Some days are easier and some days are harder. It’s easy to throw myself into my work and try to forget everything that is happening in my personal life. It’s hard to see constant pregnancy and birth announcements every single time I open any social media account. And it’s not as easy as “just don’t go on social media” because that is where a lot of my business resides. As I write this, my second IUI has failed and now I must grieve what could have been and start moving forward. Again.

It doesn’t get easier. In fact, this time is more terrifying than the last. In the hopes of improving our chances of success, I’m scheduling surgery for later this month to have a tube unblocked. I hope that will fix the problem. I hope and pray and wish more than anything that this will be the missing ingredient in our success. That this surgery will mean we will get pregnant soon after and hopefully conceive naturally in the future. Without all of the doctors and bloodwork and medications.

But somehow it doesn’t feel like it will be different. Maybe it is because we’ve spent the last 2.5 years hoping and praying and wishing for success just to grieve the failure every single month.

Maybe it is because IVF is the next step after surgery. A step that everybody tells me I can handle and that I’m strong enough to do. And maybe they’re right. But I don’t feel that strength. I feel terror and I feel defeat any time I think about having to go down that path. I don’t even know if I can go down that path.

So for now, the next step in this awful and painful journey to surgery. The first surgery I’ll ever have and one that will take me out of work and holidays and basically society for weeks. But will it be worth it? For now, who knows. For know…I just have to continue to create ever dwindling hope because that’s all I really have left at this point…