18 weeks tomorrow

I found this piece of writing today as I was cleaning up my hard drive.  Zowie.  Brings me right back.  I think I wrote it during the summer of 2012 after an upsetting conversation with a friend.  I never sent it to her but it felt very, very good to write:

“When I think about our conversation about infertility I feel really upset. I have been trying to identify what was upsetting about it (besides being about something that is just upsetting). When I think about it I feel irritated, sad, frustrated, disappointed and angry. I have been trying to identify where those feelings are coming from in me. I know you are on my side and want to help me and that when we talk your intention is to be supportive. I think I have figured out what would help me feel supported when we talk about it.

When I talk about infertility I need you to just listen and hold the space for me to talk about my feelings and ideas. When you make suggestions about what might be causing our infertility or what might help it can feel like criticism of our process or like an assignment for me to add to my list of things to do (like: “have you thought of/heard of x?” can feel like “why haven’t you” or “you should”). Likewise for sharing what worked for you (like the OPK). When you ask questions it can feel like an evaluation or assessment of how we are approaching the problem – questions about how long/regular my cycle is, how I know if I am ovulating, anything like that feels like analysis or like a test of my data collection abilities. I know that you can relate to having physical struggles that take up a lot of time, energy and money and that you have a lot of experience with approaches of healing. There might be times when I want to pick your brain about what you think might help us or what you have heard/experienced about this or that. If I do I will be explicit about it. Otherwise what I really need is someone to listen deeply without offering advice/information, just unconditional, non-judgemental support. Basically, when I talk about infertility I am not asking you to solve the problem in any way. Just hold me and hear me as I walk this path.

I wish I could bring you inside this experience so that I could show you why I need this but I don’t know how to do that. It is a sad, sad, sad place where hope feels poisonous. Hope is inextricably linked to disappointment and grief. May you never experience infertility but if you do I have no doubt that you and I would make different choices, pursue different ideas, feel a different spectrum of feelings, use different coping strategies. There is no “right” way to deal with infertility. I can only do this my own way. This cycle is feeling very different for some reason. I am delving into the experience in a new way. I noticed a lot of similar feelings the last time I talked about it with a couple of my friends (who both had their own struggles with infertility). I left that conversation with the same feelings I described above. I felt misunderstood and unsupported and judged. I felt like I didn’t want to talk with them about it anymore. I felt that yesterday with you, too. I really need to talk about this with someone other than my husband and my various caregivers.

I am in a really, really hard spot right now. A real low point. Usually at this time in my cycle I am getting into “trying” mode, feeling like “maybe this will be the time we conceive.” I am feeling that way sort of but on this other level I am watching those feelings arise and in the process of that watching I feel devastating despair and sadness, like I am already getting my next period, like I know I will never be pregnant/birth a baby again. It’s so awful. These are the things I need to say to you, tell you about, know that you hear and just be held.

Sometimes I wish I could stop my cycle all together, make it go away. Last night Brendan and I had the most lovely time together reading our book and then having the best sexual time together we’ve had in really long time. I felt so close him and happy to know him and have him in my life. It was day 10, the desire to have sex did not have anything to do with conceiving, it was just about us. But of course, it’s there: I couldn’t help but be aware of little things like how my cervix felt or blah, blah, blah and of course today my mind is doing its thing: “hmmm, we have almost never had sex on day 10, maybe I have just been ovulating really early and maybe that explains my shorter cycles, too but that’s not what my temperatures show and what’s that sensation there? and and and and and.” It’s awful. We had such a nice time. But it feels tainted, ruined, mangled.

Yesterday in the car I was listening to a sad love song that had a lyric like, “I’ll never kiss those sweet lips again” and for me it was a song about never kissing my imagined baby’s lips.

I feel baby flutters in my belly.

When a small infant sucks on my finger (a frequent experience given my work) my uterus contracts and my breasts have that “letting down” feeling.

I experience all these things with a kind of horror.

 

These are the things I need to tell you and know you hear and be held.”

 

 

∞

17 weeks, 1 day

No news is good news?

