The age thing

So, the eagle-eyed among you know that I had a birthday in the last few days. I'd been planning this whole big post about age. How I was so sad to be creeping up on 40 (but not there yet for another year), and yet I don't have a husband or kids to my name, despite trying pretty fucking hard for both. OK, so in the last few years I've been trying harder on the kids thing than for a husband, but it's not as if I've been turning hordes of guys away. I was feeling like a failure, like a foolish idiot for hoping an IVF can possibly work with my "advanced maternal age" eggs, like life was slipping by.

And then my birthday came and went. And all of a sudden I don't feel so bad about my age. I still feel normal, just like I did last week and the week before. In fact, I feel the same way I did several years ago. I don't feel like I'm aging all that fast. I am eating healthily, exercising and generally being a saint in preparation for my last IVF, and so I have good energy levels at the moment. Moments of positivity and hope even creep in every now and then.

But I think more importantly, I have been working on that whole "acceptance" part of infertility. The part where I stare deep in the eyes of reproductive failure, and I actually envisage a life where I don't die because of it. Where I carve out a role for myself in society despite being barren. Oh sure, some days it is hard to imagine ever feeling fulfilled or happy, but I know now that I will be able to do it somehow. Sometimes I like to think that I will be just wistfully sad and distant when people mention their kids, instead of devastated, and sometimes I think I might be able to pull that off. We'll see. I hope that it won't come to pass, of course, but sometimes I think that life really can go on if I stop TTC.

Anyway, instead of moping, I want to raise a glass to all the "seasoned" ladies out there who are still valiantly trying to get knocked up, whether through their own eggs or DE, or get that adoption to work out. Hey, it works out for some people, right, why not us?