Old Journal Entries from Feb-May 2011

Timing February to May 2011

Infertility, it’s such an ugly word, an even harder word to swallow, timing.  I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard or repeated the mantra in our heads “it’s just timing, it will work next time.”  There is nothing more annoying and frustrating than having all our baby making issues be related to bad timing.  My husband and I have both gone through the testing phases of our supposed “infertility,” but it was determined that neither of us have a problem.  Using infertility as the label for the inability to have all the right phases of the moon in alignment with our eyes and toes crossed hoping that for once we’ll finally do it during the correct window of time is a no win situation.  I know the doctors have to label it that way before they really know what the issues are, but now we will forever have that label.

Everyone seems to think that “trying” to have a baby is a fun process…well it is for the most part, but there are a lot of other factors that are just plain annoying.  For example, stumbling into the bathroom at 5:30 in the morning to find that your motor skills are still not awake yet and spilling urine on the bathroom rug.  Peeing in a little plastic cup to test to see if you are ovulating is not something I would wish on anyone.  It’s not like it’s a hard thing, but having to wait each day for the little pink lines to tell us if we should plan our sex life, is less than exciting.  The lack of spontaneity has really gotten to my husband.  We’ve decided we have to find some other fun ways to keep it interesting in the bedroom…or wherever.

Dancing in the Kitchen

No, this is not the title of a new country song; it’s just one of the things my husband and I have been doing lately to change it up a bit.  Last winter, we started spending some of our Saturday nights in the kitchen coming up with new and fun concoctions.  This was a good test of our patience and our ability to work on projects together, which hasn’t always been something that we’ve been good at.  Let’s just say that I’m more of a baker that likes to do things with precision and usually in a specific order.  My husband on the other hand likes to just go with the flow when cooking, this really isn’t always a bad thing, and because of this we’ve made some really great dishes, but you have to actually know the basics of cooking before you can get all fancy-which my husband is just starting to learn.  My husband claims that he doesn’t like watching Top Chef with me, but he secretly takes mental notes on what he can try during our next cooking session.  He often throws around the new foodie terms he has learned, which inevitably just makes me laugh, since he almost always uses them incorrectly. 

The cooking parties have slowly progressed into dance parties.  This usually involves loud music pumping through the house and my husband and I struggling to have counter space to cook and floor space to dance.  Needless to say we’ve gotten pretty creative with what we make and we’ve gotten better at being in the kitchen together and at dancing.  Occasionally, we’ll have a spontaneous moment while cooking and dancing.  Sorry, that sounds like a Cialis commercial or something.  We have definitely learned that we are not as young and nimble as we used to be.  All the fun ideas we have don’t always go as planned, but at least we’re still able to laugh at ourselves.

The Waiting Game

I know it’s talked about often, but you never really know just how intense and stressful the waiting game or what I call my holding pattern really is.  For that two week holding period you try to eat the best you can, get extra sleep and try not to even bend over more often than necessary as if bending over would some how impact the implantation stage of the process.  My toes have gotten very adept at picking things up.  Who knows, there are so many crazy and superstitious things that you are willing to do in hopes of somehow having everything align perfectly throughout the world to produce a miracle.  You read a random article here and there, and cling to whatever nugget you can to get by…in the end it’s all just a bunch of crap.  I know there are supposed to be things you can do to help your ability to get pregnant, but then you see people who abuse their bodies getting pregnant all the time.  I mean there are even shows about how women didn’t know they were pregnant.  Seriously, you think to yourself, if they can get pregnant why can’t I?  There are always a lot of questions that are raised and then never answered.

I thought at first that my type A personality was the reason we weren’t getting pregnant.  I know it’s silly, but you try to cling to anything you can.  Everyone keeps telling me to “relax”.  Oh, really, well if that’s all it takes…  Telling someone with a type A personality to relax is just plain rude.  I don’t know how to relax even when I want to.  Despite my natural aversion to relaxation I’ve been working hard at it.  I do both Pilates and yoga twice a week, which seems to be helping.  It seems that I do like to relax; I just don’t take the time to do it.  To try and distract myself from our situation and the inability to change anything about it, I’ve even started playing zombie killing video games…I know this doesn’t sound very relaxing, especially when you are getting vomited on by a boomer and a horde of creepy zombies are trying to eat you, but it makes my husband happy and I get to sit on a comfy couch in the dark and try not to think about everything that’s going on in my body or not going on.  Killing as many zombies as possible and getting to safety are my top priorities certain nights, and I’m getting to be ok with that.

