I know there's an infertility blog called "A Little Pregnant" and it's apt. A few weeks ago an acquaintance (who has a child) made a comment in conversation that used the term in the usual way: "[Such and such] is one of those things you can't be just a little bit. Like you can't be a little pregnant!" Oh, how lucky you are to believe that's true. I have been "a little pregnant" in many different ways. For pregnancy #1, I would have told you I was pregnant all the way up to that 9.5-week silent sonogram. Then I spent a week in this horrible limbo of knowing my hoped-for baby was dead, but waiting for the (excruciatingly painful, by the way) actual miscarriage. So I was pregnant but not. Then, with pregnancy #2, I'd had some spotting, but no period, so when I took the pregnancy test and it was positive, I was like, Yay...I guess? I'm pregnant? And then the oh-so-light spotting trickled for a while as Dr. Keep Trying's nurses just kept telling me not to worry. So I'd think to myself I was pregnant but with a question mark. I'm pregnant? Six weeks or so? I guess? I'm due in July? Supposedly? Then, a week after what I thought was an early miscarriage--bleeding and cramping--I was told to take a pregnancy test at home to make sure my levels were down. By the way: what an assholic thing to do to a woman with a miscarriage! Make her take a pregnancy test at home! So I did, and whaddya know, the longed-for positive, except not longed-for at all. I threw it across the room. I was kinda pregnant. Technically pregnant, but not actually going to have a baby. So then began the months of weekly blood draws: the levels went up; I had to have an emergency D&C; I waited a month after that to finally have indiscernible levels of HCG, the pregnancy hormone, in my bloodstream. I figured I was technically pregnant for half of 2014. My poor, weight-gaining body.
Which brings me to today. In yoga, the instructor said to push on our abdominal psoas muscles "unless you're pregnant." Well...I doubt one day post-positive-test means I'm pregnant, but yeah, technically I am. Being out of town, I don't get some kind of reassuring doctor response, blood test results in hand, saying, "everything is going okay." How cool that would have been to have gotten to go in the *day* of the positive test for that. Maybe I'll find out on Monday this is all over. Will I regret having let myself be happy for five days? I don't know; I don't care. I'm happy now. Still no spotting. I'm not taking my temps or taking another home test. I'm putting this one in Dr. Special's office's hands. I told MFP, it would be easier if the news I was waiting on wasn't inside my own body. Like we were waiting to get a call on Monday letting us know everything is okay; and maybe at some point we'd get a call saying it wasn't. But the news is right here. Only it works a similar way. I really just don't know. I know that I'm pregnant, but I don't know if I'm going to have a baby. I won't say I'll know that until it is in my arms, squirming and screaming. My child's life begins as a mystery to me. I suppose in many ways it will always be a mystery to me, if it lives. No matter how close we are, how bound up with one another. I am not all-knowing, I am not in control. This little life has got its own trajectory. Help or hinder, that's all I can do.
I will tell you though, that I would love to have a baby. The plus sign yesterday allowed me to indulge in a few seconds of hope. MFP as a dad. I think about diaper tables for some reason. Maybe next summer, a baby pool...that's it. I won't go so far as to think about the calendar. Right now I'm on the hopeful side of "a little pregnant," not the trying-to-get-unpregnant side, and I'm grateful for that.
In a larger way, I think this is a big part of what's wrong with the way people talk about reproductive justice, the idea that you can't be "a little pregnant." That's fundamentally wrong, just not scientific. Just ask Dr. Special. There are all kinds of ways to be "a little pregnant." Human life starts out all bound up with other life, we don't start out as separate. We actually don't become separate people for a long, long time. I am my baby, my baby is me, right now. It's also a little MFP. It's a life-threatening medical condition. I think if we respected the realities of this whole, incredibly complicated process more, legislators and others wouldn't constantly be attacking women for navigating it. I've said it before, being "a little pregnant" for so much of last year, and now again, has only confirmed and emboldened my commitment to reproductive rights. This stage is bewildering and scary; it is utterly unjust to put roadblocks up that force a woman to go through it when she doesn't want to. I respect parenthood too much for that. I respect parenthood enough to plan it, to choose it deliberately. In good time: B'Sha'ah Tovah.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Here we go again
We were so nervous last night. Knowing that I have to take a pregnancy test after 14 days of taking progesterone every month has been so nerve-wracking. This was the fifth time, and each time the fear of how sad we'd be got worse, despite knowing that we kept being sad and it was okay. It's just so hard to want something and know it's out of my control. My temp dropped the day before so I thought, I'm probably out again. Then this. I had set a timer and wasn't going to look beforehand but MFP glanced before the timer was up and just held it up to me and said, "Look!" We were so happy! He was joyful too. Much better than pregnancy #2. I was so happy then, but he was just worried. Terrified. I know some women go through this four, five, six, even more times: a positive pregnancy test, then a miscarriage. Maybe that'll be me too. Right now I just feel so grateful. I'm grateful. So grateful to be pregnant again, like I wanted to be. To have another shot at loving someone. Just right now, right now is good. I have to keep telling myself that if I start bleeding tomorrow and it's all over, I wasn't wrong to be happy now, to feel grateful now. I'm grateful that the positive line is strong and unmistakeable. I'm grateful that MFP is happy too. I'm grateful--very grateful--that right now at least, we aren't dealing with the secondary problem of infertility. Just recurrent miscarriage still. I don't need to go on Clomid, to get shots, to have an IUI, to have MFP masturbate into a cup. We were willing and ready to do it a month from now if necessary, but we didn't get there. Whew. I'm grateful that I've been loving this baby even before it existed, taking my extra folic acid and my prenatal vitamin and my prenatal DHA, even though for a while there I felt like an imposter, taking all those for two years with no luck. I remember after our first miscarriage we learned that this is out of our control. We learned that we can help or hinder, but ultimately the power to ensure that this little bit of life will keep growing and someday become a living breathing human child is out of our control. I have been helping, maybe even the progesterone will help. Oh baby, keep growing. Burrow in there deep. Take your time. I love you right now. I have always loved you. So does MFP. I love you even if I will lose you tomorrow. I love you massively.
