Blatherings of a Fat Infertile Extroverted Bookworm

Insomnia

2008-09-10T02:10:00.000-04:00

This insomnia and effed up sleep cycle is making me crazy! I have so much to do, and I'm not getting any of it done! Bleah!

Preggo Cravings

2008-09-09T02:59:00.004-04:00

What I have been craving the past few days more than anything have been boiled eggs with a little salt; and bread roll split in half drizzled in a little olive oil and covered in shredded mozzarella cheese, then toasted. MMMMMMMMMMMM.

Visit to the Farm

2008-08-31T22:08:00.002-04:00

On Saturday we went down to Geekboy's family farm to attend his Aunt N and Uncle G's 50th wedding anniversary! It was a lovely party, and we got to see many of this relatives that we don't often get a chance to see. It was the first time seeing his folks and his brother since finding out that we are pregnant, and it was SO HARD not to let the cat out of the bag! We are going to wait until the 13th week to let them know (please please please, let things continue to go well with this Little Embryo), we are hoping to visit for the weekend. I've already told my side of the family, mostly so they would know not to drive me insane with their dramatic shenanigans! I'm pregnant, and especially after the miscarriage in February, I need to be as calm and relaxed as I can possibly be!

Confession Time

2008-08-28T15:59:00.003-04:00

I am pregnant! Today I am 8 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I found out on 7/23/08 with a home pregnancy test. There is so much for me to recap from the past few weeks, so much to (hopefully) write about the remainder of this pregnancy, and still so much that I want to say about being infertile and seeking treatment for that infertility.

The Women in My Family--Part 2b Sisters

2008-07-17T20:50:00.003-04:00

My sister S. is seven years older than me. She is the sister I've gotten along with (and vice versa, unfortunately our older sister is a HOT MESS) over the years. Things were a little tense when I was very young (well, hell, how many 15 year old sisters want to hang out with their 7 year old lil sis for terribly long), mostly because of tense family relations when she was a teen. As I got older, we got closer and I'm proud to call her my sister and my friend.

However, she still drove me a *little* crazy.

When Geekboy and I got married a little over 2 years ago, I informed S. that I was tossing the BCP a few days before we got married and hopefully we'd get pregnant in a short period of time. She said that she thought it was a mistake to try and conceive before being married for at least a year. I reminded her that Geekboy and I were going to be 41 and 32 respectively upon getting married, and we didn't have the luxury of time on our side. Plus, I was already VERY suspicious that I had Polycyctic Ovarian Syndrome (and I was right). She maintained her original opinion, no matter how many times I presented the facts. Thankfully she didn't get a say in things! And if I had in any way shape or form listened to her? We would have been an entire year behind even more in the whole TTC process. Now I'm not terribly angry at her, but it still annoys me some days. See, she got married at 22, her husband is a month and 4 days younger than her. They got pregnant a couple of months shy of their 1st wedding anniversary and were parents at 24. They have 3 children that they had by the time they were 30. So here's a message to all of those who had kids at a fairly young age and had NO PROBLEMS with your fertility: do not presume that every couple is like you, do not presume that there are only negligible issues in starting a family at an older age, do not presume that other people will ever regret having a child soon after marriage. These assumptions are very irksome, and when one is dealing with infertility, they can also be painful to deal with.

The Women in My Family--Part 2a Sisters

2008-07-16T23:01:00.003-04:00

My oldest sister T. is 10 years older than me. She had her first baby when she was 19 and the 2nd came along 16 months later. She was still living at home with us, the boys have different biological fathers, she didn't have the means to care for them herself and would have been up the creek without a paddle if it hadn't been for my parents (the kicker to this is how we had no idea either time that she was pregnant until the boys were born! seriously!). Granted, this happened a long time ago, the boys are now 25 and almost 24. My sister T. finally got married in 1991 (to another freaking BUM, but that's another story) and she gave birth to her 3rd son a little over 2 months after her 2nd wedding anniversary. I was the first one in the family she told about that pregnancy. She hadn't been trying to get pregnant. She was smoking a cigarette as she told me, and my 18 year old self was pretty disgusted at that.

My sister T. had 3 healthy sons born to her by the time she was 30. She smoked and drank throughout all three pregnancies. She did not receive any prenatal care for her first 2 pregnancies (both older boys were born a couple of weeks premature, but they were thankfully fine and were able to come home less than a week after birth). She has been an irresponsible mother from the beginning in so many ways. She's been verbally abusive towards her 2nd son because of how his biological father treated him (the older 2 boys would not know their fathers if they walked past them on the street). She's 44 years old, an unrepentant alcoholic; unemployed because of her own long history of being an unreliable employee. Her husband has left her yet she refuses to make a claim for divorce based on abandonment because somehow they are plotting to get back together after certain bills are paid (wtf?!?! I don't have a clue what her crap plan is, but after over 20 years of their insane codependent horsecrap I am DONE caring what goes on with them). Right now my older 2 nephews are paying the rent and other bills in the house and that would be good and right except she has been such a wretch of a mother and is in her current circumstances because of own miserable parade of choices, I as far as I'm concerned they don't owe her a penny and should just move the hell out ASAP (she's stayed married for almost 18 years to a man who regularly had money for his fancy wardrobe, his DJ hobby, his big truck that he doesn't really need, etc. but has somehow had a hard time keeping those boys FED. I wish I had a tally of how much money and groceries my parents gave over the years so those boys would not go hungry or worry about being evicted into the street...oh, yeah, and my dad paid for the 2nd nephew's VERY LATE private high school tuition that was owed for junior year so he could enroll in senior year, as well as paid for the first semester of senior year...something my sister never even thanked him for).

