Infertile

Infertile: Not able to conceive after a year of regular intercourse without contraception.
It's December and it's been 16 months since we started the roller coaster of attempted parenthood.  We have just arrived at my in-laws for Christmas when my brother-in-law calls to see if he can catch a ride there with us.  He has just broken up with his girlfriend and doesn't want to drive on his own.  We decide to drive half way back and meet him to save him from at least half of the trip alone.  We feel bad for him.  He sounds sad and we leave right away.  If we weren't obsessed with our "infertility" we would have driven straight to him.  However, we were now experts at "trying" and supposedly the timing was right.  Halfway to our meeting point we pulled off the highway and parked on a gravel road.  It was December so it was cold.  We opened the doors to the back seat and climbed in.  My husband is very tall so we had to leave the doors open.  We couldn't miss this opportunity.  What if this was the month that we were to conceive?  Except we hear a car coming.  It's the local farmer coming to see if we need assistance.  You know the type.  Super trusting.  He thinks we have car trouble.  Nope, we are in the back seat.  We drive away humiliated (and cold!!) and off we go to do our good deed of the day.  Missed opportunity. That was probably the month.
If you have never been infertile, infertility is that friend of yours who has been unsuccessfully trying for more than a year.  You feel for them but don't really know what to say or how to help.  Infertility is not well described by the dictionary definition.  It is an obsession with having a family and a fear of how your life will turn out if you don't.  It is temperatures, standing on your head post-intercourse, watching celebrity teens trying out motherhood, hating pregnant ladies who complain about morning sickness, jealousy of maternity clothes...and complete and utter sadness.  You get to a point when it is difficult to hear that your friends, who totally deserve to have a family, are expecting.  It is overpowering, cruel, and depressing.  It is uncontrollable. You are sure that every month is finally your month.  You know what your due date will be if it happens to happen and you create a tiny family in your mind until every month your hopes are completely dashed.
And then you do it again and again knowing that slowly you are becoming insane.  I wish I could take back all the time that I wasted.  Everything that I went through is now worth it when I look at my beautiful children.  I had to go through it to get these exact children and because of that I wouldn't change a thing.  I wish I could get all those who are struggling right now to be able to see it from this perspective.  But I know you can't.  So instead I wish that you get to the end of your journey reasonably sane.  And more importantly, I hope you get there soon.