Other Kids

Yesterday I went to visit my family.  I love them, but they are all insane.  They now know about our infertility troubles, as I decided to “come out of the {infertility} closet” during National Infertility Awareness Week.  I wanted to be able to offer my story and have others come to me if they needed to talk.  I ended up having one friend contact me and has been talking to me about her procedures (which are so different from mine that I’ve already put in a request for her to write a guest spot).  She now has 12 embryos frozen and is waiting 6-8 weeks before transfer to avoid OHSS (I’d never head of this before…).  They got 26 eggs, so it seems like they made the right call.  Anyway… I got lost…

Okay, so, while I was with my family, my grandmother started telling me that if we are going to try with our other embryos, we should do it soon so our kids could be close together.  I told her I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to even imagine taking care of two children.  Then my sister, mom, and grandmother, almost in unison, said “two is easier than one!”

Um.  I get it.  I really do.  They have each other to play with, so they don’t need you constantly, like my daughter needs me.  That would be great.  Really, it would.  I could see her loving to have a companion.  I could see me loving her having a companion, but…. no one seems to understand what I’m actually saying, perhaps I should be clearer.

I do not know if I, personally, can take care of two children.

Before you say “yes you can!” let me explain that I still have days where it takes everything I have to not sit in a corner and sob because I am so overwhelmed with the word “mommy” and the fact that all I really want to do it sit on the couch and crochet without my daughter running off with my yarn.  I get irritated that my husband wants to play golf on the weekend, but hell, he works all week too, it’s not his fault he enjoys a sport that takes a million hours to play.  I get that he needs down time, but I still hold it against him.  I have days where I feel like I’d like to get up and leave, hide myself away at the beach for a few days (weeks?).  I want to spend more alone time with my husband, but by the time our daughter is in bed, we have maybe two hours to ourselves before we are passed out drooling, and most of the time we each have our own things we want to do with our two free hours a day.

I want meal times to be easier.

I want nap and bedtime to be easier.

I want to have an adult to talk to during the day.

I want to be able to go to the bathroom and shut the door.  (Today I had an upset stomach and she came in and closed the door, trapping us both inside – if that doesn’t haunt her nightmares, I don’t know what will).

I’m not ready.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready, because it’s not just about giving my child a playmate in two years (pregnancy + age a kid is able to “play”), it’s about trying to get pregnant, going on hormones that cause depression, wondering if our embryos will survive the thaw, wondering if my depression will make me actually run away on the day of the transfer, wondering if either of the embryos, or maybe even both, will stick, carrying a baby while I have a clingy, needy, toddler to take care of, having a baby with a toddler at home (I mean, grandparents aren’t far away, but they don’t want to keep her for a year, i’m sure… or doooo they?? I’ll check on that and report back…), then having to feed both kids, entertain both kids, put both kids down for a nap, or take one to preschool, pick one up from preschool, get to the grocery store, fix something for dinner, have the house is some sort of working order (I’m not saying clean, that’s just crazy talk), and then have time to feel like a human long enough to spend time with my husband and keep our relationship together?  (We struggled for quite sometime after having E — sometimes I feel like we might still be struggling a little).

To the women who have done this, and will tell me it’s easier than I’m making it out to be, I get it, truly I do.  You’re probably right.  If it happens, it’ll be my normal life and i’ll settle into it like I’ve settled into this life.  I’ll learn who goes for a nap first, who gets bathed first, how to make all the crockpot meals on pinterest, i’ll do it.  What I’m saying it that I can’t get myself to be at that point.  I can see the line, but I can’t get myself to cross it, not yet anyway.  My daughter just turned two, and this constant pressure to “get going because yada yada yada” is just, too much.  Who says kids born more than three years apart are bad, anyway?  Who wrote that rule, and where is it written?