So, sigh, now that I've vented my spleen the point is this: I love my nephews so very very much and I could not imagine my life without them, would not want that. But it pisses me off to no end that T. has been blessed with perfect fertility despite her drinking and smoking and overall obvious %^&)iness at being a mother. But me, I'm the one cursed with PCOS and infertility. Hell, she's even had a few abortions after her last son was born, because she didn't want to have anymore children with her husband (yet he's not worth divorcing, whatever). It makes me so angry, it's very difficult to put it into words without resorting to a lot of cursing.

Poor Geekboy

2008-07-16T11:42:00.002-04:00

I hate how not a single day goes by that I don't talk about babies or infertility somehow. I am blessed with a very understanding husband, but at this point I'm annoying myself, I don't know how he puts up with it sometimes. I guess cause he loves me, and he desperately wants a child, too. Still, while we are on "break" from TTC (well, basically I'm waiting for my next cycle to start so I can go in for more blood work, get a saline ultrasound to make sure I don't have any polyps or anything that will inhibit implantation, and make an appointment to discuss the next protocol which will be injections and IUIs) I would like to be able to discuss this less with him. I don't want our relationship to be only about IF, blood work, disappointment, "doing it" on schedule or anything like that. I want to be able to focus more on the things we enjoy doing together, books, movies, discussions about politics & history. I hate how IF has colored every aspect of my life, every waking moment. I need to find a more "zen" place during this time that we are waiting to go hardcore with the fertility treatments.

Well.

2008-07-15T22:09:00.001-04:00

Mmmmmmmmm, rum and coke.

HPT

2008-07-15T21:48:00.002-04:00

I wish I had thought at the beginning to tally up the amount that we have spent on home pregnancy tests since we got married. Then I could sit here appropriately appalled. Of course, like a fool I am about to go pee on a stick that I am 99.998% sure will remain stark white. That's ok though, I want to make sure before I start kicking back the rum and cokes tonight.

The Women in My Family--Part 1 Mothers

2008-07-15T15:56:00.004-04:00

As I sit here and contemplate the women in my family vis a vis my infertility, well, it's not fun.

My mother has some serious issues, she's been diagnosed with Paranoid Personality Disorder, and I'm pretty sure she is textbook Narcissistic. She's always been very difficult to deal with and she's gotten worse as she's gotten older. She and I have been at loggerheads for as long as I remember because from a young age I argued with her and fought back what I considered to be ridiculous rules and ways of thinking. I have a mother who is truly affronted by most of her children in some way or another, me in particular in many ways. We still communicate of course, I live a little over 2 miles from my parents in the same city I've lived all my life (well, minus time away in college) and I try and visit once a week. I call home a lot, though increasingly I speak with her less on the phone because she is convinced no one ever calls for her, so she let's my dad answer the phone all the time thus making it "true "that we never call to speak to her on the phone. See the things she does? Yeah, she's crazy. But I must be too, because like a fool I actually hoped for some level of motherly interest and care for all of the crap that I've had to put up with in regards to infertility. I'm an idiot! All she's ever done is say things like "I don't understand this, no one in our family has ever had problems getting pregnant!". "Oh, look at XYZ horrible news story about some evil witch who killed her baby! God gives her a baby, but not you!"....um, thanks a lot, Ma. She's also been less than kind telling me I need to lose weight, no matter how many times I've explained the dastardly things that PCOS can do to a woman's body. Yes, she's right, I need to work harder on losing weight but she makes it seem like it's entirely a moral failing of mine, she doesn't want to understand that there are real hormonal issues at the root of all this. Oh, and she definitely doesn't want to hear that she most likely has PCOS (she says it's impossible because she was pregnant 7 times and had 5 children...no matter how many times I've explained to her not all PCOS women are infertile, it just raises the chance by a LOT). I'm so sure she has PCOS that I would eat my hat if she were told she didn't. She's just been basically a pain in my ass about all of this, so at this point I discuss the minimum with her. After all, I have a nice mother-in-law, right? A MIL who endured years of infertility so I could discuss this with her right?

