Progress

My friend Audrey had her baby on Wednesday afternoon, and I went to see her in the hospital yesterday. I was nervous about doing that, since I’ve been dealing with the yearning for a second baby that will most likely never come. I didn’t know how I’d be able to handle the scene there. But we suck it up and do things for our friends, don’t we?

And y’all, it was ok. It really was. I cried some, but it was just out of happiness for her and the beauty of the new baby. It wasn’t jealousy or sadness or anything negative at all. I forgot how tiny they are when they are born and how cute the little noises they make are, and how they’ll fall asleep anywhere after they have a full tummy and it doesn’t matter who’s there or making noise. It was all so familiar.

Yet, I found myself thinking, “I don’t want this right now.” Now, whether that’s how I feel deep inside or just self-preservation talking, I can’t say. But it doesn’t matter. I just thought about waking up every two hours and sore nether regions and engorgement and milk coming in and I just can say that I don’t want to be there right now. And since I can’t be there, it’s a win-win situation.

I think this is progress. What about you?

Dealing With It

I know I mentioned before that I was starting to feel the urge to have another baby, and that it most likely will not happen.

I had been holding on to Bridget’s bedding because I loved it so much and it was such an important part of pregnancy for me, the choosing of her bedding with Jake and all the care and time we put into getting her room all ready for her. Slowly the bedding had to go away - the mobile when she was able to sit up and pull at it, the bumper pads went away when I no longer worried about her banging her head against the crib slats, the bed skirt went away when we had to lower her crib - and got moved to the guest bedroom because I couldn’t bear to part with it, and yet I had no other room to store it. But when we did some spring cleaning, and also preparing for someone to sleep in our guest room, I had to make some choices.

I put the bedding (with the exception of the comforter which I still have on the back of the glider and I intend to keep) in the give-away pile. And proceeded to cry for the rest of the day. A couple days later, I dropped it off at Goodwill with very little reluctance. I thought that perhaps by going through that exercise, I had worked through the issue.

But every day since, I seem to get a little bit sadder. Today I felt like I was on the verge of tears all day. I guess this is part of the process, just dealing with it, mourning this loss, even though it’s only the loss of a concept. Hopefully I can get through this soon. I hate feeling like this. The only thing better about it this go ’round is that I don’t have the monthly roller coaster of building hope and then crushing disappointment when my period comes. Since I have no expectation that I could be pregnant, I don’t feel disappointed when it’s confirmed I’m not.

I keep telling myself it’s better this way. I shouldn’t tempt fate. I had a dream pregnancy (apart from the work it took to get knocked up) and a dream delivery and we have a dream child. If we do this again, what are the odds that it’ll all go so well?

I have three good friends who are expecting baby girls all around the same time this summer and I’ll just try to satisfy myself sniffing their heads and buying them wee dresses and nibbling on their little toes. And I’ll hope that enough time will go by to make the longing subside. For now, though, I’m in my pity party.

I think I’ll go get some chocolate.

Feeling That Feeling Again

I am back in a place I never wanted to be again. The place where I’m wanting a baby. And this time, I know what I’d be in for if we tried again. Last time at the beginning, I thought I was just playing a waiting game, that we just needed to started drinking wine more often and letting nature take its course. Now I know what would be involved in me getting pregnant again. And while it was not nearly as brutal as what some women out there have gone through (I was successful after two rounds of Intra-Uterine Insemination or IUI), but still the stims are similar to an IVF cycle), it was still hard on me and hard on Jake and hard on our marriage. It was physically hard but the emotional factor was off the charts. I don’t know that I could go through that again.

And yet I find myself really wanting it again. I want to be pregnant again. I want to give birth again. I want to nurse and sniff that tiny baby’s head in the middle of the night again. I know I had a hard time after Bridget was born, but I don’t think I’d have those same issues again, or at least not as severely, because it wouldn’t be the first time I’d be doing any of this.

I had a dream pregnancy. My only complaints were swollen feet, heartburn and toward the end, some upper back pain that went away once I quit my job - it was from trying to reach my keyboard over my very large belly. I was happy, I loved being pregnant, I felt ok and I had no scares over the baby. I know, I was that annoying woman who would sit for hours with hands on my belly and the goofy look on my face as I felt her kick and twirl and somersault inside me. Even my delivery was the stuff of dreams. I think this is all why I seem to be forgetting the hell it was to get pregnant.

