The Back Story

We met in December of 2000 and by February of 2002 we had had a marriage ceremony and bought a house together.  Beginning in June of 2002 we started trying to get pregnant.  We started (naively) buying frozen sperm and trying to defrost it at home and shove it up there.  We thought that would work.  Yeah, it didn't and we moved on.  The farthest we got in our journey was through IUI's with injectables.  In November of 2004 I ran into an old friend of a friend.  Long story short he offered to be our donor.  We talked AT LENGTH for months and finally started trying to get pregnant with him in April of 2005.  The first month we tried with his fresh sperm I was pregnant.  Ironic doesn't even begin to describe it.  3 years of treatments and thousands of dollars and it worked when he came over, "used the bathroom," handed out a specimen cup.  We used a syringe we bought off the Internet and did it ourselves in our bedroom.  And it worked.  Amazing stuff.

Back to the relationship.  Fertility treatments were ROUGH on my relationship.  Like a lot of couples I read about, everything became about having a baby.  And our relationship suffered.  Like a lot of couples.   Then when we finally got pregnant, "Happy, happy, joy, joy," right?  Well it was until around week 6 of my pregnancy when I started to constantly feel like I had the worse hangover of my life and it would NEVER go away.  I lost some of that joy.  I wanted to have it, I wanted to feel it, but I just couldn't.  I wanted to die.  I had tried so long to get pregnant that once I actually WAS pregnant I thought the hard stuff was out of the way.  Plus my mom never had morning sickness so I thought I was in the clear.  Well I wasn't.  And I hated it.  I even went so far as to buy a book entitled "Pregnancy Sucks."  The beginning of pregnancy sucked.  And like the previous 3 years, it took a toll on my relationship.  I feel bad about that.  Ex was very excited and wanted to read books and stuff and I just wanted to die.  I basically killed her enthusiasm with my bad attitude.  And then by the time I felt better and how wanted to start to talk about it and read the books, well most of her excitement had gone right out the door.  So it was tough.  Don't get me wrong, we were both very excited to meet our little guy, I am just pointing out it was tough on the relationship.

So in January of 2006 I had The Boy.  Ex was wonderful.  I had been on best rest for high blood pressure for about 3 weeks prior to his delivery and ended up having him by emergency c-section.  After the birth she was also great.  Helped me in the hospital, took total care of The Boy (I couldn't even pick him up for the first week) and also took care of me.  She changed my nasty pants and used the lovely little water bottle to spray off my girlie parts.  She was great.  This continued when we got home from the hospital.  She had taken 2 weeks off after the baby was born and stayed home with me.  This was a wonderful time.  I think it was for both of us.  Then she went back to work.  That's when it got tricky.  I still needed lots of help (took quite a while to recover from my c section since I was on bed rest) so my mom stepped in.  And the Ex suddenly didn't feel so much like she was needed.

***This post is totally from my perspective and I in no way mean to insinuate that I know exactly how Ex was feeling or if I am representing her correctly.***

There is so much background that goes into this that I could never properly give it justice, but it was a tough situation on her.  One night I was playing around with her when The Boy was about 4 months old and I (jokingly) asked her if she was still attracted to me after pregnancy.  Her answer shocked me.  This was obviously something that had been on her mind for quite a while and this was the time that it spilled out.  She not only wasn't sure if  she thought I was still attractive, but she wasn't sure if she was in love with me.  She felt we had drifted apart during the past 3 years and she had needed us to feel closer than we were.  She didn't feel as though I held up my end of the bargain.  My end of the bargain being that we wouldn't lose "us" in this baby.  Well he was only 4 months old.  I think we were still in the newborn trenches at that point so it was hard to prove my love at that point.  I was pumping constantly and dealing with a new baby and post par tum hormones.  We went to counseling but really, it was too late.  She was done.  And I was crushed.  More than crushed.  She moved out in July of 2006, the exact same day that our son turned 6 months old.

I could write for days about the time between then and now, but let's just sum it up at this.  We split up and spent a good deal of time away from each other, all the while each attending individual therapy.  We thought we could make it work, so we tried.  Ex moved back in and we continued in therapy.  I can honestly say that I tried everything and that I worked my ASS off to try and save this relationship.  And so did Ex.  Most frustrating thing of all is when love really just isn't enough.  So we split up again for good on Memorial Day Weekend.  It is different this time.  I am not angry, I don't feel hurt.  I feel sad.  I feel sad for both of us.  But I don't feel duped and I don't feel tricked.  We both did everything we could to make this work and it just didn't.  But we are committed to being the best of friends and raising this amazing little boy that we created together.  And we will make sure to do that the best way we know how.