Who are you and what are you doing here?

There's about a billion blogs out there about infertility. If you found this site at all and I'm not just talking to myself, you might be wondering what makes mine different.

Well, me, I guess. I've never done anything the normal way. I was born into a family of loons (no offense, guys), raised in a trailer park, and educated at the Down to Earth School in Silver City, New Mexico. I never went to prom, or took the SAT's, or had a sweet sixteen birthday party.

You might be saying, so what? Lots of people have skipped one or more rites of passage.

But eventually most people have kids. It's part of becoming a grownup. It's easy; all you have to do is have unprotected sex, right? That's what they tell us in middle school when they're trying to scare us into keeping our legs closed. You can get pregnant the very first time you have sex, if you're not careful.

So I was careful (mostly). Then, after years of a committed relationship to a good guy, I said goodbye to the pill forever. We got married last June and, as if to prove that the universe is an orderly and loving place, I got pregnant on our honeymoon. Everything was falling into place. After years of taking care of other people's children as a day care worker and later as a nanny, I was finally going to have one of my own. My kid was going to be special, too. Brilliant. And I'd be there every step of the way, guiding her with a wise and patient hand. We'd have fun. Life would be injected with energy and simple joy. I'd have something to do, someone to talk to who would love me with all her heart. I was convinced it was a girl. Her name would beNaomi.

My doctor didn't handle my first prenatal visit very well. She never came out and said the word "miscarriage". She made a bunch of cryptic comments and let my DH (dear husband, in infertility blog lingo) piece it together. That little curled-up person shape I could see on the ultrasound, monitor? Well, it was dead, and had been for a couple of weeks.

I don't need to tell you what the next few weeks were like. Surgery, a drug-induced fog, a lot of crying, hours and hours fantasizing. I read The Talisman cover to cover for like, the hundredth time. I stared at the bird cage. And I thought, I'll never get over this. This is the worst thing that will ever happen to me.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...stop me if you've heard this one. I miscarried again in November, at five weeks. Then had a chemical pregnancy (google it) in May. Then, just a few weeks ago, I had another miscarriage at three and a half weeks. That's four...should I keep going?

That's a rhetorical question. Of course I'll keep going, even if my hostile uterus chokes the life out of a dozen embryos. Hell, a hundred. Because I'm obsessed, and I won't stop putting myself through this hell until I hold a living, breathing, warm baby in my arms.

Or I'll go through a couple more rounds, with the help of an RE (again, google), realize yet again that I don't have the cojones to kill myself, give my poor body a rest, and start looking into foster care (we're way too poor for adoption). Guess we'll see what happens.