blogs.

Sometimes I get online to work on something that has a pressing deadline or to check my e-mail or to look something up, and I quickly find myself on infertility blogs.   I seek them out because these blogs are written by people I can actually relate to.  They're infertile too!  They remind me that I'm not the only one, that my break-downs and my moodiness and my jealousy are all really normal for someone in my shoes.  And I need that.  Frequently.

Last night I should have been working on some statistics homework for a graduate class I'm in.  I should have been.  Instead I found myself on one of my favorite infertility blogs which then linked me to about seven new infertility blogs ... and I had to catch myself up on each of their stories.  I found blogs specifically by women who were undergoing IVF or who had been.  I found blogs by women in almost my exact same situation.  And I did feel that I'm not alone, and it was comforting.

But then I got sad.

I'm in this three-month waiting period to begin my first IVF cycle.  I'm taking a myriad of drugs to get my body ready before I start the actual IVF stim drugs.  But mostly it just feels like waiting.  It feels like prolonging the inevitable, and in many ways, I just want it to be here.  Because I'm excited and nervous and terrified.

I read these stories by women who had been there, who had been through the entire IVF process.  Some of them had been through it more than once.  And many of them weren't successful.

I've been working so hard to stay positive about what lies ahead.  I've been trying to stay out of my head and only think happy thoughts about this end result.  I've started acupuncture and meditations to relax.  I go running every morning to kind of physically rid myself of nerves.

But it's all still there.  This might not work.

I read the blog of a woman who was starting her second IVF cycle.  I went back and read through her first IVF journey, and it broke my heart.  She wrote about how hard she was working at staying positive, she wrote about feeling like it was really working after her transfer, and then she came crashing down.  And I could relate to every word in those entries, and I could see myself in her and my situation in hers.  It reminded me there are two sides to what's coming up -- a life-changing happiness and joy and an earth-shattering despair and depression.  Sounds dramatic, maybe, but I don't think it is. And I will only experience one or the other.

I'm sinking everything I've got -- emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially -- into this hopeful attempt.  I just don't want to be let down.

And so, while I know that reading these blogs has helped me tremendously in feeling less alone, and they've really educated me about my options and the different processes people pursue, sometimes they just make me sad.  I decided, in last night's funk, to go to bed early and hope that I would wake up this morning feeling a little more optimistic.

A night's sleep is magical.  But I wake up every morning acutely aware of all of the possibilities.  I suppose no blog will change that fact, so I will keep reading.  It's better to avoid the loneliness.