thoughts in my head

A little voice inside my head as I took my shower earlier today - You're not pregnant. I stopped mid-shampoo to listen, even though I knew it was in my head, a thought only. I hadn't even been thinking of it, so the thought took me by surprise.

Truth is, there's no way of knowing. I'm on so many medications that any of my "symptoms" could be side effects. I've learned from experience that there is just no way to know for sure, not until you get that BFP or AF.

Still, I hold out hope. I place my hands over my womb, and pray. I meditate, and wear the bracelet a friend made me, claiming the stones in it would attract fertility. I have shunned caffeine and alchohol, soft cheeses, and all the other things we do when we think we might have a chance at being pregnant. I'm not even bracing myself for disappointment after the shining disaster that proved to be last cycle.

I thought of a RESOLVE meeting I went to a while back, and one of the women who was there for the last time. She and her husband had decided to adopt, and their child was to be born within the next couple of weeks. At the time I felt sorry for her, in a way, thinking how hard it must be to come to terms with the fact that she would never feel her child grow within her own body, she would not give birth herself. But today, I envied her. Her struggle is over, her joy is here. She is a mother, and tonight she holds her little one to her chest, cherishing the gift she's been given. That child is no less hers for being born of another's labor - I never thought it was. But perhaps she treasures the child all the more for the labor she did go through to get to motherhood.

I wonder how I will arrive at motherhood. Will it be through injections and catheters filled with washed specimens? Will it be when we least expect it, after we've given up all hope and stopped trying? Will it be through another's labor pains and tears, the grief of a mother who can't raise her own child?

I do not know. I pray to find out soon.