Back

I’ve been thinking about coming back from my self-imposed hiatus for a bit things are finally starting to happen and honestly I miss having someplace to put down the thoughts that are constantly running laps in my head.

The last few months have been hard – really really hard.  My mother got incredibly sick (she’s had heart problems for about 15 years) and the doctors in our area basically told her there was nothing that they could do for her and that she was going to die.  Hearing this was a shock but thanks to the suggestion of one of my uncles my mother contacted someone at the mayo clinic and my dad took her up there for treatment.  They were able to do what the doctors here couldn’t and thankfully she is still here and doing much better.  I am sooooo incredibly grateful for the care she received up there.  The one good thing is that it did serve as a bit of wake up call for her and she FINALLY quit smoking and is doing really well with it – I’m very proud of her.  A few weeks prior to that one of my uncles took a turn for the worse with his cancer diagnosis and unfortunately it’s been all downhill for him, I try to put a positive spin on things when I talk to my mom about it – I want her to still believe that the impossible is possible, but you can only do that for so long.

Worst of all at the beginning of January we received a phone call from my family in Florida that another one of my uncles had passed away.  He’d been sick for awhile and had suffered a stroke but I honestly didn’t know it was that bad.  My mother took it incredibly hard and I do what I always do when someone in my family dies (I have a HUGE family so it happens every few years it seems) I kind of turn into a stone – I don’t cry (especially not in front of others) and I make myself busy.  When my grandmother passed away in 2007 I wrote her eulogy and her obit, since then I have sort of become the eulogist for my family – when someone dies I somehow get roped into it.  I sat down to write this for my uncle and I blanked – I suddenly realized that this man I grew up around who I loved deeply, I in fact barely knew.  So I set out to ask my family questions – I asked his children, I asked his ex-wife (the one I still consider my aunt), and I asked my mother. I also remembered things that my grandmother said about her little boy – the boy with curls and the smile that could light up a room.  The boy she said she sent to Vietnam, the boy she said never really came home.  I already knew all that my cousins would say – he was a drunk, he loved alcohol more than anything, he could never leave the war behind, he loved his country passionately but could never quite love his children enough.  My mother told me of her little brother, how changed he was after he went to war how she always wanted him to find his way back to that lovable wonderful boy he was – but that he never could.  I finally cobbled something together, but it was nothing like what I wanted to write. I wanted to say that he was a man with many flaws, a man who was destroyed at 17 by the horrors of a war he was not even remotely prepared for, a man who loved his children even if they never really understood it or even if he failed to show it in all the ways he should.  After he died they found some insurance policies he had taken out years ago and paid for faithfully every month so that when he died his children would have something – this shocked them.  This man who couldn’t remember to show up to school events remembered this one thing – this one little thing, and at the end for his kids that was enough – they would never get back the time he missed with both them and their children – but they had this, this one final sign that their dad did in fact love them and had not forgot them.

Through all of this me and the husband have been trudging along – trying to finalize the sell of his family property in Cali to his mother so that we can FINALLY move on with our plans for IVF.  Thankfully this week the house finally closed and he is supposed to sign some papers this week and then we are done with it, I am so incredibly relieved. We can finally move on with our plans to finance our IVF this spring/summer.  In the meantime I have started trying to eat better and take my metformin regularly.  I started using Myfitnesspal on my phone and it’s really great.  I started the second week of January and I’m already down 9 1/2 lbs. Thanks to a suggestion from a good friend of mine I actually use baby stuff as a motivation – if I start to feel like I’m going to cheat and eat something bad instead I go on pinterest and pin some baby stuff, if I’m at the grocery store and I think about putting something bad in my cart I go stand in the baby aisle for a few minutes.   The fertility clinic we use is now offering nutritional counseling, I called them earlier this week and they are supposed to be calling me back to schedule an appointment.  It would be wonderful if by changing my diet and losing some weight I could magically get my PCOS under control and we would be able to conceive naturally.  However, I’m not betting the farm on it so we are going through with all of this with the belief that it will increase our chances come IVF.

Since I took my blogging hiatus – I’ve seen soooo many fellow bloggers have babies along with numerous people that I know.  I’m honestly incredibly happy for all my fellow IF’ers who have had their babies – it’s been a long wait for all.  Every time I look at a baby announcement whether it be in my blog roll or on facebook I try to remind myself that one day it will be us.  I’m trying to not let myself get overwhelmed or saddened by the unfairness that is so easy to feel – instead I am trying my damnedest to concentrate on the positives and so far it seems to be working.

