Friends

Serious pity party today. Poor me. Some married friends came over last night, ostensibly to see us before we left for Italy. In reality, it turned out, they wanted to tell us in person about their pregnancy because they would be announcing it at a party they are throwing next weekend, when we won’t be here.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m so, so happy for them. They are good friends, nice people, and definitely deserve every little bit of happiness. They have no idea that we’ve been trying, or how long we’ve been trying, or that we’ve been through months of testing, or that we’re being treated for infertility.

They’ve asked us when we’re going to have kids, in a gentle, joking sort of way that is usually easy to brush off, but with the news from them last night is much harder. They’ll have a baby in 6 months. Where will we be in 6 months? I just don’t know.

I already had one friend confide in me, around the time we started trying, that she and her husband lost their first pregnancy due to the discovery of a polyp on her ovary. Since then, she’s had surgery, gotten pregnant, and just delivered her son. I was sure at first that we would share the pregnancy experience, and it would bring us closer together, because God knows I need some good friends in my little town. Then after a while I thought, well, at least I won’t be too far behind, and we can still share the experience of being new mothers. Now she has gone far ahead of me, and I don’t know if I can catch up. I told her at the beginning that we were trying, too. After a while, she stopped asking for news. I’m sure she’s busy with her newborn, but I wish she would, once in a while, think of me.

It’s true, actually, that even amongst the pregnancy announcements flying around, one friend has apparently been ttc since sometime last summer (I heard this second- or third-hand). I wonder if I should break down my wall of silence and reach out to her. If sharing this experience could help us both. But then I fear that for them it will just be a fluke (after all, they’re well under a year of ttc, and for all I know could be pregnant now), and I will have shown some serious vulnerability, and they’ll be pregnant.

I think maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself in order to try to prevent myself from being too hopeful, as a way of self-protection, self-preservation. Despite everything, I still can’t help hoping that this month is it. We’ve got EVERYTHING going for us, after all. But as I’m quickly learning in this incredibly unfair experience, that probably doesn’t matter at all.