This February 11th makes four years since we lost you to kidney cancer, and not a day goes by that I don't think about the last time I saw you. You had just come home from your first week of treatment at Baptist and we were in North Carolina for the funeral of Jamie's cousin. I remember you hurting so bad because of the tumors that I couldn't even really hug you. I remember standing in your kitchen with Courtney trying to find something that you could eat. I remember thinking as I hugged you goodbye that this would probably be the last time I would see you. I didn't want to leave you. If I had the chance I would have turned the car around and stayed forever, told you things that I should have before it was too late. I hope you knew how much I loved you then and still love you now. I never told you what a great impact you had on my life, but I didn’t fully come to this realization until after you were gone. I hope somehow you know how you are helping me to become the person I want to be. You were my hero, and you meant the world to me, you still do..
I would give anything to physically have you back, even though I know you are with me everyday, I still miss you. I miss our daily talks. I miss hearing the sound of your voice. I miss sharing my life with you. But I'm not the only one that misses you, we all do. Jacob is quick to tell his story about his Grammy Trish and playing in the snow at your house. We look at your pictures and Greyson will say that's my Grammy Trish in Heaven. Leanna and Courben never got the chance to know you, but they will through us.
If I had the chance to tell you I would say Thank You;
Thank you for always loving me in spite of myself. No mistake was ever so bad that you did not absorb it under the umbrella of a Mother's love. Thank you for all the years of laughter, and fun. Life was not always easy for you, but you made it the best you could for us kids. Thank you for the numerous sacrifices you made. We never did without a need, and that was a testament to your drive. Thank you for bringing me into this world and protecting me both from the world and myself. Thank you for my generous spirit. I learned that from you. Thank you for putting your kids first above all others. Thank you for my belief in God, and knowing Jesus as the salvation of my life.Thank you for accepting me as a flawed human being, and loving me anyway.
Most of all, I thank you for the role model you were for me. I hope to be half the person you were in your lifetime.
Your time as my mother, as a sister, as a daughter, and as a friend will never be forgotten. And although I am not ready to leave this Earth, I am looking forward to being reunited with you again one day.
I will love you always.
Manda
Friday, February 10, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Complaining Parents
I don't know if it's spring fever (not that it's ever really winter in Florida) or what is going on but all I have heard from people lately are complaints about their kids. It makes me so upset!!! Do you know how lucky you are to have a child or children to complain about???? Do you know how I lay awake at night longing to be woken up by the sound of a crying baby?? Do you know how much it would make me smile to see crayon all over my perfect walls?? Do you know how bad I want to Windex off little finger prints from my windows?? So why all you parents out there complain about each crazy thing your child does..... Remember me the one that aches to have those tasks that you all get to do each and every day. Remember how lucky you are to have a child to hold in your arms. Remember when your child acts up and is complaining about what to wear, what to eat, and when they have to go to bed that I would trade you places in a heart beat.
Know that your children are blessings from God and that you are the blessed ones to have them in your life. Because I know you wouldn't want to trade all those little annoyances for my empty arms. So enjoy each day. Enjoy each mess. Enjoy those beautiful children that I so desperately want.
Know that your children are blessings from God and that you are the blessed ones to have them in your life. Because I know you wouldn't want to trade all those little annoyances for my empty arms. So enjoy each day. Enjoy each mess. Enjoy those beautiful children that I so desperately want.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Infertility is so much more than.....
Infertility is so much more than not having a baby in your arms.
That’s why you can’t hand your crying baby to the infertile woman and say things like, “Here, this will make you feel better. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to put up with this?”
The woman experiencing infertility doesn’t want your baby. Certainly, your baby is squishy and lovely (even when crying) and smells so nice, but that’s not it. That’s not even a consolation.
Nor is saying to your infertile neighbor, “You should just adopt. If you adopt I swear you’d get pregnant. It’s happened to like, three of my friends/relatives/coworkers.”
Because, that’s not it either. It’s not about achieving some ends to a means. It’s not about belittling adoption so you can achieve a pregnancy.
And adoption is not a scientific cure for infertility—and it’s not an emotional cure either.
Infertility is an all encompassing state of being. It has the force to completely take over the core of a woman’s belief about who she is and what she is capable of. It’s not about having a biological baby or an adopted baby or a foster baby, it’s about feeling whole even if no baby ever comes at all.
It’s about overcoming those days when you are called to repentance (by well-meaning family members) for “lacking the faith to conceive” or for being selfish because “what is taking you so long to have a baby?”
