My perceptions around ttc and pregnancy have changed radically. I cringe at how I approached fertility, thinking it was the easiest thing in the world and anyone could do it - I had no idea so many people struggled to conceive and that I might be one of them. I have a new understanding and compassion for people ttc and know that it ain't always an easy path for everyone. I just hope I never hurt anyone with ignorant comments prior. I also approach childbirth differently - last time, I had a doula and honestly thought the worst thing that could have happened would be to end up with a c-secion - now I am scheduled to get one and that's ok. I am much more flexible in how I approach childbirth - not only for myself but for anyone. Any way or means that brings a baby alive and screaming into this world is ok by me. I don't make any judgements or presumptions about childbirth anymore and have a whole new appreciation for the range of outcomes. I haven`t found anything easier - quite the opposite. I do miss the carefree and easygoing pregnancy I had before but I know I can never return to being that person.

Thanks for getting this dialogue started, Eliza. It`s something I think about a lot.

I started out knowing that trying to have kids could suck -- I just didn't realize how low the new depths of suck I could find would be.

I have a bad family history, lots of miscarriages, PCOS, issues. An aunt who had a cyst on her ovary get so big it pressed on her uterus enough to have her deliver my cousin at about 6 months along, my mom had 5 miscarriages, my sister lost her one pregnancy, it took my grandmother 14 years to finally have my mom, etc.

It took us about 6 months to get pregnant. I was terrified of miscarriage, and had my mom basically hand-wringing and putting even more fear into me. My OB told me he wasn't worried about me, I had no signs of PCOS and I had gotten pregnant easily enough.

I managed to dodge the miscarriage bullet that time, instead "catching the cosmic ray" and having my son have some ridiculously rare syndrome of unknown cause that basically means the embyro gets hella confused about its right and left, and the organs develop abnormally. He had heart defects about as severe as you can get -- the worst is the mirror version of the same syndrome, favoring right side development instead of left.

So that sucked.

But being able to get pregnant and not miscarry finally upped my confidence in my body; for the first time in 27 years I actually felt comfortable in my own skin. I thought that I had missed the bad part of the genetic lottery, I just had shitty luck. It would be better next time.

I waited the interminable 9 months from my c/s delivery to get pregnant again; this was the minimum I could do and try for vbac, both by hospital policy and by what research shows to be safer. I didn't want to wait for the safest 2 years between delivery interval, and then spend another 6 months TTC. I didn't assume it would happen right away, but I had to allow that it would. So we waited the minimum and tried.

I hadn't even had a period postpartum; the IUD had stopped that, and it took almost 2 months for me to ovulate after it was removed, but we caught that egg, and I was pregnant. I didn't think things would actually be that easy, but I figured I'd already had my ration of shit, and things would be better this time. And that lasted about a month.

I didn't except how much the miscarriage would affect me. I though, hey, I watched my 2 month old son die in front of me after all the time in the NICU and the 10 days of how very unpretty life on ECMO after heart failure is. How very unpretty watching someone's body just shut down is.

The m/c put me in a mild-moderate depression. I feel like it wrung the last bit of hope and optimism out of me. I feel like I wouldn't say that I'm depressed now, all the time, but I feel like I lost the better parts of me, and I haven't gotten them back. Everything that made me so strong, that handled everything with my son so "easily" that still had hope for the future and kept going got lost.

The m/c was 7 months ago. My OB was fine with me trying right away, even after the hemorrhage and all the blood I lost, but I wasn't. We skipped a cycle then went back to trying; and trying, and still trying. I've had long, irregular cycles, Oing between CD21 and 43, I'm stuck in an annov cycle now, waiting on an OB appointment.

And all around me people are constantly getting pregnant, having babies. So many of the people that were pregnant with me with Caleb are having another, and I am not. I can't even seem to ovulate. It seems so hopeless. It seems so easy for everyone but me.

I haven't put much thought into how I will deal with being pregnant again, the fear of miscarriage coming back full force with that visceral fear of having experienced it. The fear of something going horribly wrong again, of finding out that I'm passing on shitty heterotaxy genes, and the only way to find that out is by having another baby with the same thing. The fear of secondary infertility, the fear of everything else that can go wrong. I'm just focusing on the first step, just getting pregnant... just.... ovulating. And it seems like this ridiculous impossibility.

I think it is hitting me harder because I don't have anything else. I quit my job, moved 1200 miles away from everything, to settle down and start a family. It was just this thing that was going to happen; it wasn't a big deal. Yet almost 3 years later, I have nothing to show for it, nothing else to define myself by, to fill my time with besides failing at having kids.

I am terrified of secondary infertility. Right now I can't imagine ever getting pregnant again let alone conceiving, implanting, making it through each trimester... the goal of having a living child seems like an insurmountable task. I wonder if we will ever have children who live.

I think TTC this time is harder because there's more at stake. There's a dead baby on the piano, but not a live one in the nursery upstairs... and we both really want one in the nursery. Each month is full of hope but so much pressure. There's no relaxed 'we can try next month' until my period shows and we are let down again. My frustration at my new cycle and late ovulation and each month that passes makes me more and more frantic to be pregnant and frustrated that I'm not. I just feel time slipping away and maybe it's because when we TTC'd last year I was working and there were other distractions going on it was easier, but I find now there's so much attention on this goal (by me) that it's fraught with a new set of emotions.

I double Sarah's words. I was soooooo happy when I was pregnant. I remember often thinking that that was the happiest time of my life. And then, at the 40th week, everything was ruined. I became a sad, scared person. I am over anxious and obsessed with having a living child. I think if I had a living child things would be a tiny bit easier, but it is easy to think one is in the worst situation possible.

I think I will have to do cognitive therapy to be able to live (and carry another pregnancy) with all my fears. If I do manage to have another child, I don't want to be a nutty mother.