Into the fire we went: Our marriage

Last Tuesday, Wisehubby and I had come to the devastating conclusion that we weren't going to be getting pregnant with our first IVF cycle. I had peed on a stick several times, and there wasn't anything going on. I felt decidedly not pregnant, and we began to reflect on what this meant for us.

We've not moved on to our next step; we haven't put away our picture of the Wise-embies that we lost. We haven't even gotten up the courage to call and schedule our follow-up meeting with our RE to talk about what went wrong.

We have decided on a couple of things though. This process, in its own strange way, has been a little bit good for our marriage, which is now at the four and a half year mark. We had a pretty easy go of it until last year, so we have been forging our marriage in the firestorm of infertility.

Wisehubby and I met in college, at a time of relative peace and happiness for both of us. We had both struggled with difficult family situations in high school--he was caught in a particularly nasty custody battle; my brother killed himself. By the time we met, we were both pretty happy to have put some distance between ourselves and our dark pasts.

Don't get me wrong--we've talked about our pasts, but we've generally been living happy lives. Wisehubby graduated first and got a job as a school teacher. We got engaged the summer before I graduated. We married when I was just twenty-two, a newly minted college graduate. I got a job soon thereafter, and then we bought our dream home. We adopted a puppy and later got a new car.

That's about time the firestorm started. If you want to read details of it, might I suggest the following posts: Male Factor Infertility, Out of Control, and Darkest Day.  We've been struggling with our infertility now for a while, and we finally sat back and talked specifically about what it has been doing to our marriage.

Wisehubby and I agreed that, while our lives have been full of frustration, disappointment, and loss in the last year, our marriage has become a deeper partnership. We have made concerted efforts to understand how we both deal with darkness in our lives.

Wisehubby has learned to open up and create a network of friends and family for support, largely because he knows that I would collapse under the weight of it all if I didn't. He's graciously allowed me to tweet and blog, and share my story with many more people than he would have chosen to tell. He even stood there with me while I gave myself every shot. He has been my rock.

I've learned to give Wisehubby some space to process before instantly making him talk about things. He doesn't always know what he feels or wants to say right away. He may need a day or two of chilling, playing NCAA Football 2011 or watching Stormchasers, before he can meet me half-way and talk about stuff.

What I can say after coming out of the other side--at least for now--of all of our disappointment is that our marriage is stronger than ever. This last year has bonded us together in new ways that we couldn't have anticipated when we were young, carefree college students falling in love. Let's just pray that we're tough as steel since we've got a long fertility road ahead of us yet.