Mother's Day and all that jazz

Last year I took Mother's Day really, really hard, and I didn't even leave my house.  This year I'm feeling petty chill.  In fact I'm finding all of the commercialism to be laughable.  A week of honoring mother's on Wheel of Fortune?  Check.  Mother's Day specials at the grocery store?  Check.  Morning radio shows hosting a mother/daughter look alike contest?  Check.  A huge Mother's Day display at a big box store?  Check.

My chill mood toward's the day may change.  I do reserve the right to be sad on the actual day.  Hopefully a comfy day at home with hubs, binge watching Hulu Plus, and without social media will make the day as painless as possible.  I hope that it's as painless as possible for all of us.

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I stumbled across this article on Facebook.  This young woman, Emily McDowell, was diagnosed with cancer and struggled with feelings of isolation as a result of friends and family members retreating because they didn't know what to say (is it just me or does this sound familiar?).  Thankfully she is now in remission and came up with a series of empathy cards based on her experience with cancer and the things that she would have loved to hear from her family and friends when she was deep in the battle.  I love these messages.  Most are applicable to infertility (or any number of other things).  You can see her full line here.

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Hubs started a new job this week.  I'm proud of him.  A career change at 38 isn't easy.  It's completely different than anything he's ever done before.  He seems to like it a lot and I'm really proud of him.  He deserves this.

He worked a really crappy job that he hated while I was in grad school.  When I finished grad school, accepted my current position, and we moved to a different state the plan was to kick up the baby making efforts a couple of notches (we'd been "trying" for a while at that point).  With my new position came a substantial salary increase enabling us to live on just my salary.  So the plan was that he'd take a few months off, we'd have a baby, and he'd be a stay at home parent while I worked.  You know how that worked out.

He applied to this job because it looked interesting and 10 days later he started.  Apparently in one of the interviews they asked about the gap on his resume, a fair question.  He told them that we'd struggled with infertility, that it didn't work out, and that he was excited to reenter the workforce.  Short, sweet, to the point, and completely true without revealing anything he wasn't comfortable sharing.  I don't know if I could have been that brave, or at least I don't know if I could have said that and maintained my composure.

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The problem with sleeping pills is that I sleep really great when I take it.  But the kind I'm on can't be taken for more than 7 consecutive days.  The so called rebound insomnia is pretty brutal.  But at least I'm sleeping well some of the time now!

April reading

One of 2015 goals was to read at least two (non work related) books per month.  You can find my a brief description of what I've read to this point here, here, and here.  This month was a bit slow on the reading front because life (ok, work) took over my free time a bit.  Anyway, this month I read one book and then read a second on May 1, but I'm going to count it for April since it was almost April...

This month I read:

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  I've come to the conclusion that I'm just drawn to historical fiction, particularly from the World War 1 and 2 eras.  This is no exception, with the bulk of this book taking place in occupied France in WWII with a small bit in Germany.  I really liked this book.  It was a fairly fast read because the story was just so engaging that I had to keep reading until I finished the book.  It was written in such a way that I felt like I was there.  I was so invested in the characters, the story, the place.  It's definitely worthy of the 4.6 stars from over 11,000 readers on Amazon.

My kinda sorta cheated a little bit to count it as an April book read was:

Finally Heard: A Silent Sorority Finds Its Voice by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos.  It's a short book, a one sitting read (I read it in around an hour), but I think this was by design.  It was a great book, an excellent balance of staying true to the facts while maintaining readability for those without a degree in science or medicine.   I love it when a book makes me think!  The impeccable writing we've all come to expect from Pamela was on full display. She examines many aspects of the fertility industry that people either just don't think about or don't want to think about while weaving in updates on her post active grieving life.  It's a good book.  It's a needed book.  Find a spare hour or two.  Read it.  You will be glad you did!  Better yet if you know someone who is struggling with infertility or who is starting down the ART path, gift this book to them.

I think my book total for the year stands at 9.75.  Pretty darn good for me! :)

Still in the trenches (but I'll see the sunlight eventually)

This week has been tough.  Really tough.  I don't know why.  Nothing has happened to upset me.... I just feel like the pain, the grief, threatened to crush me this week.  I've kind of shut myself off from the world and buried myself in my work.  I'm forcing myself out of the funk because I know it's not good to dwell in the dark place for too long.