It’s being able to love your body even though it’s not functioning in a fertile way. It’s about ignoring the statements like, “just get drunk and you’ll get pregnant,” or “just stop trying and it will happen” or “maybe you should take a vacation”
My own battle with infertility has ripped me apart. In these heavy years I have felt every emotion given to mankind to feel. Jealously like a furious ocean. Anger, rage and self-directed disappointment. It isn’t just the inability to conceive, it is the inability to believe in myself.
There is a lot of misunderstanding everywhere I go.
My weakness is not seeing who I really am, with or without a baby. I can only see myself as a person who wants to be a mother. I am incomplete.
I feel when or if we ever do conceive to full term, I will never get over the entire experience completely. But I remember saying to myself during those extremely lonely days, “I want hope more than I want a baby.” I didn’t mean hope that someday we’ll conceive, I meant hope that someday it wouldn’t be so painful to be me.
The light at the end of the tunnel comes when the light inside of yourself illuminates who you really are, and what you’re really capable of.
That’s when infertility becomes less about having a baby in your arms and more about gratitude for having experienced it.
That’s why you can’t hand your crying baby to the infertile woman and say things like, “Here, this will make you feel better. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to put up with this?”
The woman experiencing infertility doesn’t want your baby. Certainly, your baby is squishy and lovely (even when crying) and smells so nice, but that’s not it. That’s not even a consolation.
Nor is saying to your infertile neighbor, “You should just adopt. If you adopt I swear you’d get pregnant. It’s happened to like, three of my friends/relatives/coworkers.”
Because, that’s not it either. It’s not about achieving some ends to a means. It’s not about belittling adoption so you can achieve a pregnancy.
And adoption is not a scientific cure for infertility—and it’s not an emotional cure either.
Infertility is an all encompassing state of being. It has the force to completely take over the core of a woman’s belief about who she is and what she is capable of. It’s not about having a biological baby or an adopted baby or a foster baby, it’s about feeling whole even if no baby ever comes at all.
It’s about overcoming those days when you are called to repentance (by well-meaning family members) for “lacking the faith to conceive” or for being selfish because “what is taking you so long to have a baby?”
It’s being able to love your body even though it’s not functioning in a fertile way. It’s about ignoring the statements like, “just get drunk and you’ll get pregnant,” or “just stop trying and it will happen” or “maybe you should take a vacation”
My own battle with infertility has ripped me apart. In these heavy years I have felt every emotion given to mankind to feel. Jealously like a furious ocean. Anger, rage and self-directed disappointment. It isn’t just the inability to conceive, it is the inability to believe in myself.
There is a lot of misunderstanding everywhere I go.
My weakness is not seeing who I really am, with or without a baby. I can only see myself as a person who wants to be a mother. I am incomplete.
I feel when or if we ever do conceive to full term, I will never get over the entire experience completely. But I remember saying to myself during those extremely lonely days, “I want hope more than I want a baby.” I didn’t mean hope that someday we’ll conceive, I meant hope that someday it wouldn’t be so painful to be me.
The light at the end of the tunnel comes when the light inside of yourself illuminates who you really are, and what you’re really capable of.
That’s when infertility becomes less about having a baby in your arms and more about gratitude for having experienced it.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friendship Tips.... At least in my own warped mind....
99% of my friends who read this blog are "normal" (i.e. not infertile... since I'm not discussing mental issues in this blog!!). AND I'll try to keep this post tame since I'm pretty sure that alot of my family.. and possibly my boss(Hi David!) read this blog.. Imagine how confusing most of the lingo must be for them. Anyhow. Back to the point of this post. One of those friends(who are "normal") said to me “I wish you would write about how to be a good friend to an infertile person”. Which is really sweet of her and shows she has already passed one of the requirements. So I started thinking about writing a post on this and realized what a hard task this is. How do you become a Good Friend to an Infertile?
Firstly, I have to say that this being a Good Friend to an Infertile is not an easy job at all. It is a job with fluid parameters, a thankless job sometimes and one where it might appear that no matter how hard you try, you never seem to get it right. There are times when you will be extremely busy and the job is very demanding. There are other times where you will benched, forced to sit on the outside looking in. There is not often any logic in this change of demand. Be aware of the volatility of work pressure when applying for this job. It is not a decision to be taken lightly.
