Monday, September 28, 2009

Miss me?

I am back from vacation and, surprisingly, glad to be back. I had a great, relaxing time and got to spend lots of time with my sister and nephew and do and see a lot of fun things. Still, there is something oddly comforting about returning to my usual routine, and I missed my goldens!

AF finally arrived on Saturday 9/19, while we were en route to DC. (Lovely to start your period on a plane.) Rather than place a (late) CD 1 call to my clinic from my sister's when we arrived and find a clinic for a beta hCG and a pharmacy for my drugs in her area, we elected to just TTC on our own again this cycle. (MM was in full agreement and was actually more adamant than I about not wanting that stress and inconvenience during our first day of vacation.)

So today is CD 10 of our 18th cycle TTC. We are proceeding unmedicated but will still try to make sure that we do "the deed" during my fertile window (not that this has ever been a problem for us in the past 17 cycles we've TTC). I checked an OPK today to see if ovulation is approaching, and it was negative.

Happily, I really didn't think much about TTC while we were away. Sure, there was the occasional fleeting thought when I saw a pregnant woman somewhere, but for the most part, I just enjoyed my time off.

I've been keeping up with reading blogs via my BlackBerry during my absence, but it's hard to comment when reading via Google Reader. I hope to be more participatory now that I'm back in the usual groove.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Why?

Why does someone abuse his 3-week-old daughter and cause her death?

Why does a parent leave his child in the car in the 100+ degree heat, fail to supervise her child in or near a swimming pool, or allow his toddler to wander the streets of a large city alone and unsupervised? (These things happen several times every summer where I live.)

Why is a girl who just turned 15 giving birth to her second child, while her parents have moved to another state, leaving her to live with her 20-year-old boyfriend? In a state where the legal age of consent is 15, this is per se a criminal act for the person who fathered her babies, presumably the adult boyfriend. (This happened in a case my firm is working on.)

Why do parents abuse and neglect their daughter, allowing their lack of supervision to contribute to her rape at the hands of four boys?

Why do people bring children into the world, only to neglect, ignore or abuse them? Working with children in foster care, this is a question I have asked myself hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

Now I also ask: and why did G-d deem it appropriate to bless these people with children and not me?

P.S. When this posts, I will be en route to Washington, DC. I probably won't be reading any blogs while I'm gone but will catch up when I return after the 28th.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Countdown to vacation

I haven't been posting because I haven't had much to say. I am still waiting on AF's arrival. I am starting to wonder if I'm ever going to have a period again. . . . well, not literally, but I am definitely very out of whack.

But we leave for vacation in less than 48 hours, and I'm totally psyched about that.

This week has been a busy one: I had to fly to Burbank (& back) on Tuesday for a deposition and have been diligently working to try and finish everything that needs to be done prior to leaving the office for a week. I am fortunate in that I only have three deadlines while I'm gone. . . . quite unusual, actually, and I would have had no way of knowing this when we planned our trip in April, so I just got lucky. (Good to know that I still have good luck in some areas of my life! ;-) )

Surprisingly, no one of my acquaintance has announced a new pregnancy in the past two weeks! Maybe this "baby boom" is finally slowing down? Maybe it's just because so many women I know are already pregnant?

I will definitely have to share some photos of my adorable not-quite-3-year-old nephew when I return. If this trip is like my other visits with him, I should have at least 100 photos from which to choose the best shots! ;-)

Monday, September 14, 2009

ETA: unknown

I am still waiting to have a "normal period" post-miscarriage. Because it has been nearly a month since I had the bleeding which our RE's office told me was just from "hormone withdrawal," MM really wanted me to POAS this past weekend. To humor him, I did. . . . and saw the usual stark white space on the HPT where the second line should be. (Is there a worse feeling, even when you know it's coming? Ugh.)

I have also been randomly peeing on OPKs every 2-3 days at work to check whether I will see a LH surge. Nothing. Most of the OPKs have no second line at all; only once have I seen even a faint second line, which is still a negative.

So I wait.

I was thinking this morning that at this point, since AF has not yet made her appearance, it'd be better for me if she just waits until Friday at least. If this Friday 9/18 were my CD 1, I'd have to rush to a lab to have blood drawn for a hCG level, and I'd have to start my meds for that cycle while on vacation. . . . but if I start sooner than Friday, we won't be able to do treatment at all this next cycle because our vacation will conflict with my mandatory CD 11 monitoring u/s. If I start later than Friday, I can probably call my RE's office and arrange to get my blood test and buy my drugs in my vacation locale, if we decided to go that route, though it's more likely that we will just skip a cycle in that event as well. (I'd hate to waste scarce, precious vacation time dealing with that stuff.)

