When is enough, enough?

     There are a few things that have shaken my core this week, and planted my seed of doubt about this whole process even deeper.

     First, I stumbled upon this gem of an article, detailing a woman's death, and subsequent resurrection during labor and delivery. After 7 rounds of IVF, she was pregnant with her second child, yet somewhere around the 20-week mark, after finding out she had a placenta previa, she began having visions that something was horribly wrong. Well, something was. After birth she suffered from an amniotic fluid embolism, flat-lined, and was brought back. Had it not been for a physician who bought in to her intuition that something bad was going to happen, she would have stayed dead. Anyways, the article then delves into intuition - and how it is often correct.

     Well, what the fuck does that mean for me?! I've had an "intuition" that there is no way in hell that I'll ever get pregnant. Then I did. And while having a chemical pregnancy actually restored my faith in having a baby someday (hell, it's the most pregnant I had ever been...), I'm having doubts.

     Do my strong feelings that I won't ever get pregnant stem from an unconscious awareness? Or, am I just trying to protect myself from heartbreak? Is it next-to-impossible to picture myself pregnant or as a parent because it isn't meant to be? Or, is it because I feel so far removed from those outcomes that I can't even fathom it?

     Friday night I was at dinner with some friends from the mind/body group at my fertility clinic, and I mentioned that my greatest fear is that all the infertility treatments in the world won't work for me, and re-iterated the widely-known fact that not everyone comes out of this with a baby. My friend, L, was quick to shut that thought process down, by detailing an article she read that stated most couples (I think she said 90%) would get pregnant with IVF if they stuck with it long enough. No shit. If I had the time, energy, wherewithall, money and motherfucking sanity to endure 25 IVF treatments, I would sure as hell imagine that one of them would work.

     But, how many women and couples really have it in them to wait it out?
 
     The final blow to my shaky optimism moderate pessimism (woo hoo! I've downgraded from severe pessimism!) was reading two separate Facebook posts from women who just received BFNs and decided that they were no longer going to pursue fertility treatments. I found this beyond heartbreaking. Both for the couples making the decision, and for myself, in anticipation that we will soon be in this situation.

     So, which is it? Is it my intuition that is guiding my fear? Or is it my fear that is feigning my intuition?

     We'll know soon enough.