I often don’t publicly ruminate on my infertile status.  I am still hopeful that I will be able to get pregnant with huge amounts of medical intervention–even at my fast advancing age.  I certainly know that I am running out of time.  Julia at I Won’t Fear Love wrote a post that touched me deep down in my real feelings about being infertile and about my relations with those who are also mothers…

I am a mother and nothing changes that.  Minnow is my son and now Peepers will soon be my child (in my heart she already is but legally will come soon).  Yet, being an adoptive mother is different.  Not logistically and not when it comes to loving our children–I couldn’t love Minnow any more.  He is my world.  He is my everything.  I am pretty sure that all parents feel that way.  Minnow really is a miracle. 

But, I was not pregnant.  I don’t know what labor is like.  I don’t know what it feels like to have your child grow in your belly and kick and move.  I don’t know what it is like to push and push and push and to have my face be the first one my child sees.  I don’t know what it feels like to watch my child grow from conception to delivery and from a newborn to an infant.  I don’t know what it is like to recover from birth and how it feels to struggle with breastfeeding.  I don’t know what it feels like to be pregnant.  I don’t know what it feels like to give birth. 

All of these things separate me from other mothers.  Not externally but internally and that is way more painful than anything I can imagine.  There are many conversations that I cannot participate in.  This makes me an outsider.  No one I know makes me feel this way–it is just what it is.  I often joke about not having to gain weight and go through labor and have my ankles swell and all those other physical things that come with pregnancy.  But I do it because it hurts that I don’t know those things.  It hurts that I cannot (up to this point) get pregnant and create a life.  What a gift it is to be able to create a person. 

I find myself constantly talking about undergoing IVF in the fall and I talk about it as though its a good thing. But it isn’t.  It sucks.  To be injected 2-3 times a day for 14 or so days with each shot costing anywhere between $75-$125.  Being monitored with vaginal ultrasounds checking your ovaries for growth.  Hoping you respond well but not to well to the medication.  Hoping, stressing, praying, dreaming, fearing what might or might not happen.  There is nothing fun or good about infertility and the treatments for it. 

I am genuinely able to be happy for my friends who get pregnant.  I don’t begrudge them this miracle.  It gives me hope that miracles happen, but it makes me acutely aware that I am different.  Different is not always good.