Facebook Stalker

I stalked my ex-husband on facebook today and it felt horrible. It’s so masochistic and completely dishonors my marriage. I go there to make sure that he’s not “beating” me. I’m not sure yet who’s winning. But if his new wife turns up pregnant - god forbid while I’m NOT pregnant, but even if I am pregnant - I will need to take the day off and do something drastic and probably unhealthy.

I haven't done this in months and months. But something inside me broke yesterday. It's telling, but what it's telling. I'm not sure yet.

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We had another contractor come and bid on the renovation to our house and let me tell you – contractors’ opinions are as varied and conflicting as doctors’. This one suggested building new instead of renovating because it will ultimately cost the same but everything will be new. It’s true; but we hadn’t considered it. And now I’m confused again. Every time I think we’ve made a decision, we get another opinion, and my plan is shot to hell. And of course I want to plan for all contingencies and avoid all inefficiencies and generally try to control about a million different details a la the post above.

I want someone else to drive pleeeeeeaaaaaase.

"S" is for September; "S" is for Success

STATUS: (cause I know your waiting with baited breath) - I got my period yesterday - that's damn early. I have fast turnover, it seems, because that was only a 23 day cycle.

SISTER: When I told my Mom several weeks ago that all of my investigative tests came back "normal" (HSP, thrombophilia panel, Karyotpye, etc.) she said, "Well tell me something I don't know!"

I asked her to explain herself at which point she reiterated my maternal grandmother's fertility story (she gave birth to the first of 7 healthy children at the age of 33 and the last at the age of 47!). I take great solace in the excessive and implausible fertlity of my grandmother, hoping that genetics are actually working in my favor and that I have just been enduring the "worst streak of bad luck ever."

And then she told me a story I did not know - that my sister was conceived as a result of a malfunctioning IUD. That's right. My little sister slipped past the sentry; how determined of her. I don't even know if she's ever been told the beginning of her beginning; what great cocktail party fodder! It's pretty cool to imagine that you were so bad ass, even at the cellular level, that you the beat the odds. I need a little bad ass egg of my own! I knew in a very vague way that my sister was unexpected, but I never pursued the details, assuming that my parents suffered a moment of drunken debauchery. Best to just leave that subject alone under those circumstances. But now that I know the truth, I don't know how I could have convinced myself that my mother was involved in any sort of drunken escapade, let alone debauchery. My father maybe. Mom - not a chance. I think she's been "tippsy" like 2x in her life and felt loose and immoral after the fact.

SOUTH:
I am someone who needs a lot of order in her life. Though I don’t like to think of myself as such an old lady, I have always liked things predictable, stable, and stress free, so it follows that I am absolutely horrible at change of any kind – good or bad. Change affects my perception of my physical and emotional safety – it even affects my sense of self. I just don’t have a knack for adaptability. Instead, I dig my heels in deep, open my mouth as wide as it’ll go, and emit a psychic scream meant to make the gods’ ears bleed.*

I suspect the extreme expression of this characteristic may have its roots in a traumatic cross-continent move. At the age of thirteen, my parents moved me and my 2 siblings 1,800 miles, five climate zones, and one entire country south. I was in for some heavy duty suffering. I was taken out of an environment to which I was reasonably adapted and dropped into a murky alien planet where 13 year-old girls shaved their legs and “went-out” with boys (which actually just meant holding hands at recess, but I didn’t know that then. I thought they were DATING – like going to the movies and kissing and OMG!) and where the boys snapped your bra and made inappropriate sexual innuendos. Now I am sure that this was all going on in my old environs – I just didn’t notice or didn’t care to notice because I had my safe little niche carved out and was prepared to live in that niche with my same best friends and my same school mates all the way through college.

But that was never to be. Instead, I ended up in Stepfordland; and I was NO be-ribboned, smooth-legged, lip-glossed Southern Belle, but a very awkward, very shy, very different and very new piece of junior high meat. With the heightened senses of a cornered rabbit, I experienced what were probably normal adolescent torture through a lens of intense displacement and disassociation. I don’t know if that experience is the genesis of my change-averse personality, or a stressor that exacerbated a latent characteristic (and precipitated my depression), but whatever the case, that is the first time I remember feeling unmercilessly, unrelentingly victimized by those laughing gods. I felt totally powerless and inept, despite eventually making friends and finding my identity as a nerd.

