Ouch

I was reading a new blog this week, a new face with the familiar problems. She wrote about the pain of fertile ignorance and the frustration that accompanies their innocent assumptions that life will go according to plan. As I wrote a comment to commiserate, I noticed the captcha at the bottom of the screen: "Outch."

Spelling aside, I thought it quite fitting for an IF blog. If any one word could sum up this journey, "ouch" would be it. Such a simple word, one we learn early in life, and yet one that has over the years has acquired many different nuances.

First came the disappointing ouch of the continued arrival of AF, month after month.

Then came the more heartbreaking ouch of the negative pregnancy tests.

Next, the embarrassing ouch of invasive doctors and the angry ouch of diagnosis (or lack thereof). The financial ouch of treatments, followed by the physical ouch of injecting yourself on a daily basis. The varied ouches of side effects, coupled with the indignant ouch of repeated examinations and blood draws. And then there's the ouch of our fertile friends and family moving forward, while we seem unable to get ourselves unmired from the muck. The ouch of holding a newborn infant that isn't yours, the ouch of envy, jealousy, and guilt. The ouch of marital strain, of becoming distant or angry or inaccessible to your spouse. For some, there's also the debilitating ouch that comes when a life is given, when hope rises, and then is snatched away.

Each ouch cuts in different ways, and each leaves its own kind of scar. But all of us, somehow, find a way to endure, and to lend support to others in the trenches. It's only to an IF sister that I can say "ouch" -- and know that she knows exactly what I mean.