I know what I'm feeling is normal

I wrote this entry almost a week ago, and debated whether or not to post it... today I finally decided to.
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I Know What I'm Feeling is Normal

You sit on the end of a table, holding your husband's hand. The RE sits in front of you with a clipboard. That clipboard holds your hope, your dreams, your future, your past. Everything you've lived for... on those lines. Then in the upper corner... a picture.

Embryos.

Three of them. You can see them. Oh... YOUR embryos. The RE hands you the picture. Explains what you're seeing and what you're looking at. You lay back, still holding your husband's hand, and the embryos are inserted through your cervix where they should stay for the next 36 weeks. And you're still holding the picture.

The whole procedure takes less than 10 minutes. You're now PUPO (pregnant until proven otherwise).

After 30 minutes of rest at the doctor's office, you go to the acupuncturist. Where she tells you not to pull your shirt up today. You're being treated as if you're pregnant.

Then you go home. Your doctor wants you on bedrest for 2 days. So your husband treats you like you're pregnant.

Your husband talks to the embryos. Tells them secrets that you're not allowed to know. That's okay. You have the picture. Your embryos.

You look at that picture every day. All day. You can see the babies the embryos are going to become and the stories you'll tell them about how they were conceived. You imagine bringing them to meet the doctor, and hanging their picture on his wall... next to all of his other success stories. You picture showing them the photo one day, and telling them that it is the first picture you ever had of them.

You inject yourself with hormones every day - to convince your body that it's pregnant, because with IVF, sometimes it forgets. Injections and Pills in the morning, suppositories three times a day, more pills at night.

Your body thinks your pregnant. Your mind thrives on the hormones. Your eyes keep staring at that picture.

But one afternoon the phone rings.

All of the hormones, the dreams, the imagination.

Gone.

You're not pregnant.

Even though you still have that picture.

You turn the picture over, and write the date on the back, then slide it into your nightstand. You can't throw it away. In your head, these were already your babies. You think you do this for closure. But it just makes the hurt worse.

IVF #1
1/4/10
BFN