Infertility hurts 😞

MamaBear813 • Married Dec 2014 • TTC #1 since Nov 2015 • 3 failed IUI's • IVF • FINALLY PREGNANT after IVF #1 🙏🏼🙌🏼👶🏻💙 • Baby boy born July ‘18 💙
No one ever plans on infertility. No one ever really thinks about it, until you want to have a baby and then….you can’t. We are all well aware that labor hurts… a lot. What most people don’t know is that infertility hurts too. It’s not the loud, screaming kind of pain. It’s long, and slow, and quiet. It’s a different kind of labor altogether. A labor of the soul. 
It happens when you toss another negative pregnancy test in the trash can and sit on your bathroom floor and cry. 
It happens when you lay in your bed at night, and your husband holds you as you stare into the darkness, while silent tears fall into your pillow. 
It happens when you sit at another baby shower and hear all the “Ooh’s” and “Aah’s” over every little, tiny gift, and wonder if you will ever have any little, tiny gifts of your own to open? 
It happens when you look in the mirror at your flat stomach, and put your hand over it, and pray for life to grow. And try to imagine what it would look like, what it would feel like, if it did?
It happens when people come up to you and say, “Hey! Isn’t it about time you two started having kids?” And you smile (a big, fake smile) to hide your pain.
It happens when you see teenagers pushing strollers past your house. 
And when the minivan full of children opens it’s doors. 
And when a friend says they had another “oopsies” pregnancy. And you wonder: Why is this so easy for everyone else? Except us?
I know these things, because I fell them all; I live them all. I thought it would be so easy for us to conceive on the first try. But it wasn’t. We're on <a href="https://glowing.com/glow-fertility-program">IUI</a> number three. It has been 14 months and we still haven't conceived. 14 months that wear on our hope. And wear on our souls.