A post in which I cuss a lot.

Note: This is an ugly vent. It may offend some people, but I am not in the mood to apologize. If you don't like it, don't read it. And please, no comments about how I should be grateful. At another time, I will be, but not right now.

I just got back from picking Brad up at work. I sobbed all the way home. Let me tell you a story about a "fellow" infertile.

Brad and I used to work together. Brad still works at the same company. There was another couple trying to conceive at the same time we were. Lets call them Charles and Laurie. I used to work with Charles and while he could be nice at times, he could also be a jerk. Laurie worked in another department, but we got to know her better when she started dating and then married Charles. She always seemed nice and I don't know why she married Charles.

Brad and I started trying to conceive about a year before Charles and Laurie. When we got pregnant with Ernest, they found out we had fertility issues and we started to come together because of our shared experience. Both of us were dealing with male factor infertility. Then Ernest died and another year went by. Charles and Laurie moved to Arizona, but we stayed in touch via email.

When we were both getting ready to move on to IVF from IUI at the end of 2005, we got together for dinner while they were in town. I remember being surprised that Laurie didn't know when she ovulated. She didn't even understand what a trigger shot was for. She didn't change her diet, she didn't do acupuncture. She was hardly even trying! AND she was married to a jerk.

In the beginning of 2006 we both did our first IVF. We both got pregnant. Ours was a blighted ovum. Theirs seemed healthy. Brad and I did our second IVF. "We saw a heartbeat!" I was happy to email Laurie as she entered her second trimester. "The baby died." I emailed a few weeks later. She never emailed back. I told myself that she couldn't deal with the possibility of her child dying and so couldn't communicate with someone who knew all too well that babies die and pregnancies end. I thought she might email down the road, maybe after they had their baby.

And she did, but only to send a birth announcement - with pictures, no less. I couldn't believe it. Surely she should know how heartbreaking that would be for me. Even if she had said, "I am thinking about you and thought you should know we had a baby boy," and left it at that I might have forgiven her. As most of you know, some infertiles forget too easily. It was a bubbly "look at me and the baby we made!" kind of email. We decided we were done with them.

Fast forward to today. I had just come from an appointment with my hypnotherapist. We had been working on letting go of the grief of the last six years and especially the last four since we lost our son. I left there feeling so much better. Maybe things will be ok. Maybe I won't always grieve for the loss of a mutually genetic child. Maybe the heartache of trying every damn thing possible while still failing to make a baby will dissipate. Maybe LB will be born alive and healthy and we will finally enter a new, happier chapter of our lives.

As I waited for Brad to come out of the building, one of my old coworkers spotted me and came over to the car. Everyone who knows Brad and I know what we have been through so I have gotten used to them stopping by to say hello and ask how the pregnancy is going. I rolled down the window. He leaned in and said, "Did you hear Charles and Laurie had their babies?"

I didn't even know they were pregnant. They just had twins.

I wasn't very gracious. I didn't even fake it. I said, "I don't give a fucking rat's ass about those people." I gave the short version of the above story as I cried and then apologized for falling apart and then cried some more. My ex-coworker held my hand and said he was sorry. I pulled myself together eventually and apologized again. Then Brad came out and I could fall to pieces in private.

Why is it so unfair? Why is it so unbelievable easy for some people? People who aren't even nice. People who don't even try that hard. Why has it been so freaking hard for us? This just is all so unbearable sometimes.