Project IF- What if?

Visit Mel at Stirrup Queens for more details about this project, it ends today at midnight.

On the past three years I have had to ask myself many hard questions, explored scenarios I never thought I would have to. It starts with a why me, and expands to the 'what if's. What if I never get pregnant? What if I never get to be a mother? What if my husband never gets to be a father? What if we can't adopt? What if I have a miscarriage? What if I keep having miscarriages? What if the treatments don't work? What is we never get any answers? What if we spend a long time pursuing this dream that just might not be feasible? What is having a biological child just isn't meant to be? What if adopting isn't either?

Many of those scenarios came true... we tried treatments that failed, had miscarriage after miscarriages, and we are still not parents. But we survived, if barely. I doubt I could survive many more years like this, and I don't intend to.

Of course, that brings it's own thoughts into mind. If we move on to adoption we will be forced to take many more years in pursuit of being a parent- whereas with trying biologically we were able to take things a month or two at a time.

What if something happens to me or my husband during that time? I ask this even now, what would happen to me if something happened to my husband? I would be more alone than I've ever been in my life. I would face the fact that I lost all my babies, and I lost my husband. After each miscarriage that was the thing that made my chest squeeze shut and feel like the vice-grips were shattering my core- what if he left the house and never came back. How could I survive that? How could I survive losing absolutely everything I wanted, needed, in this life?

What if something happened to me? I like to imagine that my husband would move on, I like to imagine he would eventually find him a new wife, and he would have all the beautiful children he deserves and would otherwise be able to have had if he hadn't married me. But I know it wouldn't be that easy for him, I just like to imagine it would. My husband loves me, and watching me suffer hurts him. What would me dying do?

The loneliness of being infertile, of having had all those miscarriages, has never been so profound as when I look back and wonder what will happen if fate has yet other plans. Life is fragile, car accidents happen all the time, household accidents, fires, underlying medical conditions... What if we put everything on hold for the next few years, save to adopt, and then before we begin the journey something happens to him? Or me? Or after we begin the process, what if we get in a fatal accident? What if one of us doesn't die, but ends up paralyzed?

There are so many unknowns about the future, that it stifles me to even try to imagine how we will get from here to a few years from now. Yet we just spent three years of our life, quite without thought, pursuing a biological child. We took that one day at a time, one cycle at a time, one year at a time... it didn't seem so overwhelming. In retrospect... my god. But to plan that out, to say "Yes, I am going to devote the next three years of my life to this goal and this goal alone... and hope it works out." It's a lot to face, especially knowing that there are so many unknowns.

But then again... what if it works out? What if we do start saving now, what if in three years we planned it out just right and three years from now we bring home a honest to goodness child? Everything we wanted, in our arms? There would be no words for the depth of such an emotion, of such love and devotion. I would finally be able to say that all these years of pain and grief were worth it.

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For a basic understanding of IF, please visit Resolve.org And more information about National Infertility Awareness Week visit here.