NIAW 2012

So, once again I missed National Infertility Awareness Week. It just ended on Saturday and, ironically, the theme of this year's NIAW is "Don't Ignore Infertility," which is exactly what I have been doing lately.

It's been incredibly hard to ignore, and yet incredibly easy at the same time. It is hard to watch everyone around me celebrate their children and their new arrivals and pregnancies. I have another team member who is counting down the minutes until her maternity leave, two others still on maternity leave, not to mention that I am one of just a handful of non-parents and I just got invited to a baby shower for a woman I have never met.

On the other hand, when there aren't periods of elevated hope each month, there aren't periods of massive despair, either. Without treatment, there's just a constant level of wishing and dreaming without the roller coaster ride of hopefulness and hopelessness. It feels like it has been forever since we have been in any treatment at all and yet it is almost time to get the ball rolling for our summer IVF.

I haven't been on the boards at all lately, not on purpose really, but because I have been extremely busy and I feel like I have nothing to say. While others are moving forward, I am just standing still.

On a mostly unrelated note, I have been moved at work to a new position and I'm not very happy about it. I have worked tirelessly over the last four years building a science curriculum from the ground up and now I am expected to pass that work onto someone else. I have been moved to 7th and 8th grade social studies and I will be starting from scratch all over again. I'm not upset about it and in the long run I think it will work out fine, but it was a bit of an unwelcome surprise.

Nevertheless, I already told my boss that I was planning to have a "procedure" this summer and that I wouldn't be able to come in and plan as often as I normally would have. I hope at this time next year, work will be the least of my concerns...