So, Is She Better Now?

An interesting, innocent question put to me by a friend this weekend. She was asking about my sister's fertility now that she's had my youngest nephew (let's call him Bear, shall we?).

Is she better now.

Is there such a thing? I can't think of a form of infertility that ever gets permanently "fixed". Endo can always grow back, PCOS only gets worse with age, even male-factor probably doesn't get permanently better after surgery or what have you. This is not the flu. It does not simply get better, go away.

And what if it did? What if there were no such thing as secondary infertility because (for whatever reason) getting pregnant fixed the problem. Would any of us be better? Even if one pregnancy was a cure-all, the emotional and psychological aspects of infertility can't be fixed like that.

Is she better now.

Is she better because now she has two kids instead of one? Because she got a *little* bit closer to that big family of 6 or 7 that she had always dreamed of? Or is she better because its been 3 years since she lost the triplets and maybe an hour slips by that she doesn't think of them and miss them terribly? There is no medicine for that. There is no way to forget the years of heartache and loss. There is no way to fully let go of the fear, even after a positive experience.

When someone cuts your arm off, it does not "get better". It hurts less over time and you learn to adapt to a new way of life. Eventually you can find some humor and some life lessons in the tragedy. But it certainly does not get better; your arm is never coming back.

I know that's not what my friend meant. I know she lives blissfully unaware, in a land where women *plan* to get pregnant, without knowing anything of the intricacies involved in conception, and lo and behold, they do. Two point five kids, evenly spaced out, no more than two years apart. Who *are* these people?

Is she better now.

Is she done trying? Probably not. Will the next attempt be easier because of this last success? Definitely not. But much like losing your arm, the process hurts a little less and she has adapted to this way of life, as we all do, over time. This completely and utterly baffling way of life. I think that's as close to "better" as we can expect to get. What has been done cannot be undone, but the person without his arm soldiers on and so do we.

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I heard a song this morning on the radio. If you go to this site, it is the fourth song down. I stood in the bathroom, curling my hair, with tears in my eyes. But I needed to hear that song. I was in the kitchen a few minutes later when it hit me and I *knew*. 

I know it is already planned out, but its time to try again. I have been afraid of what I might go through this year on my last series of cycles. Everything about what might and might not be has made me apprehensive about going down this road again. But now I'm sure, its time. I need to do this, no matter what the result is. I am ready.