Crazy Bitch

Anyone else think of Buckcherry? The feminist in me wants to hate that song, but it's just so catchy. I'm just checking in today to say...I'm a crazy bitch. If you had caught me about an hour ago, I would have fought you on this fact...and likely cut you. However, the wild swinging pendulum that is my mood has now swung and I will admit it. I'm absolutely, certifiably nuts.

First of all, you should know that I'm dressed like a unicorn today. That's not really relevant to the story except for that it has significantly contributed to how crazy I feel. But, I'll back up to what happened before I had to get dressed for work this morning. So, I'm using OPK's again this month. I got a questionable positive on Sunday afternoon. I assume that ovulated Monday afternoon, but I'm not really sure. So, Garrison and I got romantic on Sunday, Monday, and yesterday morning. Well...."romantic" meaning that I woke him up with an elbow to the side and said, "You've got 10 minutes before I have to get in the shower."

For the last few days, he's been a really good sport. He got right to the point and even squeezed in a little spooning afterwards. Then, this morning, he suddenly was offended at my advances and wanted a little more romancing. I responded to his need for a little intimacy and affection by bursting into tears and stomping down the hall to the shower. Did the shower calm me down? Oh no, this fit of rage lasted right into breakfast where I slammed pots and pans around while making eggs. I kept right on screaming at him as I pulled on my golden furry costume with the hooves. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get someone to take your tantrum seriously while pinning on your tail?? Then, my tirade continued as I passive-aggressively ignored texts from my husband and cried my way down the highway to work.

Then, I pulled myself together, pulled on my furry headpiece with the unicorn horn, held my head high and walked into the building. As soon as I walked inside, I felt great. Not just in a good mood, but positively giddy. Walking on cloud nine. Giving high-fives, cracking jokes, and bouncing around the room.

Perhaps it was the gold sequins on my costume, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with that little pill called Progesterone. That stuff makes me absolutely BATTY. I can go from being ready to scratch a coworker's eyes out to hysterical laughter to a sobbing puddle all within 10 minutes.

So, I'm not sure about my timing this month. I had felt pretty good about it until my husband decided to hold out on me this morning. Yes, I know. It's now two days past the day that I suspect that I ovulated and that is way too late to conceive. But, I reserve the right to blame him if I'm not pregnant. And you can bet that I will make him pay dearly for that.

The best part of the whole day? The text I received from Garrison about 15 minutes ago apologizing for HIS behavior this morning. Sigh. Poor bunny. If he escapes all of this without PTSD it will be a miracle.

I just added a new recipe to the recipe page. It's amazing. It's Sweet Potato and Garbanzo Bean Curry. Sweet Potatoes are good for fertility! I stole it from another site, so I can't take credit. Try it served over some brown rice. It's amazing.
Anyone else feeling a little crazy from all of this TTC madness? Are any of your partners feeling a little used and abused? How do you handle it?

Babies or Used Cars?

In the last two weeks, I've graduated from some moderate disappointment over the monthly return of Flo to full-fledged frustration and panic over where we'll go from here if pregnancy isn't in the cards. I wish I were one of those women who could say that life will be just as full if children aren't in the cards, but I'm not. Adoption would certainly be an option and I would be very okay with that. It isn't nearly time to count ourselves out of the game, but we have come to a point where the "What if...?" conversation is starting to come up.

So, there's this book. Have any of you ever read it?

In short, Orenstein chronicles her journey from being unsure of her desire to have children to becoming completely consumed by the desire to become a mother. Along the way, she is confronted with cancer, marital troubles, and infertility. If you are at the point where you are starting to think about the what-ifs, then it makes for some interesting reading. Orenstein is honest and witty and her account of her battles with infertility will leave you feeling both raw and comforted. Don't worry, I'm not trying to write a book review. I will come back to this book in a moment. First, let me tell you about this bizarre experience I had last week that has me thinking a lot about some of the points that Orenstein made. (I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.)

So, after I was sure that we were unsuccessful again last month, I called my sister and had a little (huge) temper tantrum. The next day there was a message on my voicemail from her stating that she had talked to one of the fertility specialists in her practice. Her synopsis of the conversation was vague and hurried, but she said that the doctor said that I should talk to someone about something and if I wanted to talk about that something, then I needed to be somewhere at 4:30 that afternoon or I wouldn't be able to talk about anything. What's that you say? Talk to someone!? About something!? I'll be there!

