Constantly reminded

So many of our friends are struggling with infertility and recently a friend posted on facebook about how the clock is ticking.  Of our friends we only know one couple that did not have trouble conceiving within a year. Everyone else is struggling.

One of the problems is, no one talks about infertility. We only told our parents and my best friend, we know the pain of trying to conceive and having nothing happen. That struggle does not need monthly reminders from friends, we get that in the form of blood.

I didn't really think about life with baby once we got pregnant; I think it's some sort of protective measure for my heart. My heart grieves for our friends that have lost children, such pain and sorrow after the feeling of jubilation. I made plans for how to deal with my dysthymia, how to combat potential post-natal depression; but nothing concrete. Of course prior to even trying we talked about what we wanted to give our children, how many we wanted to have and how we wanted to adopt or do foster care.

Once you enter the minefield of fertility treatment though you have to slow down and consider your options, there are only so many rounds of drugs you can take so timed intercourse and IUI are somewhat limited. You can find someone to carry your baby for you or use someone's eggs or sperm. You can spend money for IVF or adoption. This all weighs heavily. At some point in our journey to parenthood, while lying in our bed at night, I up and announced to my husband that if we couldn't have biological children I didn't want children at all. That was a hard realization to come to.

We were very lucky to get pregnant the first time we did IUI. Three blood tests later I was realizing that this was actually happening. I remember our first ultrasound at six weeks, I wished the nurse would've printed a picture of tiny Guster. I was afraid that that might be the only picture we would get, especially given what happened next. I complained about some pain and after a blood draw we found that my hormone levels were very low, the nurse ordered medication and a more detailed ultrasound. The next day we sat in the waiting room of the imaging department waiting for my name to be called, the tech came and told Jason he couldn't come in with me. She had a lot of trouble finding the baby and getting good images, but she finally gave me some peace when she said that she found the heart and that it was beating. Later the nurse called to say everything looked fine with Guster.

When sharing the news of our pregnancy we called some people because I wanted them to be able to process the news privately. I remember being at church when the pastor announced yet another woman was pregnant and I couldn't contain my tears. The feelings of unfairness and inadequacy. I wanted to spare people the pain of having to hide their emotions.

So, moral of the story and your take away:

• Fertility starts to decline at age 30 and once you hit 35 you only need to wait six months instead of twelve to seek out infertility treatment.



• Talk with a specialist.



• Consider your options and realize your plans are going to have to change, you may no longer be able to have the four or more children you planned on.



• Don't be afraid to ask your doctor what Plan B is, at the insemination I asked a whole bunch of questions about what we would be trying next.



• Don't be afraid to share your story, lots of people are struggling and sometimes it's nice to read the success stories (especially if they share a diagnosis), let's you know someone is experiencing this too - you are not alone.

Surrounded by two computers and a messy desk

So, I'm posting on my blog basically because I wanted to leave a comment on Melinda's and I realized I hadn't written on here all year. Maybe when our baby is born I will use it to post pictures and stuff. Melinda asked if I was going to do that and I was thinking, yeah, I'll do it a few times and then I'll just forget about it.

Still like the title of my blog though. Still in therapy (like that's ever going to change).

No longer dealing with trying to get pregnant as you can (not) see, we ended up doing IUI and it worked on the first try. I think I was in shock that it worked the first time out. Jason doesn't really feel comfortable discussing the IUI, but I don't really care if people know. I just don't want to hear anyone's story about how they know someone who was trying and then a) started/finished the adoption process and just got pregnant b) tried for a long time and then stopped and got pregnant c) some other story that I really don't give a **** about. It's not your story, it's what you saw happen, these mysterious people have no bearing on my life and regardless of all that, infertility is like a minefield. It could be the woman, it could be the man, it could be both, it could be unexplainable; each of those situations require different treatments and procedures and just because pregnancy happened to someone you sort of know about doesn't mean that it will happen for us. It is not somehow uplifting or inspiring for you to tell me this "miracle story", it's pointless because by this point in the game people we've heard all the stories! We could really care less that it ended up happening somehow to someone you sort of know. Now if it was you personally that made it through this voyage then sure, go ahead and share. I know it feels good to be able to say "Hey, we did it and it worked", to say "It happened to us and it can happen to you" to sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know I would've appreciated someone telling us "Look, we were dealing with infertility as well and this is the good thing that happened".

