Reserved parking?

Are you freaking kidding me?  I've heard of these spots but have never seen one before today.  I laughed so hard at the absurdity of this sign.  I mean really.  Who thinks these things up?

I swear to god that if this spot is ever open at a time when I happen to be at the mall I will park in it as a small act of civil disobedience.  I dare someone to question me.

As seen at my local shopping mall.

A list of names

Earlier today I was looking for an old file on my computer when I came across a completely unrelated document titled "names.docx."  Curious about what it was I opened it up and then realized in approximately a second exactly what it was.  Years ago, back in the early days of TTC when we assumed I'd get pregnant easily, we sat down and came up with a list of baby names that we both liked.  The "names.docx" document was our list.

I wasn't expecting to find this.  Honestly I had forgotten all about it until I opened it up.  It's hard to describe how it made me feel.  Something less than a kick to the stomach but something more than an ouch.  The list brought back all kinds of happy memories.  When we sat down to come up with the list, we were some combination of giddy with excitement about starting our own family and and scared shitless of bringing our own tiny human into the world.  Not surprisingly it brought up some really sad feelings too.

I dragged the file to the trash, immediately regretted it, and then dragged it back to the old folder it was in where it will remain indefinitely.  I pulled it out and kept it because I realized that the silly list of names is the closest we ever got our own baby.  So much love was put into that list.  So much hope for the future.  It wasn't for nothing.  It wasn't a waste of time.  It's ok to hold on to this memory.  Those names were for our baby, our baby just never came to fruition.

Who will be there for us?

Who is going to be there for me when I get old?  This is a question that's not new to this community.  We've all wrote about it or at least thought about it.  I've thought about it a lot too.  The last five days have provided the occasion to think a lot about it.

We were at my in-law's house on Saturday when I got a text from my mom asking if I could call her as soon as possible, which isn't my mom's style at all, so I knew something was up.  My dad had a heart attack.  Luckily, at least at that point, it appeared to be a pretty minor heart attack.  She called again on Sunday morning after meeting with the cardiologist and the plan was for him to have a heart catheterization on Monday

After taking with hubs, the plan we devised was to return home to our house on Sunday afternoon (our original plan) and then I would leave early on Monday morning to drive to my hometown to be with my mom.  One sister had a meeting that she couldn't miss, another sister just started a new job in July so she couldn't miss the day of work, and my youngest sister is a stay at home mom to three kids and didn't have a babysitter.  I'm glad it worked out that I could be there, but there is some irony in the fact that I live 150 miles away from my parents and in a different state but all three of my sisters reside in the same county as our parents.  I was thankful to have the ability to rearrange my schedule to be there.

He had the heart cath on Monday, they found a 99% blockage in a really challenging place, cleared it, and placed a stent in his artery.  The heart attack was quite a bit more significant than the blood tests indicated, but with some minor diet and lifestyle changes and some medication, he should be just fine for a long time to come.  He was able to go home on Tuesday evening, but was told he shouldn't really do strenuous physical activity for at least two weeks, which is extremely hard for a 62 year old man who has worked every day for the better part of the last 50 years.  Between this and my mom's breast cancer scare in June/July, I think I'm maxed out in the "parental health crisis" stress category.  I'm so grateful because they were both lucky, our family was lucky.  Hopefully both will be healthy for a long time to come!

My dad's heart attack and me making sure to be there to support my mom made the reality of not having children hit me pretty hard.  If hubs ever has a major health crisis, who is going to drop everything and rush to be with me?  If I ever have a health crisis, who is going to drop everything and rush to be with hubs?  We have nieces and nephews, sure, and while we have a great relationship with all of them, we're not particularly close with any of them and they all live in a different state, so we're not going to be able to count on them.  It's a lonely feeling.  I feel the need to plan for this, but how does one even plan for the unknown?

It is times like this where the weight of infertility is crushing.  It is times like this that make me question decisions that we made.  I'll get through this just like I always do.  Tomorrow is a new day and it will be better.  I have so many things to be thankful for.

When a friendship runs it's course

I've been wanting to write this post for several weeks but I haven't been able to find the right words to say what I want to say how I want to say it.  It's been weighing on my mind so I'm just going to write.

I lost a friend recently.  A good friend.  This friend and I went through the worst parts of infertility together.  We were each other's support system.  We talked almost every day.  To tell the whole story I need to rewind to this time last year.  We made the decision to stop trying, to not pursue fertility treatments, and to live childfree right around the time that she found out that she was pregnant.  I'll spare you the details, but how she handled her pregnancy with me was a case study of what not to do.  She hurt me deeply, irreparably in some respects.  We were able to talk through it and salvage our friendship, but it wasn't the same.  I moved past it as much as I could and was able to support her through her miscarriage.

As the months progressed we remained friends but I was very guarded with her.  She had hurt me deeply and I needed to protect myself.  Our friendship became more about her.  She was traveling deeper down the treatment path at the same time I was headed in a completely opposite direction.  Even though she couldn't express it she was having trouble supporting me with my choices and even though I was having trouble admitting it, it was difficult for me to support her because she was still immersed in the TTC madness and I was trying to move past that.  It all came to a head when I decided to get the IUD.  She outright told me that she thought that I was giving up.  That I was making the wrong choice.  It hurt.  It was around this time when I realized that she may not be the healthiest relationship for me at this point of my life.  More hurt followed, little jabs here and there.  But they hurt.

