To "Stop Trying"

I have been thinking lots about all the ways that Dan and I tried to have a child.  All the ways and times we tried to conceive our child biologically.  Then came the hyst.  Yes, I asked for it, and yes, we both looked forward to it.  But I have just recently begun to see it for another thing that it was.  It was not just a radical treatment for the Endometriosis, it was not just another diagnosis, the Adenomyosis.  In a way it was the point that ever couple on this journey must somehow reach.  It was our decision to stop.  To stop trying.  To end fertility treatments.  To officially look for another way.

I am by no means saying that we tried everything we could have.  Money and pain were the biggest things stopping us from continuing the journey.  If I hadn't been in so much pain all the time, we would have saved the money and tried an IVF cycle or another IUI or SOMETHING.  But I couldn't do anymore.  WE couldn't do it anymore.  I was literally living on Percocet, while on the couch feeling sorry for myself.  There just was nothing else to do.

I know there are women out there that have tried these treatments numerous times without results.  I am by no means saying that my choice was any harder or easier than theirs.  It was just different.  It came to us in a different way, in a different form.  The mindset that all of us infertile people are the same is something that has been explored before on other blogs, and I must say that lumping us all together into one big basket with the black I pasted on the side is just as unfair as looking at a group of people with AIDS or cancer and saying that they are all the same, and have been on the same journey, and reach their choices the same way.  We are all unique, and we are all on relatively the same journey, but we are individuals.  One of the things that we all have in common though is that every couple, no matter if the end comes with a child or a choice to stop, has to reach that point of "enough is enough."  Every couple has to stop at some point.  Sometimes it is chosen by the couple, in a situation where they feel they have tried everything they can do.  And sometimes it comes in the form of a medical condition, like with us, where I needed the hysterectomy to survive.

I am not saying that keeping my uterus and ovaries would have literally killed me.  I could have lived with them still inside me.  I could have continued to breathe while sitting on that couch or lying in bed for the rest of my life; but how would that have been any different from someone leaving me in a coma with no function for the rest of my life?  I see it the same.  So I had to have it.  I had to lose those things to find me again.  But it was also our choice to stop trying.  It was also that point that everyone on this journey eventually reaches...that point when they are done.

It's an odd feeling.  I am no longer TTC.  We are no longer trying.  I no longer have a use for the very expensive ovulation predictor or pregnancy tests or even the big bottle of folic acid (other than the obvious staying healthy on this new journey).

In a way I feel robbed.  I didn't get to sit down with my husband and have that long talk about what to do next.  I did get to sit down with him and talk about how we were going to deal with the loss of my organs, but I didn't really get the choice of "stop and pursue adoption or continue trying."  That important choice was made for me, made by my stupid body that never really worked the way it was supposed to work.

I don't regret the hyst.  Well, I don't regret it right now!  I go through regret times and happy times, and I think thats normal.  I think that if I didn't think about my loss AND think about my gains in equal form right now, this soon after, I would either be crazy or on drugs, and I am pretty sure I am neither.

Mostly I just want to let everyone out there know, in case it isn't obvious.

Dan and I are no longer trying to get pregnant.  We are exploring other options.  I will never be pregnant.


(BIG duh....but I still strangely feel the need to have that moment that others get.  That moment where they share their choice to stop with the world.)

“Although we've come to the end of the road, still I can't let you go, it's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you .”