Living in Denial

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing something a little strange. I’ve started trying to convince myself that I don’t want a baby. I look at babies and kids in the street and think to myself “what’s so great about them anyway?” I list off reasons in my head as to why having a baby is the stupidest idea we’ve ever had; they’re noisy, they’re smelly, they’re expensive, they take over your lives, the dog won’t like it, we’ll be tired all the time, we’ll probably start arguing because we’ll be so tired.

Last week out of the blue I even said to Dave how I really didn’t think I even wanted a baby anymore. I could see in his face he knew I was tired, emotional and fed up of wanting something so desperately and not being able to get it, but he humoured me and said we would just see how things went. But no, on and on I went about how this second cycle was a waste of time, as I knew it wouldn’t work anyway and really there was more to life than kids. I even tried to say that we were too old and too stuck in our ways to be bringing a baby into the mix. We like our life the way we like it and what were we thinking trying to change it when it was already pretty perfect?

I’m aware that a psychologist would probably look at the way I was behaving and say I was either in denial or trying to protect myself against the possibility of having another failure, or both. And in myself, I know that’s what I’ve been doing, but really it’s the only way I’ve found to cope recently. I just can’t bear the thought of having another failure and I’m scared of how I will feel and react if that does happen, so trying to convince myself that I don’t really care about having a baby is the only way I can protect myself from potentially feeling so much hurt again.

Obviously having thoughts and feelings like this is not ideal when I’m trying to keep positive during my second cycle, however I’ve found that I’ve felt much calmer this time around so I persuaded myself this was the best course of action. Don’t expect too much then I can’t be disappointed.

But then everything changed when we went to see my friend’s 3-week old baby girl. To say I fell in love would be an understatement. She is such a perfect little baby and before we went round I’d thought to myself that I would just have a quick hold then give her back. I didn’t want to experience the feelings and emotions that I knew were still inside me; buried way down, but still there nonetheless. But of course, me being me, I couldn’t resist and I ended up holding her or most of the evening and giving her a bottle. It felt so natural to me, second nature almost and once again I had that feeling of “Why us?” “Why have we not been given this chance?”

Suffice to say I cried myself to sleep that night, because I knew deep down that of course, being a mother was and is still the most important thing in the world to me. I can’t pretend it isn’t, because it is. I know the past few weeks have just been a period of deep denial for me, and maybe every woman suffering from infertility goes through a period like this from time to time.

However, I know now that I’ve got my focus back and need to just accept that becoming a mother is all I want at the moment. Nothing else matters and if that means putting myself out there and opening myself up to potential heartbreak again then I just have to do it. You’re either all in or you’re not. And who knows, this time round it may not be heartbreak, but the greatest gift of all.