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Channel: hope – Amanda's Journey
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One Year

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With each day that passes, I’m more acutely aware that Scott and I have been actively trying to conceive our child for officially a year now. Perhaps the thought of “a year” makes it seem longer than it has been in reality. Twelve months. One year.

I cannot believe what this year has held. Countless prescription hormones. Oral, injections, patches, suppositories. The myriad of side effects: hot flashes, insomnia, migraines, dehydration, bloating, chills, pain, mood swings, crying spells, bruises, nightmares, 30 pounds of weight gain, and probably more that I’ve forgotten with time. Literally dozens of early morning drives to our Beachwood clinic and a couple even further out to Avon to make sure my specific doctor was the one doing any needed tests. Labs and more labs, scar tissue building under each antecubital vein. Oh and transvaginal ultrasounds – literally dozens. They used to make me feel violated but now knowing that every tech in the office has seen my female anatomy, external and internal? It just makes me feel even more numb.

The Beachwood office is grey and drab but the secretaries and nurses add bits of color. This place is where I watched all of my follicles grow, it’s where my embryos rest, frozen in time, and it’s where I was promised hope. It’s where both of my intrauterine inseminations were cancelled, where we found out I wouldn’t be having a 5-day transfer, where over a dozen follicles were extracted from my ovaries while propofol kept me sleeping and as the nurse anesthetist put it, fentanyl kept me from writhing in pain. It’s where my husband’s sperm was injected into my eggs and the cells in our embryos later multiplied into blastocysts. It’s where I woke up after IVF, tears streaming from the months of pain before combined with the screaming, acute pain of the needles that had just pierced my vagina and ovaries fifteen times. I prayed to God that morning and silently hoped that all of this was worth it, that every tear, every procedure, every hope and disappointment, every check written would soon be worth it.

A year probably seems so insurmountable because of the questions that never leave my mind. Was a year a fair deadline, or was it merely a super-imposed notion? If we are not pregnant at a year, would that mean our chances were higher or lower that we would soon – or ever – meet our child? What does “a year” really mean; what does it really define?

I hope to find out soon, but for now I know that my husband and I are the 1 in 8. We have infertility, and I think we have it bad. We have given our hearts, souls, and finances in hopes of bringing a child into this world. Our families and communities have rooted for us, supported us, and prayed for us on this journey. (Thank you.) But what is a journey anyways? Does it always end at a destination? Maybe not always the one that hopes and dreams and aching hearts are made of. And that is a fear too big for me to say out loud.

I once had a dream (while on ovarian stimulating shots, where the dreams are extra vibrant, cruel, and detailed) where I had finally given birth to the perfect child, a sweet and beautiful daughter. It horrifies me that my mind remembers the graphic details during which a man with no face stormed into our peaceful hospital room past my husband and I and grabbed the swaddled bundle of joy right from my arms. The man was screaming that it had been a mistake, aggressively shouting that I did not have a baby after all. I sat there with my mouth wide open, traumatized to a point of no return. Each time I hit that point in recalling that story, my mind fades to black.

So, one year. It’s been a cruel one punctuated with hope. Yet I plead with you, Time, “Please don’t let there be a second year of this.” I’m not sure my heart could bear it. So for now, let each new day on this journey only hasten the arrival of the hope of our promise. May this territory never become our familiar.



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