Other than all that not a whole lot has been going on – we’ve been battling the flu, strep throat and numerous other fun time ailments this winter and I think we FINALLY got rid of all of them – they just kept bouncing back and forth between the husband and myself which sucked.  I’m hoping to be able to frequently update my blog but I’m taking it one day at a time, hopefully I still have a few people out there reading it after all this time

-tara

Hiatus

I know I haven’t posted much lately, that is mainly due to the fact that there isn’t much to post.  Life has been crazy outside of the infertility bubble/madness, I’ve been trying to focus on that and it’s taking all my energy. At the same time my mother was being treated for cancer we found out that my uncle has terminal cancer.  We also found that a friend we haven’t seen in a few years who has been fighting a heart condition is terminal and has been given only a few months to live – he will leave behind his wife and a very young daughter.  Last week the day before hearing the news about my uncle, one of my dear friends lost her best friend to murder – it was violent, senseless and tragic in so many ways and has haunted me since then.  I’ve always been good at swallowing my feelings and trying to shove my grief/sadness/pain as far down as it will go but honestly you can only have room for so much, till you are spent.  I am spent.  I have reached that point in so many ways, I can’t talk about infertility right now – we aren’t in the middle of treatments and won’t be till after the first of the year.  I hope to come back then, better and ready to fight for the family my husband and I so desperately want.  Today though I have no fight in me – not for me, not for this.  There is so much pain, sadness and grief in this world and for the people in my family and circle it never seems to happen over time it always seems to happen in clusters, clusters of tragedy and despair that happen without warning and leave you feeling like you have been punched in the gut or have forgotten how to breathe.

Late last month I was in desperate mourning, I was mourning for the baby my husband and I lost – on my birthday I had the realization that s/he would have been born near that day – and it filled me with overwhelming sadness like nothing I had felt before. Since then everything has been a domino effect, one after another.  I’m stepping back for now – spending time with people who don’t have much time.  I wish everyone the best of luck on their journey in the coming months, hopefully I come back and my reader is full of good and joyous news – the world needs more of it.

baby shower dilemma

So, my 18 year old cousin (hell, maybe she’s 19 by now I can’t keep track of all of them) emailed me the other day to get my address.  She was requesting it as she is planning her baby shower.  I gave it to her and fully expect to receive one in the mail any day now.  I called my mom after receiving said email and told her I wasn’t sure I could go, her response “well why not?  You need to go, she’s family.” Grumble freaking grumble.  Should I put on my big girl panties and deal?  Should I send a card and a gift with my mother knowing that I’m going to have to deal with a speech?  It’s very frustrating – there is a part of me that is happy for her but on the same token there is a part that just wants to scream then cry.  The last baby shower I went to was about two years ago, I left early and bawled the entire way home – and that was for someone who had been trying for years to have a baby and who I was genuinely happy about.  In my mother’s world I’m being selfish, in my world I’m being honest.  This is how I feel – I can’t magically change it.  How do you guys deal with shower invites?  Do you show up and deal?  Does it not bother you?  Do you skip out on them?  If you skip out on them any magical excuse you can give me?  Since I stay home (and my family knows that) I can’t use the magical “oh I have to work” excuse.  Is there something I could say to my mother to have her “get it” – for the most part she has been incredibly supportive and understanding about our infertility issues – but the things that  she has never been able to understand is why I hate to attend events like this or how I can’t be around other peoples kids at the moment.  ugh.

the ghosts that we knew

We got back from Nebraska late yesterday afternoon, originally we had planned on being home that morning but it just didn’t work out that way.  Concert was a gigantic ball of awesome, amazing and a bunch of other positive adjectives.  The only downside – venturing out into the masses reminds me how much of a “not a people person” I actually am.  I have no problem judging people as douchebag hipsters and there were plenty in attendance.   However, even with all that  it was still an awesome way to celebrate my early birthday and a great first concert experience for my hubby.  How that man managed to go 33 years without going to a concert though is beyond me!!