Actually, as I am thinking about this more as I write this post, I'm realizing that there are far more scenarios regarding AF's arrival where we are out-and-out screwed for treatment next cycle (or at least greatly inconvenienced) than there are scenarios where things work out OK. Oh well.

I am in uncharted territory for me, and I honestly have no idea when I might have a period again. I don't think anyone can give me answer to that one.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Envy

Envy means "to bear a grudge toward someone due to coveting what that person has or enjoys." In a milder sense, it means "the longing for something someone else has without any ill will intended toward that person."

I would definitely say that I envy those with children. I often find myself wanting to have a child of my own so much, and feeling so frustrated that I don't, that I definitely bear grudges--at least on some level and to some extent--against women who have what I don't. It's not personal. It doesn't mean that I want THEIR babies; I only want my own.

I find this feeling to be more pronounced when I am dealing with women to whom I know pregnancy came easily. For some reason that isn't quite clear to me, if I know that a woman waited a long time to achieve pregnancy, or had to through treatment, or thought that she could never get pregnant, I somehow find her "success" where I have thus far "failed" easier to bear.

Unfortunately, many of my friends and acquaintances fall into the other category: their pregnancies occurred easily and readily or, indeed, were unplanned. I have more than one friend who was able to "time" her pregnancies when they were most convenient for her (in terms of time off from work or spacing between children). And aside from women I have met online in the past several months, I have few friends for whom achieving pregnancy was a struggle. Which, given the incidence of infertility in the general population, makes sense, I guess. And it's no one's fault: it just is what it is.

I am not, by nature, an envious person. I am satisfied with the lifestyle MM and I have, even though many of my friends and acquaintances live more affluent ones. I went to a public university and a public law school, and bear no grudge against those who received more prestigious, private school educations. I am content with our relatively small, modest house and its simple, modest furnishings; my 2005 Prius; and traveling within the U.S., rather than to Europe or more exotic locales. I don't dress in designer clothes, don't belong to a country club, and don't care about those things.

In making me envious of women with children, women for whom pregnancy has come easily, our inability to have a child of our own has once again brought out a feeling in me that I don't like and that I feel are not "me." Where will it end?

Thursday, September 3, 2009

That girl

(No, I'm not talking about the 70s TV show starring Marlo Thomas. . . . though I loved that show as a kid!)

At various points over the past several months, I have congratulated myself at not being bitter about our infertility in the face of friends and acquaintances getting pregnant right and left. Sure, I've felt bitter and angry when I hear about one of the felons MM supervises having a child or any unplanned/unwanted pregnancy, but those feelings are long-standing for me and pre-date any TTC efforts of my own. I've written about the fact that I could still be happy for friends announcing their pregnancies, still attend baby showers, and still be around children without being overwhelmed by sadness or anger at the unfairness of it all.

I didn't want to be "that girl." You know, the infertile woman around whom people have to walk on eggshells for fear of hurting her feelings. The average, fertile woman can't talk about her pregnancy or her newborn in front of "that girl" because she might burst into tears. You have to be careful what you say to her so that you don't set her off. That girl who can't go to baby showers or baptisms or the zoo or the like because it's just too painful for her to see what she doesn't--and may never--have.

Though I still have more good days than bad days--more days when I can cope and feel happy with my life than days when I can only dwell on my failure to have a baby of my own--I believe that I am slowly becoming "that girl." I find myself hiding the Fac.ebo.ok status updates of friends with babies more often. I avoid talking to friends with small children if the only thing they can discuss is their baby. (BTW, what is this phenomenon where most women with a baby less than a year old seem incapable of conversing about anything else?!) For the last couple of acquaintances on Fac.ebo.ok who have announced their pregnancies in a status update, I have been unable to even post a quick "congratulations!" I even find myself making less of an effort to see my (now 7-month-old) godson and his mom than I did six months ago.

I used to be the go-to person to talk with friends about their pregnancies and children, even though I'd never had any firsthand experience with either. I guess my background as a nurse and a psychology major, and my obvious love of children of all ages, made me a natural for thinking on and discussing these subjects. Old friends of mine with children (several of whom are now in their teens/'tweens) could tell you how I enjoyed babysitting for them and hearing about every little thing their babies and toddlers did.

One of the many painful things about infertility is this: that it is making me into someone I never wanted to be. I'm not who I used to be. I hate how this experience is changing me, and I wonder if I can ever go back to who I was.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

When Pills Aren't Enough


Hope you enjoy this anonymous guest post, courtesy of the "When Pills Aren't Enough" Sessions. ~S


We have lived in the same house with the same furniture for 15 years. In those 15 years, I have not changed which drawers I keep my undies and bras in. And yet, 15 years later, when you take laundry out of the dryer, my stuff never gets put away. Yours does, kid stuff does, but my undies and bras are left sitting on top of the dresser. This... enrages me.That is all.
~Beaches