Always Waiting

It's a truth universally recognized by women of low fertility who are trying to conceive that the week before you can know if this is THE month always takes longer than the previous weeks in a cycle. 

Those last few days, when a propensity to cry could be PMS or an early sign of pregnancy. When hunger could be psychological from that New Year's Resolution Diet, or the beginnings of feeding two. 

It's a maddening time. One I face with everything ranging from indifference to insanity every month. Some months the hopes are just higher, and I fall a little further when the predictable happens. 

It seems to be a prolific time among my friends.  I'm starting to lose count on how many children homeschool acquaintances have now.  I'm starting to see others filling the gap between their kids SP's age and new ones already here or on the way. 

In all that wealth, it's so easy to focus on my lack. To see only what I'm missing. 

To feel it keenly every month. 

This strikes me as a kind of purgatory. There's pain and longing, with no clear idea of how much longing, how much pain must be endured.  

And yet, I have faith it will be eased again someday, in part because I know that adoption is an option for us, but mostly because I am putting all my eggs in God's basket and trusting. Painfully, imperfectly, trusting. 

Because even when my days of children are over, I will have been open. I will have trusted. 

Until it's over, I will wait. Every month I will wait and hope. I will cry many more tears, endure many more injections to treat my hormone imbalances, but today there's hope for another day, another child. 

To remind me of why I keep shooting those shots, I need only look around my home :)