But it won’t happen on its own, I’m fairly certain. And if we were to go back to the REI for assistance, we’d have to have some serious cash in hand. Last time, our health insurance covered the whole damn thing for a convenient $15 copay, except for the drugs. Now, insemination is significantly cheaper than IVF - the actual procedure running in the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands with IVF. But the drugs are pricey. Really pricey.

Price is really the least of our concerns, honestly. When you stimulate your ovaries, you end up with a lot of eggs. That’s kind of the point. On our last cycle, the one that was successful, there was a threat of having ten mature follicles, which would have caused either a cancellation of the cycle or turning it into an IVF cycle. In the end, only three follicles had grown to the appropriate size so our risk of a litter was eliminated. We spent about three weeks wondering how many little heartbeats we were going to see when we went to that first ultrasound. We were sort of hoping for twins, but were still completely happy to have at least one heartbeat. If we do this again, we have the same high risk of a multiple birth since I seem to respond so well to the stims. But for a second pregnancy, we are not so open to multiples. Multiples are hard, but if you’ve never done it any other way, you don’t have any idea how much harder it is than one. It just is what it is, to use a phrase I hate. I would fall over with all the work involved after having had a singleton.

So honestly, the logistics of it all make me want to smack myself. What am I thinking? Why would I consider this again? I guess for the same reasons I considered it in the first place. Wanting a baby isn’t a logical thing, even in the easiest of circumstances.

I don’t want to be here again, dreaming of babies I’ll never have, feeling the stab in the gut when someone tells me they are pregnant. I don’t know why I thought that I’d be done with this after having my daughter. Before I knew I was infertile, I always thought I wanted a gaggle of kids, so it only makes sense that the dream isn’t completely dead. I wonder what it will take to get over this. I know adoption is an option for us and I think that once I can come to grips with this, maybe we can explore it further. But I’m not going into the adoption process still clinging to the hope of getting pregnant again. I don’t think that’s the right frame of mind to be in as you face what is surely as difficult a struggle as dealing with infertility.

I know the only way to deal with this is to let time work its magic. Hopefully in a few months this will have subsided. But for right now, I’m feeling needy and petulant and jealous and I’m hating myself for it.

Happy Conception Day!

Two years ago today, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine and a lot of blood, sweat, tears and hormonal rages, Bridget was conceived. Although I didn’t know it for two more weeks, my life was forever changed lying there on that table with my hips up in the air.

And luckily, 15 months in to this whole parenting business, I feel like I’ve gotten a handle on being a mom. Wow, 15 months. If this were a paying job, I’d have been fired about a year ago.  I guess that’s not really correct. I had a handle on being a mom to an infant within a few weeks. Then she turned into a toddler and that transition has taken me longer to acclimate to, but I think I’m finally happy with toddler-hood.

I wonder exactly how long I can get away with celebrating March 2 as a significant occasion. Will she think it’s weird if I call her when she’s away at college to congratulate her on the anniversary of her conception? No, surely not.

Surprisingly Still Raw

Yesterday I was watching Oprah, which is not something I do on a regular basis. In fact, I rarely turn the tv on during the day anymore. That’s as much from an energy conserving standpoint as anything else. But today I was tired and needed to sit down to feed Bridget so I turned on the tube just for some noise. Anyway, Oprah’s show was about different women in their 30s and what was going on in their lives. Gripping television, that is.

Of course, she had the token infertile woman on there, explaining what all she had been through. I felt for this woman who had been through way worse than me, she had done the drugs and then found out IVF was her only hope, and got pregnant but lost the baby at eleven weeks. Now she and her husband are just waiting to save up enough money to try IVF again. So not exactly what I went through, but still. Before I knew it, I was bawling.

Crying because I remember how it all felt, and how it will feel again when I get to the point where I want another baby, which I am sure I will, and don’t get pregnant, which I’m sure I won’t.

Crying for this woman who has been through so much to get the one little thing that so many people take for granted. Crying at the unfairness of it all. When she said she felt like a failure, I knew exactly how she felt. This is the one thing women’s bodies were designed for, and sadly, for some of us, our bodies don’t do that.

When she talked about all the stupid advice you get - “just relax, it’ll happen” or “drink some wine, that’ll do the trick” - I was so right there with her. I threw down with my own mother at one point because she told me to just relax and it would happen. I screamed at her that no matter how much I relax, my ovaries are not going to produce an egg because I HAVE A MEDICAL CONDITION. Not my proudest moment as a daughter, but then again, it wasn’t her most glorious mothering moment either.

