Wow. I am starting to feel it.

I started feeling a little twindgy yesterday and as of this morning, I am starting to feel "full" down there. And it's only the beginning! I can't imagine how uncomfortable I'm going to feel by next week, before egg retrieval. On my simply femara cycles with 2-3 follicles, I feel so uncomfortable - oh my - how am I going to feel with 5 times as many follicles? ack.

On another note - I was really happy to read the comments from my "How IFers feel about their children" post. I was quite impressed how the non-IFers felt, especially Poltzie. She noticed how just about every IFer agreed with me while every non-IFer didn't agree. It just goes to show how it's impossible to know what you will feel until you are there.

It's impossible for a non-IFer to understand how it feels once you are truly deemed "infertile". And hopefully the non-IFers won't ever have to feel it. There is just this feeling of desperation feeling I didn't get until way after a year. The year marked sucked, but it wasn't until I failed those first handful of treatments that I felt the real desperation. And that's when thing changed for me - it was no longer a "when", but a question of "if". That first 16~ish months of ttc had me just in a holding pattern, waiting for it to happen, because I truly believed it would just be a matter of time. After than, I knew it wasn't guaranteed - things may not happen. That is why the BFP after that mark for ~me~ was more of relief than the utter joy of it. I honestly don't think I would have felt that in the first year or so.

Even with me having a C1 bfp, like Rachel commented on herself, it was ~after~ already going through 18 cycles of trying. So, for me at least, it wasn't expected at all. When we started ttc#2, I dug my heels in for another long journey where nothing was promised at the end. When I got that C1 bfp, I felt that relief again, but this time it was coupled with shock. The relief feeling wasn't as strong this time, as I didn't have time to really wonder if it would happen or not. But since I knew what could happen, it wasn't anything like how a C1 while ttc#1 would of felt like. Of course, that never happened to me, so obviously I would have no idea.

All I can draw from is how I felt with C1 while ttc#1 and how my feelings of hope and want ~changed~. Of course I ~wanted~ my children the first cycle I tried to conceive, but it DID change after those first 16 months. The want turned into desperation, both for my own needs and for the want of a child. It's something I personally went through, something that I can tell you happened to me. The change of my wants. The change of my desire. The change of my feelings. And because it's something that's impossible to know and understand unless you have gone through it yourself, I'm not surprised there was disagreement. And that's okay. To get to that understanding is a big bag of monkey shit, so I'd rather people not understand my feelings.

I do want to add that I still won't ever understand the feelings of a long time ttc-er, especially those ttc#1. I know how lucky I was to conceive on C#18. And even though I'm on C#18 ~again~, I already have children. So my world is much different, even if my journey ends without a BFP this time around. I ~know~ how lucky I am. I would never go around saying I had a tragic journey or that I even had a hard time with infertility. My infertility was MINOR to true infertility. 18 cycles, 1 cycle and not 18 cycles again. Bah. Sure, 34 cycles of BFNs suck, but I've had 2 BFPs too. That gives me a 5.8% bfp rate, which is outrageous when compared to a rate of 0%. And even me would give anything to be in the "under 12 months" fertile group; I just can't imagine ttc for #1 past that 2 year mark. Past treatments. Past IVF failures. Those ladies are the true IFers, and while I wish they weren't in that group at all, I salute them.