I think one of the hardest parts about all of this is seeing the disappointment on E’s face when I announce that I got my period.  Neither of us wants to disappoint the other and sometimes we feel like we are failing as a couple, but as always we get right back on the baby making wagon and try again.  Sometimes I think about the definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome.  At least we’ve been trying different methods out, I think I literally would go insane if there was nothing I could do, but most of the time I feel helpless, like there isn’t anything I can do.  I hate the having the inability to fix a situation.  I’m trying to up the amount of yoga and Pilates I’m doing, continue to eat better, watch how much alcohol I drink and try to enjoy my husband and our marriage.

The Crap People Say: Part 1

So I know everyone has good intentions, but you hear some of the lamest “words of comfort” from people who know about your situation.  To make matters worse I was an accident and my sister had a little oops about three years ago.  Granted my parents claim that although it was hard to be recently married with a young child, while they were still pretty young themselves they don’t “regret” having me.  My sister has had it a little rougher, having to do things mainly on her own, but I still get very frustrated and somewhat bitter when she constantly complains to me about not having a life.  Or when she is frustrated with something my niece did or my parents say.  She has no concept of wanting something so bad, not being able to get it, and then watching everyone around you get pregnant so easily.

A few months ago my sister said something to me that was probably the most insensitive thing she has ever said to me or anyone has said to me for that matter.  She had called me to complain yet again about another boy and the boy drama she was having.  This type of phone call is a very typical occurrence.  I thank my lucky stars all the time that E and I found each other.  Anyway, she started talking about how she couldn’t believe she was twenty-four and that she hadn’t had another kid already.  Even though she got pregnant at twenty, she thought she would be in a happy family with another kid already here or on the way by age twenty-four.  Hell, I’m just happy I got engaged on my twenty-fourth birthday.

She kept going on and on, as she does, about how she didn’t want be thirty before she had another kid.  This hit home for me as my twenty-eighth birthday was less than a month away.  I debated hanging up on her and not talking to her for a while, but I took a deep breath and my maturity reared its ugly head.  I calmly told her that it really hurt my feelings that she would say something like that when we had been trying to have a kid for a while and that I was only about two years away from being thirty…and that there was/is a large possibility that I would be thirty before I have my first child…or not at all.  The worst part about the whole conversation was that she didn’t even apologize.  She just said “yeah, well,” and continued to babble on about her meaningless problems.  I waited a few minutes a) trying not to scream at her and hang up and b) trying not to cry.  I eventually interrupted her tirade and said that I had to go. 

We didn’t talk for a while after that, mainly because I didn’t want to.  I still don’t know if she knew how upset she made me, but I felt like I had told her.  I think the hardest part about it all, wasn’t necessarily the comment she made, but the fact that she couldn’t understand why I was upset.  Then she didn’t even try to call me later to apologize or try to understand why I was so hurt.  There are just people in your life that can be toxic at times and suck all of your energy from you.  My sister and my parents both have that affect on me from time to time.  I’ve never been one to let someone take advantage of me, but I have always felt like the glue keeping our family together.  They may not think that, but I remember the tremendous internal struggle I had when I was trying to make the decision to move to Minnesota for school.  I was very worried that they would crumble without me there to interfere.  That sort of happened.  My sister moved out and starting living with my niece’s dad.  She was still in high school and he was 21.  Why my parents ever allowed that to happen, I’ll never understand.  My family often only calls me when they need to vent or talk about something in their lives.  I’m more than willing to listen, although, the last couple of years it’s been harder for me to bite my tongue and not say “would you like to know what I’ve been up to?”  E thinks I let them in too much, but it’s just my nurturing nature that makes me care.  I always ask him how you’re not supposed to let in your family.  We had very different families growing up and oftentimes E doesn’t understand how close my family is.  He finds it amazing that my extended family often sends him birthday cards and genuinely cares about him and what he’s doing.  I wish he had been able to experience a lot of the things that I got to with my extended family growing up.  I really look back at that time in my life and miss being around them so much.  They definitely helped make me who I am today, but also reminds me of how much I want a family.