get a call back from our nurse later in the day with the results. Two days earlier we’d found out that one of our best friends was pregnant. I cried myself to sleep that night, because even though we hadn’t had the test yet, I knew I wasn’t pregnant. I’m not sure my husband knew what to do with me at that point I was so inconsolable. Then that Friday I got a text mid-day from one of my best friends announcing her pregnancy. I got a call from our nurse a few hours later, as I was leaving work, in a tone I would become familiar with over the next few months. “I’m really sorry, but the test was negative…”
At the time I was commuting to work partially on public transportation. It took everything in me not to 100% break down on my way home after getting that call… but once I was in my car, I lost it. It probably wasn’t safe for me to be driving given how close I was to hyperventilating and passing out. I’m convinced someone was looking out for me that day because I made it home, and both of my sisters were there waiting for me. One lives with us, so that was normal, but the other had a last minute work trip and was in town visiting. I didn’t have to say a word when I walked in the door and they sandwiched me in a hug and just let me cry.
So far, that week was rock bottom for me. Even though we had two more IUIs that didn’t result in pregnancy, and even though I cried inconsolably after each of those results, I learned after this first one that I had to have some significant and immediate distraction to pull me up long enough to move forward. The second time, I immediately took myself to spin class and cried the entire 45 minute class… thankful for the dark room full of strangers and music so loud no one could hear me (by this point I’d abandoned my previous ban on spin classes). The third time I took a pregnancy test ahead of time, got my crying out, and spent that night hanging out with friends. As we are now moving on to even more intense fertility treatments, we are already strategizing about what we can do to pull ourselves up if/when things get hard again. If you’re going through this… or anything hard for that matter - I’m here cheering you on! Find what pulls you up out of the dark places - you’re so much stronger than you know.
