Counselling

A couple of weeks ago I went to an infertility workshop. I went by myself because I didn't think J would get much out of it, and would probably be targeted to share, which is not his comfort zone.

In total there were 2 couples, another girl and me. It was interesting to see the range of places we were all coming from. Multiple miscarriages, secondary infertility, problems of some kind, and me, unknown. I was also the only one that had gone through this in a previous marriage and the journey had a very huge impact in that relationship.

The social worker had a ton of things that were very good to hear, like telling us that it was perfectly normal to feel it was our fault (even though it's not), or to feel envious of people with kids, or to get scared every time we go to the washroom, or to feel so deeply sad when we get our periods.

At the end I made an appointment to meet individually with her. I went last week and after hearing part of my story she said "you have gone through a lot" (and I haven't finished!). I get to go again tomorrow, to keep sharing. Besides that I also got two wonderful things out of the workshop.

We are divided in the intelligent self and the emotional self, and that is ok.
- The intelligent self is the one that knows is not our fault. The emotional self blames itself.
- The intelligent self knows the innocent but painful comments were coming from an innocent place. The emotional self hurts and cries and screams.
- The intelligent self plans, works on it, and keeps going. The emotional self cries, hurts.

It has helped me dearly to explain to people why I now cry every day. It has helped me understand myself and give me a break when I blame myself. I  am allow to blame myself, just as long as I come back to my intelligent self and know it's not my fault, there is nothing I can do, and forgive me for blaming me.

The other thing that really helped me was a quote she had at the end of the presentation. I found the quote online here if you want to read the whole article. Here is the part that made me cry:

"These current days of pain and heartache will become your past some day. Healing will happen. It may come about by becoming pregnant and having a baby. It may come about by adopting the child meant to be in your home. It may come about by focusing on a future of living life childfree. You will be forever changed but you will heal from the wound of infertility"

How do you respond?

How do you respond to people when they make comments about your nonexistent kids? How do you respond when you just want to get up and walk away? How do you respond when you have no words left?

I trained to answer the famous question "do you have kids?". I could answer something that would shock people, I could also tell them something like "I can't" and watch them fall silently, but I always answer the same reliable way "not yet".

The problem is the people that have the need to follow up that answer. I have heard a few "don't wait too long", sure, let me start right here and now, "they are worth it/so wonderful", thank you for letting me know, I had no idea!. Today was "you should try it". Good idea! Didn't think of it, wanna talk about trying? I bet you didn't try, it just happened. No one that FIGHTS for this makes that type of comments. Oh, and by the way, "try", what happens if I don't like it?

Sigh...

I'm just so tired, damn if I do, damn if I don't. I don't know how to pray for it anymore. I don't know how to wait anymore. I don't know how I can sit, smile, and move on anymore. That's what I did and now I just want to cry. I just want to know! And I know I don't get to know, not yet.

I'm on my third cycle of IUI. I already had the insemination, and had 2 eggs when I ovulated. It seems like my estrogen was a bit higher too. I also started therapy/counseling, and I'm constantly busy. Yet, I feel like there is an eternity until next Saturday when I get to find out again. I imagine myself sad at the bad news. I imagine myself happy at the news. But I actually feel empty. Imagining me happy doesn't make me happy. Imagining me sad feels like a movie rerun.

And yet, I wait. I wait and wonder how to respond and if I should try it.

Picture perfect

I volunteer every other Sunday at church with babies. Me and a friend spend the whole service holding, playing and cuddling little babies while their parents get an hour for themselves.

I thought it would be really hard, but it actually feels good. It doesn't make me feel better but it doesn't make me feel worse either. It just feels good to care for them and give their parents a little peace of mind. On the other hand, its much harder when guys are holding babies or playing with them. Could be because it breaks the gender stereotype? Its not hard for me to understand it, its hard for me to see it and not feel pain for J or my dad, or my dad in law.

I'm sooo happy J is not the kind of guy that loves to hold babies. When he plays with kids he is fabulous and I still wish he can do that with our own, but at least it doesn't hurt as much as it does with my dad. My dad loves holding babies, and every time I see his face with one that is not our own, it breaks my heart in a million pieces.

Sometimes I wish my sisters would marry and get pregnant so it makes my parents happy, and so I can have nieces and nephews to adore. Sometimes my sisters getting pregnant when I can't is my worse nightmare. I don't know how I'll handle that, and if I'll have to. For now I put it back at a hidden place in my heart, wish for the best for them, and I'll handle it when/if I have to.

For now I work on taking care of other people's babies without the desire of kidnapping one for myself. I know at the end of the day I wouldn't do something like that, but I think its the easy way to explain how much desire for one I have.

Innocent comments go wrong, or how not to talk with your not-yet-fertile friend

What kind of campaign would take for people to become more sensitive to fertility problems? Would that ever succeed? Would it ever be better?

I feel like the victim that needs to learn how to live with insensitive comments of how it was my fault. There is nothing I can do to completely get away from them unless I stay at home and never get out again. It has gotten better since I stopped hanging out with friends with kids, but how do you handle being with family?

The other day we were at a lunch with J's family. They had all 3 kids quite frankly "too easy". Nothing against it and I'm happy for them (and for me, they have wonderful kids) but my own mother in law says she cannot relate to me as they got pregnant very easily. Anyhow, we are there and we started counting years of this and years of that. Like, we have been married this many years, and comparisons between the couples. (BIG mistake)

My husband says something like "I got married younger than you did" to his dad and, like a knife to the heart that you see coming and can't stop, his dad said "We had kids faster than you". 

