National Infertility Awareness Week

I know I have been a very bad blogger, I just haven't felt like I had anything significant to say! Since this week is National Infertility Awareness Week, I thought I would come back to blogging and do a little post about that as a change from pregnancy countdowns.

Obviously, I am that 1 in 8 people and I have many friends in that group as well...even if this is not a personal struggle for you, chances are, with statistics like that, there are more people in your life impacted by infertility than you think.

Even though I know I am so incredibly blessed to have my baby Seahorse growing and I am so excited to meet him in July, I cannot forget the pain and stress I went through to get to this point and the fear that infertility brings you, never leaves. The fear that this is all a dream and that something can still go wrong, plagues my mind every day. Infertility takes away a pleasant naiveté that couples who do not suffer from infertility, get to enjoy. I am excited about my baby Seahorse and I trust that everything will continue to go well, but I am not so naïve to think that things can't change in an instant.

Women who struggle through infertility and women who don't, need to unite to take the stigma of infertility out of society. It is not something that one should be ashamed of...it is a disease and the more this disease is talked about and the more information people receive about it, the more success we can have.

 **As one of the lucky ones who has seemingly come out on the other side of infertility, I have found myself feeling as if some of my friends who are still in the middle of their struggles, no longer consider me part of the "club", as if I magically know nothing about the struggle because I was lucky enough to have success. Just because you have success in that struggle (and I hope everyone I know finds their happy endings with their beautiful babies as well), you don't forget everything you went through and you are not magically cured of the infertility problems. If and when J and I are ready to start thinking about a sibling for baby Seahorse, we will have to go through the IVF journey again (perhaps multiple times again) and that is another thing that is in our minds when we think about how excited we are for baby Seahorse to arrive. Before we knew what we were dealing with and we had that "this shouldn't be too hard" mentality, we had dreams of a family with more than one child. I think having a sibling is important because you hopefully have a built in support system for your children when you can one day no longer be around. We would love for baby Seahorse to have a sibling in the future, but infertility has changed our dreams slightly and we have adjusted to think more realistically about our situation. Our dreams have changed, just as much as anyone still dealing with this struggle and we all need to realize this to be able to support each other through these difficult times.

I hope that everyone going through this struggle finds their happy ending of a family (and very soon) and I want all of my friends to know, that even though I am pregnant, I know what they are going through and I will always be here to talk and support them through their journeys. We all deserve to be mothers and one day, I believe we will be.

If you would like to know more about National Infertility Awareness Week, or infertility as a whole, please visit Resolve.org  There are links for more information and ways you can support someone going on this difficult journey. You can also use this "twibbon" in your Facebook profile to show your support for all the couples going through infertility (even if you are lucky enough to not be yourself): Support Infertility