To all of my blogger friends, I wish you the best for the holiday season. To those who celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a great day surrounded by those that you love. To those not celebrating Christmas today, I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing day and enjoy the holiday season. To my fellow IFers out there, I hope that the holidays were easy on you. I hope that the pain was minimal and you were surrounded by those who love and understand you. And if you had to put up with a difficult holiday, I hope you find some peace and recover between now and the new year.

This past week and a half has been a mess. I spent a lot of it upset and crying. But I also fixed a lot too. I posted last week about a Christmas party I went to. I removed the post. I was still very emotional from the day and I found out I was rather misinformed about the evening and the happenings by local friends when they asked to talk to me about the post.

Honestly, after all of this, it was my infertile mind seeing things in ways that it wasn’t happening. I spent the entire day with my pregnant friend. I was driving her to the event so she came over in the afternoon while I was getting ready to go. This girl was wonderful enough to take me aside a few weeks prior to tell me about the pregnancy so that it would be a bit easier on me. But since then, her excitement for her pregnancy (which is completely understandable in my book) has overtaken her common sense at times, and coupled with the emotional holidays, she spent the entire afternoon talking about her shower that I was asked to co-host. If she wasn’t talking about the guest list, she was talking about the games and prizes and food. I smiled at all the right times and I was excited, at first, but then it started getting harder and harder to sit through the talking. I tried to change the subject with no luck because she would just direct it back. I understand her excitement, but this is the woman who considered telling me first so she could give me the time to process is before she went out and told everyone. I was grateful for that. Incredibly grateful. But I think she was hit with pregnancy brain to not know that all this talk this close to Christmas, my 3rd Christmas without a pregnancy, that I would be able to handle this level of pregnancy talk without it bugging me.

So by the time that we got to the party, I had hit my breaking point. I was just telling her to tell them (to hopefully get it over with and out of the way and just enjoy the rest of my evening). And I did take part in the talk. I talked to some of the girls about prizes and whatnot. But for the rest of the night, the pregnant girl pretty much attached herself to me. So it really felt like it was all the party was about. She wouldn’t leave my side so no one could ask me how I was handling it. And she was talking about it to anyone that would listen.

After my post went public, some friends very dear to me brought these issues to my attention. I found out after the fact that some girls took other girls aside (out of sight of pregnant girl…and me by extension) to make sure that I was ok. And after I dropped off pregnant friend, I sat in my car with one of the other girls (one of the hosts) and she let me rant and cry and they helped me feel better. She is one of 2 people that I open up to about everything related to my infertility. I am at a comfort level with them that talking to them about it helps me find peace the same way this blog and posting sometimes does. I was very grateful that my friends were willing to talk to me about it, especially when they really have no idea what I’m going through. We have sorted everything out and since my post was wrong in many ways, I wanted to take down the original post and correct my errors. 

Having this happen has led to an interesting couple of days leading up to Christmas. I fought with my husband. I was fighting with my parents and all about our infertility. I am very impatient about my infertility and this was the time that my family decided to remind me of how much they understand that we are going through. And that they support us even if we don’t have kids yet. They have faith that it will finally happen but they don’t understand how my mind works. So once we settled down and got through everything, I started to relax and enjoy my Christmas. And the day before Christmas Eve, I finally started to feel my Christmas Cheer.

So a Christmas that seemed to start out down and depressing is feeling just a little bit better. I’ve sent out my Christmas wishes. I’ve sat through Christmas dinner, our massive Christmas Breakfast and opened all of our gifts (including a wonderful gift from my parents: a 32 inch LCD tv and a sewing machine!) There is definately an empty feeling that comes with the holidays though. The magic of a child’s excitement is definately lacking. It does make the events easier because there are no young kids to shower with attention (but sometimes the showering of attention helps me as an IF). With no children to share the holiday with, we open gifts on Christmas eve and have a glass of wine and hang out but there’s no excitement that comes with the smile of a child seeing all the gifts under the tree. The magic is gone. I want that magic back. All I can hope is that 2012 holds that magic for us again.

I hope you all find what you are looking for in 2012.