the waiting room

The waiting room represents two places to me. First there is the physical waiting room that you spend quite a bit of time in if you are in treatment for long enough and then there is the mental space that is occupied by waiting. When you are in treatment there is always another delay. It is like your life stops while you watch everyone go on beyond to the next steps of their lives and plans. I am sure we will explore this place in future posts but in this one I want to write about the experience of a fertility clinic waiting room. It is such a bizarre place. No one has had sleep since monitoring is before the crack of dawn and everyone is amped up on hormones (or quite the opposite which makes you equally as crazy). In the big NYC clinic we went to no one really speaks or makes eye contact. I play a game looking around the room wondering about the other women and their stories. Trying to guess who will be successful and who won't as if someone else getting pregnant in this round will decrease my odds which I know is not the case but somehow sticks in my mind. There are the dreaded times when people bring their babies or children. Some try to be discreet about it. They know the aching pain. They understand that some of us in the waiting room will not succeed and will never have what they have. It is a reality no one wants to face. The waiting room at a fertility clinic... I am not sure which it feels like more limbo or being picked last for kickball. Either way let's face it no matter how many nice magazines or couches and fish tanks... it totally sucks.