“I wish I had a brother,” he said this morning. 

Which is something I have said a million times when I was little.  But it was in a ‘I am sick of hanging out with two whinging  sisters who won’t come kick a football with me’ kinda way, not in a ‘I am lonely and have no one to play with at all’ sorta thing.  I know having a sibling or even two doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to have an amazing sibling relationship your entire lives, and I know it doesn’t even mean that you’re likely to always get along well at all…. but having no siblings removes the possibility entirely.

And it this that was a large part of what drove me for so many years on IVF, long after it outwore it’s economic viability and long after the emotional toll untenable.  I  didn’t want to have an only child.  I’ve always enjoyed my sibling relationships (for the most part) growing up, and truly didn’t want to have my little guy not getting the opportunity to make good sibling relationships of his own.  But this one has turned out to be totally beyond my control, and a single little rug rat he has ended up being.

Still… it’s like a kick in the guts when he says things like this, and reminds me of how utterly I failed.  Being on IVF always felt like I was working towards something… an endeavour or undertaking of some sort.  One that became all encompassing for many years.  But ultimately it didn’t matter how much time, money, energy or effort I applied to the problem nothing I did affected the outcome.   I’d never been in that situation before, where my concerted efforts mattered not a whit and I’d never encountered something that I couldn’t succeed at regardless of how hard I worked at it or how many resources I expended on it.  And that is why the whole thing has left me feeling like I’ve failed.

I made the big mistake this morning of clicking on the IVF tag on my journal and reading back through the last 14-20 entries I have made on IVF… big mistake!  Huge!  It’s all too depressing, let’s go back to thinking about happier things – like back pain!  🙁

Angel blindsided me again this evening.  I’ve been feeling pretty ordinary all week (girly-swot problems I think) and was laying on the couch with the heat pack and a cuppa trying to relax and not focus on how much I am hating my job right now… when Angel came up to me and asked me when I was going to have another baby.  God this kid has a memory as old as Methuselah!!!  He remembers heaps of stuff I  don’t give him credit for, and then springs things on me.  He’s done this before a few times even, and each time it still seems to upset me.

I haven’t had any IVF procedures since about September 2005, and basically I just try not to think about it if I can avoid it… which means on a day to day basis, I’ve been working hard on convincing myself that I’m over it, and that I don’t care about it anymore.  But then Angel will come out with a comment like that…. or I will get a bill in the mail to pay for the storage of the ten embryos that I still have in the freezer…. or my boss will tell me with a huge smile on her face that she’s pregnant – and it all comes out again.  It feels like an old wound  sitting in the back of my brain, and all it takes is a slight knock to rip the scab off and open it up fresh again…..  as raw and painful as it was years ago. 

The window is well and truly closing and I’ve done nothing but ignore the situation for the last  eighteen months.  I have allowed myself to put it on the back burner while my father was sick, but in the six months since Dad passed away, I’ve been unwilling to turn the rock over and have a look at how I’m feeling about it all…. something tells me it ain’t gonna be pretty – and I honestly don’t feel like I have the energy or the strength to deal with it anymore.
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