Secondly, there is not a universal job description, and worst of all, your job duties will change over time. There is not a universal job description because Infertiles come in different flavors. True, one can categorize these flavors to some extent, but variations will always exist. Your eternal optimist / newbie / completely uninvolved infertile doesn’t need too much in the way of special friendship; they believe the problem is temporary and will get resolved soon. They don’t feel broken, different or an outcast. Your longer term / highly involved infertile is a very tricky beast, and is one to be handled with great caution and protective gloves (for you, not her). This person feels alienated from society and carries great pain and angst in their souls. They might not show it all the time, but there is a very sensitive, raw spot in their souls that is easily bruised. Then you get the older timers, who’ve been doing this so long it just becomes part of who they are. These infertiles have gone through the great angst and intense pain of the ‘dark years’ and have come out realizing that while infertility is shit, it is not all consuming. And instead of crying, they laugh. Because infertility is actually a comedy of errors, sometimes.
Infertiles tend to move through these stages at different pace. Which makes it very hard being a Good Friend to an Infertile, because the type of friendship involved is so different at each stage. It is very very hard being a Good Friend to someone stuck in the dark stage of infertility. It is a very painful place for an infertile to be. There is no hope, just a great deep dark sense of despair. You feel totally alienated from the rest of the world and you are consumed by your situation. Every thing hurts, and every thing has the power to hurt you. Your world shrinks to the world of infertility and you fight tooth and nail to protect the fragile hold you have on sanity. The best advice I can give to a Good Friend at this stage is to offer friendship and support, from a distance. Say things like “I am here for you if you want to talk, or not talk, or drink, or swear, or shop. But if you don’t want to that’s perfectly ok. I’ll be here waiting for you when YOU are ready to come out the cave”. If you can bare it, hang in there, your friendship should return to some semblance of its previous form once your Infertile has worked her way through her dark despair. It has nothing to do with you or you ability to friend, it has every thing to do with her coping with the horrible reality of her situation.
Being a Good Friend to the eternal optimist or the good-humored veteran is a lot easier, with these few survival tips.
1. Good Friends never judge. Remember that unless you’ve walked in the person’s shoes, you can’t say “well I would never….do IVF/terminate a pg/spend so much money on ART etc” To be honest, who likes judgmental people any way.
2. Good Friends will educate themselves about what their Infertile is going through. HUGE proviso: see point 3 before putting any thing into action. Read up about infertility so that you get a high-level understanding of the intricacies involved. Know little things like eggs are retrieved, then fertilized and they become embryos. Then the embryos are put back. Just small things so that when your infertile does share some of her world with you, you will understand. I think this shows commitment to the friendship.
3. However. Do not willy nilly offer advice, or hot off the press latest research about a fantastic new procedure that is sure to work. Remember the stuff they write about in your local woman’s magazine is stuff that your Infertile did in Infertility 101. Been there, failed that. ICSI is not a new procedure, I promise. And yes, we have heard of taking cough syrup to increase cervical mucous. Oh, and for my Aunt, yes I have heard of lying with my legs in the air after having sex. Unfortunately, I have PCO and don’t ovulate so I could be lying with my legs in the air doing bicycle movements till the cows come home and all the sperm are going to do is mill around confused asking where the fuck the egg is, bemoaning the fact that this has been a useless trip out and they might as well have had a wank. Which goes back to Point 2. Educate yourself about your friend’s diagnosis so that you can avoid offering pointless advice. And please, what ever you do, never, ever be so stupid as to say “just relax”. Would you say to a cancer patient “just relax”? Would you say to someone who can’t see “just relax”? Of course you wouldn’t. Plus you have to know that “just relaxing” will not change the medical diagnosis that is causing your friends infertility. Because of course you’ve done enough reading to carry on an intelligent conversation, if your Infertile decides to engage you in one.
4. Platitudes. Never ever offer platitudes. This is a totally selfish act any way because all platitudes do is make you feel better and the Infertile feel worse. Saying “maybe you are not meant to have children” is an incredibly stupid thing to say. You wouldn’t say to a diabetic “maybe you weren’t meant to have insulin etc”. Infertility is a medical condition. Not some factor in the universe’s bigger plan for the Infertile. Similar to “its God will”. How the fuck do you know? You have a direct connection or what? How about “are you sure you want kids?” lovingly looking at your own screaming kids. No dear, I am spending thousands and enduring physical, emotional and mental anguish just because I am obscenely stupid. Or “you can have mine”. Now that’s an incredibly stupid thing to say. What kind of mother are you to give her kids away? Oh you were only joking? What was the funny part? That I don’t have my own kids? Sorry, but I am not getting the joke? Call me stupid. In addition, please don’t tell me about your friend/cousin/co-worker who got pg naturally after 8 years of trying. It doesn’t make me feel better, it depresses me. Good for her. It’s got nothing to do with my situation.
