Marking Time

One of the strange things about suffering a miscarriage or a failed IVF cycle is the marking of time. As the months pass, I think "I would have been this far along", or "I would have looked about as big as that woman does right now". It is sort of a melancholy thing, to be thinking about something that never came to pass, but that easily could have been.

I have already marked the first of two days this year that "might have been". February 22nd was my due date for the pregnancy I lost to miscarriage. Like a distinct tying of lose ends, my pregnant sister-in-law (who called a week after my miscarriage to announce that she had just discovered her surprise pregnancy) gave birth a few days before "my" due date.

As for the other marked day, I have the misfortune of having not one, but two friends who are both due on the exact June Friday that would have belonged to my baby, if our most recent attempt at IVF had worked. So instead of preparing for my own little one to arrive, I get a front row seat to exactly what might have been instead.

Sometimes I wonder if it is worth risking more failures and more marked days to expand our family. But as any woman who has dealt with infertility knows, every month there is a marked day, a possible due date, and the heartache of losing that possibility all over again.

So is it worth it? Sometimes I just don't know. But then, I realize that the heartache of not trying at all would be far worse - a fact of which I am reminded every time I look into my sweet little boy's eyes and wish for him to have a sibling.

Marking time is one thing, but regretting time wasted is quite another.

Better to have tried and lost than not to have tried at all.