I'm out of town, so I have to wait to go in for blood work until Monday. Very different from my last experience with Dr. Keep Trying's office--with BFP (that's "big fat positive," which I learned the hard way after reading infertility boards) #2, I called and got an appointment (admittedly, they squeezed me in for a 6 week appointment then, which I was grateful for). But this time I called Dr. Special's office and they said, can you come in for blood work today? Ha, I wish! I guess after my levels get high enough then they'll schedule an ultrasound. *If*, creation-willing, my levels get high enough, that is. I might wait until then to tell my closest friends. I know if I miscarry again I'll need support, so I might as well share with them before that happens. The circle is going to be damn small though for a while. Right now I'm out of town and I'm kind of okay with telling you, which is to say, just telling myself. I'm happy.
People who have had pregnancy losses probably understand now that that picture I posted up there of a positive pregnancy test has nothing to do with having a baby. No baby shower for me--ever--and no calculating due dates and thinking about plans anytime soon. MFP and I are planning a big work thing that we're going to continue to plan, even though if this pregnancy grows beyond the first trimester I will have a responsibility to cancel it. Those plans will continue apace.
What the positive pregnancy test does tell me is that we don't have infertility. It tells me that we kept trying after traumatic heartbreak we couldn't even have imagined, and so much sadness and despair, and I'm glad we kept trying. It tells me that we have developed some fucking mature self-soothing skills--telling each other over and over last night and even this morning that no matter what happens, we have our great dog--I'll call her Pupstein--we have each other, we have our health, we have our jobs, we have this relaxing week away, and that is always true. That we can be sad and we won't be alone, we'll get through it together. We'll get through this happiness together too. I remember a mentor once told me to try, in an interview, to turn my nervousness into excitement. They're very similar emotions. I'm feeling that today. My chest is constricted, I can tell, and I'm doing this breathing thing I've had for years when I'm stressed--having a hard time getting a deep enough breath. I found a yoga class to go to, stat. My excitement bleeds over into nervousness. Like there's a part of my brain that is saying, "PROTECT YOUR BABY!", a primal, protective, fight or flight part. That part doesn't quite understand about miscarriages being mostly out of my control. But if I take a calm breath and feel the sun on my back and smell the fresh air, it can get the message that I and everyone I love are very safe right now.
MFP is very happy to have caffeinated coffee now whenever he wants. After a friend said she thinks her husband cutting down on coffee helped them get pregnant, he started restricting it. As for me, I'm happy to now have zero coffee and zero alcohol. Dr. Special's orders (I had asked how much). Always going back and forth with well, I can have a little, but not too much, but am I just trying to exert some control when it's really out of my control? Was getting tiring. Now I know for a fact I'm pregnant, I know for a fact I've lost two pregnancies, and it's easier to say none than "well maybe this much." I'm happy I don't have to go back to that acupuncturist across town that was kind of a hassle, and I don't have to feel guilty like, "maybe if I went I'd have a kid."
The thing with pregnancy symptoms is that the progesterone mimics them. That has sucked about being on it. Swelling of my fingers so bad that my rings don't fit any more (edema), that's a side effect; so's breast pain; even nausea and constipation. I've had all those. Today my boobs are okay but man, last week, when I was also noticing a temp dip (maybe the fabled ovulation dip? Or total bullshit randomness?), my breasts hurt something awful--a sharp pain. Ow. Now they're just vaguely sore if I touch them. Now I don't mind having to wear my rings on my pinky finger. I'm pregnant! That sounds much better to tell myself than "I'm on progesterone to try unsuccessfully to have a kid!" I need to remember to drink lots of water--I've been trying to already recently because of my swollen fingers, my swollen everything--my skirt barely fit the other day. An annoying reality when you're not pregnant, but a much, much less annoying one when I am. Fuck it, negative body image!
