ICLW Intro

Hey, guys, nice to meet you!  I may have seen some of you before at my other blog, but I started a new one so that I had a place where I could talk openly, where my real life friends can't see it and talk.  I've left messages for a couple of y'all, because I want to still be connected to the bloggers I knew before.  I'm not trying to hide from the ALI community!  I just need a place where I can talk about TTC and not yet being a stepmom.

I guess the biggest descriptor for me and for my circumstances at this point is not having a neat box to fit into.  I'm not divorced yet (checking the mail and the court website every day waiting for the final decree to be processed).  I'm not a stepmom yet, I'm "Daddy's girlfriend," and as much as my boyfriend Bear tries to tell me that I am something real to them, I feel like I'm not because I have no real status.  It'll make a big difference when we get married, but we're not yet.  I'm not a wife.  I'm not even a fiancee yet, even though Bear and I are wanting to get married before the end of the year.  I'm not a mother. 

But I don't even know if I'm an infertile now, I don't fit into a neat ALI box either.  When I was with my ex, we had unexplained IF.  So I don't know if it's my fault.  I don't know if I'm infertile without him.  Bear and I have just started TTC last month, because we don't want to wait any more.  We both want a child, and we don't want to spend months not trying for what we want so badly. 

But whether I'm a "real" infertile or not, I have the feelings of being one.  I have the heart that is still broken in a million pieces.  Those pieces heal some when Bear's children follow me around or tell me they want me there or say "I love you both" at bedtime.  But those pieces also show how jagged they still are, slicing me six ways to Sunday when I see a baby or when one of my friends announces her pregnancy or even when Bear talks about when his kids were babies, because I doubt I'll ever hear him talking about our child that way or see him doing the things with our child that he did with the two he has already.

So I don't know where I fit in.  The only blogger I knew who was a step-parent has stopped writing.  Two of my close real life friends with IF, one of whom I've been friends with since the cradle, left their husbands and now are pregnant or have a baby with someone new, both unexpectedly.  The one I've been friends with forever has been a step-parent while infertile, but I don't want to burden her with my feelings while she's newly pregnant and excited and scared.  The other one will be a step-parent once she marries her baby's father, but she won't have ever been a "Daddy's girlfriend" or stepmom without a baby of her own, since she got pregnant right away.  But I don't, can't, think that will ever be me.  That kind of thing only happens to other people.

So yeah, I need to be able to talk.  And I want to be able to talk TO someone, not just out into the ether where no one's there.   So welcome!  Come have a cupcake or a biscuit or whatever I've been baking lately, and we;ll chat.