At the end of the interview Oprah asked her if she had made peace with it and I wanted to shout, “NO, you dolt!” If she had made peace with it, would she be saving her pennies for another round of IVF? I know that there is peace to be found for some, but I don’t know if I would be strong enough to find it. Oprah even had the gall to say that once she pursued adoption she would probably get pregnant. I gotta tell you, I normally love me some Oprah but she needed a lesson on sensitivity around infertile women before she did this interview. The poor girl, you could tell, was just sickened by that comment.

I thought that once I had a baby, this wouldn’t hurt as badly. But now the unwittingly hurtful question is “Are you going to have any more children?” I get it all the time. And it hurts because when I say “I don’t know,” I really mean it. I’m not just trying to dodge a wildly inappropriate question. I have no idea if fate will be kinder to us this time around and let us get the surprise pregnancy. I doubt it. I wish I had the luxury of planning when I was going to get pregnant again.

Through all of this, though, I look at Bridget and see that gummy grin and hear her say, “Ma ma ma ma ma” (even though I know she doesn’t mean me, I still love to hear that sound in her tiny beautiful voice) and I am so grateful. I really am. I would love to add to our family but never, ever would I feel that our family was somehow shortchanged if we don’t get that chance. My disappointment at the possibility of not having any more children certainly does not prevent me from seeing my daughter as the best gift I have ever been given and loving her with my whole heart.

Lingering Effects of Pregnancy

One of the strangest pregnancy symptoms I had was some odd numbness on the top of my right thigh. The numbness was only on the skin, not the flesh or muscle, and so minor that I never even remembered it when I was at the doctor so I never mentioned it to her. I figured that it was because I always slept on that side, putting my considerable weight on right leg. I often would wake up with that tingly pins and needles feeling there.

I assumed when I delivered the baby, it would go away. But it hasn’t. When I went for my post-delivery check up in December, I mentioned it to my OB who looked at me blankly and said, “That’s weird!” as though she had never heard of this pregnancy symptom in her life. So I left it at that. I felt like I had remembered seeing this particular symptom online somewhere so I wasn’t really worried about it. I went to my regular family doctor a month or so after that for something else, and mentioned it to him, just to see if he had ever heard of this. Before I even finished explaining it to him, he was nodding and said he knew exactly what it was. The weight of pregnancy had caused pressure on some specific nerves in my lower back, the nerves that effect feeling in my right thigh. OK, great. So he adjusted my back (I had never had that done before and it felt wonderful) and then prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug. Unfortunately I can’t take the drug because according to the pharmacist, it is not compatible with breast feeding.

So here I am, almost five months after delivery with a numb right thigh. I suppose that, like feet that have grown half a shoe size and fingers that most assuredly will never comfortably fit into my wedding rings again, this particular reminder of pregnancy is here to stay. I guess it’s not that bad. Really it only bothers me when I have an itch there. You know, because no matter how much I scratch it, it never feels better. Actually, that is pretty maddening.

This Time Last Year

I can’t believe that one year ago today, I was laying on a table with my feet in stirrups while modern science got me knocked up. So much has happened since that day, and my life is completely different than it was then. Dude, I’m somebody’s mom. And I will be for the rest of my life. That thought still freaks my brain.

I know that for the rest of my life, I’ll always remember March 2 as a significant day. I’ll never share that with Bridget, for sure. But maybe one day when she gets older, she’ll wonder why it is that every March 2 mommy wants to hug her a little more, or just look at her in awe of how beautiful she is and tell her how lucky I am to have her.

Does Hallmark make a happy anniversary-of-your-conception-day card?

Nesting Wrap Up

One of the last things we had to do was get the carpets cleaned. See, the mental giant who built our house decided that white carpet was a great idea. White carpet does not go well with everyday life and certainly not when you have two dogs and two cats. Two dogs and two cats who defile the carpet quite often with vomit, pee and hairballs. Gee, that makes our house sound so appealing. Don’t you all just want to come over and stay for a while? Anyway, we definitely plan to replace the carpet in the not too distant future, but right now it’s not in the budget. Until it is, carpet cleaning a few times a year is definitely in the budget. And since we are having guests tomorrow it seemed the perfect time. So right now, it’s very noisy in the house but it will all be worth it in about an hour or so, when they leave and we remember what our carpets look like clean.

I only wish that I had arranged to have the housekeeper come again this week. Actually since they don’t do laundry, it wouldn’t really help. I just need someone to put away all my friggin’ clothes. Maybe I should just throw them all out and start over. That seems easier than trying to wash, dry, fold, hang up and put away doesn’t it?