I don’t know.  It took WEEKS, not days for them to determine which antibody I had.  Three blood draws.  They finally figured out I have Lutheran group B antibody.  It’s not the “worst” type to have but mostly it’s rare so they really can’t tell me a whole lot yet.  We have scheduled a level 2 ultrasound and a meeting with a maternal-fetal medicine specialist.  That’s a week from Monday, ten days.  Feels like a lifetime.

CONSIDERING, I have been doing pretty well.  I went from being as close to suicidal as I’ve ever been to somehow coming out of the fog and going about most days as though everything is going to be fine.  I’ve been busy which helps.  And it’s the time of year I am filled with hope in general and make a lot of lists and connect to joy more easily.  I have high hopes for our garden and re-newed commitment to the health and wellbeing of our herd of goats and flock of hens.  I am even cleaning the house more and making the bed and finding pleasure in the little things.  Is this a seasonal thing?  Is it a coping strategy?  Is it hormone induced nesting?  Maybe all of the above.  I am eager to finish work related things and simplify my life down to family, friends, farm and home.  

I made a registry.

I didn’t do that with our son.  Then, I was determined to find everything used and have as few Things as possible.  Not so, this time around.  I am reveling in my internet window shopping and list-making.  There’s a thing around here, a depot at someone’s house where anyone can drop off or pick used baby stuff.  As a service provider, I refer people to this resource all the time.  Yesterday for the first time I went there to rummage around for my self.  Then I came home and took out all the clothes I had collected so far and went through them again, casting off some things and sorting them by size and function.  It was deeply satisfying and pleasurable.  I spent the rest of the afternoon playing on the registry.  I counted and sorted all the diapers and blankets and whatnot.  Oh, it was lovely.  I went trolling around on various cloth diaper sites, some very familiar from my first round and posted questions on our local cloth diapering FB group.  It was SO fun!  SO intensely fun and joyful.  I picked out some simple, plain, white organic cotton  tops, some bright, colorful wool diaper covers and beautiful printed fitteds.  My mind’s eye is filled with the image/sensation of dressing my little one and having my baby in my arms. 

(Here come the waterworks as I write…) 

I showed the registry to my husband, who hates to buy things and is a committed anti-consumer guy.  He was luke warm.  Not surprising.  But for some reason his lack of enthusiasm pulled the plug on my pleasure and joy and as I fell asleep I was filled with fear again and doubt.  This morning I longed to turn on the computer and look at the registry again.  I realized that on that silly website my baby lives.  Making it and tending it and looking at it means we are having a baby, that we will step off this bridge between the world of infertility and the world where our family is whole and burn it down!!!  I never, never, never want to go back and right now, the registry is my lifeline. 

∞

(14 weeks, 3 days)

A routine blood antibody screening came back positive.  They re-tested and it came back positive again.  The sample is being analyzed now to find out more.  We should have more information on Monday.

From what I understand the positive result indicates that my body is creating antibodies against the baby’s blood.  This means our blood may have come in contact – no one can figure out when that could have happened.  This type of sensitization can be caused by missed miscarriages for example but at least one of the midwives we talked to asserted that this condition must be recent since my pre-IVF bloodwork would have shown the antibodies.  This screening coming back positive is uncommon so there just isn’t that much known about what it means for management.  It is similar to what happens with Rh sensitization (which is much more common) but it’s not that.

There is a range of what this all means.  We could find out that’s it’s no big deal and my pregnancy will continue to be considered normal and low risk.  Depending on what type and the amount of antibodies (which they are figuring out but don’t know yet) it could mean that I will be considered high risk, need a lot of monitoring and possibly need long term prenatal hospitalization.  It could also mean (the most rare, worst case scenario) that this baby will not survive.  The risk to the baby is fetal anemia.

It has been a pretty hellish couple of days.  The first we heard about this was Thursday.  I cried all the way home.  After putting our son to sleep I had another bout of intense crying.  The following morning (after learning it was not a lab error but a true positive) I had another very intense cry.  Just now I tried to attend a party at my husband’s work and didn’t talk to one person before I turned to him and said, “This is not where I need to be right now.”  And I left.