I just realized that I titled this “other kids”, not meaning to yammer on about possible other kids for myself, but to talk about how I wanted nothing more than to snuggle my nephew (9 months) the entire time I was with my family yesterday.  I carried him around the store, comforted him when he cried, made sure my sister gave him plenty of carrots for lunch, gave him toys to play with from my personal purse stash, and gave him about a million kisses.  Did I , in that moment, want another baby?  No.  So isn’t that my true answer right now?

Go with your gut, ladies and gentlemen.  The size of your family, and the space between siblings, is not something to compare with others.  Make sure it’s right for you.

I’m hoping this is my last post on “the second baby conundrum” for a long time.  If I get a baby surprise one day (ha!) I will certainly let you all know.  For now, i’m not thinking about it, or worrying about it.  I’m hoping to use this blog as a place where I talk about how I’m simplifying my life, or what crafts I’m doing, or what random thought pops into my head (scary…).

Oh, and by the way, I love my daughter with my whole entire heart.  It’s not her fault she drive me crazy, she’s a toddler, and I’m a human, it’s normal.  Plus we spend 12 hours a day together, that would drive anyone a little crazy!  Just a little….. well, okay… a medium amount of crazy…

-E

Back to Blogging Basics

I feel like the last post was not me at my brightest.  I’d apologize, but I feel like that would be apologizing for not always feeling happy, and that wouldn’t be fair to me.  Sometimes I’m not happy, and 98% of the time it’s because my hormones are ravaging me from the inside.  I will explain why they’ve been out of control lately, and maybe that will shed some light on my low mood in my last post.

In April, I had a chemical pregnancy.  I know, it surprised me too.  How the hell did that even happen?  Not only would that mean that I would have had to ovulate *gasp*, but my husbands sperm would have also had to make it to an egg AND penetrate it AND fertilize it.  *gasp gasp gasp*

The truly sad, yet also good, part about it is that I didn’t know it had happened until well after it happened.  I know, ridiculous right?  You see though, my cycles are somewhere around 35-42 days.  I had tested at four weeks because even though I was sure I’d never get pregnant naturally, I have always enjoyed peeing on sticks and hoping to be surprised one day.  Test at four weeks was negative, same for the test at five weeks (or so I thought… more on this later).  So when I woke up on cd 44 and tested again (hey, i had one test left!), I didn’t even check it because that same pee showed that my period had started.  What a waste of a test.  I shoved it back into the box and put it away in the pregnancy test drawer.  My husband knows I test, but for some reason I don’t like him to see the tests in the garbage.  I know, it’s weird.

After my period, which was lighter and shorter than normal, I felt very sad and I had no energy.  Usually after my period I’m ready to go everywhere, clean everything, and get it on with my husband to my hearts desire (my PCOS gives me an insatiable sex drive — only perk, honestly).  I didn’t feel like this at all though, so I talked with my friend who’s had a few miscarriages.  I was just telling her about how I felt pretty sucky, and she asked if I was positive I hadn’t just miscarried.  I was pretty sure, since the chances are like… a bazillion to one, but I was curious, so I pulled the box of tests out (still not thrown away — try not to judge me for holding on to old pee sticks), and I pulled out all three.  One was definitely negative (four weeks), but to my surprise, the other two had faint pink lines.  One was very faint, and one was actually visible.  I know what you’re going to say, evaporation lines!!  I agree, that is a thing, but you must also know that I’ve never once had an evaporation line on any test (I’ve looked days and weeks later at some of them), and these lines were pink, I hear evap lines typically aren’t.

So, there it was, right in front of my face.  Holy crap.  I had been pregnant—ish?  Was I glad I hadn’t noticed the positive the same time I started bleeding?  I mean, wasn’t it already too late?  I tested again to make sure I wasn’t still showing as being pregnant, and I wasn’t.  The doctor said if I wasn’t then it was too late.  Wow… I still can’t believe I was pregnant—ish.

