"I will praise the one who's chosen me, to carry you"
-Selah: I will carry you

Saturday 12 October 2013

Babies everywhere I look

I'm at work. I never usually blog from work, it isn't what I'm here to do, but right now I just need to take five. Or maybe ten.  It's peads clinic this morning, and it's a huge list. And it seems like more than half of them are babies today. Everywhere I look there's another happy parent holding their baby. It's tearing me apart.  I was doing ok, I even saw one or two of them earlier, but it's getting to me now. It's such a torment. Work, the one place I can be distracted and NOT think about what I don't have. The place I can wear the professional mask with pride and excell at what I do.  Not today. Today I'm reduced to greiving, infertile mother who is not a mother. And it hurts so bad.

I saw a quote yesterday, "Envy: Blowing out someone else's candle won't make yours shine brighter". This is true. I don't believe that is how my envy is though. I don't want to blow out anoyone's candle. I don't want them to NOT enjoy their babies, or not have them even.  But I am jealous. I just want my candle to burn too. I just want some of it to stop hurting. The Bertie pain will never go, I know that, but the pain of infertility is just an added cruelty, which can be removed from me, if only my prayers would be answered.

Sunday 6 October 2013

Doing well and coping amazingly.

I've just been through the tough month. The month that feels like life is nothing more than a series of hard dates to get through, and then one more.  I've been told a lot this month that I'm "doing well" or "coping amazingly".  My boss' favorite when I tell her that a particular something has been hard that day is to tell me "yes but Sarah, six months ago, you wouldn't have even done that". Big whoop! Aren't I doing well? Aren't I coping amazingly! Well I don't want to any more. I don't want to do well and cope amazingly. Or rather, I don't want to have to.

I want more.

There has to be more to my life than this. There has to be more to come for me, surely? Can I really be destined for a life where my biggest achievement of the week is not crying when a colleague brings in her almost one year old, reminding me of just how long this road has been for me? Reminding me of the early days of grief watching her bump grow. Can I congratulate myself on how far I have come and be satisfied with that? Of course I can't. So why do people expect me to be pleased with my "achievement" of coping? Especially, when society's definition of coping is not crying, it seems. So, what we are basically saying is, "well done you for not crying, have a coconut!"

Forgive me for not feeling like the cat who got the cream. I'd rather have won the fish.