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This post has been a long time in com­ing. Truth­fully, this should have been writ­ten a few months ago. How­ever, between prepa­ra­tions for the audit at work and hav­ing just recently had the con­ver­sa­tion with Hubby a week ago, the tim­ing just didn’t seem right.

A year ago ear­lier this month, I was in Chicago inter­view­ing for the posi­tion that I now hold. The very same one that has given me much stress and headaches over the past 11 months. The same one that has made me real­ize exactly how strong I really can be … with­out the hor­monal emo­tions get­ting in the way.

I specif­i­cally men­tion the “hor­monal emo­tions” for a rea­son. That’s because when I look back dur­ing those active “baby-​​trying” years , I can now see how much strength I needed in order to get me through that period.

Except I can hon­estly say that I never feel that I was strong at all dur­ing that time period. I felt as I was liv­ing day-​​to-​​day, hop­ing that some­how I would catch a break from all the “hard work” I was putting into start­ing my family.

Whereas with the “chal­lenges” I faced this past year … well, they didn’t feel like a day-​​to-​​day strug­gle. There was always an end in site for each new chal­lenge I faced. From the very begin­ning of “Oper­a­tion: Move to Chicago,” there was a goal in mind that was achiev­able:

  •  
    • Find an apart­ment; check.
    • Start new job; check.
    • Sur­vive liv­ing alone in new city for three months with see­ing Hubby only on the week­ends; check.
    • Get through six months at new job with­out being fired from “My way or the high­way” boss; check.
    • Live through high pro­file work audit with dig­nity intact; check.

Every­thing I faced since mov­ing here was (rel­a­tively) suc­cess­ful; with that bright light guid­ing me to the end of a dark tunnel.

Unfor­tu­nately that same bright light was never there when fac­ing the dark­ness that is infer­til­ity.  And, in my case, def­i­nitely not suc­cess­ful … at least in the way that I defined success.

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There’s this mem­ory I have from back in my high school years. It’s back when Dis­ney began to start re-​​releasing clas­sic movies on VHS tapes. The idea was so that a per­son could own these movies before they were put back into the “vault” of clas­sic Dis­ney animation.

My mother totally bought into that smart mar­ket­ing ploy. In fact, she bought many videos includ­ing The Lit­tle Mer­maid, Beauty and the Beast, and … if I can recall, Sleep­ing Beauty. AND she wouldn’t even open them; stor­ing them away in her dresser, in her own per­sonal “vault.”

“Not fair,” I remem­ber telling her. Espe­cially since I loved Ariel and Belle. “Couldn’t we just open them up and watch them once?”

“No,” she had told me. She was sav­ing them for her future grand­chil­dren. So that she can sit down and watch these movies with them, when­ever they came over to visit.

This mem­ory, as incon­se­quen­tial as it may seem to oth­ers, is one that cuts me incred­i­bly deep. It’s a reminder of how I’ve failed to ful­fill my par­ents’ dream of becom­ing grandparents.

Never mind that I already felt hor­ri­bly bad that my body was not able to give my hus­band a child of his own. This spe­cific mem­ory reminds me that I’ve prob­a­bly dis­ap­pointed my par­ents as well. That I haven’t been able to give them the grand­chil­dren that they’ve always wanted.

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I’ll be hon­est that one of the many rea­sons Hubby & I moved to Chicago was start fresh. There had been way too much emo­tional Infer­til­ity bag­gage that I had been car­ry­ing around for years. And although I had been work­ing very hard at purg­ing that bag­gage, I could never fully put it away … at least into a place within me that could make things manageable.

So putting some phys­i­cal dis­tance between myself and the bag­gage (which held waaay too many mem­o­ries of hurt and dis­ap­point­ment), as well as the phys­i­cal loca­tion where most of these mem­o­ries occurred, was some­thing I felt I needed to do.

And it’s with the bless­ing of my very sup­port­ive hus­band that we found our­selves mov­ing out-​​of-​​state; away from the only “home” I had ever known.  All this is in effort to be exposed to new peo­ple and to be open to new chal­lenges. To have a fresh out­look on where Hubby & I stand in our quest to have a family.

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Next Octo­ber will be my 20th High School Reunion. Part of me is inter­ested in see­ing where every­one is at in this stage of life; to see how far they’ve come since we were teenagers. Then there’s the rebel in me that thinks, “Pshaw … HS Reunions are so ‘Peggy Sue Got Mar­ried’! We must break this cycle at once!”

And then there’s the Infer­tile (with a cap­i­tal “I”) in me. The one with no chil­dren. The one with noth­ing excit­ing to show for my life over the past 20 years, other than a degree (only under­grad, to boot!) and a good job. I’ve no kids to brag about; I’ve no incred­i­ble 3,000 square foot house to talk about. All I have is a decent walk-​​up apart­ment in the city and fur chil­dren that shed hair all over the place, includ­ing my clothes.

