Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming........

Aaaah hello dear blog. We meet again.

Yes yes ok I might have had some wine..... But I have a confession to make. My last blogpost (here) was quite an angry and bitter one and was also, dear readers, written almost two months ago but due to the complexities of my job and the ridiculously busy time of year I find myself in professionally at the moment, the earliest chance I had to 'finesse' it (if that's even the right word. Do you 'finesse' a blogpost?!) was earlier this month. And so that's when it was published. My feelings about the situation have changed slightly in the sense that I am now at peace with how things lie. She can go and lead her life and I shall lead mine. I will try my darndest (altho I guess I make no promises) not to blog about her again. I am not going to waste any more energy on her.

So. For what purpose am I turning to my little outpost this evening? And after wine no less! Well, the glorious Salt in the Womb who is not only one of my favourite twitter posters but also writes one of my absolute favourite infertility blogs (here is my very own little fangirl post about it) posed a question the other day that piqued my interest. She tweeted the following:

"Friends, I need your help. Which subjects don't get discussed enough re #infertility? Cost? Emotions? Relationships? Speak yo mind"

To which the two most pertinent topics that responders mentioned, to my mind, were:

• Family dynamics when siblings have kids when you're not/can't, and parents (would be grandparents) not handling it well
• Parents can't understand/identify what you're going through

And:

• The effect infertility & IVF has on relationships, intimacy & sex in my opinion
• Sex is a big one for me. It's hard to know if we will ever get back what we had
• Ditto for us! I'm not sure you can ever go back, just create a new normal
• How to avoid drifting into being roommates. How to get that feeling back?!

Both of these are utterly relevant to me. Issues with the first set of responses hit home recently whilst trying to sort out the arrangements for my youngest nephew's birthday (his falls just five days after mine). My own mother told me that since we were childless all we had to do was worry about work so surely we were the ones that should be flexible. Way to kick a girl when you're down. Thanks mum.

However it was all the comments on the last post that really hit me where it hurts. I have been there, ladies and gentleman, and I have the t-shirt. The comment about drifting to roommates particularly resonated - is that what hubby and I were on the verge of due to our lack of intimacy? I've written about this before here and the pain that comes with that situation I understand very well. Despite the love and affection, without the intimacy that one would associate with a marriage is the relationship just a friendship? We were in that limbo for over two years. It was only earlier this year that we broke it and things are starting to return to normal. Or at least a semblance of normal, a different normal that (at the moment at least!) seems to be working out just fine. It doesn't help admittedly that hubby works shifts and his pattern means that there are at least two or three nights every week that we don't see each other. And the ones that we do he is invariably knackered. But you push through - you don't force things but you don't give up on things either.

I want to give hope to those that posted the responses above - it CAN happen. You CAN get it back. It might not be the same, but it is infitely better than where you were..... Keep going :)