coming clean

I have gone back and forth (and back and forth) about whether or not to write this post.

There is an FET in our very near future. We’ve jumped through all the pre-cycle hoops the RE requires and the funds to pay for the procedure arrived in my shiny new FSA this morning. Our original plan was to do a transfer this month until we realized it would fall right on top of a trip E and I are leaving on tomorrow morning. Then, we learned the dates of a major trip we’re taking with BIL/SIL next year and realized it would be good to push everything back one more month. While it doesn’t seem possible that our FET will produce an actual child (20% success rate at our clinic), it seemed like a responsible move to at least consider the fact that I might end up pregnant, improbable though that seems.

I’m sorry for not sharing this with you until now. To date, I have told one friend about our plans. One. I have been coveting this fantasy world where M and I become pregnant with no one else knowing about it. Can you imagine? We’d be so… normal. I knew there were costs – specifically, costs to you, my cherished IF blog community – but I hoped that you’d be able to understand why I did what I did. I wrote my “coming out” post a hundred times in my head – hopefully to be a pregnancy announcement post, but maybe just a “here’s what we’ve been up to but it didn’t work” post – begging for your forgiveness for not telling you and explaining how going through the process NOT on a microscope slide was so important for my own healing and for my relationship with M. With our first pregnancy, I spent two years blogging and message-boarding every decision, every blood test, every setback, and every emotion. You all got me through it. M was there every step of the way, of course, but you were an integral part of our team. In hindsight, I have wondered how things would have been different if I’d turned more toward M during those times of need. Was there a cost to inviting so many people into what is typically a 2-person journey? Did I share things with you I should have kept between us? I don’t know the answer, but I feel secure enough to do things differently this time and see how it goes. It’s different going down this road a second time. I don’t feel as panicked or desperate as I did while TTC #1. (Not yet, at least. Check back with me after a couple of failed FETs and we’ll see where I am then.) My gut tells me it will be good for me and M, and that doing things in a more private way will go miles toward replenishing some of what infertility has taken from me. Can you even imagine getting pregnant with only you and your partner knowing you were trying? How bold. How fantastical. What must it feel like to have that much power over your environment? I was determined to try it.

But then there is the fly in the ointment, and that fly is you, dear readers. I can’t make peace with my decision because I know how deeply a surprise pregnancy announcement would wound you. I have taken too much from this community – from you – to act selfishly now. As I write this, I know it is the right thing to do. I just have one favor to ask of you: I really don’t want to talk about this again until we have news to share. If you’d like to leave a comment on this post, I would be touched and grateful to read your thoughts. But going forward from here, can we all just pretend you don’t know anything? I promise to bring back news whenever there is news to bring.

I know that some (many?) of you have That Feeling in the pit of your stomach right now. How greedy and presumptuous of us to be headed back into the stirrups already. How selfish of me to have waited until now to spill the beans. I know, and I’m sorry. I wish there was more I could do to mitigate that pain. Hopefully you can feel the reverence with which I hold your feelings, even as I share something I know may injure them.

I’m going to leave this post up for about a week and then I will make it private. I figure that will allow plenty of time for any of my regular readers to get up to speed, and you are the only people I feel I owe any disclosure to. I have been blogging (well, journaling I guess, since I haven’t been sharing them) our FET steps up until this point and my intention is to make all of those posts public at some point. I will add this post in with those to be (re)published in the future.

Again, I would be honored to read any and all comments you feel so moved to leave here. I just ask that once this post is sealed off, the information is sealed with it until sometime in the future when it is re-opened under my own (hopefully happy) terms.