There are lots of truly awful, shitty things about this situation but one of the very worst is the wedge it drives between myself and my husband.  When I am this upset I cannot find a way to feel connected to him.  I push him away, direct my anger and frustration toward him or just hide.  It’s AWFUL.  My anguish and grief in the face of any possibility except a live, healthy baby is incapacitating.  For the first time since I found out we conceived I have an actual, concrete reason to be afraid.  And it is bumping me right back to that horrible place I was in for so long during the years of infertility.  Except worse.  Actually, truly worse.  These past few months, especially the past few weeks I have been more joyful, more positive, more happy to be alive than I have been in years.  These past few days I have felt that I do not want to live without this baby surviving.  And that is TERRIFYING.  What about my son?  What about my partner, my friends, my work, leaves, sunshine, all these things that otherwise make my life rich and meaningful and worth it?  I feel hijacked by this need, this desire, this fixation and I feel POWERLESS to change that. ∞

11 weeks, 2 days pregnant

This afternoon I asked my son to help me make a pregnancy announcement video.  I saw someone a few years ago post a video of their 11-year-old daughter holding up signs that said, “For 11 years I have been an only child…” and so on announcing the pregnancy of her sibling.  I, of course, burst into tears when I saw it (tearing up now!).  It gave me hope.  Every time I saw evidence that widely spaced children existed, it gave me hope.  It also filled me with longing.  Since I saw that I have fantasized about making a similar announcement.  I’ve been waiting to make a public (aka Facebook) pregnancy announcement until we reach 12 weeks.  We’re so close!  It’s become this marker in my mind.  I KNOW intellectually that reaching 12 weeks does not magically guarantee we’re having a baby BUT it still feels huge.  It’s when it’s socially acceptable to be public about pregnancy and that feels more significant than the reduced risk of miscarriage.  I noticed today that it is kind of looming in my mind and that it feels like a pretty big deal to make any kind of announcement at all.  I am looking forward to it and fearful at the same time.  I am also feeling a bit superstitious about it.  My son did not want to help me fulfill my video with signs fantasy.  Fair enough.  I knew that was one of the possible realities.  And I only wanted to do it if he was excited about it.  He is definitely skittish about this whole baby thing.  We told him after our first ultrasound (7 weeks, 2 days).  The infertility clinic gave us the green light to seek regular pregnancy care.  That was an awesome day.  Seeing that little heart beating!  One giant step towards healing after infertility.  Up until that point I felt so guarded.  What if it was ectopic?  And what if it was twins (I was terrified of twins)?  Being released from the care of RE felt amazing!  We could NOT leave the office soon enough.  We never wanted to be there in the first place, we didn’t particularly like any of the people we interacted with (except one nurse who wasn’t even there that day) and we found the IVF experience to be pretty traumatic all around (worth it! but traumatic).  Also, I thought we would need a followup visit with them before we were set loose so to hear that we wouldn’t have to go back there again was an awesome surprise.  We decided on the drive home that we would wait to tell our son but, of course, we couldn’t!  It was too wonderful not to share with him.  So he’s known for a while now.  A couple of times he’s seemed excited but mostly he seems to be ignoring the idea.  A few times he’s expressed a kind of coolness about it.  So when I floated my announcement idea I was not too shocked when he rejected it.  So I found myself casting around for another idea.  That’s when I realized how mixed I felt about it.  So excited.  And also anxious.  I am both bursting to tell everyone and bask in their congratulations and well wishes but also still so fragile.  It is a time a great change and shifting.  Yesterday it really hit me that I will be giving birth again.  That’s no small thing.  I am eight years older and I have seen a whole lot more of this mothering thing.  It’s beginning to seem like we are really having a baby.  Thrilling, exciting, overwhelming, anxiety producing.  A lot of things all at once.  We are in between.

