Secondary Infertility to the Second Power

Do these entries seem stale to you? Have I lost my edge as a blogger, however dull that edge already was? Is there a recycled, refried, retread quality to my thoughts?

Maybe the worst part of this most recent miscarriage is its awful "back to the future" quality. For many sufferers of secondary infertility, the first child arrives without incident and then the sudden onset of fertility problems comes as a nasty shock. It has happened to several of my friends and I truly understand what a brutal experience it is.

Yet. What I'm going through as a second-time infertility sufferer is different and carries its own particular pain. I am not for a moment going to compare my plight to that of someone in the midst of primary infertility. "One is better than none" cannot begin to sum up the joy that Turtle brings me. Still, I am going to dare to compare myself to regular secondary infertility sufferers and say that I have secondary infertility squared. Secondary Infertility to the Second Power, if you will.

Here's the thing: I emerged from primary infertility sadder but wiser. I had learned patience. I had gained perspective. To get those things, I worked really really hard, in typical type-A fashion.

I started a blog. Joining a community of women on the world wide web made me feel cared for and competent at a time when neither feeling came often. I wrote lots of angry essays and lots of sad ones and more than a few sentimental ones. I also managed a few that were actually funny, if you like gallows humor, and I'm such a compulsive good girl by nature that I'd never spent much time trying to make anyone laugh before (wouldn't be proper). I liked finding that side of myself.

I went into therapy for a little while. I joined a support group. I rebuilt relationships with family members that needed attention. I read countless medical journals, web pages, and women's magazines and I honestly thought that I'd discovered a reason for my miscarriages in the form of inadequate thyroid hormone. I marveled that anything good could come out of the experience, but in the end I felt like a stronger more resilient person, someone who'd learned a little more humanity and humility, someone who knew how to be deeply grateful for motherhood and how to treasure every moment of my son's all too fleeting babyhood.

I coped. I achieved closure.

And god damn it, the closed door has swung back open again. I don't wanna cope. I don't wanna think up clever new ways to say how much infertility sucks. I don't want to teach myself all over again not be jealous and spiteful of pregnant women. Especially not pregnant women I care about. Like my amazing sister in-law. This woman threw me a beautiful shower for Turtle 3 years into her own infertility hell. She even hand-crocheted him a blanket. NO matter. Now, another two years later she has enraged me by making it through her first nausea-free trimester with twins after her first IVF. What kind of person would feel nothing but coiling snakes of jealousy towards someone as deserving as her? I don't want to be that person. I hate myself for being that person. But can I just ask, how DARE she hopscotch right past me to have 2 kids at once, all the while glowing and proclaiming that pregnancy has made her feel the healthiest she has ever felt? How have I slid back to this bad place?

I feel as if I've graduated from from high school only to be ordered to go back to ninth grade detention, with that really nasty math teacher with the saggy two-shades too-dark pantyhose glaring over her glasses at me. How the HELL do I get out of here. Do I really have to take Algebra I again and fight those nasty rumors started by the popular girls? Do I really have to get my heart broken again by one feckless teenage boy after another? Are you gonna make me apply to college again? I been here. I done that. And I am soo, soo, sick of it...I just wanna get on with my life.

I'm a recurrent miscarriage relapser. I'm back on the sauce folks and this time the binge is gonna be ugly.