My sense of the Universe as a dangerous and pernicious prankster remains strong to this day. So you can imagine, then, that I work really hard at controlling my environment so that I don’t have to suffer anymore unpredictable and unwelcome bouts of change. I have never considered myself a traditionalist, having always identified myself as “different” and “outsider.” But after each expectation in my life has been dashed, I am surprised to learn via my grief and disappointment that what I did actually hope for was the safety I assumed was built into a traditional life trajectory - be a good girl and get good grades, establish myself as a respected practitioner in some fascinating field, land an accomplished and handsome husband, have a few children, live in a comfortable/not-ostentatious home, and generally garner respect and admiration from my community and live happily ever after.

I want to be part of the herd after all, and it turns out I can’t. Even worse … I’m not cut out for trailblazing. Not enough confidence, wonder if people will still like me, wonder if I’m doing everything right, etc. etc. Sometimes I just want someone to tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Just like in school - someone tells me what to do then I study real hard and then you’ll give me an A+ and I win! Yay! I’ve always been really good at school.

Well, I am 36 ½ years old and I am keenly aware how many times and ways life can just be absolutely confounding. Not that the unexpected turns have all been unwelcome. My job is really fulfilling and I am thankful that I have found something I can do for 8 hours a day without pulling my eyelashes out. I also have an endlessly kind, loving, and patient husband who truly takes me for all that I am and all that I’m not. I have not one, but THREE homes (2 of which are rented) that leaves us in a stable, comfortable financial position. The rub is that I simply can’t get over how little my intentions and actions have to do with the actual outcomes in my life. The knock-the-wind-out-of-me-leave-me-gasping final blow was this miscarriage thing for 2 reasons:

1) Wanting a life with children was one of the reasons my first husband and I divorced. There were so many complicated issues bubbling around our divorce, but being on different timelines about children was a big factor. To be completely frank, I left with some sense of urgency that my reproductive years were rushing by and I didn’t trust him anymore. I didn’t trust that he loved me, that he wanted to be with me, that we wanted the same things. And so I came out of that marriage with a clear goal – children.

2) Having children was the last remaining component of my “dream life” that would give me a sense of a life-well-led. The perfect marriage was no longer on the table, the accomplished career woman was impossible with no direction (this was before I discovered graphic design). It seemed that as much as I fought for the things I wanted, either I didn’t have it in me to push past failure or there were just too many factors out of my control.

Cut to me on this couch typing away on a miscarriage blog as a recurrent spontaneous aborter. Life is not only changing, it is changed. And I am grappling with some larger issues related to the meaning of life and identity. What am I to DO with myself if I don’t have a family? And why would I want to DO anything anyway considering I have absolutely no control over it.

I am feeling completely powerless and utterly out of control. And my head is full of anger and hate – at myself, at my husband, at my parents, at my friends, at this gloomy, broken world. And it seeps out of me despite my best efforts.

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*Of course the gods sit on their mountaintops eating their ambrosia and drinking their nectar and just laugh at me. The Greeks had it right; the gods are cruel, prank-playing asswads that use human suffering for their amusement … or so it seems to me. It’s a sad state of affairs when that version of the Universe resonates with me.

23CD AKA 11 DPO ... ABCDEFG1234567

I have re-read my posts and I think I am a horrible monster. I am really really an angry, temperamental little bitch and I don't know how my husband puts up with me. If I could see past my enormous reserves of self-pity, self-righteousness, and self-indulgence, I might be able to process my sadness and my anger without bathing in it.

I have been just awful to my husband. Unloving and unfair. I see a pattern in these posts, and I don't like what I see. I see a whole lot of anger and frustration taken out on my husband. Do you see the same thing? Tell the truth, or tell me your story.

I blame everything around me for what I perceive is wrong with my life and 1) there actually is nothing wrong with my life except that I haven't had a child and 2) none of what might be wrong with my life is anybody else's fault. But since I have no one to blame, where does all that anger go? I think I need to look up some self-help on anger.

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I also realize that I have been ignorantly jumping the gun trying to assess the nausea I have been feeling. It is unlikely that at a mere 7dpo, I could have been feeling nauseous from HCG production; implantation would probably not have occurred by then. I think the culprit is actually coffee on top of an empty stomach that is irritated by emotional stress and pre-natal vitamins. I am not taking very good care of myslef.