I'm grateful that, unlike pregnancy #2, I have had zero spotting. No "implantation spotting," nothing. I hope, like with pregnancy #1, I never have any spotting. Except I hope that, unlike pregnancy #1, I get to see a heartbeat. Hope is hard. I want to stay in the present. A bright, dark positive today instead of a negative. But like a blogger who's lost a child wrote recently, "Hope never killed a baby." It's safe to hope. I'm not inviting misfortune, and if misfortune happens, I'll try not to be ashamed of the joy I've felt today. Maybe I'll have a baby before I turn 36...that's a long way off, a long road ahead. Just yesterday I was emailing a friend about how when I turned on social media yesterday I saw not one, not two, but THREE birth announcements from random people I barely know. How I wished I was feeling that joy! Just when I was trying to focus on the great aspects of my life as they are right now, and maybe even try to savor not having a kid. One thing about anticipating a negative pregnancy test after recurrent miscarriage, I was thinking yesterday, is it's hard not to think like it's the most important thing in our life. Because last year we lost with the miscarriage #1 what we realized, especially afterward, was the most important thing in our lives. And *not* getting pregnant again can feel like a mini-repeat of that, rather than just a bummer on our longer journey. It's true, though, that this pregnancy is my favorite thing I've got going on. I've got MFP, Pupstein, my health, my job, my own ongoing healing journey, my volunteering, my friends, my home--but this is my favorite thing. My most important thing. My child deserves that love. Now I just need to focus on all those other things that haven't changed since yesterday, to let go of the need to feel like there's something I need *to do* besides breathe and feel grateful. And tell myself, B'sha'ah tovah.
In closing, here are the two songs MFP and I needed to dance to after we saw that nice dark plus:
Enjoy--we certainly did.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Salt in the wound from your local megacorporation
I signed up for pregnancy email updates with pregnancy #2 in a vain attempt to make my hopes concrete. Despite un subscribing in every way possible, I have still received boxes of formula in the mail (despite never giving out my address?). Tonight my barren self got "welcomed into the sisterhood of motherhood" by Similac, timed right after my former due date. I wish I could shove this down the CEOs throat. This has to have happened to other women. It's so ridiculously awful it's almost funny.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Asking for help is...a good idea?
So after the big disappointment around month #4, MFP had the bright idea of calling to make an appointment with Dr. Special (the infertility specialist we started seeing for recurrent miscarriages). I was like, isn't this a bit jumping the gun, since we said we'd wait till after month #6 ended in defeat to talk about infertility? He had some questions about sex, specifically, what to do about those months when the flashing smiley face on the Ovulation Predictor Kit lasts for days and days before we get to the solid smiley face, meaning, it's O-time. MFP was worried that what has at times ended up being 8 day sex marathons might mean that *his* fertility had declined by the time mine was at its peak. And I had ridiculous worries like, could it be possible that the progesterone Dr. Special prescribed could be hampering my ability to get pregnant, potentially? I also thought, okay, maybe we are looking at post-recurrent miscarriage secondary infertility. If so, it would be nice to know that there's not just some cliff we get pushed off of at the end of 6 months of this latest regime of trying, and instead, get a sense of what the next steps would be. And even though these questions could really be answered with a phone call, as you know, doctors don't really work like that; you have to ask a nurse who asks the doctor and then calls you back and then leaves a message and then you call back and then they say the nurse will call you back and hopefully phone tag ends. And I didn't feel so comfortable calling a nurse and talking to her about last month's 8 day sex marathon and admitting our total ignorance about how sperm work. But I also didn't feel comfortable about asking Dr. Special that in person, and I had this fear that I would go to the doctor and be told I was really over-reacting, we should just sit tight and call her when 6 months are up, and "why did you make this appointment again? Everything's fine! Just relax! I'm sure if you stop thinking about it you'll get pregnant right away!" As though Dr. Special would respond like 99% of other women I encounter instead of, you know, as a doctor. [One of the reasons I worried about being seen as being *too* pro-active is because last year, I was getting worried about infertility post-miscarriage #1 and made an appointment with Dr. Keep Trying for an infertility consultation and possibly a referral. Then I got sort-of pregnant. And was poo-pooed the whole time when I worried about all the spotting until, yep, that's a miscarriage, and oops, looks like it might be ectopic. Afterward, when Dr. Keep Trying ordered some blood tests to do a workup for any possible causes of the 2 miscarriages, she was like, you don't need to see a specialist about recurrent miscarriages/infertility yet, not till after 3 miscarriages, but then I went and did so anyway and I'm so glad I did. A friend told me about her experience having a D&C post-miscarriage when working with Dr. Special's office and it was sooooo much better than mine, at a huge hospital. I just thought, a) I want to know the latest research about things like progesterone and folic acid and if there's anything I can do to prevent another loss and b) if I have another miscarriage, I'd much rather go through it in a doctor's office than surrounded by a lecture hall full of students and residents I've never met before. Grrr bad memory. Anyway.]