So, I started birth control.  My husband and I had decided a while ago that if we did try again, we’d want to try with our two frozen embryos first.  So, I wanted to insure I didn’t have another miscarriage, and I started birth control.  It made me sick, so sick.  I had the worst headache, it took over my entire body, head to feet.  I couldn’t focus, or think, or take care of myself or my daughter, so after three days (yes, only three days) I stopped.  My period started two days later.

Then we went to the reproductive endocrinologist and set up a date to try our FET.  The hormones from the pregnancy/miscarriage made me want to be pregnant right then and there.  I would have gladly thrown myself into the stirrups and had them do the transfer right that minute if that were how it works, but sadly it doesn’t.  Sadly, you have to be on birth control for at least two-three weeks before you can start the process.  not have the transfer, but start the process.  So I tried a different birth control…  eight days later I was in bed, sobbing and sleeping… and that was it.  That was all I could do.  My in-laws had to take my daughter for two days because I couldn’t do anything but cry.  I was sure my husband hated me, that my in-laws thought I was a terrible mother, and that the world would be a much happier place if I just wasn’t in it.  I wasn’t suicidal, thankfully, I just thought that if I disappeared, people would be better off.

It has been three weeks since I stopped BC.  I just started feeling better about three days ago.  I feel like myself.  No more nasty thoughts haunting me, no more pain, no more sad. Phew…. I am relieved.  I do not know how people function when they are depressed.  I couldn’t.  I hope everyone who suffers from depression can find their way out.  It is a dark place.  So very dark.

So that’s where we are.  I can’t do the FET, because I can’t be on birth control.  Even if there is one that won’t turn me in a sob monster, or cause me horrible pain, I couldn’t work up the nerve to try right now if someone paid me to do it.  I just can’t.  I can’t go back to that dark place right now.  I am still physically and mentally exhausted from it.  So, we are just going to toss our baby hopes into the wind and see if maybe we can get lucky and have something stick this time.  I am eating as well as I can, exercising, and also getting a lot of down time and help with my daughter.  Trying to put myself into a good place so that maybe, just maybe, I can be one of those “after infertility treatments” success stories.  If not, we will try for an FET again down the road sometime.

Fingers crossed….

Thank You, Robert G. Edwards.

I am ashamed to admit that I had not heard of the passing of Robert G. Edwards this past April.  Not that I would have recognized the name, which shames me all over again, but the story would have caught my attention.  He is one of the two men who “discovered” IVF.  One of the men who is the reason that I am a mother.  The reason my world is filled with joy, and love, and laughter.  The reason I am overwhelmed with emotion at every moment of the day.  And he passed, and I did not know.  I was unable to take a minute to say a thank you to the universe for providing a man who had a vision.  A vision for being able to help infertile couples around the world.  A man who refused to give up after many, many failures.  Years of failures.  I can account to years of failure too!  His motivation to keep going, just so he could help others have babies.  It is amazing.  He deserved the noble prize, and I am happy that he got it before he passed.  If I had a noble prize, I would have handed him mine.  I would have loved to give him a hug.

If you’d like to read a little about his life, please read this.  And if you have had success, or even if you haven’t and you are relying on IVF to give you a family, please send a big thank you and a big hug into the universe for him and his partner Patrick Steptoe (who passed in 1988).  Their work was not always appreciated as it should have been, but I owe them so much for my beautiful baby girl.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I May Have Found A Flow….

Okay, so, I was trying to do the breastfeeding thing where I offer one boob, let her go to town until she was done, and then put her to sleep.  Well, she keeps waking up every hour to eat more, so I decided to try feeding for 15-20 on one side (usually until she falls asleep), then I change her diaper, and then I let her feed from the other boob (usually 10-15 more minutes).  I did this exclusively last night and it seems to be working wonders.  We will see if it was just a fluke….

Right now she is still asleep (10:00am here).  I HAD to get up and eat, so I let her and daddy sleep in this morning.  I haven’t been eating anything until noon or 1:00pm lately, so this has been a treat to eat something so early in the morning!