Yesterday at 22CD I took my first pee test. Negative. I am more upset than I thought I’d be considering I’m at the earliest possible test date. I’ve been barely, barely staving off madness. I had to stay three nights in a row in town instead of making the 40 minute commute since my innate impatience presupposes that every single other driver on the road is out to make my life miserable – for 40 minutes – 2 times a day. You can see why I opted to just stay in town (where we rent a room in my friend's house for just such emergencies) rather than pop a blood vessel.

On an ironic note, I am eagerly searching for blood on the TP after peeing. I WANT there to be blood because that will indicate implantation. Each time I've been pregnant, I bled a little at implantation time. So that gives me a little knowledge ahead of the curve. So far no blood ... obviously.

I’ll know pretty much for sure in time for Labor Day, so I’m looking forward to seriously tying one on if I’m negatory.

Spinning

Today, I am about 19 CD or approx 7 DPO. I feel weird . . .


I am so tired. This morning I was also inarguably nauseous though that subsided by about 11:00am. I hadn’t eaten any breakfast but that is not part of my typical morning routine and I am certainly not someone who suffers from nausea unless I’ve taken a multi-vitamin on an empty stomach (which I hadn’t). Perhaps these are red wine withdrawl symptoms? Last night, I threw my phone down in a fit of temper, prompting my husband to sneak up to our bedroom and leave me to my tantrum. He had to TEXT me good night and that he loved me, that’s how unapproachable I was. Finally, I have been teary and emotional all day. The teary, emotional part is not so unusual – but I can’t assign it to anything right now; it’s just a pervasive, floating sadness that sticks to anything that enters into my sphere of influence. Otherwise life is as stable as life can be.

So here I am, spinning that same old 45. Am I? Am I not? When can I test? How will I know? What if it is? What if it isn’t?

Seriously? I haven’t learned that that is fruitless? Why are we, as humans, so susceptible to running the same mental game that never got us anywhere in the first place? Like maybe this time, if I put enough angst into it, I can discern some fine nuance I hadn’t ever thought of before. I guess it’s kind of like my scardy-cat Chloe - because I know she high tails it at the mere suggestion of possible danger, I never have to worry about her. She does quite enough worrying to keep herself out of the jaws and tires of her natural predators. 

At least I’m not running to Google every half hour. I’m done with research (till the next bend in the road, I’m not Superwoman for God’s sake). That is the benefit of having decided that this is the last pregnancy and to have committed to an avenue of conception. The rest is out of my control and I am now (barely) managing my anxiety by seeking commiseration in all of your blogs.

I am looking forward to the last 2 days of work when my boss will be leaving for the long weekend. It's as good as a holiday for me too!

Fighting to conceive

My window of fertility has officially passed and I am ...... 16 days into my cycle (I don't have the lingo down. Is that 16CD?)

We TTC 3 out of the 5 days of fertility. As usual, on the day I was predicted to be most fertile, Jason and I had a blowup that made any act of intimacy unlikely. This is the THIRD time during a TTC month that a fight has ensued during ovulation time.

The first time was during a vacation in Spain, and hubby was tired and grumpy in our unairconditioned hotel room. He wasn't in the mood or something, and I couldn't understand why I had to prod him through the necessary exercises when he KNEW it was on the agenda. Did I really have to tease it out of him? Convince him that time is of the essence in these matters? Remind him that it might mean we'd have to repeat the whole thing next month? Remind him that my eggs are not getting younger? We did not conceive that month.

Same scenario second and third time. Husband being coy, tired, inexplicably resistant. Me feeling resentful that I have to cajole and persuade him. Then we fight about something inconsequential of which I have no recollection, and we end up not having sex. Despite these monthly histrionics, we have managed to get pregnant three times ... but Good God!

This month when the fight broke out, I stamped downstairs to the living room couch, unable to bear the sound of his breathing, and with tears streaming down my face, wondered how we got to this place AGAIN. I could no longer chalk it up to fatigue or some other such elusive cause. I think, plain and simple, the full weight of our fear, anxiety, and hope is focused like a laser on the only thing we are able to DO with respect to becoming parents. Having unprotected sex is the only thing we actually ACT on; all the rest is completely and utterly out of our control. In other words, because we generally are able to conceive, sex without contraception is now the traditional moment we open ourselves up to a world of potential pain. And apparently, as a couple, we don't shoulder the stress very gracefully.

