Flashback to Pre-IF Days

One of my close friends is going to TTC next year and these days when she plans future trips, she often adds, "Well, that's if I haven't gotten pregnant by then" or "BUT if I get pregnant before then, it means I have to change my plans."

After reading similar sentences a few times, I felt a tug in my heart. I was made uneasy by that tug 'coz I wasn't sure if it was jealousy/envy or something like that, so I did some soul-searching and realized that it was actually something else.

That type of sentence took me back to my pre-IF days, when we were just starting TTC, when we were still a tad afraid of "losing our freedom" if we had gotten pregnant so easily. I was reminded of a time when I felt that I would be pregnant that very month, when I still often thought about how our child might look like with a hopeful heart and a smile on my face (not with a heart filled with 10% hope, 30% dread that I might get disappointed that month and that would trigger the all-familiar roller-coaster IF storm, 60% doubt that it'll ever happen). I was taken back to the innocent pre-IF days and it made me feel sentimental.


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It reminds me of how much IF has changed me and that I can't go back to my innocent pre-IF days. During my pre-IF days, hope seemed like a flower blossoming so beautifully in summer, enticing me to smell it and bask in its scent and beauty. After facing IF, hope still looks like a blossoming flower, but 'coz I've been pricked over and over by its thorns until I bled so much, I'm afraid of coming too close to it, so I'm just admiring it from afar. It's still there, it's not dead, yet I'm getting too scared of it. During my pre-IF days, I didn't even realize that the flower had thorns. Strange but true...

Anyway, that was the essence of the tug in my heart that I felt when I read my friend's sentence. As usual, it feels great to finally understand what went on when I read her emails. For all its worth, through IF I've met so many other people that I wouldn't have known before. I've also learnt so many things along the way that I wouldn't have learnt before, for example: I know more now than ever that I've picked the right guy to be my husband. So, IF, THANK YOU for having let me understand a world that I never would have understood otherwise.