NC.
I have one child who is an absolute blessing, I thank my lucky stars every day. I would love another. I have a health condition that means it is harder for me to get pregnant than it may be for others. When TTC my first, I ended up getting very down. It took a while to get pregnant and it was hard on me at the time. We did conceive naturally. In the end it was only when I lost faith that I'd ever get pregnant that it happened (always the way).
Many of my friends have got pregnant very quickly when TTC - within the first few cycles. If I am out with them and I mention that I feel sick (no I don't want to share xxx food with you, I'm feeling a bit queasy today), or anything that could relate to pregnancy symptoms, I get the raised eyebrows, the smiles, and the "maybe you are pregnant!!". Naturally I have my hopes up before this and I end up testing despite telling myself that I won't do tests unless my period is ridiculously late. Every time - BFN. I have just had another and sat with my head in my hands after.
It's so easy to tell yourself to "stop getting your hopes up" but actually putting it in to practice is another matter all together. This becomes monthly torture and it really isn't helped when others around me have had very different experiences. I am really, genuinely happy for them that they got pregnant easily, almost like clockwork, but that wasn't the case for me before and probably won't be now. Some of them are worried about being intimate with their partners because they got pregnant easily before and don't want more children, and I appreciate that is a genuine problem for them (personally I'd just track cycles and double up on BC but whatever) but it's not easy to listen to. I don't want to ask them not to talk to me about it right now, because that feels dismissive of their situation and I don't know if that's being a bad friend, they have just as much a right to talk to me about their experiences as I do with them.
I don't know what I'm hoping for with this thread, maybe just to talk to others about it and try and work out a way to stop torturing myself.
I have one or two friends that are sympathetic to my feelings and give me the space to vent, the others just come out with "it will happen when it's meant to" and I know that that is said with the best intentions but it doesn't help and leads me to get frustrated with myself (why isn't it meant to now?).
I also get told "just go out and get drunk" - great when TTC for DC1, not so easy with DC2!