Worst daughter EVER!

So today I was to wake up and be ready for my mom at 5am, Jason turned the alarm off and I woke up at 5:44, I ran to the front door where my mom had been beating at the door for 15 minutes. She woke up the neighbors, I feel so bad about that. Mom drove fast to the airport, I kept telling her to step on the gas and "GO!" Luckily Mom and Louise got to the airport about 6:40ish and right now I am checking SFO's website and it says that they are still boarding - hopefully everything worked out okay.

I have a therapy appointment today, just kind of thinking about what I'm going to talk about, I was thinking about my parent's divorce and realized that today is the date of their marriage. I think it kind of funny, as in odd funny, not ha ha funny, that they are both on vacation today. I wonder if that was intentional or not. Probably not in my mom's case, she's going on a cruise, but my dad planned a trip to Disneyland; either way I hope they both are having a good time.

I've got some of the day mapped out, therapy at 10am and then I've got to go to the teacher supply store and then to Target to get a gift card as an apology to my neighbors (this is the second time that they have been disturbed by my family trying to bang my door down). Jason will be home around 4:30 and then he said he had to check to see if he has an evening client, but he went last week so he should be free this week. Maybe I'll make dinner again, I do have mom's car so I could go buy anything I need. Speaking of mom's car, she wanted to know what I'd be doing with it and I said I had a doctor's appointment today and tomorrow and then she was all "Well (sigh), okay, I just don't want anything to happen to it." thanks, I'm going to be all paranoid now.

I've been cooking dinner!

So far I've cooked dinner twice this week. Today my whole meal was made from scratch; I made a Cherry Tomato Onion Tart because we had so many cherry tomatoes from our CSA box and udon noodles in a peanut sauce. Yes, I'm well aware that these two items don't go together, but they were both tasty and aside from the actual noodles I made everything! The only thing that went wrong was that I read the oven temp direction wrong, it was 200 but it was Celsisus and I forgot to convert it, oh well, it took a little longer and the tomatoes weren't quite as wrinkly as I was going for but the crust was cooked which is what I was mainly concerned with.

Love Jeopardy!

We've DVR'd a bunch of Jeopardy episodes and today we've watched 3 episodes. We're not that dorky; I haven't kept score today.

So lately I've been thinking

I've been thinking lately about my blog and using it as a platform for something bigger. I don't know why, maybe it's because I want to be (cue bright lights and snappy music) FAMOUS! Okay, not really. Besides, no one reads my blog and I kinda like it that way (no offense to those of you actually reading these infrequent missiles).

I thought about writing about my "journey" with depression, but I don't think anyone wants to read about that. I thought about posting different challenges for the day, but I don't know if I'll actually want to complete any of them. You say, but just pick something you want to do! But what I want to do and what I end up doing are often two completely different things. I thought about writing about wanting a baby, but at the moment it's still out of our hands, well it's always out of our hands and into God's, but until we find out what's going on there's no point in hypothesizing, we're just going to wait and go to our appointment and then go from there.

Hedo, Hedo

Hedo, hedo is one of Jason's favorite sayings. Basically instead of using the l's in hello he puts in a d, it's funny and now I say it too.

Not feeling well today. Went to church, we had a potluck, I brought chips and had one of the older girls go to Little Ceasar's and get a pizza. She was already going so I thought she could pick up an extra one. I like potlucks, sometimes the food can be weird, but this time it was really basic. Pizza, cookies, deviled eggs (did you know the last hymn in our hymnal is #666?), cold cuts, cheese and crackers, you get the idea.

I always find it interesting what other people bring. I wasn't sure where the potluck was going to be so I didn't want to bring something that had to be kept cold or hot. I think one of the weirder things about today's potluck was that someone brought 4 strawberries, 4 chicken strips and like 6 potato wedges, that just struck me as strange.

What I don't like is when people want you to sign up to bring something. It's like, I'll bring what I'll bring, I don't want to be tied down for something as informal as a potluck. When I say this my mom always tells this story about how she once went to a lunch potluck with like 20 other women and they all brought potato salad. The moral of that story is that you need a list, but it's also interesting to note that all the potato salads were different. Personally if I was there I'd have brought something different, I don't like potato salad.