hang on to hope

i wasn't going to post this, but after reading a friend's blog this morning, i felt like i should. if i can't laugh and be a bit sarcastic about our situation, i don't know how i will get through it.

i loved whitney's funny post: infertility: the board game. as she says, infertility is as much fun as a barrel of monkeys! i would just add a few spaces:

*you are asked for the 1000th time "when is it your turn." skip your turn and wait patiently until everyone else has their turn two or three times, then spin again.
*go to hospital for hystosalpinogram. lose $2000 but there's nothing wrong with you!
*doctor forgets to read your medical chart. go back to the start and lose all your money.
*switch doctors for the third time. go back to the start and lose all your money.
*receive a perfectly-timed text or email from someone who simply says "you are great" or "thinking about you." move forward 3 spaces.
*babysit other people's kids (or teach the 3-year-olds at church) and wonder why you want kids in the first place. move forward one and back two.

i keep getting told that i don't know how hard it is to have a baby. i've honestly lost count of the things my family members have said to me this week that begin or end with "well you just won't understand until you've had a baby....you just don't know how hard it is." and they are right. i don't know how hard it is. but i have tried my very best to be loving and supportive and concerned for those who are experiencing the trials of motherhood. really all i can offer to those experiencing the "hard" times as a mother is my empathy. maybe you don't know what it's like to experience infertility (or a myriad of other difficult situations), but you can be empathetic.

i guess this is all to say that the empathy that has been extended to me and the empathy i've felt for others gives me a lot of hope, and the final space on my own infertility board game would have to be hope. (was that a really awkward transition or attempt to bring it all together? sorry.)

i'm hopeful that one day i'll read this and laugh because i'm knee deep in the trials of motherhood. i'm hopeful that one day i won't have to fight back the tears and force the smile when someone announces a pregnancy or i hold a new baby or see a pregnant woman, hopeful that i can repay all the kind acts and words that have been extended to me, and hopeful that i will love my babies all the more for having felt so much pain at not being able to have them.

and for those of you who are also suffering, i hope the same things.

hang on to hope.