::crickets::

I have noticed, while reading infertility blogs, that oftentimes once the blogger becomes pregnant the blog becomes stagnant. Once overly verbose writers clam up, posting nothing more than the occasional ultrasound update. I often wondered why pregnant infertiles suddenly go quiet and sometimes deduced that they were too blissfully happy to bother updating us who were still miserable, bitchy and barren. And maybe that's true for some of them.

But having officially become The Pregnant Infertile Who Shuts Her Mouth, I can tell you that in my case it's definitely not a matter of being so consumed with the rays of light shooting forth from my womb, but rather an inability to process my own thoughts and feelings within my own head, muchless in a readable way, sanitized enough to share with the public.

As an infertile you have months, years, to adjust to the life you're living. A woman new to the world of IF blogging is still quite experienced in feeling and thinking in the way of an infertile. Even someone newly diagnosed has likely had a year or more to come to grips with the fact that she is not like everybody else. By the time pen is put to paper, fingers to keyboard, she has likely processed countless failed cycles, a diagnosis, endless friends and their "oops" pregnancies and have begun to identify as one of the barren bunch. Pregnancy, it turns out, is the reverse. After spending 2 1/2 years adjusting to the concept that you are not pregnant (and aren't likely to get pregnant without remarkable acts of god or science) suddenly you're thrust into a new identity. Sure, it's an identity that you've strived for over the course of a lifetime, but it's also one you've fought to accept you might never have. Where the hell are you supposed to go with that?

I have now known about the pregnancy for 5 weeks, but I am no more adjusted to the reality of this reality than I was the day I found out. I am thankful that I haven't come out to most people, because honestly I don't know how to be pregnant. When friends who know ask how I'm feeling I don't know how to respond; I find myself uncomfortable discussing even the most mundane pregnancy details. I've spent so long feeling so raw when hearing the details of others' pregnancies...I just never imagined I would feel the same way myself. And I cannot lose the understanding that my pregnancy details could be excruciating for someone else to hear - someone out there doesn't want to know about my morning sickness the fact that I'm already in maternity pants, worrying instead that they will never have the discussion themselves. And as it turns out, maybe they won't. At least not out loud.

I don't know who this woman is or how she's supposed to feel. I don't know what to say, what life to live. So the days tick by, the counter creeps further towards 40 weeks and I wait. Hoping that someday soon I will know once again who I am...likely just before having to adjust again, this time from pregnant woman to Mother.