Doing Hard Things

Tomorrow marks another step in our IVF journey...I’m having a minor surgery called a hysteroscopy. Our fertility doctor wants to look more closely at my uterus to see if there’s any scar tissue from my c-section that might be affecting our ability to get pregnant. She’ll use a camera to look at the inside of my uterus and remove any scar tissue that she finds.

I was really upset last week when my doctor recommended I have this surgery. It just felt like one more thing to put my body through, without really knowing if it will help us get pregnant. Yet she said she wants to do everything she can to ensure that we will have at least one successful pregnancy with our three remaining frozen embryos.

When I got in the car to leave the appointment I started crying out of a sense of defeat—it all just felt so hard. My mom took me to lunch to eat tacos, which usually makes things better and as we talked through everything she helped me see the benefits of choosing to forge on with a more optimistic stance.

Being optimistic doesn’t mean overlooking how hard this journey is, but rather acknowledges the good that can come from doing hard things, even if it’s not what we expect or hope for.

When I choose to be optimistic I start to get curious about how this surgery might help solve a problem for us or otherwise confirm that my uterus is in good shape for receiving another embryo in our next transfer.

It’s hard being at the mercy of an educated guess. It’s hard experiencing loss after loss. It’s hard to keep putting my body through surgeries, injections, and blood draws. Sometimes things are really hard and just seem to get harder, but we are resilient creatures and can handle way more than we think—we can DO HARD THINGS and eventually good things do happen. But in the process, BE KIND TO YOURSELF because it’s hard!

Please send me and my doctor all your positive thoughts for tomorrow.