∞

Early pregnancy is such an odd time.  I remember not loving this part my first time around.  Then I had no thoughts about miscarriage (or very few).  I didn’t like the secrecy part and couldn’t wait to be visibly pregnant.  This time I think about loss A LOT.  This time I am pregnant but not “expecting” if that makes any sense.  It’s huge, huge deal to be pregnant, such a shift from trying to conceive.  Over the past few days of adjusting to the news I don’t think quite as much about loss as I did right at first but it’s there.  November feels so soon and also a million years from now.  Again I am impatient to be “out” and big.  Partly because then it will be so much more likely that we will bring a baby home (but still no guarantees).  Partly so that I don’t have to “tell” anyone.  I am really not looking forward to that part.  I’ve only told my parents, sister, acupuncturist, therapist and three friends.  One of those friends is pregnant herself (she lost her last baby at 27 weeks) and the two others gave birth in January after infertility struggles.  So we’re all kind of in the trenches of motherhood and they can understand the mixed feelings these early days bring.  An added weirdness is that many friends know we were doing IVF so I feel like there’s a whole crew of people who know we might be pregnant.  I am weirdly reluctant to share this with them yet.  It’s one of the frustrations of ART that we have had to share our very private, intimate experience with so many people.  I’ve shared it with many friends and co-workers over the years.  I’ve needed to and it has been mostly a positive experience to share our story but this part feels so tender, so in-between.  We are still so raw and it is so new.  I want to hide a while longer.  I feel bad about it, like I am not being a good friend.  Like keeping the news to myself would be ungrateful after all the support I have received.  At the same time there’s something upsetting about anyone thinking I should tell them before I am ready. ∞

Time is moving v e r y  s l o w l y.  “Pregnant” is an alternate reality.  Had bloodwork again this morning and my numbers looked good so there’s nothing to DO until our first ultrasound, scheduled around seven weeks (so three weeks from today).  I guess there’s still a daily list:

Progesterone 3x daily

Estradiol patch every other day

Moxa every night

Eat well, hydrate, move my body

Prenatal vitamin, wheatgrass, red raspberry leaf tea, probiotic

Plus my Lyme regimen

Plus acupuncture once a week (and therapy)

I guess that’s kind of a lot!  But after the tremendous time demands of IVF it seems rather low key.

I am still adjusting to this new reality.  I feel like my whole life, my whole inner and outer landscape has been so shaped by infertility for so long.  These past forty eight hours are the beginning of a rebirth.  I have a strong urge to kick the dust of Infertility off my heals and leave it behind forever.  I am not so sure it will be that easy.  I was quite anxious today about the results of this morning’s bloodwork.  Jumpy every time the phone rang.  I had no reason to suspect bad news.  But after four years of disappointment, it’s my default setting.  And the relief was palpable.  It was like hearing I was pregnant all over again (not quite that dramatic).  I emailed my acupuncturist and my family and the one friend I have kept in close contact with to let them know: “Still pregnant!”

Profound change is underway moment to moment.  I work with mothers and babies as a birth and postpartum doula and have this whole time I’ve been struggling with infertility.  There have been times when I thought I would have to leave my work behind.  That it was too painful to have so much contact with an experience that I longed to experience again.  Early on my work helped me remember how challenging pregnancy, birth and the early days can be.  It helped to temper my longing with caution and realism.  I was also thrilled to be working after spending so many years caring for my own young child day in and day out.  I love my work and it was thrilling to develop myself as a worker in the world beyond my home and family.  But over time my desire to experience pregnancy, birth, infancy and even the terrible toddler years again, to know a person from their first moments, to feel the joy and pleasure babies and young children bring to the world first hand as a parent completely overwhelmed my interest in other work.  I have the whole rest of my life for that.  More and more I have struggled to fully embrace my work.  I am so ready to take a break and turn inward to this new life growing and expanding by the minute.

Last night I held a baby for the first time since learning I was pregnant.  I hold a lot of babies and I always enjoy it, especially the littlest ones.  It is deeply pleasurable for me.  Last night was new though.  The feeling of him, his smell, his movements, everything about him I took in fully in a way I don’t usually allow myself.  I saw him being born just two months ago.  Last night I got to hold him for an hour or so while we talked and ate dinner with our friend and her two older kids.  I LOVED IT.  The sensations of holding him have stayed with me all day.         

∞

I  a m  p r e g n a n t.