Feeling down, I logged on to Blogger yesterday and read Mali's latest post, A snapshot in time.  It told me exactly what I needed to hear in that moment, that things will get better.  I know I receive this reminder regularly from multiple different people, but I guess I still need it.  Like riding a bike with the support of training wheels.  Eventually I won't need the training wheels anymore.  But right now I do, and that's ok.  It's no secret that I'm in the trenches right now and dark periods are normal and to be expected.  I even experience a vacation from the trenches every so often where I can bask in the sun, but not all the time.  Not yet anyway.  Things will get better and someday I'll be able to climb out of the trenches and into the sunlight all the time.  Thanks for being a M.o.M., Mali!

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I had my IUD follow-up appointment earlier this week.  She was a little concerned that I'm still bleeding (which is longer than she usually sees but still not outside of the manufacturer's published range of possibility) and apparently what I consider light bleeding isn't actually light (for normal people) after all.  Anyway I'm now the proud owner of a progesterone prescription that will hopefully make it stop.  Let's all keep our fingers crossed that a) it stops, b) I don't gain a million pounds, and c) that I don't lose my libido.  The plan is to address the bleeding first and then deal with the hot flashes once that's under control.

I was also prescribed a sleeping pill.  It was hard for me to admit that I needed something to help me sleep, but I do.  I've taken the pill for three nights now and I feel rested and have a mental clarity that doesn't often visit me.

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I downloaded Finally Heard: A Silent Sorority Finds Its Voice by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos this morning (available for purchase on your Kindle or Kindle app here) and plan to read it tonight!  I have 23 final papers to grade standing in between me and the book (and a big glass of wine) so naturally I'm writing a blog post instead of grading those.  :)

Little things that hit hard and some random whining

Sometimes the little things hit the hardest and sometimes those little things are seemingly unrelated to infertility.  Last weekend I drove past a yard sale sign.  I've always loved yard sales (and second-hand shopping in general) and have said for years that I can't wait to have kids so I can go buy them all the clothing they need at the sales.  This is the first year where I know it's not a possibility, not even a small one.  I'd like to say that I was able to brush it off, but the truth is that four days later I'm still thinking about it.

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It snowed today.  It didn't stick.  It was mixed with rain.  But it snowed.  It's almost May, damn it!

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If you're uncomfortable with discussion (bitching)  about lady parts, skip the next two paragraphs.....

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I go for my IUD follow up next Tuesday.  I'm actually glad to be going.  I'm used to extended periods of bleeding/spotting, but this is extreme, even for me.  I don't think I want to give up on it quite yet (all of the literature I've read about Mirena says that it can take up to six months for a person to adjust and irregular bleeding is to be expected, though I'm not sure that something like 28 consecutive days classifies as irregular), but I've hit my emotional threshold for handling it.  On the bright side, if it ever stops, I'll get to replace all of my underwear!

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Hot flashes are sucking the life out of me.  They literally almost make me wish for winter again.  I just want to sleep through the night.  Even six hours.  Or five.  I plan to address this at the IUD follow up and see if we can't figure out something to make them more manageable.  They didn't seem quite as bad in the fall and winter since the outside temperatures were so much cooler, but now that it's getting warmer, it's pretty miserable.  I drove home from the grocery store on Saturday with the AC blasting on high and a bag of frozen peas on my neck.  Not fun.

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I won't bore you with anymore whining in this post, but I'm sure I'll have more things to whine about in the future.  I'm thinking some wine with my whine may be necessary.

Things that make you go hmmmmmm

Did anyone else see the news reports about the 65 year-old woman who is pregnant with quadruplets?      She already has 13 kids ranging in age from 44 to nine.  Here are a few of my thoughts, pretty much in order:

• (string of curse words)
• This woman, who is literally one year shy of being double my age and already has a litter of kids,  is pregnant and I could never get pregnant (despite being a normal age).  It's unfair.
• Math.  At minimum this woman will be 83 when her kids graduate from high school, provided that she lives that long.  The average life expectancy for a German woman is 83.  It seems selfish to me to take steps to get pregnant when it's unlikely that she will live to see them through adulthood.
• What do her other kids think?  Particularly the 44 year old big brother/sister.  Or the grandchildren who will be older than their aunts/uncles.
• Does the doctor who approved and preformed IVF even have ethical standards?  The human body just plain isn't designed to handle pregnancy at that age.  Case in point: the article says that it took multiple attempts (though it doesn't specify how many).
• I wonder how the egg donor feels about a woman of this age carrying a pregnancy with her eggs?

