Hope Hurts

Hope shouldn't hurt, but somehow it does.

Even though we're not planning to start trying again for a couple of months, and we plan to try naturally at that point, I went ahead and had a phone consult with another RE this week. I wanted to get a second opinion, and I figure it's best to be prepared in case I don't seem to be ovulating regularly or R's numbers come back low when he retests at the beginning of the year.

2nd Opinion RE said all the right things - he doesn't think my age (33) is a concern, he thinks I'll respond well (based on 32 eggs retrieved in July 2006), he thinks our issues have been chromosomal due to too many eggs being retrieved and that that's easily corrected with a slightly lower stim protocol, he thinks it's a good sign that I've been able to get pregnant so many times, he thinks I'll be able to carry to term with a healthy embryo, he thinks it will happen for us.

All of those are very encouraging things, and I'm grateful for them. But (and isn't there always a "but" with me?) as odd as it sounds, part of me was also sad after speaking with him.

To be totally honest, in some ways it would have been easier if he (and Doc, and Antibiotic Doc, and Ob/Gyn) had said "I'm sorry, but you're not creating good embryos, your chances of creating good embryos are nil, and you should just give up because this isn't ever gonna happen for you." At least then I could begin to accept that and move on. It's been 5 long, painful years. At this point, if he (and the rest of the bunch) had a general consensus of something like that, I think I could be ready to hear it.

But they don't. Instead, they're all sunny, optimistic cheerleaders about our case. They all say that we're so close, that we're way too close to give up, that we should definitely keep going.

When you've been doing this for a year, that's good news to hear. That's motivating and encouraging. When you've been doing this for half a decade, as strange as this may sound, it's painful and even a little bit scary to hear.

Because instead of the ignorant optimisim of a newbie who thinks "They say our chances are good, they say this is going to work, soon we'll be holding a baby - yea!", a beaten down, loss-ridden vet thinks "They said that FIVE. YEARS. AGO. Clearly they don't know what they're talking about. Do we have 5 MORE years of losses and heartbreak in front of us before this purgatory ends?"

And sadly, the only way to find out is to keep going.

I know I could opt to throw in the towel now, that no one is physically making me continue. But there is a part of me that still has hope. Granted, sometimes it feels like such a tiny part of me, so small that if hope was a visible thing it would require a high-powered microscope to see at this point. But still, it's there. And even if it wasn't, I still want this for R, so I would keep going for that reason alone.

I just never knew that hope could be so painful.