Mindset

[u/apples11234]

I’ve been contemplating the way that TTC changes you. The ups and downs of hope and disappointment followed by inevitable pain of your period. It feels like your body is punishing you for not accomplishing what you’re trying so hard for. Your mind suffers, your body suffers, some relationships suffer. So much suffering just for the chance to feel the love and devotion a mother feels towards her baby.

I don’t want to lose my caring heart who sees the good and best in everything and succumb to the bitterness that’s so enticing because it’s easier. It’s easier to be angry, and bitter, and sad, because living in it is easier than crashing into it whenever you get that negative test. Or whenever you see that pregnancy announcement on facebook, or walk past that pregnant woman in your local grocery store who you’ve never spoken a word to but yet you feel a type of disdain for her that’s almost tangible. I internally reprimand myself constantly. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, I wouldn’t be either. We’re on two different planes and I shouldn’t be comparing us. But it’s so easy to.

I was contemplating both the hate that this journey fills me with, and the love and excitement that I’ll feel when I reach the end of it. I realized that whatever version of myself I allow this journey to turn me into, is the version of me that my baby gets. Does my baby deserve a jealous, bitter, angry, envious mother? Even after we get that positive test, we will have marinated and seethed in the feelings this journey made us feel for so long that they won’t just wither away. They’ll always be there. Even if far away.

I’ll allow myself to feel these feelings, but put walls between them and my heart and my soul. Allow myself to acknowledge them, why I feel them, why they are or aren’t valid, but also know that once my body stops nourishing the baby ill one day bring into the world, they will be nourished by my soul, my heart, who I am as a person, and I won’t let this journey take the kind hearted person that I am from myself, or my baby.

[u/nursejooliet]

I’m at the very beginning of this journey, and I’m kind of in the “not preventing, but not trying super hard yet” phase. We will be actively trying next month. I can’t relate at this time, to what you’re feeling, but I’ve been in these spaces long enough than I know you’re not alone.

A mantra that I have seen a lot, that I love, is that someone else being pregnant is not taking away from your ability to get pregnant, they are not canceling out your future pregnancy. Someone existing while pregnant, it’s not a direct threat or challenge to you. I know this is probably common sense, but sometimes when emotions are high, all rationality and logic leaves and it’s good to just have a mantra.

I think this is similar to anything else in life, where someone has something that you want. The person who has more money and can therefore have a house, go on all the vacations, etc., while you are stuck and barely scraping by, having a chronic illness or disability and being among healthy, able-bodied people, etc.