I also need to get under the sink in my bathroom and organize that cabinet. It’s crazy under there with travel bags, sample sizes, tampons boxes in various sizes, nail polish in various colors and assorted first aid items. It’s literally overflowing under there and it drives me crazy whenever I need to get something from under there or I need a place to stash something. That could be a task for tomorrow morning. After that, though, there’s just not a whole lot left to do other than basic stuff. We’ll vacuum a few times while people are around, and I do need to do a quick mop of the hardwoods downstairs thanks to some rain on Tuesday which led to muddy dog prints.

And now we are ready for Curtainrod to arrive. Because babies can’t arrive until all cabinets are organized and carpets are clean. Maybe THAT is why the baby won’t drop!

Not What I Hoped to Post Today

Doctor appointment today did NOT make me happy. I was really hoping that I would be able to report more progress in the baby department. But no. I’m no more dilated - still 1 cm - and although my cervix is soft, it’s still thick. The baby does seem to have dropped some but not dramatically. We discussed induction. She said that if nothing happened on its own before then, she was scheduling me for an induction on December 1. She also mentioned c-section to me. I think it was more of a gentle way for her to say that if I wanted it, she’d do an elective c-section because the baby is still not engaged in my pelvis. I thought at first that was a bit premature of her to mention, but it does make a bit of sense. Especially after she said that a 36 hour labor was not in my best interests or in Curtainrod’s. So yes, if he does not engage, then we will have to do it. I let her know that my preference list went like this:

Let the baby come on its own time and with a vaginal birth

Induction of labor, but still a vaginal delivery

C-section

I told her that my top priority was a healthy baby and that if c-section is the best way to accomplish that, then I wouldn’t fight it, but I’m really not wild about the thought of recovery from surgery if I can avoid it. I think she knows where I’m coming from now. If we have to induce, then we have to, and if labor doesn’t progress how we want, then we can consider c-section. So blah. I guess she has to cover all the bases and prepare me. I’m just hoping that something happens before December 1.

On to brighter topics, the baby’s room is done as far as decorating goes. Well, as done as it’s going to get. I do still have some laundry to do and put away. Typical for me, though, to have laundry to do. My kitchen cabinets are reorganized and ready for someone else to come into my kitchen to cook. Jake’s mom will be here and will be doing the majority of Thanksgiving dinner plus some other cooking. I wanted it to be easy for her to open a cabinet and find what she needed, which would not have been possible just two short weeks ago. Yesterday I cleaned out the utensil drawers, which did not yield the results I had hoped for - I wasn’t able to throw much out, but I did discover that I have way too many corn on the cob holders and boxes of toothpicks (which I only use to test the doneness of baked goods, so why the hell do I have so many???)

As I was cleaning out the fridge, I finally decided to toss the Gonal-f pen that I used on my last IUI cycle. It still has medication in it, but its expiration date is in January, so I knew that even if I wanted to do another IUI, this would not be usable by then. No way in hell would I consider trying to get knocked up again THAT quickly. And I couldn’t donate it (like I did with the other unopened one) because it has been used. It was very hard to throw that away, but it also made no sense to keep it hanging around, either. I still haven’t tossed the two pregnancy tests I took, and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do that.

And I keep thinking of things I need for this baby. I finally realized I needed sheets for the pack and play if I am going to use it as the baby’s bassinet for the first few weeks. So after meeting my friend for her birthday lunch today, I went to Babies R Us and got some sheets for that, a no-slip mat for under the car seat in Jake’s car, and some pants. It is finally getting cold here and I figured pants are a good idea for the very few occasions I intend to take the baby out soon after birth. I just bought two pairs, so I didn’t go hog wild or anything.

I guess that’s all there is to report. I’m going to lay down for a quick nap here in a minute and later make some banana bread and pumpkin bread for when Jake’s family is here. It’s easy to make and freezes really well, plus the recipes each make two loaves, so there is enough for a couple breakfasts and snacks out of not much work. Oh, and cornbread for Jake’s mom’s stuffing. She needs that to be made in advance so it can get stale. That sounds weird, but in the stuffing world, it makes sense. Other than that, I’ll be sitting here hoping for the onset of labor. But I won’t hold my breath.

Sometimes It Comes in Quite Handy

Like when you want to amuse your husband by seeing what all you can balance on it. This is a free sample of a Kashi granola bar.

Other items attempted but not successful included a can of tomato sauce. It stayed for a little bit, but then I laughed and it moved.