U is for Unfulfilled

Unfulfilled is a word with which infertiles are very familiar. We feel it every month. We butt heads with it constantly. It becomes our unwelcome guest.

Everytime we start a new cycle when we were hoping for a positive pregnancy test, everytime we hear another pregnancy announcement from a friend or relative, everytime someone brings their baby home safe and sound while we remain empty-armed, everytime we get excited about an adoption match and it falls through, we feel that sense of being unfulfilled.

I've read recently about several of my blogging friends who've reached their unfulfilled due dates. My heart just breaks for them when I read the sadness they're feeling. To hear the heartbreak they're feeling when they should be feeling such joy is almost more than I can take. It's simply gut-wrenching.

I've never known that feeling, although I know my own brand of being unfulfilled. It's a different kind of hurt to never have been pregnant. In most ways, I'm grateful I've never had to experience the kind of pain I've watched many of my friends go through. Having said that, I am left with the emptiness of not knowing if I can evan achieve a pregnancy. That leaves me unfulfilled.

Watching all my non-IF acquaintances experience holidays with their children also leaves me feeling unfulfilled. Never knowing if I'll have the opportunity to experience that is an awful feeling.

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week. Be sure to do what you can this week to make others aware of this very important week. Resolve is asking us to bust myths about infertility this week and I'll be writing a post about that later in the week, so be on the lookout for it!