Infertility can make you feel like such a loser. After each failed cycle, I felt the world caving in. I mean how many more times do I have to endure hearing it’s negative, and the pathetic “I am sorry” from my nurse who knew how much I despised that phrase. Again, no one has died here; I am trying to make a baby so if you could please stop saying “I am sorry” we can all move on.
I was looking for a new cover for my Erin Condren Life Planner and found Redefine Success. This is exactly what I need to see every day. A reminder that what I thought success was is in fact not really what success is.
So let’s go back to the feeling like a loser from all the failed infertility cycles. When you start out on this IVF journey, you have no idea how this beast of a journey will play out. You don’t get a manual or get to watch a short trailer on how you are to navigate finding a reproductive endocrinologist, dealing with the hormones from hell and not making mistakes when time is not on your side. I have let infertility rob me of my self-worth and self-confidence. It sounds so ridiculous when I write it out, but the bottom line is YES! Infertility had been like a category five hurricane, and I didn’t have the five-day warning to secure my life.
It’s been incredibly hard to keep my normal work pace up from writing and shooting beauty videos to posting on my beauty blog. These things are a part of my daily life yet I find myself at a loss on how to pick myself up and get on with it.
After IVF #4 in Colorado, this past September where we have one normal PGS tested embryo on ice. I started thinking about what does success really mean? Who sets the bar for success? Why do we feel if we fail at something we do not have success? I have been meditating on this for some time now and here are my thoughts.
SUCCESS [suh k-ses] noun
- the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one’s goals.
- The attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
- A performance or achievement that is marked by success as by the achievement of honors.
- A person or thing that has had success, as measured by achievement of goals, wealth, etc.
- Obsolete, outcome.