IF: Does it get easier?

Read part four here.

Yes.

And no.

It may be reluctant acceptance.  This is my life.  Deal with it.  It might be blessed grace.  This is my life, the one God gave me.  Or it’s time or age or sheer exhaustion. 

But, dealing with IF does become easier.  At some point it is no longer all consuming, the first thing on your mind in the morning and the last at night.  The sharp pain of not being able to get pregnant is gone or at least replaced by a dull ache.

Every once in a while, when you least expect it, the doubts and pain rear its ugly head.  For me, it was a couple of months ago.

A while back I mentioned that while my aunt and uncle were visiting, we were going to watch baby Sara for a day.  I had the day planned and pictured it in my mind.  We were going to pick her up early that morning before my brother-in-law left for work.  We’d go home and I would make breakfast for us all and then Himself and I would take Sara to our favorite art show.   Afterwards, we would come home, she’d take a nap and I’d get the lasagna ready for our family dinner that night. 

It sounded like a great day.  I’m a pretty good aunt and Sara is an easy baby.  I was stoked.

Then reality set in.  My visiting aunt fed Sara her morning bottle while I fixed breakfast.  As we ate, the fussing started.  Then the wailing.  Poor baby had a tummy ache of the worst kind.  There didn’t seem to be much we could do to comfort her.  We walked and bobbed and swayed.  We patted her back.  We laid her down.  And picked her up again.  Her belly rumbled and gurgled.

An hour and a half, a bout of projectile vomiting and a messy, messy diaper later she was a little better.  Our plans to go to the art show flew out the window.  As I sat at my computer with a whimpering baby on my lap, my tears came.    I fired off the email below to Himself. 

Himself assured me that wasn't the case.  I still didn't know all of Sara's likes and dislikes yet and once I did things would get better.

 

Another day, a couple of weeks later, it hit me again, though not nearly with such vengeance.  I was driving to work one morning and had to wait for the school bus that was picking up the middle school kids in the neighborhood.  I looked at them and thought our kids should be getting on that bus.  Had we had kids when we were newly married they would have been about that age.

But, and this is key, those times become fewer and fewer.  If tears come from a PG announcement, they are tears of joy. 

Attending, or even throwing, a baby shower not only becomes easier, it is what it is - a joyful celebration of a new life entering this world.  It's no longer a reminder of what isn't.

The cries of a newborn tug at your heart because you want to fix what is wrong for that little child not because it's not yours. 

Somehow, some way, it does get easier.  Sometimes it just doesn't seem like it will.

AMDG