11dpiui=BFN

Although I am not going to go screaming through the halls "I'm out completely this cycle"....I do feel it is time to let a little bit of hope slip out of my heart. Yes, I know my temp went up again (btw I slept great), and yes I know that 11dpo is still considered "early", but I also know my body when it is "just a little bit pregnant" and this isn't it. Oh, and please raise your hand if you had a "perfect" chart and still got your period....yeah, I think everyone can attest to that one.

Truth be told, I've been on the verge of tears all morning.....just thinking about my entire TTC life in general, not just this most recent disappointment. To let you in on a little secret, I just *knew* this would be the only cycle we had to do post m/c. Three follies, good sperm, great timing=apparently nothing....but in my head THIS had to be the one. I don't want to keep doing this....honestly I don't. My heart is very much contemplating just giving up on it all if this cycle keeps heading down the path I foresee. DH made a comment to me this morning that I just can't shake, and although I have said it to myself many times it was like a slap in the face to hear Thomas acknowledge it too: "We've put our life on hold for 2.5 years because of this crap". So, since then I have been thinking about what we have "put on hold", and the major things are like so:

~First and foremost, we put our marriage on hold. Of course we have made some wonderful memories these past years, but I know in the back of our head there has always been that voice saying "next year this will be better because we will have a baby" or "wouldn't this seem perfect if we had a child". For those who don't know, Thomas and I started TTC three months after we got married....so for basically our ENTIRE married life, we have been struggling to have a child.

~We gave up our sex life. This one seems pretty self-explanatory, but let me go a little further. Of course we have sex...we have sex to make a baby...FDing is few and very far between. I would go as far to say that we have "sex for fun" once every couple of months. Also along with the loss of our sex life I feel comes some loss of attraction because we aren't have sex simply because we can't resist each other or have a strong desire to intimate with one another.

~We've given up vacations. Thomas and I have put off making vacations plans in the off chance I would be too far along or just given birth (this thinking was the first year of TTC). The second year of TTC we didn't go on vacations because we needed money for treatments....and as we found out, money for treatments that didn't work that well. The last time Thomas and I went on vacation alone (i.e-without family or going to visit family or anything work related) was our honeymoon....May of 2005.

~I gave up different education. See, when I first started going to the college I eventually graduated from (and now work for) I wanted to go into our PA program. It was still a B.S at the time, and it was what I wanted to do....this was in Aug. of 04 in hopes of starting the PA program in Fall of 2005 or possibly 2006 if I wanted to wait one more year....meaning I would have graduated last May or in a few months from now (it's a two year program). However, the more Thomas and I discussed starting a family and then actually started trying we realized that once I got pregnant (yeah, nothing was an *if* at that time, ha) I would be in the middle of my program and would have to drop out (it's very intense). In saying this, having a family was much more important (actually it is the only dream I have always been sure of) to me than being a PA because I could still get my B.S in Biomedical Sciences from the same school and raise a family at the same time. All I have to say about this is HA HA HA. At this point I could have started that program, graduated, gotten a solid, stable, well-paying (as in about 15,000 more than I'm making now just to start off) job AND have respect in the medical community.

~I gave up trying for better jobs. In regards to the previous comment, I have also given up on trying to get a better job with the degree I actually have. This is because I have been with my same company for 3 years now, and decided it would be silly to leave and start somewhere else because I will, and I quote, "get pregnant and since I haven't been there year, not get my FMLA" or "not qualify for short term. dis. on maternity leave" (which btw, I have a whole completely different post about that given the events yesterday, but I digress). Don't get me wrong, my job is stable, it isn't too complicated and brings home a steady paycheck that covers the mortgage and all our bills BUT there is no where for me to go here. No ladder or chain of command to move up. I feel like I'm stalling out staying here, but because of the reasons listed above I haven't tried to find a new job with a new company. I think I am going to start looking actually.....

~We gave up our house preference. See, as all new home buyers do Thomas and I had a list of "must haves", "wants" and "can live withouts". When Thomas and I started looking to buy our house about a year and a half ago, we of course wanted to get something that would accommodate babies, children, etc. Although we realized most first homes aren't that lavish we had a decent loan approval and saw a lot of condo's or town homes that we loved, but always said we wanted our toddler to have a yard to play around in so we opted out of those. As far as houses go, we ended up buying a house with a yard in a great neighborhood with NOTHING of our "must have list". Examples: our house is a 1 bathroom instead of at least a 1.5, it has 2 bedrooms instead of our minimum three (ours, a study, and the nursery), the kitchen is completely nonfunctional with no dishwasher and odd layout (for someone who loves to cook, this is torture), it doesn't have a garage or finished basement for all of our stuff (and believe me we have a lot, as do most people)....god I could go on forever. But because of the neighborhood and the land, which is really only .17 acres, but still a lot in the middle of a city.....we bought it because it was a "house", thinking we could fix it up and make it work. If we had to do it all over again, knowing we would be childless 2.5 years later....we would have gotten some awesome loft or one bedroom condo overlooking downtown, which is really more our style because we honestly both hate yard work.

In my mind, those are HUGE things....things that make me sad....things that make me realize how different life would be. I've decided that regardless of an individual's fertility, infertility is a couples problem. It doesn't make a difference if both are primed and ready to make babies if you can't actually make them together. Sometimes I wish Thomas would just leave and go marry someone who can give him children (not that ~I~ want him gone, I just hate not being able to fulfill this part of his life). Looking back over it all, although we've stuck together and grown...our desire to create love's ultimate gift has caused us more pain and compromise than should be allowed. I realize that I could wake up tomorrow or the day after that and still get a BFP, but that wouldn't make this post any less valid because this post isn't about that....this post is about the past, what we, my husband and I, have put on hold or given up based on one huge maybe that never came to be.