Most nights it feels like I’m playing Russian roulette with my sleep. I am slowly starting to worry that there is something more physically wrong with me that they just can’t find. I’ve always had trouble sleeping. Either falling asleep or staying asleep. My mom always says it’s because my mind never stops running. My acupuncturist thinks it’s because of a Yang deficiency. I used to be able to sleep so soundly that hardly anything would wake me up, to now having any whisper of wind or creek in the floorboards and I’m wide awake waiting to hear for any other noises. Of course, I can never fall asleep after this. Then there will be days where I sleep for a little while only to wake up again about an hour or so later…starting the cycle all over again. I know it’s mainly just my head going crazy and focusing on so much at once. In some ways I like having a brain like this that processes things very quickly and that is able to multitask as I can get a lot done in a short period of time. It’s not so good for when you’re trying to sleep. E always says I need to relax, but even when I’m at my most relaxed I still feel like there are things I could or should be doing. I’m constantly trying to figure things out, whether it’s the key to life or just planning what I need to do later. I often come to conclusions or solve issues I’m dealing with while I’m sleeping. I definitely try to analyze my dreams and see if there is something bigger I’m trying to deal with or need to work on. I guess it’s my psych major coming into play.
Basically, I’ve been having insomnia again…not as bad as it has been in the past, but its still there. Lately I’ll have short, really intense dream sequences. I’ve always been one that can dream in color, lights, and smells. I can even dream that I’m having a dream or dream that I’m in a dream, lovely Inception type stuff. Recently I’ve been dreaming about my grandmothers. First, it was my paternal grandmother who died about 7 ½ years ago (a month before I met my husband) in a horrific traffic accident. She appeared to me with her arm outstretched inviting me to come along with her. At first I couldn’t see her face, but I knew instinctively who it was. She was like a half decayed body (gross huh), but as the dream went on and the further I followed her she came to look more like herself and how I remembered her. I couldn’t quite figure out what she was trying to show me or take me to, but when I woke up I felt a little confusion, but peaceful.
I’m not really sure what she was trying to show me, but for some reason I think she was trying to tell me that I just need to keep on the path I’m going and enjoy the process. Almost a stop and smell the roses, but also a hopeful, keep it up kid kind of thing. For some reason I interpreted it as being related to our fertility issues (I tend to think that everything is related to that lately) and since I was just about to start my first core doctorate class I think it was her way or my mind’s way of telling me that I’m right where I’m supposed to be in life. That everything has a reason, a time and a place for when and where it’s supposed to happen.
I also just recently had a dream about my maternal grandmother who passed away almost a year ago. I still can’t believe it’s been that long since she’s been gone. It also means that I’ve been at my current job for about a year. It also marks the official year or year and a half of trying to get pregnant. E and I disagree on dates. I think it’s been longer since I haven’t been using birth control since Feb. of 2010, but he thinks it should be Aug. 2010 that we started since that’s when we started paying attention to my ovulation and having sex on those days. I had previously been monitoring my temperature for a few months, but wasn’t finding the results helpful. In May 2010, even though I was defending my Master’s thesis and E was finishing up law school we decided it had been three months since I had stopped taking birth control, and that we should start paying more attention to our timing. We had previously agreed that we weren’t going to officially start trying until Aug. after he finished studying and taking the bar…so in some ways I guess E is right about the dates, but in my mind it’s been longer since I have been off birth control for so long. We’ll continue to disagree about the dates, but either way it’s been taking a while.
One of the hardest things for me with this whole thing is that there are all these things that I as the woman, potential mother, must do to get my body ready for a baby. All E has to do is ejaculate. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be pressured into needing to only do one thing, but at the same time I’m doing a whole bunch of things all at once. I thought marriage and making a baby was about partnership, but sometimes E just doesn’t understand all the sacrifices I have to go through or all the torture I put myself through as the potential vessel.
I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had to change my diet too drastically. I’ve been taking either a multi-vitamin or pre-natal vitamins since I first got off of birth control, I eat pretty healthily, I hardly drink and I haven’t had caffeine in fifteen years besides what is naturally in decaf tea or chocolate. I have done a lot of research and book reading, blog reading, inspirational quote finding, anything that help me stabilize my emotions and reactions to everything around me. E has been doing a lot of research as well, but he somehow has the worst timing of when to send it to me, or when he wants to talk to me about it. I am very thankful that he even wants to be involved in the process and I know that it helps him to be analytical about it. Sometimes it’s hard to have a lawyer for a husband. Sometimes I just want to complain about something or express my emotions and he has trouble with that. I guess it may not be a lawyer thing as much as it’s a guy thing.
We have different philosophies on how and when to talk about our fertility issues. He feels the need to talk about it everyday whether it’s a long drawn out conversation or only a few short sentences. He’ll try to ask me if I’m ovulating…but as we’ve learned the pressure to perform on specific days got to be too overwhelming for us, specifically him. I still check my ovulation from day five of my cycle, until I ovulate. Not one of my most favorite things in the world, especially at 5:30 in the morning, when all you want to do is go to the bathroom quickly and not have to worry about fumbling with a pee cup and predictor stick. I wish those things were easier to deal with…at least I’m always awake right away after doing my test, as nothing wakes you up in the pre-dawn morning like trying to get pee into a cup and then carefully moving it over to the counter without spilling. I tend to be more of the “I’ll talk about it when I want to talk about it,” kind of person. So we’ve been learning to communicate in different ways to each other. They always say communication is the key and I know that it’s helpful for us to talk about it, but it can be hard. So most of the time I will indulge him, but after a while I have to pull back and ask him to stop talking about it, which inevitably leads to a discussion. So we’re still figuring out our limitations.
It almost seems like the more you talk about it the more you see it and the more obsessed about it you are. Everyone always says to just quit trying…well we “attempted” to do that and then I had an extra long cycle that lasted an additional seven days past my twenty-eighth cycle day and we started to get excited. This has happened three times to us in the last 18 months. In July, we even indulged our fantasies and went as far as talking about how we were going to tell people when we found out. I knew at the time that we were tempting fate or karma, or whatever, but it did feel good to think about something positive. How do you determine how much is too much talking about it before you tempt the fate and karma gods or make yourself insane?
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