Counseling

Ok, so I took everyone's advice and went to counseling. I actually had two sessions last week. One on Thursday and one on Friday.

The one on Thursday was okay - I'm still not sure how I feel about it. The lady I went to see was a marriage and family therapist - she does not deal with infertility. She also is about my age. It wasn't hard to talk to her, it's just that I don't think she understood my situation. I told her that I basically stayed on the couch last week staring at the ceiling and she said I was coping just fine - or at least it sounded that way to her. She said that if staying home and away from babies helped me, then that's what I should do. She said that staying away from things that hurt us is human nature. I get that. But am I supposed to stay away from things that hurt me forever? I cried the entire hour - I went to this alone because Ryle was out of town. When I left I felt better, but the more I thought about it after the session, the more I thought she was nuts. Does she really think that I'm coping? Am I? I mean I flat out said that I want to know how to handle the situation and how to handle being around babies or pregnant ladies. I don't know. I just wasn't satisfied - so I went to see someone else.

On Friday, I went to see my ex-step dad, Fred. This is a man that I grew up with for a big part of my life. This is also what he does; not infertility per say, but counseling. He also went through this process with my mom when they were trying to have my brother William. So I was comfortable talking to him. I took Ryle with me. Fred says that I have to "take myself out of it". Meaning, when I see a baby, instead of thinking I want a baby, I should think about the baby's hair or fingers or something other than me wanting one. But that's a hard thing to do when you want something so badly and can't have it. But it's not just me that I want to give a baby to. For example, we were out eating with Ryle's parents the other night and I saw a father feeding his infant daughter. And I didn't think "Oh I wish that was me!", instead I thought, "I wish Ryle had the chance to feed his daughter". We talked about how important it is that we start to communicate again. We also talked about how I felt when Ryle called me selfish - it hurt, A LOT, how Ryle feels about not seeing his family - it hurts him, A LOT, how Ryle and I feel when his family says ugly things - it hurts us A LOT, and how Ryle feels when I say it's "his family" - he would rather me say "his cousins" or something instead of the general term "family", etc.

Anyway, we talked about a lot of things. I think that it did help. We don't have a set time to go back and talk with Fred, it's just whenever we feel like we need to. Fred wants me to start a journal, which is basically what this is, but he wants me to have a private journal as well. So I am going to start trying to do that this week.

I haven't posted on here in a while and many people won't be able to read it now that I don't post updates on Facebook, but I felt like I should at least tell the people who asked about counseling how it went!