At least I have an incred­i­ble hus­band who I can show off and brag about.

As it is, I’m still debat­ing on whether I want to go or not. How­ever, what I do know is that a bunch of the HS friends that I still keep in touch with, will be plan­ning a more low-​​key get-​​together some time next year. That should, at the very least, be a “mile­stone” some­thing to look for­ward to next year.

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I’ve had the plea­sure of (finally) see­ing my new fam­ily physi­cian, not once but twice in the past few months. One was the quick one-​​over, “Hi, nice to meet you” –type of visit. The sec­ond was my yearly female parts check-​​up.

Both times my physi­cian asked me if I was inter­ested in pur­su­ing fur­ther treat­ment for my infer­til­ity. And both times, I told my physi­cian I still wasn’t ready to make that deci­sion. I was in the midst of still adjust­ing to my new job in a new city.

And I needed more time to sep­a­rate want vs. need, hope for the future vs. more dis­ap­point­ment, treat­ment vs. acceptance.

Let me say it’s extremely strange to go from liv­ing in one State where In vitro Fer­til­iza­tion (IVF) is not cov­ered, to cur­rently liv­ing in a State where it now is. To now have that option to choose what course of treat­ment that Hubby & I would like to pur­sue in cre­at­ing our family.

For those that don’t know, infer­til­ity treat­ments are some­times not cov­ered by health insur­ance in cer­tain States. There may be some aspects of treat­ments that are cov­ered (such as the work-​​up and, at times, the med­ica­tions), but for the most part infer­til­ity treat­ments — and specif­i­cally IVF is not.

The Infer­tile RN in me thinks it’s utterly cruel to allow cov­er­age for the work-​​up of the infer­til­ity diag­no­sis and then turn around and not cover the treat­ment for it. Even though IVF is not a “guar­an­tee” that one would be suc­cess­ful in start­ing a fam­ily, there’s still that lit­tle bit of chance that it becomes suc­cess­ful in “cur­ing” that person’s infertility.

I relate it to treat­ment for can­cer. Much like chemother­apy and/​or radi­a­tion ther­apy is con­sid­ered stan­dard treat­ment for a per­son with such a con­di­tion … it’s never a “100% guar­an­tee” that the can­cer would be “cured” or go into remission.

It’s that double-​​standard in treat­ment of a health con­di­tion that both­ers me the most about the lack of cov­er­age in IVF treat­ments. Because, quite frankly … the RN Case Man­ager in me (the one who works for a health insur­ance com­pany) strongly believes that peo­ple have the right to choose how they would like to pur­sue treat­ment and have the Health Insur­ance that I pay for assist in cov­er­age for that treatment.

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This Jan­u­ary, it will be a year since I’ve lived in Chicago. And April will mark the offi­cial date that Hubby & I will have lived together in this bright new city (well, new to us anyway).

Dur­ing this past year, Hubby & I have had a chance to open our hearts and minds to dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties. We’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to accept where we’re at when it came to reassess­ing our options in cre­at­ing our family.

We’ve talked about IVF and the impact it may have emo­tion­ally for me … Both if it wasn’t suc­cess­ful and if it actu­ally was. But even though we know the option of IVF is avail­able to us in the fine State of Illi­nois, both of us have decided not to pur­sue that route.

We’ve also had the oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss adop­tion more in depth. To decide if this was the right path for us to take. And the more we thought about it, the more we decided that this was also some­thing we wouldn’t be a 100% com­fort­able with. (Okay, I admit it. It’s me. I’m the one who fears that I’ll just end up being dis­ap­pointed again. And I fear that I’d get stuck down that rab­bit hole of dark­ness once again.)

So what does this all mean? Well, read­ers. It means that Hubby & I have accepted that hav­ing chil­dren at this moment is not in our best inter­est. It means, that we have accepted the fact that we may never have chil­dren. (Okay, maybe it’s more like *I* accepted this fact, because Hubby was light years ahead of me in this thought.)

This means that we’ve con­sciously and delib­er­ately have made the choice to begin liv­ing life child-​​free.

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It’s taken me more than 12 years, but I think I’ve finally reached some clo­sure in my infer­til­ity journey.

Yet even as one door has closed in my life, I’m still learn­ing to live with the real­ity of this deci­sion. My infer­til­ity is no longer a daily strug­gle, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have those “moments.”

And those “moments” are the rea­son I choose to con­tinue writ­ing on this blog. Except now, instead of this blog being about the long­ing to have a chil­dren, it will be about try­ing to let go of this long­ing. About learn­ing to look for­ward to my new future with Hubby. The new jour­ney we’ll be tak­ing together.

It’s about try­ing to break free from these Apron Strings.

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