So I marched right back up the stairs to our bedroom, turned on the light, and insisted that we address the fact that, for the third time, we have fought while trying to conceive. There were no big apologies and no earth-shattering breakthroughs. We just spoke our feelings to one another - good and bad - and acknowledged the big ass elephant in the room. We didn't have sex that night and I went back to the couch (which is very comfy). But I wasn't really angry at him and I don't think he was angry at me. We were both just tired to our bones and scared to death; we both understood why we were snarling at one another.

I've got to say that in reading other blogs, I don't hear too much about dissonance in others' relationships. But infertility has been hard on our relationship. There is a lot of tension and sadness and guilt and stress and, of course, we usually end up taking it out on each other. I love my husband very much, and I don't think of us as people who fight a lot. I certainly don't want to conceive a child under circumstances that don't include love and tenderness and intimacy. All I can hope, if this month is a wash, is that we go into the next month more self-aware and more gentle with one another.

But I do have to cut us some slack 'cause this infertility shit ain't for the faint-hearted.

A VEIL OF CALM: Part 2

Well - the second portion of the post was to have been a thoughtful essay on waiting ... and how I am absolutely horrible at it. Worse than you, I promise. It's pathological. But I'll save that for later and just skip to the main point of my unwritten essay to explain that the second reason I am feeling calmer is that O-Day is upon us.

I started my period last Monday and will be ovulating in earnest anywhere between tomorrow and Friday. Jason went on a white-water rafting vacation with his buddy; he's been gone since last Thursday. I instructed him that he needed to blow a wad or two while on vacation so that he's not delivering old sperm tomorrow.

So ... the first waiting is over - to be followed by approximately infinite periods of waiting. Waiting for a pee stick. Waiting for an ultrasound. Waiting to make a phone call with good news/bad news. Waiting for test results. Waiting, and waiting and waiting and waiting for life to take a right turn or a left turn.

A VEIL OF CALM: Part 1

I am finally calm…..er. A couple of things have happened this week that seem to be the cause of this uncharacteristic serenity. I’ll split this into 2 parts because you all have lives and didn’t sit down to read a book. :)

PART I: The Decision (insert medival trumpet announcement)

Jason and I have agreed that we will try one more time, but that this will be the last time. It took us a long time to get past the paralyzing fear and emotional mudslinging to hammer out the details – although truthfully, the mudslinging was part and parcel of communicating which parts of this were non-negotiable for either party. I don’t suppose ours was a textbook example of “how to communicate with your spouse to make important decisions,” but it was our messy, human version of grappling with life’s cruel bag of tricks.

Frankly, I didn’t know how we’d come to a mutually agreeable decision, even wondering if our relationship would survive the decision at all. But I guess between my insistence on talking, his insistence that we’d make it through this, the specialists, the therapist, the tears, the books, the blogs, supportive friends, my lovingly prostheletyzing mother (who insists prayer will deliver miracles, which begs the question, what did her prayers produce the last three times? – but I digress), my computer scientist father (who delivered a comforting statistical analysis via email*) and lots of chemical crutches – we stumbled through the fog of disappointment and grief and detailed the following plan:


1. Au Natural:

We will just go the natural route since none of the physical or genetic assessments warrant other measures. More specifically, we ruled out IVF for a combination of reasons – mostly financial and emotional. We decided we could not endure the process without absolute assurance that the result would be positive. I mean, I’d rather have my entire back tattooed than go through even one IVF cycle and come out the same way I went in – less $30,000.

I just don’t have it in me … though I did have to consider long and hard whether IVF was a test of how badly I wanted a child. But I don’t think it matters, nor is it even possible to determine, how BADLY I want to be a mother – how the fuck do you measure that? Probably some sort of machine called a guiltometer. Fuck that. What I really needed to consider was what I thought I could endure. Because that is where everyone must draw the line at some point if they continue to fail to conceive. What can one realistically endure before there is significant or even irreparable damage? I am of the opinion that it is all too possible to fail to draw the line, and the costs can be astronomical – physical damage, emotional breakdown, failed relationships, financial distress, damaged career, etc. etc. I knew, even after my first miscarriage, that having a child was not an “at all costs” proposition for me; but deciding where to draw the line has still been a bitch of a decision. I am actually rather thankful that my husband is less inclined than I am to keep trying ad infinitum because I might have pushed myself beyond reasonable limits out of sheer anger. Though initially painful to embrace, I can actually now look forward to the end of this heartwrenching journey either way – with child or without.

