Bradley Method as a recovery from IF

A fellow nestie asked me about the HSG today. I went though my blog and found the post about it to send her the link. I read it and just wanted to weep. It seems so long ago and yet so close. As I read the post for the first time maybe since writing it, I could remember the highway we got lost on, remember feeling sick, and the cherry blossoms on the trees. The emotions of IF never leave me, they are always there under the surface, ready to burst out when I least expect them to.

Tomorrow is our first Bradley birth class and while I feel prepared for the class, a part of me can't believe it is time to take it. I have always wanted a med free birth, the not med free conception didn't change that, but it has changed they way I look at birth a lot. A drug free birth has always been a little about proving I could do it, that has increased since IF. I want my body to do this so bad so that I can regain faith in it. It is like I NEED my body to give vaginal unassisted birth to a healthy baby in order to survive. I feel that strongly about it now. Why is so hard to explain but I will try.

Before infertility I could do anything if I tried and worked hard enough. Getting pg on my own was my first adult failure. I don't like failure and more so I didn't like not being able to control my body. My mom jokes at times that the reason the meds worked was because I was finally some what in control and thus more "relaxed". I don't think she remembers how stressed I was that cycle. Her surgery being the day of my IUI, I think she is a little hazy on the details.

I know I can't control giving birth, just like I couldn't control getting pregnant, and thus it becomes even more important in my mind for things to go the way I have "planned" them. I am sure God is looking down on me laughing at the moment, him not being a fan of us planning things he is more in control of than us. But I like to think he will give me this, that he says "things will go the way they are meant to be in your birth but if you lean on me, get strength from me, then you will have the birth you want".

And so tomorrow we take a class to help us gather our strength in preparation of birth, and to class I will be taking my strength and faith but I will also be gathering up the emotions infertility has left me with: the pain, the self doubt and the fear, that any second it might all be gone. I would love to rid myself of all those emotions, of the pain so close I feel like the HSG was just yesterday, but I know those emotions will never be gone. My hope is that I will be able to use the emotions of fear to my advantage and that would be a big step.