31.1

Summer is neither my favorite time of year nor my real name, but all else within the confines of this blog will be as true a reflection of my experiences through infertility as I can get. Wearing this badge of infertility is a relatively new thing. Though I have had a miscarriage and have gone through the “prescribed” year long TTC with no pregnancy and lurked in the shadows of the Infertile Elite for over a year (Julie, Tertia, Grrl, Julia, Cecily to name just a few), I didn’t quite feel like I was in their class because what they wrote, they wrote so well and on top of that my experiences certainly don’t compare to the hardships they endured (but I certainly don't seem to have any problem addressing them as if I knew them, do I?).

So, why this label and this blog now? Last week, my day 3 FSH levels came back. The Dr left a message asking me to page him and call him back. I knew it couldn’t be a good sign because if everything was normal, they don’t call you, you call them. I braced myself for the worse, for what I had suspected for at least the past year and for what I feared for the past 4 or 5 years. I just turned 33 years old, but it was true. My biological clock was dying a slow death and along with it my hopes of having a biological child of my own. Surprisingly, my reaction was not the usual meltdown and despair followed by the gazillion worries about what else could be wrong with me or will be wrong with me. I knew having this diminished ovarian reserve at so young an age meant my periods will stop sooner than is typical and I will go into premature ovarian failure. Not good news. So why was I handling this relatively well? Sure, I cried for two hours, but I was actually able to get back to work and put this in the back of my mind and not be anti-social to the people around me and finish the day weepy but with a semblance of sanity. A far cry from the months of depression that followed my miscarriage last year. In the next couple of days I thought about how I had wanted to start a blog but it never came together in a way that felt right. I could never find the right name for it that encompassed who I was. But these last days it came to me and here I am. I realize now that I couldn’t find the right name because I had spent this time after my miscarriage stuck in my worries. I had days when I hated the person I had become but didn’t know how to go back to the person that I was. But, for some reason discovering my high FSH level brought back the fighter in me. Not the aggressive, I-am-going-to-tackle-this-thing-no-matter-what-life-throws-at-me fighter. I was never that kind of person. But, an ok-this-is-who-I-am-so-how-am-I-going-to-deal-with-it fighter.

Will I go back to the withering pile of worries that I was? Probably. For a little while. On some days. Because, that’s who I am also. But, the infertility fight isn’t about having my own babies anymore and conquering infertility. Now, it is about having a family and fighting the good fight.