And so I was. I entered the fertility suites that I'm beginning to grow accustomed to and waited my turn to talk to someone. The nurse led me to the back and after doing the normal weight checks and LMP chat, led me down the back hallway to what I assumed would be the exam room. Instead, she took me to an office with a flat screen television. I was becoming a little apprehensive, but I figured, "Hey. These are doctors. They are going to talk to me about something."

After a few minutes, a woman in a white lab coat entered. She looked and spoke exactly like Mary Katherine Gallagher. We talked a little about my history and then she explained that she wanted to talk to me about a different type of charting called the Creighton Method that focuses primarily on cervical mucous. She took me through a powerpoint presentation (enter the flat screen television) on the science behind this method and the technique behind the charting.

About 45 minutes into the presentation, it occurs to me that I've never had a doctor sit with me for longer than about ten minutes. My mind starts to wander and I start to stare at her i.d. badge. It's then that it hits me. This woman is no doctor. I'm in the middle of a sales pitch. Hey.....

As duped as I felt, I decided that I had already been there almost an hour and might as well stick it out. Besides, I was learning a lot about cervical mucous and can you ever really know too much about cervical mucous? The woman really knew her stuff and I was starting to think that maybe I should give some thought to purchasing the charting materials and follow up sessions. Then....it happened. When I told her that I would love to get back to her after running it by my husband, she said that the materials were only this price for the next two weeks. If I didn't get back to her, then we would have to pay for another initial interview. Ugh. In a matter of one hour, this woman went from revered doctor to used car salesman.

But, you know what? I had no business being upset that I felt duped. No one had tried to trick me into going to this sales pitch. My desperation to make progress, any progress, toward becoming pregnant had caused me to leave running from work straight into an office waving my wallet above my head without having any idea of why I was there or what I was paying for.

The whole experience reminded me of Peggy Orenstein's words when reflecting on her own attempts to navigate the "vortex of persuasive doctors and miracle cures."

"That's the insidious thing about fertility treatments: the very fact of their existence, the

potential, however slim, that the next round might get you pregnant creates an imperative

that may not have otherwise existed. If you didn't try it, you'd always have to wonder whether

it would've worked. That's how you lose sight of your real choices, because the ones you're offered

make you feel as if you have none.

There were more than a million fertility appointments made within the last year, and it's unclear

how many of them are necessary. One recent large scale study found that 90 percent-90 percent-

of women in their late thirties will get pregnant within two years of trying (assuming their

partners are also under forty). Yet infertility in this country is defined as failure to conceive

after just one year, and many couples...storm the clinic doors after just a few months. So, what's

a girl with a ticking biological clock to do? Until the workplace and family life better

accommodate mothers, there's no right answer. Nor can you count on the specialists to provide one;

their doctor-patient relationship is too easily influenced by profit motive and the vagaries

of self-regulation. As ever-newer "cures,"...are dangled before us, it's up to the

consumer to be alert to their pitfalls, to the allure of perpetual hope. I wish I had understood that."

I'm 33 years old and we've only been trying for about eight months. The "allure of perpetual hope" already has me running screaming into the doctor's office rather than giving my body and nature a chance to take its course. This month, I'm going to try and live by Orenstein's words. I'm going to continue with my OPK's and fertility smoothies, but I'm going to try and believe that my body can do this without any outside help from specialists or used car salesmen.

Before I go, a couple of things...

A) Before anyone wonders why my sister sent me into a sales pitch, that wasn't her fault. She assumed that I would call her so she could better prepare me for what the appointment was. I didn't call her and instead went to the appointment blind. This entire scenario was my fault for not educating myself prior to the walking into that office.

B) I am not, in any way, giving an opinion on the Creighton Method. The Creighton Method has apparently had some great successes that have been confirmed by independent studies. A fertility specialist said that I might be interested in hearing more about it, which I was. I haven't tried it. I know very little about it. My opinion was of the sales technique of the woman I encountered, NOT the method itself.

Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs

Work has been b-a-n-a-n-a-s. So, this post will be short and sweet. I'm on CD 26. All you TTC-ers know that the last couple of days of the two week wait can be the WORST. Your body is super active because it is either gearing up for AF's arrival or maybe...just maybe...a baby??? Every cramp can either be AF or implantation. The pain in your boobs is pregnancy or PMS. Every single little gas bubble or tingle or toothache is worthy of endless analysis. Unfortunately, it isn't really socially acceptable to discuss any of this with people outside of your close circle (and most of them, especially your partner, are painfully bored by the topic) so you are left to have this insanity-inducing dialogue completely inside your head. So, that's basically where I am right now. I'm keeping myself away from computers for the next 48 hours so I don't drive myself completely crazy. I'll check back in when I'm either on CD 1 (while sobbing in the big ass glass of wine I plan to pour myself if I get yet another negative) or with fun news. In the meantime, I'll be chewing my nails up to the knuckle and watching lots of Reality Housewives as a distraction.

Women Supporting Women

Yesterday I had three cups of coffee. Three to five cups of coffee per day used to be pretty standard in my world. I cut it out cold turkey about three or four months into my TTC journey. Going from three to five cups of coffee to nothing overnight is not a good idea. Trust me. It doesn't take much to turn me into a raging bitch, but sweet cheeses, between the pounding headaches and wild mood swings, that was an ugly week.

Anyway, so I had a coffee date with a friend yesterday and the convo was so good that I allowed myself a couple of refills. My body just isn't used to that much caffeine these days, so I tossed and turned in bed until about three in the morning. While I was tossing and turning, I reflected on three unsettling conversations that I had over the course of the week. I'll recap:

1. An acquaintance is entering the hospital the next day to be induced. This is her first child. Her due date isn't for a couple of weeks, but the doc says the baby is over 8lbs. One of the women discussing this situation clucks and says, "Ack. All these unnecessary interventions. Mark my words. That baby will be born in 48 hours, 7 lbs, and will be an emergency c-section." Mind you, this is EXACTLY what happened, but still....

2. A co-worker is discussing how her sister is at her wits end due to some sleeping issues that she is having with her 9-month-old. She is trying to transition her baby from co-sleeping to the crib. Another co-worker says, "Welp. That's what you get when you co-sleep with your baby. She had it coming. My babies were in the crib from day one. I let them cry it out and now we have no problems. I don't get all this hippy-dippy co-sleeping nonsense. You're just teaching your child to be dependent and spoiled."

3. At a baby shower last weekend, mothers were trading war stories about breast feeding. One mother stated that she found it too difficult to pump once she went back to work, so she only nursed her son for the first 12 weeks. Another mother chimed in, "Well, I feel that the benefits of breast feeding outweigh any inconvenience that might be placed on the mother." Another woman, in the SAME conversation, said, "Well, the really sick thing is all of these mothers who nurse their children until they are old enough to climb up on their laps and pull at their shirts. I mean, really. Breast feeding past 12 months? Gross."

I mean...really ya'll?

As I reflected on these conversations, I got the cold sweats and the room starting spinning. Is this the sisterhood of motherhood that I'm entering? I always pictured myself entering some sort of Red Tent style sorority where we all washed each other's feet, brushed each other's hair, and massaged oil onto each other's stretch marks.

Maybe I just wasn't paying attention up until now, but I had NO idea that there was this world of judgement out there. Apparently the judgement starts with how you get pregnant, continues into what you eat and how you conduct yourself during pregnancy, then continues into how you give birth, and plows full steam ahead into how you parent.

Ladies! What happened to WOMEN SUPPORTING WOMEN?? It's hard out there. Can't we help a sister out? Do we need to make it harder on each other by judging?

Like every single other woman in the world, my opinions and behaviors are formed by my background experiences. I am the sister of a midwife and the daughter of an amazing mother who I would love to emulate. I'll be honest, I have very strong opinions on how I would like to give birth and how I would like to parent. (This is assuming that I am ever lucky enough to actually be pregnant and be a parent.) But guess what. THESE ARE OPINIONS FOR MYSELF. My opinions and behaviors come out of love and the intense desire to give my (hypothetical) children the best life possible. So do everyone else's! The number one priority of the vast majority of mothers in the world is the well-being and happiness of their children. I'm not a mother, but I've heard enough mothers discuss how it's the hardest job in the world. Why would we tear each other down just because the way I want to give my child the best life possible is different than the way you want to give your child the best life possible?

