63 is the magic number

This is our 63rd month. It hit me this morning as I squinted one eye and tried to concentrate on getting at least one drop in the tiny cup I use to dip my hpts into. Afterwards, I stood there waiting obediently for the prescribed seven minutes (after five, before ten). After handing it off to a team of rocket scientists to scan and probe under a telescope for any sign of a microscopic second line, I tossed it into the trash and curled up in bed again.

I closed my eyes for about five seconds and then that voice... that voice. The infertile one? She said... This is month 63. I told her she was only repeating herself but she just continued to push my buttons. She is such a bitch sometimes. Thankfully, the alarm went off a few minutes later and hubby finally got up. He knew. He didn't even ask. He just dutifully trudged in and dug it out for a second opinion (those rocket scientists and their telescopes are so unreliable!) and commenced to return it quietly. He peed and came back to bed for a morning hug.

With that number out in the open I realized that there was so much more to it than just 63 negatives or 63 failures. In fact that is far from the truth. Truth is, as wacky as my cycles are I've probably only had about half that many cycles and I've probably peed on twice as many sticks so that isn't a very representative number for my infertile journey.

I guess it was just something that kind of shocked me. There should have been 63 eggs in that time. There should have been 63 cycles. One of those surely should have worked. That's a long time folks. It is a hard thing to swallow. Five years is a single digit round number. When you put it in terms of months though it starts to look ugly to me. Do you realize that 63 months translates into almost 2000 days?

I see people that write letters to their children on their blogs. I consider them friends. I love their blogs and I read them daily and look forward to them. They write a letter each month journaling the milestones and changes that their child made that month. I hope when I have a child I can remember to do that. But, when I look at their children's faces and see how old they are in those letters it puts an age, a face, to my infertility. I guess it seems strange but for me it is a very sobering and sad thought. In August, everyone else with my number will be nervously walking a tiny person into kindergarten. I can only pray that by then I've simply seen two pink lines.