I’m on the end of the crimson wave and it’s feeling good. I go in on Wednesday for my FUS (the ultrasound where they check my ovaries to see if I’m ovulating and if I am where I am in the cycle). Since this is my first one, I am not sure what to expect but mostly I am just expecting to have to go back in a day or so for one or two more. Still, is it wrong that I am so hopeful for this cycle? I know it’s our first one and that the chances are low we will conceive right away. In fact, my closest of friends are telling me not to get my hopes up and to just lay low with the expectations. Still, I can’t help but feel hopeful. All our tests came back normal/regular. I had the laparoscopy to clear up all the endometriosis and my tubes and uterus are free and clear. Shouldn’t I be optimistic? Shouldn’t I believe and hope for the best? We only get 6 shots at this. When I read of couples who have had 10, 11, 12, 15, 20…well my heart dive bombs a bit and I think maybe I’m naive to think we can do this in 6 or less. Still, I can’t help but hope.
Last night at a meeting we had for a planning committee we are on, Bob shared that we are trying to have a baby and you would have thought he had announced we WERE having a baby. People were so excited and Bob was so proud. I’ve never seen him so gentle and excited and celebratory that way before. We’ve been making plans. Plans! Plans for baby care. Plans for baby support. Plans for room arrangement. Plans for home ownership. Plans for college funds. Plans for naming said progeny. Plans! Are we crazy? Are we insane? Are we rubes believing so strongly in something and believing it will actually happen only to find we’ve been taken for fools? I don’t know. All I know is that in all of our hoping and dreaming about getting pregnant, it’s never seemed so real, so close, so actual. It’s like the brass ring and the carousel. I’m riding my horse and I’m riding by the ring. I can see the ring and when I reach out to touch it, I can just barely get a grasp. It’s right there and yet I can’t claim it as my own just yet.
Life happens when you’re living it and stuff can come at you that feels like office furniture being hurled at you at top speed. Kevyn Burger can tell you that. So can Noreen. So can the Punnetts. So can each and every woman on every infertility and mommy blog I’ve ever read (Cecily, Julie, Julia, etc.) Still, would any of these people tell me not to try? Not to reach for the brass ring? Not to hope or believe? I don’t think so. I think that is where you find the meaty morsels. If we try and fail, at least we tried and we most likely met some nice people (and even friends) along the way. Maybe our story helps someone else to try and succeed. But if we don’t even venture out to try at all, well, that’s a failure in itself and that’s no way to live at all.
I was talking to Bob last night about how hard he is on himself when he fails or messes up. He flogs himself verbally over and over and doesn’t let up. If he had a whip, I have no doubt he would send that thing over his own back hundred of times in order to assuage himself of whatever guilt he’s built up over a mistake. Even though I have struggled with my own faith and feelings towards God this past year, I have no doubt that the guilt he’s feeling is not from God. It’s too dark and too much of a burden and instead of building him up, only discourages him. In our conversation, he told me I do the same thing when it comes to conception. I have taken on the roll of sole owner of conception and any problems we have conceiving have become MINE. He’s right. We’ve been diagnosed with mystery infertility. There is no clear or logical reason we haven’t conceived and yet I have made this MY issue. I’m old. I had endometriosis. My cervical fluid is inhospitable to sperm (my own diagnosis…nothing has been done to confirm or deny this). I don’t tip my hips for 15 minutes after sex. I, I, I, me, me, me. Seriously, why do I do this? Is it because I need some kind of answer, any answer at all? Or is it because I feel it’s I’m a failure as a woman because my body is not doing something it has been specifically designed to do? Or is it better to name it myself before someone else names it for me? Who knows? All I do know is that both me and Bob would do well to go easier on ourselves and remember a little thing called GRACE abounds in the love of God.