5. The tricky one. Announcing pregnancies / baby showers / births and other kid things. The best advice I can give here is trust the Infertile to know what she can or can’t handle. Don’t hide things from her, but respect it when she says to you “I don’t think I am going to be able to handle that”. Your Infertile knows when her good days and bad days are, and what she can or can’t handle. But do invite her, give her the choice of saying no. And then respect her to know that sometimes she needs to protect her own fragile soul more than she needs to fulfill social obligations.
6. The level of involvement. Infertiles differ in the level of involvement they engage their Good Friends in. Some, like me, are pretty open about the whole thing. Every Friend and their Mother knows when I am going in for ER, ET or whatever. Other people prefer to keep their infertility private. Find out what your Infertile prefers and operate at the level she feels comfortable with.
7. Which brings to me to my final point. If you don’t know how to act, ask. I love that my friends ask me how I want them to act around me. They also know that if they ask the question “how is it going with your treatment” I will either tell them or I will say “irritating, I don’t want to talk about it now”. They totally respect that and don’t push. I have great friends.
There have been many articles written on the web about what to say and not to say to an Infertile, how the family should act etc. I wont go into those. If you are a Good Friend you will have done a little surfing and read those things anyway. Besides, this post is already way too long.
To end off, if you decide to accept the job of Good Friend to an Infertile, I applaud you. Because it is not an easy job. It really isn’t. As I have said, it’s a pretty thankless job and one in which your job description is so fluid that what is required today is wrong tomorrow. I thank those of my Good Friends who have stuck around so long with me. I know it hasn’t been easy. I appreciate your friendship, I really do.
Firstly, I have to say that this being a Good Friend to an Infertile is not an easy job at all. It is a job with fluid parameters, a thankless job sometimes and one where it might appear that no matter how hard you try, you never seem to get it right. There are times when you will be extremely busy and the job is very demanding. There are other times where you will benched, forced to sit on the outside looking in. There is not often any logic in this change of demand. Be aware of the volatility of work pressure when applying for this job. It is not a decision to be taken lightly.
Secondly, there is not a universal job description, and worst of all, your job duties will change over time. There is not a universal job description because Infertiles come in different flavors. True, one can categorize these flavors to some extent, but variations will always exist. Your eternal optimist / newbie / completely uninvolved infertile doesn’t need too much in the way of special friendship; they believe the problem is temporary and will get resolved soon. They don’t feel broken, different or an outcast. Your longer term / highly involved infertile is a very tricky beast, and is one to be handled with great caution and protective gloves (for you, not her). This person feels alienated from society and carries great pain and angst in their souls. They might not show it all the time, but there is a very sensitive, raw spot in their souls that is easily bruised. Then you get the older timers, who’ve been doing this so long it just becomes part of who they are. These infertiles have gone through the great angst and intense pain of the ‘dark years’ and have come out realizing that while infertility is shit, it is not all consuming. And instead of crying, they laugh. Because infertility is actually a comedy of errors, sometimes.
Infertiles tend to move through these stages at different pace. Which makes it very hard being a Good Friend to an Infertile, because the type of friendship involved is so different at each stage. It is very very hard being a Good Friend to someone stuck in the dark stage of infertility. It is a very painful place for an infertile to be. There is no hope, just a great deep dark sense of despair. You feel totally alienated from the rest of the world and you are consumed by your situation. Every thing hurts, and every thing has the power to hurt you. Your world shrinks to the world of infertility and you fight tooth and nail to protect the fragile hold you have on sanity. The best advice I can give to a Good Friend at this stage is to offer friendship and support, from a distance. Say things like “I am here for you if you want to talk, or not talk, or drink, or swear, or shop. But if you don’t want to that’s perfectly ok. I’ll be here waiting for you when YOU are ready to come out the cave”. If you can bare it, hang in there, your friendship should return to some semblance of its previous form once your Infertile has worked her way through her dark despair. It has nothing to do with you or you ability to friend, it has every thing to do with her coping with the horrible reality of her situation.
Being a Good Friend to the eternal optimist or the good-humored veteran is a lot easier, with these few survival tips.
1. Good Friends never judge. Remember that unless you’ve walked in the person’s shoes, you can’t say “well I would never….do IVF/terminate a pg/spend so much money on ART etc” To be honest, who likes judgmental people any way.
2. Good Friends will educate themselves about what their Infertile is going through. HUGE proviso: see point 3 before putting any thing into action. Read up about infertility so that you get a high-level understanding of the intricacies involved. Know little things like eggs are retrieved, then fertilized and they become embryos. Then the embryos are put back. Just small things so that when your infertile does share some of her world with you, you will understand. I think this shows commitment to the friendship.