Our recourse will be pre-natal vitamins, magical baby aspirin, and a sensible diet.

2. What Constitutes a Pregnancy? 
You may wonder why this is even a debatable issue. You’re pregnant when you’re pregnant, right? Well, not in my mind. In my mind, there are soooooo many shades of grey.

Are you pregnant as soon as the sperm hits the egg? If there was a diagnostic test for that, would fertilization constitute a pregnancy even if the fertilized egg never made it out the tunnel of love (fallopial tube)? Is it when the embryo implants? Or rather, are we “in play” when you see a heartbeat?

I realize that technically, every one of these scenarios constitutes a pregnancy. But back in the day, all of these states of pregnancy would have been completely unverifiable-a mere inkling. I don’t even think I know how you definitively diagnosed a pregnancy before HCG measurements, though I think in the 60’s it might have involved rabbits.

This issue came up because I thought that perhaps I’d feel cheated if this go round, I turned up with a chemical pregnancy or something and miscarried so early that it would almost seem like a late period. But there are just too many crazy scenarios to anticipate, and the whole thing was becoming an exercise in mental masturbation. Better to aim for clarity. So pee stick calls the shots; when the pee stick/s (unlimited number allowed) indicates we are pregnant, that constitutes the fourth pregnancy. Whether the pregnancy is determined to be a chemical pregnancy, a missed miscarriage, or another blighted ovum, there will be no more tries. Final match, final set, final point. 

3. Statistics are NOT our friends:
Finally, we have decided that we will skip the screening blood panels and jump straight to CVS, the earliest diagnostic test available to determine the chromosomal health of the fetus. This is important, I think, in our case since our last fetus was lost as a result of a chromosomal abnormality and I suspect that the first 2 were lost for the same reason. Plus, I don’t trust the HUGE margins of statistical error on those screening tests. With our triploidy fetus, the screening indicated that there was a 98% chance that the fetus was healthy. If we’d decided NOT to do the amnio based on those numbers, the pregnancy could have been much more complicated and emotionally draining. Luckily, the decision was taken out of our hands naturally before the amnio was even conducted.

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As you MUST have gathered by now, I am not a creature that likes to leave any rock unturned. I am vigilant, obsessive, cautious and detailed. A true Capricorn if I actually believed that stuff. My husband is a different beast, he floats through life and is happy about 75% of the time to let life just happen to him … or so it seems to me. I have yet to figure out HOW he made the decision to try once more; it certainly wasn’t by reading or blogging or googling. Maybe his brain worked on it while he was bolting together the jeep he’s rebuilding or maybe he thought about being a father as he planted his vegetable garden -a passion he shares with his deceased father.

I don’t mean to sell him short. When he really wants something, he has the wherewithal to make it happen. A dive course, rebuilding a car, taking dance classes to win me over (he had me convinced he LOVED ballroom dancing, insisting we get together and “practice.” I am so naive). As it seems to function, ours are two mutually unintelligible, but complementary approaches to life. In the most clichéd way, I think we balance each other out. I am sure our decision regarding children reflects the best of both worlds. Despite his inattention to his toenails and his 2 taxidermied ducks-on-a-wall, I am lucky to have him. ;)

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* Email from my dad:

"Suppose you decide to try 4 more times, in future (Hope you are willing to look that far ahead).

What's the probability of success in at least one of those 4 times?
Probability of first failure = 0.35
Probability of first and second tries failing = 0.35 x 0.35 = 0.1225
Probability of 3 failed attempts = 0.35 x 0.35 x 0.35 = 0.042875
Probability of 4 failed attempts = 0.35 x 0.35 x 0.35 x 0.35 = 0.01500625
The probability of at least one success in those 4 attempts = 1 - 0.01500625 = 0.985

Hope Jason likes these odds :-) "