Hindsight

Reading another blog has spun me into a spiral of restrospection and hindsight about the emotional journey I/we have been through over the past couple of years - in particular since diagnosis a year and a bit ago.
Like the blogger, it has been one of the toughest periods of my life. I never knew I could cry so much or be that fragile. I find it hard to explain to people why the devastation has been so utterly overwhelming. Something to do with the 5 years of monthly disappointments and fooling myself that nothing was wrong. Something to do with being a lonely, only child of a single parent family longing for a family of my own for a long, long time.
But now, like the blogger, I wouldn't change anything - I wouldn't want the past year or so to be any other way.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who sadly seems to be at the beginning of the very hardest bit of the infertility journey - when all you do is cry and be totally overwhelmed by feelings you don't understand. I realised talking to her that I wasn't quite in that place anymore. While I am not that much further on medically - or at least it doesn't feel like it - I have come a long way emotionally and wouldn't have if I hadn't let myself give in to those tears and hide myself away in the devastation. It had to be done and I am better off for it. I truely believe times like these make you a stronger and wiser person and makes you and your partner closer if you let it.
Obviously my yearning for a baby is still so overwhelmingly strong. I constantly find myself in moments, like at the carol concert last week when all the little ones came out to sing their song, when I am overcome with tears of longing and grief. But I now just let myself feel those moments and I can cope with them. It does not stop me wanting to spend time around children anymore.
And I do not believe this longing for a child necessarily means I would change the struggle I have had/am having to get one. It may take some of us a bit longer to get to the top of the mountain. But just because our path is longer it does not mean we have wasted time, just that we have seen other things along the way which could turn out to be invaluable.