So I called and made the appointment, and the nurse was like, what's this for? Questions? Okay I'll schedule you for a consultation. And I worried that we'd lose a whole morning driving out to the far reaches of town only to be greeted by nonplussed people wondering why we were there. And who also would be pretty disdainful of how little I know about sex. I'm happy to report that I was wrong and MFP was so right. I see how I assume that asking for help leaves me vulnerable to having really unpleasant judgments and reactions from people--to being told that I was doing wrong; to leave feeling ashamed. This makes a lot of sense given my traumatic upbringing. Yet MFP made an assumption about what would happen with Dr. Special based on--get this--our prior interactions with her, all of which have left us feeling good, hopeful, glad we reached out. And today was no different. Now I feel like if I get my period after cycle #6, that day I have something concrete to do: call her office, and initiate The Plan. We have next steps to take, we have a plan B (though at this point, it feels like a plan D, given all of our prior efforts). I also got a peek at this outlook--that I doubt I'll be able to hold on to most of the time, but it's a welcome reprieve--that this is an ongoing project. We've been doing some housework lately and that's an idea I find comforting there as well, when I get overwhelmed that there's always more to do--that a house is an ongoing project, not something that's ever "finished" and static. And we are in the game of parenting. It's just something we're working on. That helps get me out of the view of thinking in terms of success and failure; like last year we had two big failures and now it feels like every month is its own mini-failure. That's also why I don't like hearing from others, "it will happen," because that's just talking about the end-game, and that end-game could just as easily be "it won't happen"--who knows. We bought a house. It's an ongoing project. We are working on becoming parents. It's an ongoing project. As though I can think of my charting, my OPKing, my lack of caffeine-ing, my grieving for miscarriages, as some kind of crafting. Like I'm sewing a quilt or something in my spare time. And I like thinking about parenting as an ongoing effort, rather than an achievement anyway. This game (though perhaps not this blog) isn't going to end for me once I get a positive pregnancy test, or when I hit 12 weeks healthy gestation, or 20 weeks, or viability (especially not after getting to know the baby loss mothers from the pregnancy loss group), or even when I take home a healthy human child. Not even when that baby leaves me an empty nester; I'll always be its mother, if I should be so lucky to have a safe and healthy child who gets to grow up. I'll always have to be growing and changing and facing heartbreaking challenges and frustrating, repetitive annoyances. And a baby isn't an achievement in any way in terms of making my life meaningful, or being a real or better woman. MFP and I talk about this as, we're in the game. We're proud of that. We started off on this adventure. That was brave of us. It took a lot of commitment. It's put our hearts on the line--god knows that's true. It can be a brutal, heart wrenching game. We're going to stay in the game. And a lot of it is out of our control. Whether we get pregnant again; whether we carry that baby to term; whether our baby is healthy and gets a chance to grow up safely; who that child becomes. Just both of us choosing to go on this adventure is an achievement I hope I'll always be proud of--I put my heart on the line. I took a risk for a meaningful experience I really wanted to have in my "one wild and precious life." We're seeing what happens.
The content of the visit consisted of Dr. Special letting us know that these OPKs that have the flashing smiley for "High Fertility" are basically bogus. All you need is the regular ones that show up the smiley face when I'm ovulating (they're cheaper too--wish I'd known this earlier), and then have sex for three days. What a relief. Some months, like this month, the "High Fertility" days never show up and it goes straight to the solid smiley, ovulation; but other months, I get like 4 or 5 days of flashing smiley faces. And MFP and I get burnt out on sex under pressure for a consecutive week or so. It's a feast-or-famine sex life, because before and afterwards, we feel like we need to rest up in case the next month's marathon is a long one again. Knowing that really, I just need to worry about three days makes it seem more plausible that the rest of the month we can actually have sex however and whenever the hell we feel like it, instead of always being grieving post-miscarriage non-parents desperate to have a baby, and organizing every last intimate bit of our lives around it.