It all came to a head one day in May when I stopped talking to her.  There wasn't a big blow up or anything like that.  I was sick of all the jabs.  I was sick of having my choices questioned.  I was sick of me supporting her but receiving no support in return.  I was just done.

I'm not quite ready to declare our friendship dead, but I don't know if I'm going to make an effort to rekindle it anytime soon.   I honestly don't think she ever intended to hurt me.  I think that she's the type of person that, when hurting, lashes out at those around her.  I really do wish her all the best and I hope she gets her much wanted baby, but I just don't know that I am the right person to support her right now.  I know she's not the type of support that I need in my life right now.  It makes me sad, but I also know that I deserve better.  I guess our friendship has just run it's course.

They wouldn't want us

Earlier today NASA announced that they discovered the most Earth-like planet to date.  Hubs and I are closet space/sci-fi nerds and watched excitedly as the story played on the news tonight.  After the story he posed the hypotheitcal question "If they found out that this planet could support life and NASA asked for volunteers to go there and start a colony, would you go?"  We discussed the pros and cons of going and ultimately decided that we probably would.  We decided that we don't really have many ties here on Earth so we'd be good candidates.  I mean, how cool would it be to go and start a new civilization on a planet that is 1400 light years away?

A little bit later hubs said "you know, I don't think NASA would choose us to go and live on Kepler-425b."  I asked why.  He said "reproduction is essential for species survival and we can't do that."  Oh yeah.  That.  I suppose we wouldn't be good candidates.  Their loss.  I guess we'll just stay here on Earth.

At least we can have our ashes blasted into space when we die, so the dream of going to space is still alive (even if we won't be)!

You did what?!

Saturday started off well enough.  We slept in a little bit, ate breakfast, and then I headed upstairs to take a shower.  When I came back downstairs hubs and I had the following conversation:

Hubs: "I told (family friend and his wife) that we would come to their* baby shower"

Me: (sits down on steps) "What?"

Hubs: "Yeah!  It's on (whatever date-I wasn't listening).  It's going to be at (whatever place-also not listening)."

Me: "You RSVP'd?"

Hubs: (sensing this is going downhill fast) "Yeah...."

Me: "Without asking me first?  To a baby shower? I'm not going to a baby shower.  I'm not going to a baby shower ever again!**"

Hubs: "But I RSVP'd..."

Me: "I don't care...I'm not going" (I'm crying and yelling at this point)

Hubs: "It's just one day...."

Me: "I'm not going.  Period.  Not open for discussion.  You can go if you want but I'm not."

Hubs: (a little angry at this point) "What am I going to tell them?"

Me: "I don't really care.  Tell them the truth for all I care.  Maybe you should have thought about that before you told someone that we would go to an event without asking me first."

Now hubs almost never commits to something without running it by me first.  So this is what I will file in the "momentary attack of stupid" category and try to forget about it.  It did result in a good conversation about my feelings surrounding baby showers.  I've told him many times that I won't do this or that but I haven't really told him why or how it makes me feel.  So he unintentionally did something pretty hurtful, but the end result was growth.

I won't lie, Hubs and I don't have these conversations often.  He's the sort of guy that wants to fix things***.  But this can't be fixed, and definitely not fixed quickly.  This quality makes him somewhat hard to talk to about my feelings.  This is just something that I have to go through.  And it will get better.  Eventually.  I've said more than once that I don't think he'll ever truly get the emotional toll infertility has taken on me, but conversations like this help.

Then he told me that his dad and brother were coming on Sunday to spend the night.  Apparently he found out two weeks ago but forgot to tell me.  Ugh.

Oh and my mom told me that I was overreacting to the whole baby shower thing.  Just when she starts to earn back a little bit of my trust and I think she might be trying to understand a little bit, she goes and ruins it.  Back to arm's length she goes....


*Since when did baby showers become a couples thing?
**This should have been known.  Six months ago I made the same exact statement concerning my sister's baby shower.
***I totally get that it's his instinct to protect me and try to make the hurt go away.

A little bit of miscellany

I haven't been writing much because there really hasn't been a lot to write about.  I'm doing really well at the moment.  I'm not thinking much about infertility.  The grief is in the background but it doesn't feel like a kick in the stomach.  I'm mostly content with my life right now.  I don't know if this feeling will last another hour, day, month, or what, but I'm going to enjoy it while it while it lasts.  At some point I know the grief monster will come back and kick me in the stomach again.

*****

I fell off of the exercise wagon.  I was doing really well until about four weeks ago and then a combination of life, work, and getting sick all hit at the same time and working out got pushed to the very bottom of the to do list.  Thankfully my eating is in check so I haven't gained weight, but I do want go get back to a regular exercise routine.  I hope that by writing about this it will be enough motivation to get my butt back to the gym!

*****

Someone close to me recently had a breast cancer scare.  There was a biopsy done and it turned out that the lumps were not malignant, but it was scary because there was about a 10 day stretch where we just didn't know.  During the biopsy all suspicious tissue was removed so it shouldn't be an issue in the future but she will continue to be monitored.

As someone who has found lumps in my breasts (one at 25 and the other at 26), I know first hand how scary it is to find something that's not supposed to be there.  My lumps were just cysts and eventually went away on their own, but it's a disconcerting feeling when you find something that isn't supposed to be there.  As a result I've always been extremely diligent with monthly self exams.

So I guess that's my round about way of urging all of you to do a monthly self breast exam and to go to your doctor if you find something outside of the norm.  If you're not sure how to do one, this is a great guide.