Home birth, hospital birth, birth center birth, water birth, epidural, natural birth, breast feeding, not breast feeding, co-sleeping, crying it out, attachment parenting, all organic diet, processed food, competitive sports, non-competitive sports...WOMEN ARE DOING THE BEST THEY CAN! Instead of judging, how about a pat on the back and an offer to help a sister out? Or, if you can't muster the energy to help, how about just a sympathetic shake of the head and a, "Man. That's so hard. I feel you. You're doing awesome. Keep on truckin'."

That's my Sunday Soap Box. The end.

 

How do I begin?

Hello Friends! Although I've read many, MANY blogs on this journey, I've never blogged myself. Last night, as I entered my seventh two-week waiting period, I decided that I wanted/needed to start journaling my thoughts. I still don't really know what I intend the purpose of this blog to be. Maybe it will just be my private thoughts-boring to anyone else who stumbles across it. Or, maybe it will help me to connect to others who are feeling the same roller coaster of emotions that I am during this journey. We'll see! I don't know how I'm supposed to begin, so I guess I'll just start with my baby-makin' journey to date.

I never thought I wanted children. Or a husband. Or anything that I deemed "conventional" or "what the man said I should do." If you asked me (or even if you didn't ask) about 10 years ago if I wanted a family, I would have laughed, picturing my life as cool as these guys:

and said something oh-so-cool like, "Ugh. And lose my independence and the ability to travel the world? I plan to contribute to the earth in much cooler ways than baby making." And I meant it. You see, I was 24 years old and had just left my teaching job in Washington, DC to move to Ecuador to teach for two years. A huge part of my 20-something identity hinged on the FACT that I was a purposeful wanderer.

Fast-forward a couple glorious, reckless, irreplaceable, and most of all humbling years of traveling the globe and realizing that the world is a very big place and I am just a small part of the bigger picture. Somewhere in those years, I realized that I needed to stop speaking in superlatives because I wasn't really too cool or too sure of anything.

And then....Garrison entered my life. Well, not exactly entered. He actually entered my life in 1988 on our elementary school playground during a field day. I remember someone talking about the short, red-headed kid who had just won some event or another (He would want me to be sure to tell you that he may be short, but he's very fast.). I looked up and saw a boy with the cutest red curls I had ever seen. My next memories of him are vague and fleeting...seeing him play soccer in high school, him walking through the hall with the other soccer guys wearing khaki shorts in December, at a party sitting across from him on a couch laughing while we raced to see who could guess Ice Ice Baby or Push It first. Then, at 26 years old, this distant acquaintance from my past walked back into my life at a mutual friend's cookout and became the unlikely love of my life.

Fast forward again a few years...I moved to our hometown (the 24-year-old me gagging at the thought), Garrison and I bought a house, and began to settle in. However, we were just shacking up, so I still held on to the feelings of being unconventional and independent that made me most comfortable. Babies were still nowhere close to being on the radar for me and he seemed happy with that as well.

Then, in 2008, my family's entire world was rocked. My mother had been having some digestive issues for a few months and after getting back from a beautiful, two-week family vacation in Costa Rica, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer of unknown primary source (CUPS). CUPS is a really nice name for a really shitty type of cancer that is hard to fight because you don't know where it started. So, my amazing, beautiful, healthy, non-smoking, non-drinking (except for her ONE glass of pinot grigio per night), gym-going mother, died at 57 years of age after only getting to fight her battle for 10 months.

The utter devastation of those 10 months in which I lost my very best buddy in the whole world and my family lost its nucleus and its rudder is another blog entirely. But, in short, in those 10 months there were big changes. My sister and her husband moved across the country to be with the family and got pregnant in hopes that my mother would be able to hold at least one grandchild (sadly, she missed her granddaughter by 3 months). Garrison and I decided that "being unconventional" was less important than making another beautiful memory that included my mother. So, I did the whole shebang. My mother, sister, and I did the whole wedding planning thing. We condensed it into about a month and had a small family wedding in front of the fireplace, but we did it. And although the circumstances were utter crap, I don't regret it for a second.

