all around you.

When you're infertile and want nothing more than to experience pregnancy and hold your baby in your arms, it seems as though everyone around you has the opportunity -- except for you.

I think any of us who have experienced infertility can relate to these experiences.  You're at the mall and every woman you pass seems to have a round tummy, is pushing a stroller, or is toting three kids through the crowds.  And you can't help but be jealous.  You can't help but envy what all of these women have because it's what you want and what, for some reason, you can't have.

Everyone around you announces their pregnancies.  And you have to react joyfully for them -- for each of them -- every time.  You say your  - Congratulations!  The - I'm so happy for you!  You ask the expected questions -- When are you due?  How are you feeling?  You compliment.  --You look beautiful!  You're truly glowing.

But inside you hurt.  Month after month you're faced with disappointment.  And month after month, they keep finding success despite your failure.  And each time, you're expected to be happy.  To be a good friend.

If you're like me, you want to be.  You want to feel joy for everyone who achieves what you cannot.  It is the most amazing thing one can experience in life, after all.  You want to be genuinely happy for these women who you consider to be your friends.  But it's harder than some might think.  After enough time passes, it's truly difficult to feel joy for others who achieve your biggest dream so easily.  While you're left further and further behind.  It's difficult to put on the expected show of happiness and excitement.  Because all you want is to feel that way for yourself.  Finally.  After so much waiting and heartache.  All you want is what all of these women are experiencing, and there seems to be no valid reason you can't.

Sometimes I'm afraid these building feelings of jealousy and envy and bitterness are harmful to me, too.  I fear that karma may get me (or is getting me) for my inability to always experience the kind of joy a good friend should.  I fear that the negativity finds a home inside me and burrows deep, and that's not the person I want to be.

I have yet to skip out on a baby shower due to my emotions.  I have yet to retreat from my friends because I'm not in the same place they are.  I have yet to hibernate and surround myself with my sorrow.  So I'm proud of these continued efforts.  But I just want to be normal again.  I want to be a kind, concerned, generous friend who feels true joy and excitement for the women who mean so much to her.  I want to join the club with them.  I want to feel included and back on the inside instead of the outside.  I want to experience everything that they are -- two years ago.  I want to be completely me again.

I hope my emptiness can be filled soon.  I hope my dark space can be brightened.  I hope my ability to truly be a good friend returns.  Because I don't like this.

someone else's baby.

We went to some friends' for dinner tonight.  The husband is in my husband's class in the Optometry program, and the wife is a friend from a former job (and because our husbands are friends).

The wife and I have known each other for about two and a half years now.  When we first met, we were both in the midst of strong baby desires.  We were fighting them off because our husbands were just beginning their four-year programs, but we both admitted we couldn't help but hope we'd have babies in the near future.  We talked fantasies constantly at work (our offices were joined by a doorway) -- baby names, pregnancy, birth plans, doulas, baby showers, announcements, etc.  Everything.

Her older sister had endured struggles with infertility for three years or so and had basically been told there was nothing more they could try if they weren't interested in attempting IVF.  She wasn't.  The wife and I used to talk about our sympathy for her sister and brother-in-law.  How awful it would be to know you couldn't have your own children.  How hard on a marriage.  How difficult to have to abandon your biggest dream.

Funny looking back.

My husband and I began trying during this time, and although I was acutely aware of the possibility of infertility, I told myself I'd be pregnant very soon.  I didn't tell a single soul we were trying.  No one.  I wanted it to be our secret, and I wanted our joy to be private when it worked.

Instead, though, our friends got pregnant.  First try. 

We had only been trying five or six months, so even though I was jealous, I thought our turn was just around the corner.  But it wasn't.  I watched her pregnancy.  I went to her baby shower.  I met her sweet daughter at the hospital the day after delivery.

And tonight I held the six-month-old baby girl.  I've held her dozens of time in the months since she was born.  But tonight I touched the bottoms of her feet.  I squeezed her little thighs.  We nuzzled our heads together.  And I imagined, for just half a second, what it might feel like to experience all of that -- to make those observations -- with my own baby, whether it be biological or adopted.  My baby.

It was one of those moments that stops your heart for just a moment.  I frequently get those glimpses, and when I do, I can't even distinguish whether they make me happy or sad.

Probably both.