Trust me, I thought about that a lot.

Especially given my scenario of having been childless by choice into middle age, being willing to walk out of my marriage when my husband told me he didn't want kids, this longing having seemed to have come about with the onset of perimenopause. I think this is one reason why the general public has such harsh opinions about infertile people, the intensity and doggedness of our pursuit of our goal, especially since so many of them are ambivalent about their child rearing experiences.

What people who haven't experienced it don't realize, and I didn't either till I started ttc, is that there is no white dove from heaven that comes and descends on your head and tells you just to accept that it's hopeless and not throw good money after bad. You never know when you will be giving up on your dream. That's not insanity, that's just reality. And then the expense and stress of fertility treatment makes us feel crazy.

It's not necessarily reassuring that we're all here supporting one another, safety in numbers. There are online support groups for people with Morgellon's Syndrome, which is a name people with delusional parasitosis have adopted to try to legitimize their condition as a dermatological illness. And the same is true for multiple chemical sensitivity, although the evidence is mounting that it's not a physiological disorder.

So, I think you need to detach your feelings of stress and craziness from the goal, which is a reasonable and good one, but one which may require a lot of determination and hard choices.

Take care,

Maggie (in VA)