A New Year Begins

Happy New Year, readers!

Our New Years Eve was uneventful, spent eating takeout Indian food and watching Pawn Stars. This morning I awoke with a sense of relief: not only was it 2011 and I was still pregnant, it was also 24 weeks, that unofficial milestone of viability.

Last year, New Years Eve 2009, I remember waiting anxiously for the calendar to change to January, for our new insurance to kick in, for my period to come so that we could begin fertility treatment. Although it would ultimately be another 8 months until we conceived our baby girl, emotionally 2010 was much better than 2009--just the fact of doing something put both my husband and me in a better place.

Would my reflections be the same if I didn't ultimately become pregnant and were now preparing for IVF? Not exactly--I mean, I scored the prize, let's not sugarcoat it. The other day, my husband and I went to Ikea, and holy crap, there were a ton of pregnant women. At two points, other preggos came up and chatted with us about cribs, baby stuff. But not long ago, I remember being in a two-week wait after an IUI that would ultimately fail, going to a furniture store with my husband to look at furniture for our bedroom and literally making a noise of disgust at a pregnant woman, the third I'd seen since entering the store. Looking back, that was pretty unfair of me, but at the time, it was just so damn hard to see belly after belly after belly and know that my own, weary from injections, remained flat.

But I do believe that a few key things that happened in 2010 helped me to be a (relatively) happier person before I got pregnant:

-Reading blogs about women who have struggled/are struggling with infertility
-Sharing some things about my treatment with those closest to me and through this blog
-Writing about infertility in my graduate program and under my name (separate from this blog)--that feeling of validating my experience into something useful
-Keeping infertility separate from my career--I needed that sense of normalcy

I think a lot of happiness, for me, comes down to being open, which isn't a strength of mine. My resolution is to share honestly and really maintain strong relationships with the amazing people in my life. In 2009 especially, that second year of BFNs, I shut out a lot of people. Luckily, many stuck by me.

So if you made it through this post, have a happy, fulfilling new year.