for lost women everywhere

Today I read on various other blogs how two wonderful, intelligent, charming women have both lost their chance to have a baby. One with a failed ivf, another heartbreakingly having had 5 consecutive early miscarriages (you know who you are).

I am so upset for them, so heartbroken for any woman who loses their baby. Nobody should have to go through such immense angst, pain and disappointment. And yet I also feel that I will never KNOW what they are feeling, because I have never been given the opportunity to know what it's like to have something real, living, growing inside of me. How can I really sympathise with their loss when I have no concept of the joy they had originally felt?

I have always felt a little sorry for myself that I have never been pregnant. Yes, I have wallowed a little in that sense of "it will never happen?", "why me"? etc etc. Who knows if it will or it won't. I'm not doing anything differently now than I did before; I guess I have as much chance each month as I had the previous one. This brings me no comfort, no encouragement.

And I have to confess, I have always thought I'd rather BE pregnant and lose our baby, than never be pregnant ever. It seems awful written down like that, but I honestly thought "at least I would KNOW what it's like to have that bfp, even if it's just for a few days, hours, weeks..." To be able to finally achieve that which we've been attempting for so long now. To know how other women feel, just for an instance, would be better than never knowing, never feeling I've fulfilled my destiny of carrying a child.

But is that really the case? Am I really sure I would prefer to have "loved and lost"? Perhaps I will never know what it is like to be pregnant. To hit that euphoric high I see in other people's faces. Perhaps I will rue my words if some day in the future we get our much-longed for bfp and all our joy and happiness gets snatched away from us again. Maybe then I will be in a position to truly sympathise with all those who have suffered.

Perhaps I am better off never being pregnant, and never going through the awful, terrible heartache that women everywhere go through, some - tragically, unforgivingly - many, many times over. But I sure as hell don't feel it. I feel empty. I feel a failure. And those wonderful women must feel upteen times worse.

Now I feel selfish for wanting what women who lose babies have. That knowledge, brief as it is, of what it is like to really create something, something that is purely yours, you and your partners. How could I even feel this way? Why would I want this? What is happening to me?

Yet infertility eats me up, slowly gnawing away at my insides, and gradually wearing me down, so I'm always wanting something I can't have. I hate that I can't be happy for people anymore, just genuinely happy that they are pregnant, because in the back of my mind I am thinking "why you, why not me?" I hate that I have to "put on" a face when I see pregnant family and friends. I am ashamed of how I feel.

I am lost, lost amongst dreams that may never be realised, and I am surrounded by so many others. I am bitter and I am sad. No one deserves to be in this place.

GG