When it gets down to the IVF milestones (baseline ultrasound, bloodwork, protocol start), I literally know the DAY my life changes. I know the DAY my life goes from being a mother of one child, wife to a great husband, to a woman who is under an intense medicated protocol to create an exaggerated reproductive scene that hopefully ends in a live baby.
All my routines go away. My sitting on the couch and watching TV, my laying in bed nursing Jonah carefree, with my thoughts to something interesting. Once that single pill or shot goes into my body, things change. My perception changes, my body changes, the chemicals in my body changes every single thing I do from how I talk to how I think, to everything....changes.
Once on meds I wonder about breastmilk supply and impact, side effects, the hope of a pregnancy is overwhelming in those moments, everything is so intense and full of LIFE and DEATH and it brings so much thought of mortality and thoughts of where life truly begins.
In some ways, I feel like whining "it's not fair!" but I must say that the journey is a beautiful one, albeit challenging. It is encouraging to see my partner and I hunker down in these tough moments and put any differences to the side. We create a shell around our family and we are soft to one another. We realize that everything I see, hear, think, perceive is a figment of a hormone given to me at significantly multiple the dosage a woman would have normally.
My husband becomes a stone on the outside, soft inside - he is gentle during these stages especially. It feels good.
So being a natural woman myself, going through something so unnatural is.....not a bad thing, but it certainly is a thing.
