Reframing Failure

It's three days before my blood test to find out if our first IUI worked, and I'm feeling like it didn't. I honestly don't know if it didn't. I did take a pregnancy test, but I'm too early for a negative to be a real negative, so I have to wait. 

I was going to make a progesterone side effects post, but to be honest, I have had none. I mean, I have no symptoms of pregnancy, PMS, or progesterone symptoms. And at this point, I'm not sure what that means, but I am sure I'm not getting my hopes up.

So, I'm resigned to finding out that my blood test will say that I'm not pregnant and we're going to have to start over. That, to say the least, is frustrating and upsetting.

The thing is, I'm struggling with feeling like I've failed somehow. Even though I know I didn't. I took my prenatal vitamin every day. I put a progesterone suppository in my vagina twice daily and laid in bed long enough for it to dissolve. I could have drunk a little less caffeine or exercised more. But there's nothing I did wrong.

The thing is, as a human being, I'm programmed to look for patterns or lay blame. And more often than not, I try to blame myself. It's part of my psyche that I completely accept is not what one would call healthy.

So, instead of trying to find everything I did wrong, I'm trying to find some way to think of this as some kind of success. I mean, I guess the longer we go through this process, the more I get to think about the Fertility Treatment and it's impact on people's lives. And I get to keep telling you all about it. Though I'd really rather be writing about my first trimester.

Bonus fact: There will be a hidden First Trimester blog when we finally get there, you just have to figure out where it is 😉

The internet tells me to think of failure as a stepping stone to success or a learning moment. But you know what's wrong with that?

WE DIDN'T FAIL.

A healthy couple under 35 only has a 25% chance of getting pregnant every month. That means, if they have sex at just the right moment, the egg is released on time, and the woman's cervical mucus's pH is perfect, there is only a 1 in 4 chance that they get pregnant. That's why many doctors won't talk to that couple about infertility until they've been trying for a year. Heck, some of them won't until they've been trying for two years.

So, we're 35, we're undergoing a fertility treatment that has a 15% chance of success, and my mind is telling me we failed? Screw that. 

In the case of fertility treatments, the opposite of success isn't failure. But there isn't a better word for it. Maybe, in this case, the opposite of success is just "try again."