Wrong. My MIL had an accident when she was 12, she fell on a spike or some such thing, and it entered her abdomen. She had surgery and was told that it was likely she would have issues conceiving and carrying children because of adhesions in her abdomen. Being 12, this news apparently didn't phase her and she grew up knowing there was a big chance she would have to adopt if she wanted a family. When she started seeing my FIL, she discussed this with him and he said that if he had no issues with adoption, if that's what the Lord willed (my in-laws are very religious). They were married in early May 1958 and they turned 21 (MIL) and 25 (FIL) later on that month. My husband Geekboy was born 7 Mays later, 2 days after their 7th wedding anniversary. The pregnancy before this was an ectopic that nearly killed my MIL. She needed 3 pint of blood after the ectopic! They came very close to adopting a baby girl before she got pregnant with my husband, but they wanted to try for one more year before "giving up" and adopting. They got lucky, and were surely grateful for it. It took 6 years and 4 months later to have my BIL. There was a miscarriage between the 2 births. Here is someone who dealt with infertility in a very real way. Seven years waiting for the birth of my husband! My parents had 3 children by the time they were married 7 years. I figured, man, if someone could commiserate with me, it would be my MIL. Sigh. She's tried, I know she has, but she's managed to say so much wrong it's still hard for me to believe. She's kept on and on about "God's will". I know she is religious, and I know that she doesn't know the full extent to which Geekboy and I are not religious (it's something Geekboy can't bring himself to let them know, it would upset them too much), but this has really gotten my goat each and every time. When we were trying for less than a year, she was already going on about adoption. You know, cause we didn't know that there's always adoption! What a surprise option! I had to send her an email explaining that we still had a far way to go in TTC before throwing in the towel for biological children. I also had to educate her about how different adoption is from when she looked into almost 50 years ago. That the choices are all varying degrees of time consuming and expensive, and the potential for heartbreak is still high. The the capper: she informed me that we could still have a successful marriage without any children. This still burns me up to end. Again, she meant well, and she's right. But is this the thing you say to someone who you KNOW is hellbent on having children and who is suffering from infertility?! I mean, it's not something that would be nice, having children. Having a cat one day, would be nice. Going to San Francisco for a visit one day would be nice. Having children= something I can't imagine not doing. All of my life, as far as I could remember, I have wanted my own babies. Telling me that Geekboy and I could still be happily married without babies is to deny that there would be a gaping hole in our lives where our children should be, that it wouldn't be a big deal. And then I'm like, come on! Does she not want grandchildren?! What a weird thing to say. My mother might be crazy ans say stupid crap to me, but she at least still speaks like having grandchildren from me is inevitable. Sigh. Oh, now that I think of it, the capper might actually have been the day after I went to the ER because I was miscarrying back in February. Geekboy's parents always call on Sunday nights. This particular Sunday night we missed their call because I was in the ER. My husband called them the next day to let them know what happened, and at the end of that discussion my MIL said "Oh, well". Oh, well? OH, WELL?!?! It took all of my power not to grab the phone and yell at her that that was a pretty *(**&^%%( insensitive thing to say about the loss of their potential grandchild. Incredible. So, since then we've only shared minimum information about what's been going on.

I guess I can take two things from this: 1) gratitude that I am not nutso like my mother. 2) When we finally do have a child, I will remember remember remember the hell we went through to have that child. I will remember what it was like and strive to be as comforting as possible to the future women I meet going through IF as well. Because it's obvious my MIL has forgotten.

My New Blog

2008-07-15T03:56:00.004-04:00

I already have a blog elsewhere, I've had it for a little over four years. My husband and many friends are there (IRL friends as well as online friends). I need a space where I can more comfortably and more often bitch and moan about being infertile and being fat (thank you, PCOS!) and just what I'm going to do about all of this.

I turned 34 years old in April, my DH (who shall be known here as Geekboy, for lack of me being able to think of a more interesting nickname right now) turned 43 in May. We celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary early June (we got married on the exact 2nd anniversary of when we first met in person, so we have been together for 4 years and change). We started to TTC (Try to Conceive) as soon as we got married, I took my last BCP on May 30, 2006. Apparently I wasted a lot of good money on BC when we were dating, although I guess it did come in handy for controlling my insane period which was the main reason I was on it.

As of now, I have had 7 courses of clomid at 50 mg each (I'm lucky, it actually made me ovulate every time), an HSG (where they shoot dye up your hoo-ha so they can check to make sure you have clear fallopian tubes), more blood draws than I can count to check for various hormone levels, 2 fasting glucose tolerance tests (both came back a-ok). My husband has had 2 semen analysis (he's checked out fine). For our troubles, we had a miscarriage back in February.

I know that so far what we've experienced...it could be worse. But this still hurts like hell. It's been difficult to accept the fact that we are still childless at a point in time that if you had asked me when we got married, I would have guessed we were ready to start for baby #2. So, this is our story and in time I will give "flashbacks", keep abreast of our latest IF shenanigans, report what the doctors are up to, talk about my fears and anger (and hopes), discuss the rampant cluelessness of the general population when it comes to infertility, and hopefully chronicle my weight loss as well.