Snowball Effect

Hey Lovelies,

Squawk Box day! Another chance for one of you to share your experience and view on this crap shoot of infertility! As for me and mine, we are doing well. Halfway through week 18 now and we have passed our anatomy scan! All baby parts are present and accounted for and the heart looks great! I was apparently more worried about the heart than I thought because as soon as the tech said that they saw no evidence of the defect I was born with I started to cry. I’m so happy that this baby is healthy and growing well. Also, the legs are measuring almost a full week ahead of everything else! YAY, hopefully that means this baby did not inherit mommy’s shrimp genes 🙂 . I’m planning to do a proper update once I hit the half way mark but until then let’s let another woman’s story take center stage.

Remember, if you’ve a story you feel like sharing with the rest of the infertility community you know what to do…

Send them here: [email protected]

Today’s submission come’s from W.S.  She briefly started a blog at A Tall Drink Of Sweet Tea around the same time she submitted this story. It hasn’t been updated recently but, as with all coping mechanisms used through infertility, she may come back to it in the future. It would be nice, if you check it out, to leave her a comment. Let her know she’s not alone. Here’s hoping that wherever she is now, whatever she’s doing, she’s feeling the love.

The picture today is of snow. A wonderful analogy that W.S. uses to kick off her story. Enjoy:

Snowball Effect

Written by: W.S.

Published with the author’s permission.

Snow. White confetti from God. Pretty little globs of travel nightmares floating down from above. A Southerner’s version of chicken fried Hell. An excuse to wear your fats pants. Also, an excuse to stay inside without makeup while eating an entire box of Thin Mints and binge watching Netflix.

Snowball Effect. A situation where a small seemingly insignificant event grows into a grown-ass nightmare.

At this very moment, I have both of those things. I am quite tired of both.

Much like the recent snow storms, my story starts out kind of pretty. My sweet thing of a husband went and got his personal swim team tested on Friday. We had been putting it off until after I ovulated and after we were convinced I was not pregnant this month. Turns out getting your swim team checked out in our town costs about as much as joining an actual swim team, so of course frugal hubby wanted to wait, just in case. {Insert irony here}

As I was blissfully walking out to lunch in the bitter cold I realized something somewhat important when TTC… I was two days late and still had not started. Oh, and I hadn’t taken a test in two days. SNAP. We got a little snowed in at work and getting home was a nightmare. For those of you above the Mason Dixon or West of Texas, I apologize. Snow means one thing where I’m from: idiot ice-capades. As soon as I walked in the door, I tested. Of course, I forgot the test was sitting out because ya know, it would just be negative number 2359.

Wrong.

It was positive. Let me say this again… I had a positive pregnancy test. Two beautiful, albeit faint, but definitely present lines. Because I have trust issues with all things pink and all things lines after all this time, I did what any pregnancy test obsessed person would do: went to my stash and immediately tested again. Between the flushing cheeks and tear filled eyes I watched that beautiful pink line pop up immediately. I was looking down at cloud nine as I floated right past it.

It was that silent fresh fallen snow outside where time stands still. That kind that makes you feel like this is what Heaven must look like. White, clean, pure, serene…but surely it won’t have the Douche Bags in the Chevy doing donuts in the grocery store parking lot. Elated, I jumped in the Jetta and immediately braved the 2 inches of snow (and untreated icy roads) to run into Walgreens and buy an obnoxiously priced digital test. This is where the snowball begins. The digital test came back with the painful “not pregnant” screen glowing. Confused, I thought it must be because it was so late in the day and surely it’d show in the morning. Still buzzing with the glow of possibly being pregnant, I went on with my evening. Turns out it was a very bad evening with a 3 hour drive through some really terrible winter weather. Hindsight, it was downright stupid. But all I could think about was the fact that I was going to be a mom. God chose me to be this baby’s mommy. The due date, the possibilities, the hope. Snowballing.

Wrong.

The next morning that same digital test told me I wasn’t going to be a mom. That old friend Aunt Flo told me the digital test was right. So naturally, I destroyed the digital test with a swift hulk-smash. I cried. I felt like someone was holding my fragile sanity by a string, and Heaven help me, that string finally gave way. My heart shattered. All day long bad things rolled right into that snowball. It got so big it swallowed me whole. Consequently, part of my therapy session/pity part involved me swallowing the whole pizza alone in my hotel room watching old episodes of Glee and occasionally crying into my pillow. There was very little beauty in this breakdown.

My old standby is to soak up the sadness for a day or so only to bounce back onto my feet and keep pushing with a crooked smile and whatever patience I have left. For now, I’m having to find a new standby. Was it a chemical pregnancy? Could I have two back-to-back same-5-minute faulty pregnancy tests? I guess I’ll never know. This is uncharted territory for me. This left a mark. This really blows.

I talked to my go-to-gal about it all today. It was the first time I had vented about it to a non-pillow citizen of the world. Only then I found out that in the last month she had a chemical pregnancy, too. She went through so much more than me. She grieved so hard. She ate an entire pizza, too (no lie—it’s why we’re besties). And I had no idea. I had no idea what to say.

It’s a harsh realization that people have no idea for me, either. We re-inflate our broken heart and press on with fake smiles and frustrated souls. We think about it over and over. We question. We pray. We lash out. We feel like we are losing our already exhausted minds. We want to tell everyone, but we also want to take a sledge hammer to the radio when any song about being a mom comes on. Somehow we push on.

We may never know the answers to the whys and the hows and HOLY STARFISH BATMAN ARE YOU flippin’ KIDDING MEs… but we might find one sliver of peace knowing we aren’t the only ones. That girl you flipped off at the intersection, that lady who seems a little off at work, that waitress who just can’t seem to remember to bring you the extra cup of ranch—they might be traveling down the same road as us. They might have their own snowball. They might need a hug and a stiff drink… just like me.

Cheers to this bumpy, crappy, messy, POS road trip. Come vent with me, any time. I’ll bring the margs.

-W.S.