 

We’ve known for about twenty four hours.  After almost four years of trying to conceive I feel shocked.  This afternoon I don’t know what to do with myself.  I saw my therapist first thing and then did some grocery shopping.  I came home, walked the dog, ate some lunch, did some work and now I feel a little lost.  I called a friend to see how she was and tell her the news but she didn’t answer.  I don’t know that I feel like talking anyway.  

 

I am happy.

 

I am thrilled.

 

I am also very tired and shocked and don’t know what to do with myself.  I may just crawl into bed and take a nap.  The due date is November 12th.  My children will be eight years apart. 

 

If all goes well.

∞

Day 15 (IVF cycle #2).  Crying, crying, crying.  A friend and colleague sent me this: “Alliteration of the Heart” after a conversation we had about the things we do to “numb” or escape from our feelings, our reality.  She knows our story, where we’re at.  We were talking about how to know when it’s okay to let go of all the “inner work” and “being here now” and effort and just slip into distraction mode with Facebook or movies or books.  I feel completely lost about this right now.  Last night I got hit with a bout of some of the deepest, darkest thoughts: “Life is full of illness, death, hurt and suffering.  I am not up for that.”  Hopelessness and despair of the worst kind.  Tears.  It was really sudden.  I was doing pretty well all day and then these thoughts came so intensely and suddenly.  My poor husband.  Moments like this I get mad at him.  I get mad at him for being so fine all the time.  I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t make eye contact.  Scooted to the edge of my side of the bed and burrowed under the covers.  Said I didn’t think talking would help right now.  He offered to read to me (which he’s done throughout our years together).  I said okay and fell asleep like that.  This morning was odd.  We talked.  I cried.  Explained what I had been feeling, where the anger was coming from.  He held me and listened. 

Part of what was going on for me had to do with the Lyme disease / infertility double whammy and really not knowing what to do.  We’re supposed to start Lupron today.  My acupuncturist has said she thinks I should stop taking my Lyme herbs while I am on the big gun fertility drugs.  “Too many messages at once.”  The Lyme herbs are proscribed by a different acupuncturist / naturopath who is very hard to communicate with.  I am afraid if I stop taking the herbs my symptoms will return and I won’t heal.  I am afraid if I don’t stop the herbs will interfere with the fertility drugs and I won’t get pregnant.  I am drained and exhausted and don’t have the drive or energy to call all the various care providers.  Also, I have doubts that any of them really know what they are talking about or that any of it really makes a difference.  I am very, very in touch with my desire to have another baby and very, very, very in touch with the pain of not being able to.  It all hurts.  My husband is awesome.  He really is.  He heard me.  He was willing to make calls and did so.  He invited me for a walk with the dog but I had already wandered off to the internet…

And here I am.  I read the “Alliteration” post.  Doesn’t help me.  The author seems to suggest that if we sit with the painful thoughts/feelings and be with them, “hug” them, they will go away.  Well.  So far, no dice.  When I sit with the thoughts and feelings associated with infertility I just hurt.  The frequency with which I do this (let the feelings/thoughts in, cry, notice them, observe them without embellishing the story, la, la, la) doesn’t seem to change them in any way.  If I do this more often, I just feel the discomfort of them more often.  Over time, the intensity of the pain of them has gotten worse, more painful.  Not only am I grieving for the baby we don’t have and may never have, I am also grieving for this time in our lives – all the moments of sorrow and sadness, discord between us.  What I am trying to say is, putting my attention on the thoughts/feelings connected to infertility has not led to a shift.

“And so, because the feelings were given their due, they moved on.  They were tended to, fed oxygen, given a hug for luck, and sent gently – finally – on their way.

Numbing and fighting isn’t how our spirits lift themselves to their highest potential.  

It starts with feeling.  Feeding the feeling instead of fleeing from it.  Feeding it with breath and a quieted mind (even if only temporarily), but coming back to breath and quiet whenever we can bear to remember that that’s what we’re going for.  

Fleeing keeps the feeling there, like a child with an unanswered question; we try to remain distracted, but we can’t ignore the presence or the importance of our reality.  And as we ignore or numb – as we flee – we’re forcing our uncomfortable feelings to stick around, nagging us, until we give them the attention they require.”

