National Infertility Awareness Week...

...Otherwise known as my entire blog for the last 4 years.

So this week is reserved for Infertility Awareness. Isn't that nice? They sandwiched it in between National Don't Be A Dingus Week and National Ride A Bicycle Week. Seriously I have no idea what the weeks around this one are. But that sounds about right, doesn't it?

It's no secret that we have tried to have a baby. And it's no secret that it didn't work.

One of the hardest parts of infertility is that we are mourning a life that we will never have, children we will never know and there is no outward place of grieving to go to. There's not a gravestone or physical marker for our loss. We look as though nothing has changed on the outside.

The truth is that we are forever changed. We are not broken forever. But we are living in a new normal.

In this week of awareness, I simply want to say that there are many factors that play into a couple's ability to keep pursuing interventions. Insurance, health, emotional and mental stress, and finances are just a few. Infertility doesn't care if you are rich or poor, although admittedly if you're rich it may be easier to stomach the cost of repeated failures. Infertility doesn't play nice. It plays down and dirty. It will clothesline you and take your sense of worth and your wallet all in one move.

I would guarantee that you each know someone struggling with infertility and the outcome of it, whether that's a baby or not. Infertility is not something that disappears with a successful pregnancy. Our story has ended the way that many others have, without a baby. 

Now excuse me while I chase down infertility, break it's knees and take back my wallet and my sense of worth.