And we made a post-cycle #6 plan. I'll call on day one and go on Clomid and start getting monitored. MFP might do a sperm analysis, and depending on the results of that, we might go straight for IUI--intra-uterine-insemination, or else just get some in-office monitoring of when I ovulate and do it the old-fashioned way. She said that I'll also get monitoring to see if Clomid is working for me or if I need to try a different infertility drug (I didn't even know there were different drugs!). Dr. Special said that 85% of women get pregnant within 3 months of using the drug, which was also a relief, because at least there's a time frame for knowing if this round of attempts worked; I don't just get sent on some infinite quest. From there there's other options I guess, like IVF, and of course, MFP and I are open to adoption too. But the point is, the ongoing project continues; it has a map of potential roads to go down. I can imagine that day--the day I officially have diagnosed infertility post-miscarriages, and how sad and angry I'll feel. I'm glad to know that I'll at least have something I can *do* that day, some action I can take. There's so little that's in our control in this process; it's nice to feel that something at least is in my control.
Lastly, and kind of off-the-cuff, Dr. Special shared that what we're going through had happened to her too: she'd had two miscarriages, and then had infertility. She said, "I hadn't told you that?" She'd mentioned she had had a miscarriage once but I didn't know about multiple ones, or the infertility. I nearly cried, seriously. I don't know--it just meant that much to me, that this person with all this power and expertise was sharing this with me, that she'd been where I was sitting. She said she was in her late 30s and she was like, "come on!"--as we were, after we'd at first thought we were fertility gods, considering pregnancy #1 happened fast--and she had had to try more than one fertility drug, but then she did IUI and it worked. I'm so glad she shared that. It gave me hope. I hear a lot of stories from people, usually horrifying ones ("so and so had a billion miscarriages! And now she has a kid after 1300 rounds of IVF and it's all great!"), but this one was in the first person, it came from my *doctor,* and it really gave me hope. She shared that she understood how we are feeling. That like with every miscarriage, you get so close and then you use all these months. And then you get older in the meantime, as if to rub salt in the wound. That post-recurrent-miscarriage feels like a double-whammy. I remember when I called Dr. Keep Trying's office this year to hear she was on maternity leave--which means she was very pregnant under that white coat when all the fucked up shit went down with my D&C (not her fault; she was ill unexpectedly, and now I know likely why--something pregnancy-related). And she already had kids, plural, so this was kid #3! I actually really like her, she's been helpful to me, but how I wished I could have kids so seemingly easily like her. The gulf between us widened: helper, helped; knowledgeable one, passive recipient; woman holding the probe, woman being probed; and now childless and mother of at least 3. Like I said, I'm not saying I won't go back to Dr. Keep Trying; I am just saying it felt really good to hear Dr. Special's personal story, in a brief, but really meaningful way. I'm really vulnerable in there, getting prodded and probed and pumped full of hormones and talking about my sex life and my most painful recent losses, and I feel lucky that my doctor not only is caring, but also has had a window into what this feels like. I see how I see her--a smart, kind, empowered women who had some shit luck and faced it, and and then found some better luck--and I can start to see myself that way more often too, instead of, well, worse than that.
So yeah, MFP showed me something about myself today, about the way I assume that asking for help will feel bad, when actually, it can feel really good. I have a lot better attitude about the whole endeavor. Last thing to share: last year I got kind of fascinated by the Jewish superstition against having baby showers. I was thinking about it today when a fellow infertility friend and I talked about how intolerable it can be to be around pregnant women, especially ones we know have gotten pregnant easily, while we suffer through disappointments and despair and shots and emotion-intensifying drugs. Jewish superstition holds that baby showers and other preparations for a baby's birth can invite the "evil eye" of others that can then somehow mar the pregnancy's outcome. Shit, I realized, I totally have the evil eye, and so does my friend with infertility. I turn away, either tearful or scowling to hide the tears. I don't believe this affects anyone negatively, but I do kind of like the idea of not counting your chickens before they're hatched. Of at least acknowledging how frequent pregnancy loss and stillbirth is. Of how lucky, really, it is, to bring home and raise a healthy child; that misfortune in this arena doesn't only happen to "other" people. I read that instead of saying "Mazel tov" or "Congratulations" to people expecting a baby, it's customary to say "B'sha'ah tovah," or "In good time." YES, exactly. If I am lucky enough to get pregnant again, that's what I want to hear. In good time. Not a moment sooner. Grow and develop in good time, don't come out too soon, don't die before you've had a chance to live. And let us all be patient during that time. May it all be in good time. Maybe, if I can figure out how to pronounce it, I can practice saying to myself, "B'sha'ah tovah" to others who playing the part of the game of parenting I desperately want to play in, instead of scowling with resentment, or (only) crying "I-would-have-had-a-seven-month-old-or-newborn-by-now" tears. Small goals: maybe not every time, but I'll try it once, how's that?