I honestly don’t even know what this would look like for me.  Maybe there is something there.  But what if numbing and fighting is the best I can do right now?  For my son’s sake, if for no other reason, I cannot feed these feelings very often.  When I do I move through the days in pain, unable to see what is really in front of me: a healthy, thriving child, a mostly great relationship with my husband, good work to do, wealth and comfort.   

∞

Day 18.  I called the IVF nurses to schedule our next cycle.  My next anticipated Day 1 is January 16th.  We haven’t been able to do any of the herb work that the acupuncturist wanted to do before this cycle because I am still taking the tinctures prescribed by the naturopath for Lyme.  Basically the determining factor in scheduling this attempt is that our insurance changes at the end of March and we want to make sure we get one more cycle in on this deductable.  Infertility is just about the most un-romantic thing I can think of.

∞

Day 4

Can’t stop thinking about the ethical questions the practice of adoption raises.  I wish I had a reading list.  Or I wish I didn’t care.  I realized this morning that if we chose to pursue adoption we will be alone amongst our friends.  No one we are close to has adopted.  This thought feels very, very sad.  We are already so isolated by our experience of infertility.  I think the holidays are making everything more poignant and intense.  I feel aware that my son is leaving the little kid stage of childhood.  We went to a book sale at one of the local libraries a couple nights ago.  As usual we came away with several picture books.  On the car ride home my husband remarked that the time of picture books is passing.  He quickly followed that with, “I mean, hopefully, we’ll get to use them all again.”  That sort of thing makes me so sad.  Sad to not have a another small person to share those books with, sad that the reason we don’t is because we haven’t been able to, sad that we have such a hard time accepting and celebrating our child’s growth and development because his growth is a reminder of all that we won’t necessarily experience again.  Kids are necessarily always leaving.  That is the nature of things.  We lose his former selves every day as he grows and changes.  I think some part of me would be sad about this no matter what but I know the sadness is intensified by not having another little one to watch pass through the stages of growth.  I feel such jealousy for parents who can express an unequivocal, “I am done” stance when it comes to family size.  I want that.  Or even the “I sometimes want another one but I know that it is best not to” that I hear more and more often from friends with two kids.

I am trying not to slip into deepest despair.  I am trying not to spend this one life I have, this day today, hurting.  I am trying to watch my thoughts and make choices that shift my outlook and lessen the pain in my heart.  I am trying to be present and feel gratitude toward my child and partner.  I am trying to count my blessings.  Sometimes that all falls away.  I am “sick with sadness.”  That is a phrase that was going through my head over and over in yoga class the other day.  I was crying and crying.  I know that saying those words over and over makes the feelings of sadness stronger, more intense.  If I could change the words maybe I could find some peace and comfort and be able to feel joy.  Something like, “My family is perfect, whole and complete.”  There is a part of me that just rages: “But that is not true!!”  What’s true is the hurt and sadness and pain.  The mantras are bullshit.  This has never been more true than this morning as I watch my thoughts regarding adoption.  I recently read the packet from the private adoption agency.  A whole lot of it seems geared toward helping adoptive parents cope with the discomfort of the process.  I have also been following a blog written by adult adoptees.  When I read the blog I feel like I cannot participate in “taking someone else’s child away,” “going to the baby store.”  It seems like adoption is always traumatic for the birth family and the child and that adopters are the powerful, privileged parties in the process.  When I think that way I feel pain and hurt as I sense a door shutting.  Yes, we can adopt.  Yes, I think that could end my suffering and meet my need to parent another child.  But what about the birth parent?  What about the child?  Can I change all the words around so that I no longer suffer?  Sure.  I can think of it as “entrustment” instead of loss.  I can talk about the “sacred” act of adoption.  Blah blah.  But here is a situation where that kind of wordplay and mantra making could harm someone.  Typically the only one harmed by my negative thinking is me.  You could argue that my partner and child also are harmed when I get depressed.  In the case of adoption the implications are broader and deeper and more profound. ∞