So, we were married. Ten months later, my sister and brother-in-law had their beautiful daughter and were gracious enough to invite me to attend the birth. Witnessing that sassy, precious, amazing little creature enter the world was by far the most incredible experience of my life. Holding my mother in my arms as she left the world and holding my niece in my arms so soon after she entered the world triggered a new longing that I had never felt before. Call me daft, but I had never given much thought to the circle of life and then it was suddenly very real and obvious for me. And I wanted to be part of it. Immediately.

There was just one problem. My newly minted husband and I hadn't really agreed upon this. Although we hadn't agreed NOT to have children, we had agreed that we would take life as it came and that we wouldn't feel incomplete without babies. Oops. (Marriage Rule #27: Do NOT walk down the aisle without hammering out a solid plan on this issue.) Now I was feeling VERY incomplete and desperate for a child of my own. He was feeling VERY much the opposite.

The next part of this story is not very developed. I'm not really sure exactly how he finally came to the conclusion that children should be part of our future.We spent the next three years going back and forth on this topic. Let's just say that this is the part of my life when I perfected my passive-aggressiveness and martyrdom.

However, I didn't want him to ever feel forced into fatherhood. I knew that if we had children, I wanted him to be on board whole-heartedly. I wanted that moment of high-fiving over a positive pregnancy test. He never said absolutely no, it was always, "Maybe. Not today." And then, on New Year's Eve last year, he and I decided to avoid the hooplah and stay in with a couple bottles of wine, Chinese food, Trivial Pursuit, and a Coldplay concert on TV. We started talking about what we predicted would be different on the following New Year's Eve. He said, "You'll probably be knocked up." Swoon. The most romantic words I'd ever heard.

So. Here we are. We decided to officially start trying this past March. Much like most people who are trying to conceive, we thought that we would remove the goalie and poof! we'd be pregnant. But, if you are reading TTC blogs, you are probably like me and have quickly realized that it isn't so easy.

I forgot to mention before that my sister is a midwife. So, the first month of TTC, I felt pretty sure of myself. To most of us, words like ovulation, luteal phase, and cervical mucus are part of this new language that we begin to acquire when we become citizens of this foreign world of baby making. I had already begun to pick up some of this vocabulary through conversation with my sister. So, I thought TTC would be as easy as going to the drugstore, picking up a couple of OPK's, a little tango-ing between the sheets and I'd have a bun in my oven. Not so much.

The first month, I never had a positive OPK. Hmmm. The second month, I had a positive OPK, but it was only six days before the start of my period. Here is where I added a new phrase to my TTC vocabulary: luteal phase defect. This is a frustrating problem to have, but on the spectrum of fertility issues, it's not so bad. I starting taking progesterone and thought that would fix the issue and we'd be pregnant in no time.

For the next couple of months, there was absolutely no change in my luteal phase. So, the next stage was to decrease my exercise and increase my BMI. That sounded like a FABULOUS solution! Sleeping in instead of getting up to run at 5 am? Pizza and ice cream? Giddy up! What a wonderful world it was at first...until I realized that the combination of added progesterone and decreased endorphins makes me a raging bitch.

The good news is that my luteal phase is now up to 10 days. Solid! The bad news is that the alternating screaming and weeping is not a sexy look. In addition, as much as I hate to admit to being so vain, running makes me feel sexy. Adding some extra pounds and not being able to exercise has taken a real toll on my libido. Even less hot is my new foreplay technique of tapping Garrison on the shoulder and saying, "I just peed on a stick and it says I'm ovulating. Impregnate me."  So, now the problem lies less in issues with my reproductive system and more in the fact that Garrison and I rarely feel like doing the deed.

We've now been trying for seven months. The last couple of months were the first that I began feeling truly discouraged and depressed when the double lines didn't show. Many women have been trying for much, much longer than that, so putting my thoughts out there on this blog is not to imply that my wait has been so terribly long. I'm simply finding that this process is much more frustrating and emotionally taxing than I realized it would be.

I'm just starting my "two week wait." I'll take my next pregnancy test on November 10th. Or...maybe the 9th. Or....the 8th. Until then, I'll be over here imagining that every gas bubble is implantation and that every twinge in my boob is caused by pregnancy hormones rather than the ill-fitting sports bra that I've been wearing for three days.

I'll also be giving the side eye to my coworker who just started trying in August and is already pregnant.

Good to meet all of you! Anyone out there want to be pals?