Inadequacy and insecurity

If you were to create a Movie of the Week about the current state of my life, it would be titled something like "Ultimate FAIL: The Chronicles of the Trying-to-Conceive."

I used to blithely claim that I'd start thinking about kids when I was 30. "For now, I just want to make money and invest in my career." What I'd give for that same arrogance now.

While it seems easy enough to just turn on the ability to pop out a kid at will, the sad truth is that it just doesn't happen like that. Not for me, anyway. Now that I'm at the threshold of 30, with one magnificent kiddo in my life and the desire for many, many more running through my mind, I wish I could just snap my fingers and be pregnant. Get on the Pill, get off the Pill, and poof! After all, everyone else makes it look so easy.

Instead, I'm sifting through my year-plus recollection of failed attempts and lost pregnancies and struggling on a regular basis not to break down and cry about what could have been.

At my high points, I remind myself, "It'll happen." At my low points, I abandon all hope and cry myself to sleep. I've gone through the hopeful stage ("Is this the month?!"), the gratitude ("At least I have one."), the bitterness ("It's not fair!"), the envy ("I want one too!"), the superiority ("I'm a better mother than you could ever hope to be - why do you get to keep popping out children?"), the prayers and bargaining with God, and the eventual realization that maybe it's time to start considering other options.

Part of me - the rational part - knows I'm still young and I can't give in to the negative thoughts. After all... it could happen. It will happen. Right?

The other part of me stares at a stack of medical records thick enough to start a campfire and hears the layers of insurmountable diagnoses running through my head. "Recurrent pregnancy loss... polycystic ovaries... endometriosis... ovarian and fallopian cysts..." 

Ambivalence was so much easier when I didn't even know whether I wanted kids. Now, at times, my desire for a baby outweighs any other thought in my head.