3. However. Do not willy nilly offer advice, or hot off the press latest research about a fantastic new procedure that is sure to work. Remember the stuff they write about in your local woman’s magazine is stuff that your Infertile did in Infertility 101. Been there, failed that. ICSI is not a new procedure, I promise. And yes, we have heard of taking cough syrup to increase cervical mucous. Oh, and for my Aunt, yes I have heard of lying with my legs in the air after having sex. Unfortunately, I have PCO and don’t ovulate so I could be lying with my legs in the air doing bicycle movements till the cows come home and all the sperm are going to do is mill around confused asking where the fuck the egg is, bemoaning the fact that this has been a useless trip out and they might as well have had a wank. Which goes back to Point 2. Educate yourself about your friend’s diagnosis so that you can avoid offering pointless advice. And please, what ever you do, never, ever be so stupid as to say “just relax”. Would you say to a cancer patient “just relax”? Would you say to someone who can’t see “just relax”? Of course you wouldn’t. Plus you have to know that “just relaxing” will not change the medical diagnosis that is causing your friends infertility. Because of course you’ve done enough reading to carry on an intelligent conversation, if your Infertile decides to engage you in one.
4. Platitudes. Never ever offer platitudes. This is a totally selfish act any way because all platitudes do is make you feel better and the Infertile feel worse. Saying “maybe you are not meant to have children” is an incredibly stupid thing to say. You wouldn’t say to a diabetic “maybe you weren’t meant to have insulin etc”. Infertility is a medical condition. Not some factor in the universe’s bigger plan for the Infertile. Similar to “its God will”. How the fuck do you know? You have a direct connection or what? How about “are you sure you want kids?” lovingly looking at your own screaming kids. No dear, I am spending thousands and enduring physical, emotional and mental anguish just because I am obscenely stupid. Or “you can have mine”. Now that’s an incredibly stupid thing to say. What kind of mother are you to give her kids away? Oh you were only joking? What was the funny part? That I don’t have my own kids? Sorry, but I am not getting the joke? Call me stupid. In addition, please don’t tell me about your friend/cousin/co-worker who got pg naturally after 8 years of trying. It doesn’t make me feel better, it depresses me. Good for her. It’s got nothing to do with my situation.
5. The tricky one. Announcing pregnancies / baby showers / births and other kid things. The best advice I can give here is trust the Infertile to know what she can or can’t handle. Don’t hide things from her, but respect it when she says to you “I don’t think I am going to be able to handle that”. Your Infertile knows when her good days and bad days are, and what she can or can’t handle. But do invite her, give her the choice of saying no. And then respect her to know that sometimes she needs to protect her own fragile soul more than she needs to fulfill social obligations.
6. The level of involvement. Infertiles differ in the level of involvement they engage their Good Friends in. Some, like me, are pretty open about the whole thing. Every Friend and their Mother knows when I am going in for ER, ET or whatever. Other people prefer to keep their infertility private. Find out what your Infertile prefers and operate at the level she feels comfortable with.
7. Which brings to me to my final point. If you don’t know how to act, ask. I love that my friends ask me how I want them to act around me. They also know that if they ask the question “how is it going with your treatment” I will either tell them or I will say “irritating, I don’t want to talk about it now”. They totally respect that and don’t push. I have great friends.
There have been many articles written on the web about what to say and not to say to an Infertile, how the family should act etc. I wont go into those. If you are a Good Friend you will have done a little surfing and read those things anyway. Besides, this post is already way too long.
To end off, if you decide to accept the job of Good Friend to an Infertile, I applaud you. Because it is not an easy job. It really isn’t. As I have said, it’s a pretty thankless job and one in which your job description is so fluid that what is required today is wrong tomorrow. I thank those of my Good Friends who have stuck around so long with me. I know it hasn’t been easy. I appreciate your friendship, I really do.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Blowing off some steam...
I read quite a few blogs and lot of the bloggers that I follow are mothers. I love hearing about the silly things their kids are doing and saying and seeing their adorable faces.
While I read blogs that have to do with infertility, too, I don't read as many of those. I sort of steer away from them. I think maybe it's because I've got my own infertility issues that I'm dealing with and I just want to forget about them for a little while, reading blogs about infertility just makes me more mad.
It's not fair that we all have to go through this stupid thing called infertility. Reading blogs about infertility just makes it more "in your face", to me. At the same time, I want to be there to support my friends that are going through it, too, so I try to visit the blogs that I do follow fairly often.
