Nov 25
Happy American Thanksgiving! So what if it’s another holiday without a pregnancy! There are still many things you can be thankful for. This year, you are thankful for:
- The ability to have a fourth glass of wine so Great Aunt Ruby can stop asking if you’re pregnant yet.
- All that pumpkin pie. “Are you pregnant yet?” “No. How about if I shove that pie in your face?“
- The ‘I-ate-too-much-turkey’ belly bloat. You will be able to see what you look like with a fat belly bump!
- Your fertility clinic doesn’t close during Thanksgiving (You suck, Christmas holiday closures!).
- The combination of excess drinking and having cousin Martha announce her fourth pregnancy during the family dinner.
- Aunt Flow won’t be making her appearance during the family dinner.
But somewhere deep down, beneath all your infertile bitterness and despair, you are also thankful for:
- Your loving family and friends who can be annoying are still supportive and want what’s best for you.
- You are not living in the 1900’s where there was no such thing as fertility doctors.
- Your overall good health. You might have rotten eggs and a uterus that just won’t uterize, but you are still healthy enough to try for a baby.
- Having relatives and friends who annoying ask you if you’re pregnant yet. Imagine a life without any relatives or friends that care about you.
- Knowing and believing that one day, you WILL be a parent. Somehow and someway, it will happen. And you are truly thankful and blessed.
I know I’m thankful to make it through today without a pregnancy announcement, after last year’s at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and yes, even New Years! Let’s see if I can make it to the end of the year…
Congrats on no pg announcements, somehow the turkey just isn’t as good when your choking back tears.
Congrats on the no pregnancy announcement. My husbands aunt came up to us with her recently born granddaughter and said you see this this is what one of these look like when are you going to have one of these. Needless to say I almost cried. I don’t know if I’ll make it through Christmas, but this blog and me blogging in my blog has helped cheer me up. Thanks
First off I can not tell you how much this blog as helped me. With Thanksgiving behind us, it does make me realize how thankful I am for my friends and family. I do not know where we would be without them. But then I thought I would of been pregnant last holiday season. So then is puts time into prospective. We have had a year that has been packed with an upset EVERY month. 12 upsets from this year added with 12 upsets for last year and that equals ONE SHITTY TIME. I found myself lost in my own thoughts yesterday and wondering how we did get through this very trying year and how am I going to get through the next? Something has got to give….
(insert sarcasm here)
Happy Thanksgiving
….oh and ps….I CAN NOT make it through another pregnancy announcement…I will be the quote of the girl banging her head against the wall in the bathroom.
Oh boy. Am NOT looking forward to Christmas. Your blog is a gem. We have been trying for 6 years with no success, and just test after test after test… as much as you wouldn’t wish infertility on anyone, it helps to know that there are others out there going through exactly the same thing – and you’re not the only one who’s nuts! Eep, I even just went so far as to ask my younger sister-in-law if she and her husband would be announcing baby #4 at Christmas. If I can find out now then I can attempt to get over it before we are all face-to-face and I humiliate myself with that response: “OH! *choke-sob* that’s *deep breath* so amazingly *face going blotchy* wonderful for you! *cue tears stage left* By the way all you infertiles out there… you rock. The stuff you go through, you deserve a trophy for (or something). oxoxo
I’m in the UK, so no Thanksgiving here, but I am *not* looking forward to Xmas one bit – my younger brother’s fiancee is due to give birth in seven weeks and hasn’t offered me one shred of sympathy or empathy over my own infertility. She hasn’t even texted me for five months. And my parents, in their infinite wisdom, have arranged a family get together on my 36th birthday a week before Christmas when there will be talk of nothing but their baby. I think I’m going to have to warn my parents in advance that if it’s all baby baby baby my birthday may well be ruined.
What am I thankful for? Um… my wonderful partner has told me he’s happy for me to stop looking for a job so we can concentrate on getting pregnant. Also, the fabulous National Health Service – it’s my first HSG on Monday, and we are probably going to need IVF, Without the NHS we would not be able to afford any of this.
Thank you for this laugh! Last year this time I was getting methotrexate in the ER, so I am thankful that I am not in the ER this year and even though I’m not pregnant…. YET.. (keyword) we will be soon! I can just feel it
This post is great! I will not be attending any extended family gatherings because my young cousin is pregnant with her 2nd (I think I’ve mentioned it in other comments). She goes to the DOCTOR to CONFIRM it tomorrow. She’s been hunting for acknowledgement all over facebook and I will not be telling her the C word because they are both in school and it’s bullshit! Should be me. So needless to say I will be avoiding her at all costs. Yesterday I bought her first son a Christmas present. But don’t know how I will get it to him, as I will NOT be able to STAND being around her OR her husband for a second. They make me sick.