So I called and made the appointment, and the nurse was like, what's this for? Questions? Okay I'll schedule you for a consultation. And I worried that we'd lose a whole morning driving out to the far reaches of town only to be greeted by nonplussed people wondering why we were there. And who also would be pretty disdainful of how little I know about sex. I'm happy to report that I was wrong and MFP was so right. I see how I assume that asking for help leaves me vulnerable to having really unpleasant judgments and reactions from people--to being told that I was doing wrong; to leave feeling ashamed. This makes a lot of sense given my traumatic upbringing. Yet MFP made an assumption about what would happen with Dr. Special based on--get this--our prior interactions with her, all of which have left us feeling good, hopeful, glad we reached out. And today was no different. Now I feel like if I get my period after cycle #6, that day I have something concrete to do: call her office, and initiate The Plan. We have next steps to take, we have a plan B (though at this point, it feels like a plan D, given all of our prior efforts). I also got a peek at this outlook--that I doubt I'll be able to hold on to most of the time, but it's a welcome reprieve--that this is an ongoing project. We've been doing some housework lately and that's an idea I find comforting there as well, when I get overwhelmed that there's always more to do--that a house is an ongoing project, not something that's ever "finished" and static. And we are in the game of parenting. It's just something we're working on. That helps get me out of the view of thinking in terms of success and failure; like last year we had two big failures and now it feels like every month is its own mini-failure. That's also why I don't like hearing from others, "it will happen," because that's just talking about the end-game, and that end-game could just as easily be "it won't happen"--who knows. We bought a house. It's an ongoing project. We are working on becoming parents. It's an ongoing project. As though I can think of my charting, my OPKing, my lack of caffeine-ing, my grieving for miscarriages, as some kind of crafting. Like I'm sewing a quilt or something in my spare time. And I like thinking about parenting as an ongoing effort, rather than an achievement anyway. This game (though perhaps not this blog) isn't going to end for me once I get a positive pregnancy test, or when I hit 12 weeks healthy gestation, or 20 weeks, or viability (especially not after getting to know the baby loss mothers from the pregnancy loss group), or even when I take home a healthy human child. Not even when that baby leaves me an empty nester; I'll always be its mother, if I should be so lucky to have a safe and healthy child who gets to grow up. I'll always have to be growing and changing and facing heartbreaking challenges and frustrating, repetitive annoyances. And a baby isn't an achievement in any way in terms of making my life meaningful, or being a real or better woman. MFP and I talk about this as, we're in the game. We're proud of that. We started off on this adventure. That was brave of us. It took a lot of commitment. It's put our hearts on the line--god knows that's true. It can be a brutal, heart wrenching game. We're going to stay in the game. And a lot of it is out of our control. Whether we get pregnant again; whether we carry that baby to term; whether our baby is healthy and gets a chance to grow up safely; who that child becomes. Just both of us choosing to go on this adventure is an achievement I hope I'll always be proud of--I put my heart on the line. I took a risk for a meaningful experience I really wanted to have in my "one wild and precious life." We're seeing what happens.
The content of the visit consisted of Dr. Special letting us know that these OPKs that have the flashing smiley for "High Fertility" are basically bogus. All you need is the regular ones that show up the smiley face when I'm ovulating (they're cheaper too--wish I'd known this earlier), and then have sex for three days. What a relief. Some months, like this month, the "High Fertility" days never show up and it goes straight to the solid smiley, ovulation; but other months, I get like 4 or 5 days of flashing smiley faces. And MFP and I get burnt out on sex under pressure for a consecutive week or so. It's a feast-or-famine sex life, because before and afterwards, we feel like we need to rest up in case the next month's marathon is a long one again. Knowing that really, I just need to worry about three days makes it seem more plausible that the rest of the month we can actually have sex however and whenever the hell we feel like it, instead of always being grieving post-miscarriage non-parents desperate to have a baby, and organizing every last intimate bit of our lives around it.
And we made a post-cycle #6 plan. I'll call on day one and go on Clomid and start getting monitored. MFP might do a sperm analysis, and depending on the results of that, we might go straight for IUI--intra-uterine-insemination, or else just get some in-office monitoring of when I ovulate and do it the old-fashioned way. She said that I'll also get monitoring to see if Clomid is working for me or if I need to try a different infertility drug (I didn't even know there were different drugs!). Dr. Special said that 85% of women get pregnant within 3 months of using the drug, which was also a relief, because at least there's a time frame for knowing if this round of attempts worked; I don't just get sent on some infinite quest. From there there's other options I guess, like IVF, and of course, MFP and I are open to adoption too. But the point is, the ongoing project continues; it has a map of potential roads to go down. I can imagine that day--the day I officially have diagnosed infertility post-miscarriages, and how sad and angry I'll feel. I'm glad to know that I'll at least have something I can *do* that day, some action I can take. There's so little that's in our control in this process; it's nice to feel that something at least is in my control.