...

I don't know if anyone else even noticed, as the conversation just continued, but I am still hurting, and it was quite a few days ago. I know he didn't do it out of malice, or on purpose, but it hurts. It's not like we are doing it on purpose. And how can I not feel responsible? Would J be a dad already if he were with someone else? I would like to think that no one could make him as happy as me, and I know he loves me so much he doesn't have kids as a condition of us being together, but still hurts, for me and for him.

How can you get used to it? Is it possible?

Afraid.

So long perfectly timed periods, it was nice knowing you. It has been so long having periods between 26 and 30 days that I actually forgot when that wasn't a constant. Since I stopped the fertility drugs I had a 25 day period (which caught me by surprise and stressed me too much) and this month, a horribly 33 day one.

I kept insisting to myself I knew I wasn't pregnant, the probabilities were not on my side, but come on! 3 days late? It was really hard to convince myself at that point, I started having hope, I started to think it might actually have worked.

I had already decided on Friday that I would go buy a pregnancy test after work. I would do it and I would be ok, but what if it was negative? I could not handle a negative that day, not when I have been apart from J for so long (2 weeks at that point and still counting). But it had been already 33 days! it had to be.

I had a call with J just when I was going to the washroom, that Friday around 3pm, so I decided to wait and talk with him. I was being difficult and we both knew it, he just didn't know why. He asked, I said I wouldn't tell him, and then, like 2 minutes later I start crying. I cried to him on the phone, in a completely different continent, and said "we might be pregnant". He calmed me down, we finished talking and I finally went to the washroom to discover that NO, we were not pregnant.

Was it the crying? Was it that I had my legs crossed for so long? Was something I ate? or something I should have eaten? Is this normal? What did I do??????.... I'm still trying to convince myself that I wasn't pregnant, period. It wasn't something I did or didn't do, I would.just.not.get.pregnant like that.

I'm half better because at least I know. I'm half better because I know logically that I wasn't pregnant to start. I'm half better because I know we are doing another fertility round next month.

But yet again I'm just half better aren't I? I'm scared out of my mind to think about next month and what will happen. I'm even scared of how scary it is for each end of the month even when you are convinced it's not going to happen. I'm scared of not knowing when enough is enough. I'm scared because I don't know how I'm ever going to feel completely good if we don't have children.

I have hope I will be ok. I have hope God will shine a light and give us a happy life with or without kids. I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful family. I'm healthy. I can't complain about anything else, and I'm very grateful about that. So I stick with scared. I'm not mad or depressed, but I am very scared.

Next steps

Yesterday we had the appointment with the doctor to talk about the results of the 2 IUI and talk about the next steps. Turns out that my oestrogen wasn't the greatest. The first time I had 3 eggs and the second time I had 2, but both time the oestrogen was barely good enough to support one egg.

Among all the medications I was taking the first 2 times, the Letrozol is supposed to reduce the level of oestrogen in the body. From what I understood, this is done to protect the body from hyper stimulating with the other drugs. Keep the level of oestrogen low, give other drugs to bring it to the perfect level, do the insemination with just the right amount of eggs and hormones. She says the effects of the Letrozol should be gone after 3 or 4 days.

The next step? We are doing another IUI without the Letrozol, and with a new drug for me, that will keep my body from ovulating (don't have the name handy right now). One of 3 things could happen: the perfect one would be that my levels of oestrogen get better, we do the insemination and I get pregnant. The bad one would be that all of that still happens but I don't get pregnant, in which case next time we'll do an IVF. The third one would be that my levels of oestrogen go so high that my body hyper stimulates and the doctor won't do an insemination because of the risk of multiples, so we turn it into an IVF at that moment.

We are taking this cycle and next one to get mentally and financially ready and maybe go for it in November. It's hard, but I'm trying to concentrate in the outcome and not the struggle that will be to go through all of it again.

Another day, another month

And the first month without trying has passed. At the beginning it was really hard just in general, feeling all depressed, and getting rid of all the drugs in my body. Then it got easier mentally, and all I had left was the struggle not to count the days, not to keep track of how many times and which days we had had sex. It was all followed by the constant nagging and internal struggle of "is forgetting about everything going to work?", "it's the fact I'm not sleeping well good news?", "does this count as really forgetting about getting pregnant?". So freaking hard.

I spent the last 3 weeks not sleeping well. Still can't sleep well! I have no clue what's going on, just keep waking up constantly with no reason. I have tried everything, from going to bed REALLY late, to buying a new pillow, air conditioner off, air conditioner on, valeriana root, everything. I had hope, all I could hope for was that it was a symptom, but I didn't set myself in it, just had that tiny bit of light hope.

Now the month is over, maybe because of the drugs, or maybe it's random, but my 26 to 30 days I had been having for these past years turned into 25 days. Not only was I not prepared mentally but also physically. I wanted to scream, I wanted to punch something, I don't want to hear one more person mention that someone else got pregnant while taking a break from the clinics.

I have an appointment next week with the doctor to talk about IVF. I don't know what to expect, but I'm waiting distracted, this wait doesn't have all the crying all the other months had. This month my tears are gone.