I find it hard to do anything with relatives during the holidays… Fortunately our nephew and his pregnant fiance weren’t able to make it to Thanksgiving, and I don’t really spend the holidays with my side of the family (baby born this past July (when I would have had a baby if it worked out right away…) and my cousin and his pregnant gf (due is July of 11… HA when I would have a baby if it only took a year…)) Logged onto fb today and what was on the top of the news feed… hubby’s first cousin once removed had a sonogram photo and a “pregnant” hpt with “look at the surprise we got for our anniversary!”
I REALLY don’t want to see family or friends for that matter until after… well until I am pregnant myself!!! I seriously can’t handle another announcement, picture, anything!
Your blog is a lifesaver!!! I swear I always look forward to reading it, because it is like a much-needed shoulder to lean on! I will tell you about how your blog literally saved my sanity this weekend…
I was on the road over the Thanksgiving holidays, and I am a blackberry junkie. My husband and I stopped at a department store to do some shopping for his 3 year old daughter’s Christmas present. Going into the kids’/babies aisle is always hard for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stepdaughter so much as if she was my own daughter. But sometimes I get very sad and even jealous because DH has a daughter and I’ve had PCOS, and prolactinemia. The only pregnancies i’ve had with him have been chemical pregnancies. One happened last April…had my baby lived he or she would have been born about now.
So anyhow, here I am in the department store, in the kids’/babies aisle with DH. Between shopping for my stepdaughter, grieving my own losses (especially the April one), and looking at the clothes and cute Santa outfits and such, i am remidned of what never was. To top it off, two HUGELY pregnant women came on either side of me and blocked on BOTH ends of the aisle! There was no escape!!! No physical escape, at least. But, at that moment, to drown out my thoughts, I turned back to my crackberry, logged onto 999 reasons to laugh…and here was this glorious post to get me smiling! Thank you for helping save my sanity!!!!
Also, I have a question for you guys. Two questions actually. First, does anyone else have stepkids? Does anyone else go through what I go through, where you love your stepkids,but you feel sad and even jealous that your husband was able to have kids with someone else but not you? I feel so jealous of my stepdaughter’s mom sometimes. Even though we get along pretty well when we see each other, and even though she and DH are of course not together, I feel jealous to think that she was able to carry this beautiful child to term, could experience pregnancy and labor, and i could never.
The second question is: have any of you grieved a chemical pregnancy as deeply? Or found yourself walking up the baby aisles like I did, thinking about what it would be if you held that baby in your arms? All Ihave as any proof of this pregnancy were the faintly positive tests, and the low beta numbers, in my medical charts. not even an ultrasound. DH says it is “spilled milk,” and that there will be other chances, but my heart hurts so very much. I just feel like crying so much. This was a baby, and the love and pain i feel is overwhelming.
Well, thanks for listening. Thanks for being the shoulder to lean on. I send you all so many tight, warm hugs and so much love.
The topic this past Thanksgiving was my ovaries and my husbands weak sperm. Gravy did not look too appetizing. Thanks Mom for ruining Thanksgiving :/
Marta -
I have also grieved a chemical pregnancy deeply. It didn’t even show up on my HPTs, but my betas confirmed it . . . for a week. My husband doesn’t acknowledge that I was pregnant at all, he just thinks of it as another failed IVF cycle. A “loss” but not a pregnancy or baby, according to him.
I have the “dot picture” from the embryo transfer framed in my baby hope box. I think about her every day. You are definitely not alone in grieving the tiny baby-that-never-got-to-be you were pregnant with.
Hi Juliet,
Thank you so much for your words of comfort. i am so, so very sorry to hear of the loss of your angel baby. Your words are like a shoulder to lean on. I feel less alone, knowing that I am not the only one who has been through this pain. I’m so sorry that you go through the same thing with your husband, that he does not see it as the loss of your baby or that he does not acknowledge that you were pregnant at all.
To make a long story short, I had 2 confirmed chemical pregnancies in April 2010 and October 2010. I tested positive both times (faint + on hpt’s, low betas at dr’s) but went onto get my period anyhow. My April baby would have been born in December, and my October baby around June. I write poetry to remember my babies, and I bought these birthstone pins for December and June that i wear all the time. I ache for them. And at the same time, sometimes I feel so sad, so alone and so bitter. I feel like I am going crazy sometimes.
And just today, I found out the news that a “frenemy” and his wife are expecting a child. They are friends (or used to be) of my husband and mine, but to make another long story short the friendship is starting to fade, primarily because they are the type of people who have to do everything bigger and better, to get attention. Even with pregnancy, it is like a source of attention to them. Even though we’re not as close as we used to be, it does feel like a needle in the heart, as I grieve my own babies.
Thank you so much for listening. It helps for me just to vent and to talk. Hugs and love to you.