Lastly, and kind of off-the-cuff, Dr. Special shared that what we're going through had happened to her too: she'd had two miscarriages, and then had infertility. She said, "I hadn't told you that?" She'd mentioned she had had a miscarriage once but I didn't know about multiple ones, or the infertility. I nearly cried, seriously. I don't know--it just meant that much to me, that this person with all this power and expertise was sharing this with me, that she'd been where I was sitting. She said she was in her late 30s and she was like, "come on!"--as we were, after we'd at first thought we were fertility gods, considering pregnancy #1 happened fast--and she had had to try more than one fertility drug, but then she did IUI and it worked. I'm so glad she shared that. It gave me hope. I hear a lot of stories from people, usually horrifying ones ("so and so had a billion miscarriages! And now she has a kid after 1300 rounds of IVF and it's all great!"), but this one was in the first person, it came from my *doctor,* and it really gave me hope. She shared that she understood how we are feeling. That like with every miscarriage, you get so close and then you use all these months. And then you get older in the meantime, as if to rub salt in the wound. That post-recurrent-miscarriage feels like a double-whammy. I remember when I called Dr. Keep Trying's office this year to hear she was on maternity leave--which means she was very pregnant under that white coat when all the fucked up shit went down with my D&C (not her fault; she was ill unexpectedly, and now I know likely why--something pregnancy-related). And she already had kids, plural, so this was kid #3! I actually really like her, she's been helpful to me, but how I wished I could have kids so seemingly easily like her. The gulf between us widened: helper, helped; knowledgeable one, passive recipient; woman holding the probe, woman being probed; and now childless and mother of at least 3. Like I said, I'm not saying I won't go back to Dr. Keep Trying; I am just saying it felt really good to hear Dr. Special's personal story, in a brief, but really meaningful way. I'm really vulnerable in there, getting prodded and probed and pumped full of hormones and talking about my sex life and my most painful recent losses, and I feel lucky that my doctor not only is caring, but also has had a window into what this feels like. I see how I see her--a smart, kind, empowered women who had some shit luck and faced it, and and then found some better luck--and I can start to see myself that way more often too, instead of, well, worse than that.
So yeah, MFP showed me something about myself today, about the way I assume that asking for help will feel bad, when actually, it can feel really good. I have a lot better attitude about the whole endeavor. Last thing to share: last year I got kind of fascinated by the Jewish superstition against having baby showers. I was thinking about it today when a fellow infertility friend and I talked about how intolerable it can be to be around pregnant women, especially ones we know have gotten pregnant easily, while we suffer through disappointments and despair and shots and emotion-intensifying drugs. Jewish superstition holds that baby showers and other preparations for a baby's birth can invite the "evil eye" of others that can then somehow mar the pregnancy's outcome. Shit, I realized, I totally have the evil eye, and so does my friend with infertility. I turn away, either tearful or scowling to hide the tears. I don't believe this affects anyone negatively, but I do kind of like the idea of not counting your chickens before they're hatched. Of at least acknowledging how frequent pregnancy loss and stillbirth is. Of how lucky, really, it is, to bring home and raise a healthy child; that misfortune in this arena doesn't only happen to "other" people. I read that instead of saying "Mazel tov" or "Congratulations" to people expecting a baby, it's customary to say "B'sha'ah tovah," or "In good time." YES, exactly. If I am lucky enough to get pregnant again, that's what I want to hear. In good time. Not a moment sooner. Grow and develop in good time, don't come out too soon, don't die before you've had a chance to live. And let us all be patient during that time. May it all be in good time. Maybe, if I can figure out how to pronounce it, I can practice saying to myself, "B'sha'ah tovah" to others who playing the part of the game of parenting I desperately want to play in, instead of scowling with resentment, or (only) crying "I-would-have-had-a-seven-month-old-or-newborn-by-now" tears. Small goals: maybe not every time, but I'll try it once, how's that?
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
What to say, what not to say
I think this goes for a lot of kinds of losses, not just miscarriages and infertility. This week I heard, "Call me if you want to talk," and that felt really really good. I think the world would be a better place if those words were said more often.
One thing I liked about the pregnancy loss group was that despite the different reasons why we were there, everyone agreed that no one wanted to hear, "everything happens for a reason." Also, for me, "it will happen" doesn't feel good. The killer is the not knowing, that's what I want support for--and really, the knowing what did happen already, that I was pregnant twice and lost it twice. That just hurts, still, that I could be 9 months pregnant right now, or holding my six month old. I think people say those things because that's what others have said to them when they were hurting in the past, and that's what they tell themselves. Also, they probably feel impatient and annoyed with my pain, maybe just a smidge. People are imperfect, that's okay.
I wish there were one or two more people around I could just cry with, and I'd be happy to return the favor. If only we could get the word out that actually, happiness and fun can actually come right on the heels of that, and it feels way better than just telling ourselves to feel better!
