Realization of a new life

"how do you cope?" one friend asked me, How do I respond? If I choose to respond with an honest answer, that will make them feel uncomfortable, you choking back tears, yet knowing even if its your best friend, you lie.. How can you say you cope? you don't cope. whenever a friend, neighbour, acquaintance, stranger even announces their expecting, you wish for the floor to open right up and swallow you whole. The feeling so raw, like someone has just reached inside your chest and pulled out your heart squeezing and constricting, then throwing it to the floor where he or she unceremoniously stomps on it grinding to a fine mush. You choke back the tears, then uncomfortably you laugh it off as tears of joy for your friend and her unexpected surprise. She wants to talk the day away about how she feels this and that, or how she is going to decorate the nursery, as you attempt to tune it out, with a fake plastered, jr high picture.. knowing that your friend is oblivious to the facade that is on your face because she is bubbling with her own joy. Soon you know, you will begin to avoid her calls, and very shortly, she will have nothing to discuss, because pregnant feeds other pregnant, and soon they congregate and they are all sitting and eating their well balanced diet of milk and fruits, followed by the closet sugar binge that if caught always is explained away by "cravings" suddenly your friend and you have nothing in common, her life is moving on, she will have her family, her husband will handle their little giggling baby in the delivery room, there will be the required picture of the new arrival, and proud parents looking exhausted but complete.. while you are at home scanning your latest hpt at 3dpo looking for any sort of shadow of a line, you obsess on every twinge pain and fart, you are a mad woman to your husband, now afraid to step into the bedroom, for what he might discover is either helga the evil dominatrix getting the shackles prepared with her whip in hand demanding that he perform, or a sobbing maniac who has just seen yet another insensitive pregnant woman eating ice cream commercial, bawling out that it is all some huge conspiracy to pour more salt into her wounds... then one day it stops, you stop buying hpts because no matter how many different ways you scan it, you take it apart, no matter what million mega watt light source you put it under, there is no line. You take the battery out of the thermometer, stop checking your cervix, cf, you avoid resetting your fertility monitor, stop taking your supplements, and you remove the mouldy science experiment in tin foil from under your mattress. You begin to avoid calls from friends, and family for fear of more "great baby" news. You snarl at other peoples children, watching them from behind the curtain, waiting for that baseball to reach onto the edge of your property to scare them off by walking out of the house at the moment they begin to step on your beautifully manicured lawn.. I mean lets face it, the first few years of your fertility, you to loath the thought of gardening, a friend once put it best, "if my body is barren, so should my garden" .. but years of biological alarm clocks constantly ringing need to be silenced in some sort of fashion, be it me dressing my pup heads up for Easter and holding a doggie Easter egg hunt (yes I do this), or having them pose for Family portraits at Christmas and such. Your garden and the lawn become your nurturing projects.. you would comb out every blade if it kept your mind off conception, and makes you look far too busy to speak to neighbours passing with their baby buggies, and cheering on toddlers with training wheels. My husband finds solace in his work and dives head first, works 2 jobs, heads up the local association, is part of the honour uard, runs car seat clinics, enters charity races, focuses on fundraisers and anything he can do to avoid being in the silence of our house. I say house because that is what it is, We have made no distinguished mark on it, most rooms sit empty or half assed, there are no paintings on the walls, no portraits or pictures taken of us post wedding, as all of these pictures have fake smiles and are reminders of our loneliness. Sure there are doggie photos, most of them are not framed, and very few even get to print. No one wants to see pictures on pictures of your dogs, no matter how cute, nor do they want to hear story on story of what latest item was pulled from Kaycees Jaws.