Empty Arms

I just added a new link to the section "Infertility Resources" on the left-hand side of my blog. I stumbled across this video link while reading a post on Hannah's Prayer (my IF support network). Click here to watch it: Empty Arms video. It's a bit difficult to do the first time 'round but try to listen to the lyrics of the song while the words are displayed on the screen. It might be better to read the message the first time and then play it again to just listen to the song.

As much as I know that I need to be aware and become "de-sensitized" to the pain I feel when I hear about birth announcements or see a pregnant belly or attend church to find out there's a baptism or children's Mass going on that day, I also know that the pain I feel from these things will never entirely go away. Some days are worse than others. The pain can hit you out of nowhere over something that normally never makes you cringe. I noticed this the other day when Gil and I were eating breakfast at Denny's and a child (probably about 3-4 in age from the sound of the giggle) starting laughing... that deep, full-blown, belly laugh that says there's nothing more important in life than the joy they're feeling right at that instant. And for the first time in almost 2 years, it made me laugh... it made my soul feel happy. It was so refreshing to not feel the pain that it had come to bring me. That has always been one of my most favorite sounds in the world, a sound that could make me stop whatever I was doing and just listen and share in the feeling. But during the struggle of these past 3-1/2 years of our infertility, it made me hurt like there was no tomorrow. I'm not saying it won't be like that again because that's the nasty cycle of infertility. But it made me happy that day.

I've said this before: the joy I feel at our prospects of adopting have absolutely nothing to do with the pain that we still feel at not being able to conceive a biological child. Every time AF rears her ugly head, the pain is emotional as well as physical with the knowledge that - for certain - it once again has not happened for us.

Please just know that if you tell me about a pregnancy, or that so-and-so has had a baby, or talk about a child's baptism that you witnessed, or rant at how your own children make you nuts and you'd gladly give them away for the day, or - worse - offer your children for us to babysit as "birth control" to keep us from desiring children so badly (yikes!)... just know that my being quiet in response is just me holding back in my own personal pain of not being able to experience any of those things and has absolutely no bearing on the actual present situation. Please just be patient with my pain... it's likely never to go completely away.