I have to admit though, that people can be pretty cold about miscarriage and infertility. Even stillbirth, people can be really cold about. Maybe because they don't understand it, because there's shame around women's bodies and around pregnancy, so people don't talk about it. But I do think there's a lot of coldness, of impatience with the grieving, of hushing it, like to be sad about it is to be embarrassing yourself. That in itself is sad. And a privileged view to have, to be lucky enough to be able to be ignorant and insensitive about these kinds of losses! I'd like to get even better at responding--like saying, "I know you're saying that to be comforting, but what I'd like to hear is that you know I wish my baby was already here, and it's okay to be sad about that. That would feel really good." Not that I'd change people. Some people just already know to say things that feel comforting. But responding that way also would help me not to internalize those messages saying basically not to be sad.
One thing I liked about the pregnancy loss group was that despite the different reasons why we were there, everyone agreed that no one wanted to hear, "everything happens for a reason." Also, for me, "it will happen" doesn't feel good. The killer is the not knowing, that's what I want support for--and really, the knowing what did happen already, that I was pregnant twice and lost it twice. That just hurts, still, that I could be 9 months pregnant right now, or holding my six month old. I think people say those things because that's what others have said to them when they were hurting in the past, and that's what they tell themselves. Also, they probably feel impatient and annoyed with my pain, maybe just a smidge. People are imperfect, that's okay.
I wish there were one or two more people around I could just cry with, and I'd be happy to return the favor. If only we could get the word out that actually, happiness and fun can actually come right on the heels of that, and it feels way better than just telling ourselves to feel better!
I have to admit though, that people can be pretty cold about miscarriage and infertility. Even stillbirth, people can be really cold about. Maybe because they don't understand it, because there's shame around women's bodies and around pregnancy, so people don't talk about it. But I do think there's a lot of coldness, of impatience with the grieving, of hushing it, like to be sad about it is to be embarrassing yourself. That in itself is sad. And a privileged view to have, to be lucky enough to be able to be ignorant and insensitive about these kinds of losses! I'd like to get even better at responding--like saying, "I know you're saying that to be comforting, but what I'd like to hear is that you know I wish my baby was already here, and it's okay to be sad about that. That would feel really good." Not that I'd change people. Some people just already know to say things that feel comforting. But responding that way also would help me not to internalize those messages saying basically not to be sad.
Game on
My first impulse when I'm sad is to isolate. But earlier this week, I reached out more and I'm glad I did. I went back to acupuncture, but to the community clinic by my house, not the doctors office across town. I liked the herbal teas the doctor was making for me, but for whatever reason going there had come to feel like a burden. One of the acupuncturists at the community clinic referred me there after miscarriage #2. I got pregnant when I was doing acupuncture there twice last year, so I figured I'd better try it again. I won't be trying to get pregnant forever, I can give this a go again. I like sitting in the recliners rather than laying down in a room in the doctors office, and the acupuncturists near my house are so soft-spoken and gentle. After I went it was like pricking a balloon of sadness--I left and just sobbed. I needed to. I called my friend. I curled up with MFP and our dog licked my face and when my friend called back I just told her all about where we're at with trying to have a kid and she just listened and was supportive and asked questions but didn't give any advice or make any promises, and since then I've been feeling a lot better. Nothing has changed, but I just have this sense of, we just have to stick it out. See this through. Stay in the game. I told MFP, I imagine a coach giving a pep talk: "Look team, it's been two years and two miscarriages, and does anyone think we're down? No! We'll show em! We're gonna go out there and we're going to keep trying! We're not going to give up yet! What are we gonna do? Exactly what we've been doing! And we're not going to give up until we're down for the count! We're going to count the days! We're going to take my temperature! We're going to limit caffeine and pee on sticks! We're going to time sex right and face game time next month, that's what we're going to do! This is Day One! Let's do this!"
We're going to have a baby "by hook or by crook," as MFP says. It's not time yet to stop trying biologically and pursue adoption, but if we get there, we're gonna go for it. In the meantime were going to stick it out. Month #5 of serious trying in a row, with progesterone. Month #8 since the last miscarriage. Here we go. Day 2.
It's so beautiful out today. I wish I had my baby to share it with, or at least one on the way. I feel angry I can't make it happen. Like I've been waiting in line at the DMV for two years, I'm impatient. We'll stay the course. And breathe and try to have fun and reach out for as much kindness and support as we can along the way.
We're going to have a baby "by hook or by crook," as MFP says. It's not time yet to stop trying biologically and pursue adoption, but if we get there, we're gonna go for it. In the meantime were going to stick it out. Month #5 of serious trying in a row, with progesterone. Month #8 since the last miscarriage. Here we go. Day 2.
It's so beautiful out today. I wish I had my baby to share it with, or at least one on the way. I feel angry I can't make it happen. Like I've been waiting in line at the DMV for two years, I'm impatient. We'll stay the course. And breathe and try to have fun and reach out for as much kindness and support as we can along the way.
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