Infertility is not fair.
I'm tired of having to be strong.
I'm tired of Letting Go and Letting God.
I'm tired of having Faith that everything is in His hands and maybe some day I'll have a child.
I'm tired of waiting.
I'm tired of researching.
I'm tired of just relaxing.
I'm tired of changing my diet to have a more fertile body.
I'm frickin sick and tired of dealing with stupid frickin infertility!
I don't want to Learn a Lesson from all of this.
I just want a family.
I want a mini-me and a mini-Jamie.
You know what? Those teenage girls that got pregnant didn't have to have Faith that they could get pregnant. They just did in a moment of hot and heavy.
Those druggie's didn't have to Let Go and Let God. They just had sex, with drugs in their system, and got pregnant.
And add to that, there's those that get pregnant and decide they don't want "the fetus" and abort it without giving that child a chance to be born and grow up to be someone, whether they kept it or gave it up for adoption. {and I'm sure I just pissed a bunch of people off. sorry.}
There's also those like The Duggar's that just keep on frickin multiplying. I mean. Seriously. SHARE THE WATER! I'd gladly take a sip if I could just have a fraction of the amount of kids they have!
So why is it that I can't just hop into bed with my husband and get up pregnant?
Some of these infertile bloggers that I read have SO MUCH FAITH that they're eventually going to get pregnant and I feel like I've got zip, ziltch, nada. And I don't WANT to HAVE to have Faith. Period.
I don't want a growing experience any longer!
I think 10 years is long enough!
And then I also have an internal fight going on with myself over jealousy.
I'm jealous of those that have children.
I'm jealous of those infertile's that do get pregnant.
I'm jealous of those that have all that Faith.
I'm jealous of those that are actually getting somewhere in their fight against infertility.
I'm jealous of those that have the money to do everything under the sun to have a baby, whether it's treatments or adoption.
I'm jealous of those that have husbands that are totally on board with everything that goes with infertility.
I'm jealous of those that have husbands that actually express their feelings about the infertility.
I hate jealousy.
I hate the feeling of being jealous all the time.
Infertility just frickin SUCKS!
While I read blogs that have to do with infertility, too, I don't read as many of those. I sort of steer away from them. I think maybe it's because I've got my own infertility issues that I'm dealing with and I just want to forget about them for a little while, reading blogs about infertility just makes me more mad.
It's not fair that we all have to go through this stupid thing called infertility. Reading blogs about infertility just makes it more "in your face", to me. At the same time, I want to be there to support my friends that are going through it, too, so I try to visit the blogs that I do follow fairly often.
Infertility is not fair.
I'm tired of having to be strong.
I'm tired of Letting Go and Letting God.
I'm tired of having Faith that everything is in His hands and maybe some day I'll have a child.
I'm tired of waiting.
I'm tired of researching.
I'm tired of just relaxing.
I'm tired of changing my diet to have a more fertile body.
I'm frickin sick and tired of dealing with stupid frickin infertility!
I don't want to Learn a Lesson from all of this.
I just want a family.
I want a mini-me and a mini-Jamie.
You know what? Those teenage girls that got pregnant didn't have to have Faith that they could get pregnant. They just did in a moment of hot and heavy.
Those druggie's didn't have to Let Go and Let God. They just had sex, with drugs in their system, and got pregnant.
And add to that, there's those that get pregnant and decide they don't want "the fetus" and abort it without giving that child a chance to be born and grow up to be someone, whether they kept it or gave it up for adoption. {and I'm sure I just pissed a bunch of people off. sorry.}
There's also those like The Duggar's that just keep on frickin multiplying. I mean. Seriously. SHARE THE WATER! I'd gladly take a sip if I could just have a fraction of the amount of kids they have!
So why is it that I can't just hop into bed with my husband and get up pregnant?
Some of these infertile bloggers that I read have SO MUCH FAITH that they're eventually going to get pregnant and I feel like I've got zip, ziltch, nada. And I don't WANT to HAVE to have Faith. Period.
I don't want a growing experience any longer!
I think 10 years is long enough!
And then I also have an internal fight going on with myself over jealousy.
I'm jealous of those that have children.
I'm jealous of those infertile's that do get pregnant.
I'm jealous of those that have all that Faith.
I'm jealous of those that are actually getting somewhere in their fight against infertility.
I'm jealous of those that have the money to do everything under the sun to have a baby, whether it's treatments or adoption.
I'm jealous of those that have husbands that are totally on board with everything that goes with infertility.
I'm jealous of those that have husbands that actually express their feelings about the infertility.
