Day 12: Decisions

Ann Dee Ellis 8-Minute Memoir.

I hate decision-making. One of the nice things about having such a busy life is that most of my decisions are pre-made based on the time available to me. Some decisions are easy and a lot are hard, but at least most of them are obvious.

Thing is, when you have infertility, every decision feels amplified. The decisions I've had to make in a doctors office last minute are not small decisions. Like when I was doing my first IVF. We had decided to transfer one embryo in advance, then when I was sitting on the chair wearing nothing but thick socks and a hospital gown, they told me the options were a. 30% chance or less of pregnancy but a safer one if it works or b. more like a 50-60%+ chance of pregnancy with increased risk. It's never just about choosing one embryos or two. There is a lot of weight that goes into that decision.

After 45 minutes debating, Casey and I chose two do two.

It didn't work anyway.

Getting married was another hard decision. I knew I wanted to get married, I just didn't know for sure if Casey was the right one. When we got engaged, I was still only 4 months out from a near-engagement to a manipulative man who might have destroyed my soul. I didn't recognize that for too long. I didn't think Casey was the same, but it was still hard to say, "Yes, this is what I want", when I wasn't actually sure of what I wanted.

It didn't take me very long to realize that Casey was exactly who I wanted (and needed) to marry. I've never regretted that choice.

So many of the big decisions in my life have felt big. Everything winds up feeling overly exaggerated in some way or another, and each decision is less which ice cream to buy and more what risk are you willing to take that will influence potentially the rest of your life?