3/3, 0/4

there won't be any baby-after on this blog.
there won't be any baby-after in this life.

i had the frozen embryos transferred last monday. everything looked perfect, just like it did last month. during the transfer, i thought, "uterus, you know better than i do. it's up to you." i've been waiting to learn my fate, and now i know. i guess that's all there is to it.

i think i feel sad and i feel free. i feel a release from the obligation to try.

during the summer of 2006, the three were 19 months old and we talked about whether we wanted more children. my flesh was saying i was ready for number two, not realizing it'd had three the first time. husband was home for 2 months after a car accident, and i was thinking maybe yes, i wanted another baby. soon after he returned to work, i realized it was a batshit crazy idea and decided i was done.

that fall, i went on a diet and started working out. i had three children, a husband, a home. i was getting back to my old self. christmas time came around, new years eve...jesus, i felt bloated. january 2007 i found out i was surprisingly pregnant. i was shocked, depressed. i felt betrayed and overwhelmed. i hated being pregnant. the kids were 2 and i was terrified about adding a newborn. then she died.

my immediate reaction was that i was done before, i can just go back to being done. that didn't last long, and if i were most other women, i would have a fourth who-knows-how-old baby by now. but i'm not, and i don't. my 2008 was a full year of trying to get pregnant, yet confused about why why WHY i wanted another baby. was it to try to right a wrong? to try to heal myself from the horror of my dead baby? was it to have that one baby, to know what it's like to have a baby like a normal mother, just one-on-one? i didn't know then, i don't know now. i do know that other women don't have to know, they just have to fuck. the decision and the reasons don't have to be good enough...they don't have to be made and justified time after time after time.

i was sure that if we did ivf, it would work and i would get pregnant. it was always there, that looming high-tech medical procedure, that balls-to-the-wall act of finally really trying to have a baby. it, after all, had worked so brilliantly the first and only other time i'd done it. three out of three. all i could think of was, if i didn't do it, would i regret it in the future? would i wish i would have done it, had another baby like i always wanted to have it, one at a time? just like i SHOULD HAVE IT? WOULD I REGRET NOT DOING IT? i just assumed it would work. that was the problem.

my first injection was december 26th, 2008. four perfect embryos created. two transferred at the end of january, two transferred last monday. two stark white negative pregnancy tests. total failure.

after the failure in january, i was devastated. i was shocked. it didn't work.

after the failure in january, i started to feel a release. i started to feel that my obligation to try had ended. i started to feel free. i had nothing more to fear regretting. i'd done it all; i'd done the extreme and it didn't work. i was tired. i knew we'd try the two frozen embryos, but i knew i was free after that, no matter what happened.

it didn't work. i can't get pregnant again. i tried. i tried everything.

i am sad and i am free.

you will not come here and read that i have no words left, that i'm busy with a newborn, that i'm not sure where i belong now. you will not read that i'm too busy being happy and feel guilty talking about my baby after. you will not read about how i'm still grieving yet ecstatic. you will not travel with me during a pregnancy and birth. there will be no breath-holding. there will be no exhaling.

there will, however, be an afterlife. finally.