Label change, aisle three...

I've been walking around the last couple days since our appointment with the RE on Tuesday with a very odd feeling.  I can't quite place it.  This whole experience seems really surreal to me.

We've been talking about IVF and pricing and the steps required to get to that point, and we seem to be going full steam ahead with tests and procedures and new doctors, but it's giving me some anxiety to think that we're going to be a proud owner of a loan in the same range of a decent car whether we have a baby at the end of this or not!  I had a hard time buying a $400 dresser, and there is a lot more at stake with this transaction!  It's taking me a little bit to adjust to being out of my comfort zone finance wise.

I also never thought I'd be a woman who would need to meet with an infertility specialist.  We don't exactly need IVF to conceive, but obviously something is wrong (not sure what yet) where we need the expertise from this field.  I was talking with the financial counselor at the clinic to get pricing and such, and she told me that once you meet with an RE, you pretty much get the label of "infertility".

I guess that's what's been bothering me recently.  I almost feel as if I'm grieving for my "fertile status".  I've always associated infertility with IVF for reasons that go without saying.  I don't exactly need IVF to conceive, but I do need it for my mental and physical well being.  In other words I need it to keep my sanity and spare my fractured back so we can limit the number of future pregnancies we have for the amount of children we want.

Before we had Savannah when we first started talking about having kids, I had that fear in the back of my mind, "what if we have problems".  But we didn't have problems (at first), and I thought we were going to be safe from all the horrors of struggling with infertility.  Then we had our first loss, and then another, and then we lost two more pregnancies early on.  I still felt I could hang onto my "fertile status" because we could get pregnant so easily.  I felt and still feel like there's something wrong with me, but I still knew I was fertile.  Now that perception is changing within myself.  I know it's just a label, and I'm not one that likes labels generally speaking, but these things do help us organize things better in our minds.  So now I feel that I've finally made the change from fertile to infertile, and it's kinda sad and weird.

Update:  I forgot to also mention that I have a general sense of anticipation and excitement that hopefully this process will end with a living baby in our arms.  It seems that this strange feeling that I've had the last couple days is probably a combination of lots of different feelings and thoughts swirling around in my head from eagerness, anxiety, hopefulness, and even grief.