i don't want to surrender

I see full circle made complete in someone else. Full circle two and three times, just since I had baby boy. I know a whole brood of children is beyond my limitations or my desires. But the feeling of injustice is there, just the same.

Feelings just are. They are a method of communication. They aren’t really good or bad, in and of themselves.

My therapist asks me to avoid judging my emotions. Judging them's not helpful. In fact, it is driving me crazy.

Then I see this file on a popular social media site. Practical questions to think about when deciding your family size.

My immediate response is rage. It must be nice to have control like that. Maybe it is for the best (and I would say in hindsight, it probably is indeed best) that decisions have ultimately been made for me. But I feel a prisoner to my circumstances. It doesn’t “make sense” to feel that way. But just as my sadness at my perceived injustice doesn’t “make sense”, neither does this.

More numbing. More stuffing.

But I take a second look at the questions. “When you think about limiting or finalizing your family size, what is motivating that?” Options include comfort (check), control (double check), convenience, flexibility, desire for ease?” along with questions about faith and obedience to God.

I don’t want to open myself to more hurt. I’ve endured enough. Tears well in my eyes just thinking about the desperation and darkness of seeking baby boy. I don’t want to feel sad anymore. I don’t want to open myself to the potential of hurt. I am comfortable now. I run from the idea of discomfort.

There’s a certain kind of surrender for so much to hinge on just a couple weeks of medication, not knowing what is really happening inside your body all the while. It’s a high stakes situation. Then, tiny balls of delicate cells are carefully thawed. 

Sure, we have been on the negative end of odds, but almost half of the embryos we have had did not even survive thawing. You don’t know that until you walk in the office. It’s a cruel, unavoidable reality.

In the blink of an eye the embryos are placed from the catheter inside your body. Following that is more waiting.

Then, depending on your level of masochism and style of processing intense news, you either have blood drawn and wait for a call where the person at the other end says they are sorry or says they have good news; or, you could pee on a strip and watch the moisture wick up the strip to reveal either one or two lines. Neither is easy to do.

And this might sound dramatic but assuredly is not, but when you have had past failures and loss and trauma, your brain has a fight or flight response on a very primal level. It tries to protect you from this type of experience again.

Unfortunately, even if you go into a transfer knowing this situation with your brain and nervous system, there is not an easy way to turn the response off. So avoid pain, at all costs. Don’t entertain a circumstance that pulls the scab off.

Where does this leave me? The embryos?

Am I being selfish? What truly is best?