Sad & happy storytime: I do this thing once a year...

After watching both of my sisters go through years of infertility before i got married, I decided when I'd been trying 6 months without success that rather than feel the full disappointment and frustration and everything else of fertility issues on a monthly basis every time AF comes, that I would wait and in the event that I was not pregnant after a full year i would allow myself carte blanche to grieve and mourn the whole year all at once. I felt that this kept the size of the battle manageable, & my counselor thought it was a pretty therapeutic way of dealing with it all. So today marks day one of my 2nd annual mourning period (pun not intended but appropriate). It really sucks that it landed in the middle of a busy week, but I'm a day late with a handful of blazingly negative pregnancy tests feeling zero symptoms except raging PMS, & i couldn't put it off anymore.

I left my class early today cuz I was in just an absolutely foul mood and couldn't sit still. When I got home I readied myself and commenced with the mope-fest, which I want to point out even though it's all about being sad, it's a healthy opportunity to feel necessary and important emotions and process them. So while it sounds super terrible to settle in to a scheduled mope-a-thon, it's almost ceremonial and kind of cleansing, helps me look forward to a new year and the possibility this is the last time. So anyway, I was starting my moping and had been sulking for about an hour (taking advantage of alone time before my husband got home from work, too - he's really supportive of my mourning time but I know it kind of freaks him out, too) when i got a text from my sister. She sent me a riddle that basically announced she is pregnant!!! After ~8 years of trying or at least not preventing and one beautiful adopted child, they're pregnant - & without any tests, treatments, or counting!

I won't lie it was really hard to switch gears and be thrilled for her but I am, zero jealousy or anything, I've been praying for her fertility a lot longer than my own!

So it's weird. I find I can't turn off the mourning time; maybe it's hormones, maybe I just really needed it after a year of disappointments and a few false hopes. It's a little less bitter because not only am I no longer mourning both my sisters' infertility in addition to my own, but I no longer feel a weird responsibility to prove it's not a curse of some kind on all three of us, that I'm the healthy one who will prove we can get pregnant and fulfill a decade of hope and frustration for the family. I'm still processing my own stuff, but I wanted to share this with y'all in case anyone needs encouragement that it's not too late yet, & it's ok to grieve in the meantime. Baby dust to all of you! Staying anonymous because my sister hasn't announced yet but feel free to comment!