I hate jealousy.
I hate the feeling of being jealous all the time.
Infertility just frickin SUCKS!
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sometimes I feel as empty as my womb........
This is the first and only picture I have from my last pregnancy.
August 29, 2010... I was 10 weeks pregnant. I found this picture last night while organizing photos on my laptop and I began to cry. I look at this picture and just wonder what he would have looked like. He would be almost 8 months old, my due date was Ferbuary 28, 2011. Another date in my memory I will never forget. A birthday that I was supposed to celebrate with my child until the day I died, but now it's just a day to remind me of what I lost.
It's been over a year since he was given to us and taken from us. It just seems so unfair to have tried for 10 years to only have miscarriage after miscarriage. Now 10 years later I still don't have a baby in my womb or in my arms.
So many have such an easy time getting what I want so much. I am trying so hard: I watch what I eat, I exercise, I have to take medications. I have to go to the doctor on certain days of the month. I have to spend lots of money on just a slim chance of getting a positive. I cry every month when I get not one, but multiple negatives. I cry when I hear of someone getting pregnant. I have to hide so I don't take away their joy or ruin the moments. It's hard to be around kids or watch grandparents having such a good time with the kids and not one of them belonging to us. I feel like a failure to my family. At least my Dad has grandchildren, and my Mom got to meet and know most of them before she passed away. I feel it doesn't bother them that we may never have kids because they already have 4 grandkids.
What if I don't ever get another chance? Will I stop crying because I don't have a baby? Will my heart still ache as much as it does today?
The loss of the child I barely had a chance to know and the child I may never have gives me so much sorrow, it's almost unbearable.
Sometimes I wonder how I get through this. If it's hard today, how will it be 10 years from now? As I cried last night, I thought about how it hurts so much today at almost 31 years old, how many years will I have to go through this pain... and what will this pain plus 10 years of more disappointments and heartaches feel like?... It scares me so much.
In my real world (not my blog world), I feel so alone. I feel I am expected to be a perfect, happy, strong, supportive person. The truth is I am not perfect and I don't know one person that is (although some may think it). I may look happy on the outside, but inside I am a mess. I believe I am not strong because I can't handle things as well as others. And support, it's hard to give when I need so much of it myself and get so little in return sometimes.
There's not a day that goes by I don't think about my children and what might have been.
Not a day goes by I don't think about being infertile, but there are days when I am stronger than others and I am hoping tomorrow is one of them.
Infertility and having a miscarriage is robbing me from life.. Almost everyday I feel as empty as my womb.
So many have such an easy time getting what I want so much. I am trying so hard: I watch what I eat, I exercise, I have to take medications. I have to go to the doctor on certain days of the month. I have to spend lots of money on just a slim chance of getting a positive. I cry every month when I get not one, but multiple negatives. I cry when I hear of someone getting pregnant. I have to hide so I don't take away their joy or ruin the moments. It's hard to be around kids or watch grandparents having such a good time with the kids and not one of them belonging to us. I feel like a failure to my family. At least my Dad has grandchildren, and my Mom got to meet and know most of them before she passed away. I feel it doesn't bother them that we may never have kids because they already have 4 grandkids.
What if I don't ever get another chance? Will I stop crying because I don't have a baby? Will my heart still ache as much as it does today?
The loss of the child I barely had a chance to know and the child I may never have gives me so much sorrow, it's almost unbearable.
Sometimes I wonder how I get through this. If it's hard today, how will it be 10 years from now? As I cried last night, I thought about how it hurts so much today at almost 31 years old, how many years will I have to go through this pain... and what will this pain plus 10 years of more disappointments and heartaches feel like?... It scares me so much.
In my real world (not my blog world), I feel so alone. I feel I am expected to be a perfect, happy, strong, supportive person. The truth is I am not perfect and I don't know one person that is (although some may think it). I may look happy on the outside, but inside I am a mess. I believe I am not strong because I can't handle things as well as others. And support, it's hard to give when I need so much of it myself and get so little in return sometimes.
There's not a day that goes by I don't think about my children and what might have been.
Not a day goes by I don't think about being infertile, but there are days when I am stronger than others and I am hoping tomorrow is one of them.