On a different note (well, not that different it would seem) did you know that there is a woman here in the Twin Cities pregnant with sextuplets? There is! She is Minnesota’s first woman pregnant with sextuplets ever. Clomid didn’t work for her so they put her on another drug (I’m not quite as up to date on my fertility drugs, but I’m thinking it was an injectable). It caused her to hyper-ovulate. They thought she ovulated 3 eggs but when she got pregnant with the 6, they did some more thorough testing and it seemed she ovulated 10 eggs. THIS is why we don’t want to go beyond Clomid. Yet when I hear the Clomid didn’t work for her, I get scared again that her story is my story and it won’t work for me either. Hope, believe, try, reach, live.
Last night at a meeting we had for a planning committee we are on, Bob shared that we are trying to have a baby and you would have thought he had announced we WERE having a baby. People were so excited and Bob was so proud. I’ve never seen him so gentle and excited and celebratory that way before. We’ve been making plans. Plans! Plans for baby care. Plans for baby support. Plans for room arrangement. Plans for home ownership. Plans for college funds. Plans for naming said progeny. Plans! Are we crazy? Are we insane? Are we rubes believing so strongly in something and believing it will actually happen only to find we’ve been taken for fools? I don’t know. All I know is that in all of our hoping and dreaming about getting pregnant, it’s never seemed so real, so close, so actual. It’s like the brass ring and the carousel. I’m riding my horse and I’m riding by the ring. I can see the ring and when I reach out to touch it, I can just barely get a grasp. It’s right there and yet I can’t claim it as my own just yet.
Life happens when you’re living it and stuff can come at you that feels like office furniture being hurled at you at top speed. Kevyn Burger can tell you that. So can Noreen. So can the Punnetts. So can each and every woman on every infertility and mommy blog I’ve ever read (Cecily, Julie, Julia, etc.) Still, would any of these people tell me not to try? Not to reach for the brass ring? Not to hope or believe? I don’t think so. I think that is where you find the meaty morsels. If we try and fail, at least we tried and we most likely met some nice people (and even friends) along the way. Maybe our story helps someone else to try and succeed. But if we don’t even venture out to try at all, well, that’s a failure in itself and that’s no way to live at all.
I was talking to Bob last night about how hard he is on himself when he fails or messes up. He flogs himself verbally over and over and doesn’t let up. If he had a whip, I have no doubt he would send that thing over his own back hundred of times in order to assuage himself of whatever guilt he’s built up over a mistake. Even though I have struggled with my own faith and feelings towards God this past year, I have no doubt that the guilt he’s feeling is not from God. It’s too dark and too much of a burden and instead of building him up, only discourages him. In our conversation, he told me I do the same thing when it comes to conception. I have taken on the roll of sole owner of conception and any problems we have conceiving have become MINE. He’s right. We’ve been diagnosed with mystery infertility. There is no clear or logical reason we haven’t conceived and yet I have made this MY issue. I’m old. I had endometriosis. My cervical fluid is inhospitable to sperm (my own diagnosis…nothing has been done to confirm or deny this). I don’t tip my hips for 15 minutes after sex. I, I, I, me, me, me. Seriously, why do I do this? Is it because I need some kind of answer, any answer at all? Or is it because I feel it’s I’m a failure as a woman because my body is not doing something it has been specifically designed to do? Or is it better to name it myself before someone else names it for me? Who knows? All I do know is that both me and Bob would do well to go easier on ourselves and remember a little thing called GRACE abounds in the love of God.
On a different note (well, not that different it would seem) did you know that there is a woman here in the Twin Cities pregnant with sextuplets? There is! She is Minnesota’s first woman pregnant with sextuplets ever. Clomid didn’t work for her so they put her on another drug (I’m not quite as up to date on my fertility drugs, but I’m thinking it was an injectable). It caused her to hyper-ovulate. They thought she ovulated 3 eggs but when she got pregnant with the 6, they did some more thorough testing and it seemed she ovulated 10 eggs. THIS is why we don’t want to go beyond Clomid. Yet when I hear the Clomid didn’t work for her, I get scared again that her story is my story and it won’t work for me either. Hope, believe, try, reach, live.
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1 comment:
You've got to have the hope and the dream.
And yes, you and Bob should go easier on yourselves. I don't know why we always are so hard on ourselves about infertility when it just is. I guess because we don't want to accept it.
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