I try really hard not to judge people for the choices that they make.  I understand the desire to have a baby.  I understand wanting to do whatever you can to achieve that goal.  I also understand wanting to test the limits of nature and science.  But there has to be a point where doctors step in and say "enough."  At 65 years old the human body isn't designed to carry a pregnancy, otherwise we'd see pregnant senior citizens walking around all the time.  Just my two cents.

Infertility torments me, even in my dreams

I don't dream often, or at least if I do I don't remember the dreams.  Or maybe I just don't sleep enough to dream.  Anyway, last night I had two infertility related dreams that shook me up.

The first dream was weird and completely unlikely to happen.  I was at a press conference.  I got the distinct impression that it was at a hospital because I was in a hospital gown and there were doctors beside me.  I don't know what the press conference was about but all of the reporters were asking me if I had kids, when I planned to have kids, why I don't have kids, etc.  Finally I started crying and telling them that they weren't supposed to ask me those questions.

The second dream was very realistic and not completely unlikely to actually happen.  In the dream I was talking to my youngest sister about her daughter (my oldest niece) going to preschool.  I was outlining all of the positives of attending two years of preschool as opposed to one when my sister dropped the "you're not a parent, you can't possibly know anything about when is the right time to send a kid to preschool*."  This hurt, even in the dream.  I got the distinct impression from the dream that I did not plan to talk to my sister again anytime soon.  *I try to keep this blog at least semi anonymous, but I feel compelled to point out here that yes, I actually do know a lot about best practices in the field of education.  More than most of the general population in fact, and definitely more than my sister.

I woke up in tears and drenched in sweat, courtesy of my nightly night sweats (a term that I don't think adequately conveys the true miserableness of them).  Even after the tears receded I couldn't fall back to sleep because I was thinking about the dreams.  So I got up.  At 3:30am.  It's going to be a long day.  At least it's Friday.  Ugh.

It's bad enough that infertility finds some way to torment me on a near daily basis in my awake hours, but I really wish it wouldn't infiltrate my dreams too.

March Reading, Spring Cleaning, and Surviving Easter

One of my goals for 2015 was to read at least two books each month.  To help keep myself accountable I'm keeping track of the books that I read here on my blog.  So without further ado, here are the books that I read in March:

• The Last Letter from Your Lover by: Jojo Moyes-Another Jojo Moyes book, and another that I really liked.  This book is the intersection of a love story and a historical fiction.  The plot is simple enough that you don't have to think too much while you read but engaging enough that it kept me going.  I read the whole book in about two days.
• Breaking the Rules by: Barbara Taylor Bradford-I checked this book out from the library.  I selected it because the description on the jacket it looked interesting enough and I was in a hurry. Boring and predictable are the first two words that come to mind when thinking about how to describe this book.  This book gets a solid two thumbs down from me.

If I'm not miscalculating, I've read 7.75 novels so far this year.  Not bad considering I've already surpassed my total from last year (maybe even combined with the year before too).

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Hubs and I cleaned our whole house over the weekend.  One of the advantages of not having kids is that our house is relatively tidy on a day to day basis, but we had to do all of those tasks that nobody likes to do but they need done.  Like washing walls and baseboards, dusting, and shampooing carpets.  We also purged the long forgotten TTC/baby items that remained in the house.  It felt good.  I even found a box of unused pregnancy and ovulation tests in a seldom used drawer and rather than being reduced to a puddle of tears, I took them outside and smashed them with a hammer.  I had Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it" playing in my mind.  I also jokingly told hubs that they must have been from early in the TTC journey because there's no way I would have paid for the good tests (you know, the ones in the plastic casing) by the end.

I still can't face getting rid of the crib (I wrote about it at some point but couldn't find the post to link it and I'm too lazy to devote more than about two minutes to looking).  I know this is highly illogical, but I just can't face it.  Not yet.  So it will remain in a closet until such a time when I can rip the proverbial band-aid off and send it on it's way.  No rush.

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We survived Easter.  We had a quiet, low key day at home where we spent time together and largely avoided social media and the news.  We called our nieces and nephews and our parents in the morning and then turned off our phones.  It was nice to be "unplugged" and spend uninterrupted time with each other.  For dinner I convinced hubs to make chicken parmesan (being married to a third generation Italian American has it's perks!) and we shared a good bottle of wine that we'd been saving for a special occasion.  The lead up to Easter was pretty tough but the actual day wasn't so bad.  Like we did at Christmas, we put ourselves first, and I think this is a holiday strategy that we are going to continue in the future.  :)