Waiting

I feel like the last year and a half of my life has been a series of waiting. It seems that we’re always waiting on something – a test to be done, test results, the green light to try again. I have to say that over the 52 weeks of 2012, I spent each one of them waiting on something. I’m tired of waiting, but it seems I have no choice.

Have you ever been forced to wait for something you wanted? I mean something you really, really wanted? I’ve had to do that every day, and there isn’t anything I can do about it. Timing is everything when it comes to my situation – tests and procedures can only be done at certain points in my cycle. Even on fertility medication, you only get 1 chance a month to try to make a baby. And it seems like every time we get that once a month shot, we have to wait on something else.

I think a lot about all of those quotes to “seize the day” or “make today count.” I recognize that our time in this life is short, and we’re here to make the most of it. And I have to admit, I feel really conflicted about that. In one sense, I am making the most of my life by organizing it around the thing I want most in the world. In another sense, I’m waiting for something that may never come. Will I look back someday on this time as wasted time – time and effort that I should have put towards something else?

Gordon and I have, in my ways, put our lives at a standstill over the past year. Big decisions get put off or pushed to the side because we have to focus on this 1 big goal in front of us – to have another child. We can’t move, change jobs, or even plan a big vacation 6 months down the line. It’s important that we are here, with our doctors who know us, and that we’re available and ready when our once a month shot comes up.

We talk a lot about how that can make us feel stuck. We can’t move forward on other things we want to do, because this is our primary #1 goal. And goals 2, 3, and 4 fall WAY behind this one. And so we stand still, and we wait. We don’t often feel progress or forward momentum. Every time we do, it seems like there is a “wait and see” right behind it.

And so here we are again, waiting. My hope is that a year from now, we have the living child we have wanted and worked so hard for. I hope that this year is spent on waiting out the 40 weeks of pregnancy, and not on more procedures, tests, or my worst case scenario, giving up the dream. As much as I hate the waiting, I guess I’ll take it as long as it comes with the possibility that this can still happen for our family. But I can’t help but constantly feel like I want to be doing something to move us toward our goal. But that’s not my reality. My reality is that I wait. And then I wait some more.