new found empathy

since cooper's death in december, i have learned so much about myself and my relationship with my precious husband, about friends and family, and about how much one's heart has the ability to expand in order to love and then break when faced with loss. i have also learned that among the darkness, sadness and despair, healing does come and with it comes hope. for me hope is most clearly represented in the form of another baby. i know that another child will never replace cooper, but i do know that a baby will bring us joy, will show us our capacity to love again and bring a sense a purpose to our lives. and a baby is something we so desperately want.

when i got pregnant with cooper, it was easy, textbook easy. i stopped taking birth control and two months later i was pregnant. i thought that was how it would work this time around, that as soon as my cycle returned i would be pregnant. well, that has not been the case and for the past 3 months i have learned more about my reproductive ability than i ever wanted to know. i have counted days between cycles, days of lh surges and i peed on all kinds of sticks. i cant even begin to tell you how many sticks i have peed on since february and i am still not pregnant. i feel kind of silly talking about not being pregnant after 3 months, because i know couples try for years to have a baby, some are successful, others are not. and i can not imagine the heartbreak they experience each month. but for me each month that goes by is kick in the gut, my heart breaks all over again and i wonder if my ease at conceiving cooper was a fluke. now intellectually i know this is my head playing games with me, but emotionally it is so real. i also know that obsessing about it is not going to help, but when you have experienced something so amazing and then have it ripped from you makes you a little frantic and desperate.

but today is a new day, a new path. thanks to modern medicine and drugs my cycle will return to normal and hopefully we will be given that chance to love again. my obgyn prescribed a regimen of clomid to help my cycle return to a more normal time frame, rather than the 37 day course it has settled into over the past few months. and today i took my first dose. and even though i feel hopeful, there is still an ache in my heart that has become so familiar and reminds me that hope and heartache can and do coexist.