Infertility and having a miscarriage is robbing me from life.. Almost everyday I feel as empty as my womb.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Road to Uncertainty
Once you start ttc and bring children into your life, you end up giving up an element of control. There are so many things that could go wrong. Before finding myself deep in infertility treatments, when I was first started to seriously think about having children, I imagined all of the changes in my life. How would J and I be able to afford children? How would I manage work and family? How would relationships with family and friends be changed? What would our children be like? Would we be good parents? I didn't really think that much about act of getting pregnant, and was kind of scared of pregnancy--particularly childbirth. When I was pregnant for the first time, I spent some time reading a Lamaze pregnancy book, which included a section on the whole birth experience, including some troublesome cases. It freaked me out so much, that I thought at time, "Man, How am I ever going to do that!" I guess by 30, I've changed my mind, but scary pregnancies haven't gone away. I'm just more willing to risk them.
My above worries are now much farther down the list, supplanted by worries of treatment and managing to have a healthy pregnancy. For people who don't battle infertility, I suppose they might never have any other types of worries. However, I think that I was probably also naive about all of the uncertainties that come with pregnancy. When I first started with treatments, I thought a positive test would solve all of my problems and everything would go smoothly. The advertisement for HPTs make it sound that way: "Look, honey, two pink lines!" {Hugs and kisses all around} I have come to realize now, after suffering four heartbreaking miscarriages, that the first positive beta is but one of many hurdles to jump over in the quest for a healthy child. As IFers, we just get a head start on the road to uncertainty.
I have recently again had the elusive positive beta, but it was low. I helplessly watched it rise, then fall. Although about a week after my last beta indicated an HCG level less than 5, I got a postcard from my clinic with a congratulatory note and instructions for next steps. Hello! As if I'm not already feeling bad enough, can't the office get it's communications straight! But even if I had experienced three positive beta tests with good doubling numbers that's a must before they consider you pregnant (at this clinic), the uncertainty wouldn't end. There's the first ultrasound. Will there be a heartbeat? Follow-up and tests. Will things continue to progress normally? Oh yeah, and if you make it that far, you still have to go through child birth. I cry every time I read about another blogger who loses a pregnancy.
If you do make it to the point where your child is born, all of those initial concerns of mine are still valid. J and I could strive to be good parents, but our children could turn out to sick, we could make bad decisions adversely impact their life, or they could make bad decisions, despite our best efforts. I feel like I had loving parents who did what they could to place my life and my siblings lives on the right track, but things still did not always turn out as planned. It's an awesome responsibility to be parent, to try to raise your children to be ready to go out into the world, and things may not work out as planned, despite your best intentions.
Thinking about the next step in our IF journey: the IVF cycle, makes me scared of all that uncertainty all of those things that could go wrong, just in the process of trying to bring my potential children into the world. J says that he is trying to not think about the uncertainty, about the weight of potential problems, and just go where the cycle takes us. I wish I could do that.
My above worries are now much farther down the list, supplanted by worries of treatment and managing to have a healthy pregnancy. For people who don't battle infertility, I suppose they might never have any other types of worries. However, I think that I was probably also naive about all of the uncertainties that come with pregnancy. When I first started with treatments, I thought a positive test would solve all of my problems and everything would go smoothly. The advertisement for HPTs make it sound that way: "Look, honey, two pink lines!" {Hugs and kisses all around} I have come to realize now, after suffering four heartbreaking miscarriages, that the first positive beta is but one of many hurdles to jump over in the quest for a healthy child. As IFers, we just get a head start on the road to uncertainty.
I have recently again had the elusive positive beta, but it was low. I helplessly watched it rise, then fall. Although about a week after my last beta indicated an HCG level less than 5, I got a postcard from my clinic with a congratulatory note and instructions for next steps. Hello! As if I'm not already feeling bad enough, can't the office get it's communications straight! But even if I had experienced three positive beta tests with good doubling numbers that's a must before they consider you pregnant (at this clinic), the uncertainty wouldn't end. There's the first ultrasound. Will there be a heartbeat? Follow-up and tests. Will things continue to progress normally? Oh yeah, and if you make it that far, you still have to go through child birth. I cry every time I read about another blogger who loses a pregnancy.
If you do make it to the point where your child is born, all of those initial concerns of mine are still valid. J and I could strive to be good parents, but our children could turn out to sick, we could make bad decisions adversely impact their life, or they could make bad decisions, despite our best efforts. I feel like I had loving parents who did what they could to place my life and my siblings lives on the right track, but things still did not always turn out as planned. It's an awesome responsibility to be parent, to try to raise your children to be ready to go out into the world, and things may not work out as planned, despite your best intentions.
Thinking about the next step in our IF journey: the IVF cycle, makes me scared of all that uncertainty all of those things that could go wrong, just in the process of trying to bring my potential children into the world. J says that he is trying to not think about the uncertainty, about the weight of potential problems, and just go where the cycle takes us. I wish I could do that.
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