Are you operating on infertility time? You know, the perspective that comes along when trying to conceive.
“I’m running out of time. There isn’t enough time. Why can’t it happen faster?”
Sound familiar?
These were all things I said to myself when going through fertility treatment. I was always a planner and conscious of time. When we became part of the infertility world it seemed as if all the sudden I was keenly aware of every second of every day, particularly if I was waiting for anything fertility related.
I held on to the belief that I was running out of time pretty fiercely. With every cycle that passed my body was getting older and (I believed) less fertile. With every cycle that passed another friend, acquaintance, coworker or celebrity made the world sit up and take notice of their own fertility. I believed I was running out of time to participate. With every cycle that passed, it was becoming increasingly more urgent for me to get pregnant.
Experiencing infertility warps our sense of time. We used to be able to have an entire menstrual cycle go by without thinking much about it. Now, we agonize over every single day eagerly anticipating what stage is next with appointments, procedures and the long-anticipated pregnancy test at the end of it. Waiting. Always waiting.
But the agony of all of it is self-imposed. The most important thing to know about time is that it is relative. Our experience of it is dependent on how we think about it. Time just is. Our experience of it is all in how we interpret it.
Two weeks is always two weeks of time. Whether it is the longest fourteen days of your life is up to you.
Are you stuck in an infertility time trap? Let me help you out of it.