Fighting to conceive

My window of fertility has officially passed and I am ...... 16 days into my cycle (I don't have the lingo down. Is that 16CD?)

We TTC 3 out of the 5 days of fertility. As usual, on the day I was predicted to be most fertile, Jason and I had a blowup that made any act of intimacy unlikely. This is the THIRD time during a TTC month that a fight has ensued during ovulation time.

The first time was during a vacation in Spain, and hubby was tired and grumpy in our unairconditioned hotel room. He wasn't in the mood or something, and I couldn't understand why I had to prod him through the necessary exercises when he KNEW it was on the agenda. Did I really have to tease it out of him? Convince him that time is of the essence in these matters? Remind him that it might mean we'd have to repeat the whole thing next month? Remind him that my eggs are not getting younger? We did not conceive that month.

Same scenario second and third time. Husband being coy, tired, inexplicably resistant. Me feeling resentful that I have to cajole and persuade him. Then we fight about something inconsequential of which I have no recollection, and we end up not having sex. Despite these monthly histrionics, we have managed to get pregnant three times ... but Good God!

This month when the fight broke out, I stamped downstairs to the living room couch, unable to bear the sound of his breathing, and with tears streaming down my face, wondered how we got to this place AGAIN. I could no longer chalk it up to fatigue or some other such elusive cause. I think, plain and simple, the full weight of our fear, anxiety, and hope is focused like a laser on the only thing we are able to DO with respect to becoming parents. Having unprotected sex is the only thing we actually ACT on; all the rest is completely and utterly out of our control. In other words, because we generally are able to conceive, sex without contraception is now the traditional moment we open ourselves up to a world of potential pain. And apparently, as a couple, we don't shoulder the stress very gracefully.

So I marched right back up the stairs to our bedroom, turned on the light, and insisted that we address the fact that, for the third time, we have fought while trying to conceive. There were no big apologies and no earth-shattering breakthroughs. We just spoke our feelings to one another - good and bad - and acknowledged the big ass elephant in the room. We didn't have sex that night and I went back to the couch (which is very comfy). But I wasn't really angry at him and I don't think he was angry at me. We were both just tired to our bones and scared to death; we both understood why we were snarling at one another.

I've got to say that in reading other blogs, I don't hear too much about dissonance in others' relationships. But infertility has been hard on our relationship. There is a lot of tension and sadness and guilt and stress and, of course, we usually end up taking it out on each other. I love my husband very much, and I don't think of us as people who fight a lot. I certainly don't want to conceive a child under circumstances that don't include love and tenderness and intimacy. All I can hope, if this month is a wash, is that we go into the next month more self-aware and more gentle with one another.

But I do have to cut us some slack 'cause this infertility shit ain't for the faint-hearted.