When we left Monday morning the hubs had just gotten off work so I ended up driving while he slept – 3 1/2 hours of nothing but straight road and corn fields and no conversation – at one point I felt like we were about to star in our very own version of “Children of the Corn”.  However, it did give me time to think or as the case usually is over-think.  I tried my damnedest not to think about our upcoming (hopefully) IVF treatments, about our miscarriage or even about infertility in general.  However, trying is not necessarily succeeding.   It’s always there isn’t it?  Clouding everything, effecting every thought.  I can try to out think it, I can try to drive away from it but it follows us.  I think it will until it’s all finished in one way or another.  In less than a week I will be 32 years old – it seems strange to me to say that.

I remember being 17 like it was yesterday, I remember being filled with sadness and with hope and a belief in tomorrow. My life is currently so completely different than I had thought it would be, that doesn’t mean it’s bad – in some ways it is better and in others it just is. However,  in one way or another no matter how bad something seemed like it was in my life it always seemed to work itself out, infertility is the first thing in my life that hasn’t done so.  I know that IVF gives us a chance to have a child but it doesn’t cure infertility, it doesn’t magically remove a medical condition.  I sometimes wish I could go back in time and have a nice yell at my 17 year old self – scream at her for her arrogance and punish her for her belief in “everything will be okay”.  Then perhaps warn her about the mistakes she will make and guide her towards the right choices that came later if  they came at all.  Life doesn’t work like that though, we don’t get a reset button.  Everything- every choice, every good thing that happens along with every bad thing, every thought, and even every mistake guides us and forms us.  They make us who we are, blemishes and all.  I know that this upcoming year will be a hard one, I just hope that it will also be a happy one.  I want to be done with this journey of infertility, I want a happy ending.  I don’t want to be haunted by the ghost of “what if” and “why not me” anymore.  I don’t want to lose anymore babies I want to see one finally be born – healthy and happy and loved.  I am impatient – I guess that is one thing I still have in common with 17-year old me, a desire for tomorrow to be today.  I have always ached for the promise of tomorrow while having a cautious eye on the past, some days I have probably forgot how to live in the present – that has been especially true these last few years.  I think all of us are a bit guilty of that though, it’s one of those things you could probably file under “infertility” symptoms.  No matter what, I will be grateful to be turning 32, I will be grateful for another day on this earth, another chance to get it right.

 

“So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold on as long as you like
Just promise me that we’ll be alright.
But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
And we’ll live a long life”

random

So, the marching band has returned with great fanfare to my uterus, I was hoping that since it’s only been a month since my last period I wouldn’t get super vomit cramps – I am not so lucky.  I’m going to take the advice from the comments on my last post and call my RE this week – I’m going out of town tomorrow so it will have to wait till Tuesday.

 

Things have been a bit crazy the last week, I thought that upon returning from vacation and all the craziness that entailed things would calm down – I was wrong. We are leaving for Lincoln in the morning to go see Mumford & Son’s and celebrate my early b-day (I still refuse to believe I am turning 32).  We find out in a little over a week whether or not the MIL was able to get approved for the necessary loan so that we could move on with getting a HELOC for our house.  I’ve been a bit on pins and needles regarding this as we have sooooooooooo much riding on it.  I think the worry from that (I’m a worrier – it’s what I do) has completely fubar’d my sleeping schedule and it seems to be playing havoc on the hubs as well.  I’ve spent time every day at the post office mailing stuff I’ve been selling on amazon, and we’ve also had to play three rounds of “take the dogs to the vet” which is a production in and off itself and requires taking them one at a time because they all can’t be in the car at the same time.  I’ve had no motivation to cook so we’ve been living on crap food for the past week – I’m usually pretty anal about making a super duper menu and following that.  This week we have lived off of pizza, sandwiches and burger king – I hate myself :/ .   Well off I go to eat my tendergrill chicken sandwich and be self-loathing about it.

 

 

the case of the mysterious period

So, if you recall shortly before I went on vacation my period started – it lasted for a day then stopped only to reappear a week later and last for a full week.  So, now almost EXACTLY a month later my period has started again.  A month is normal for a lot of people, it has NEVER been normal for me.  I don’t know what to think – I’ve been super bad about taking my metformin so I know it’s not medicine magically giving me a regular cycle – so I’m not sure what could be causing it.  I’m anxious to see if it stays for all of a day only to disappear again and reappear a week from now.  I’m also worried that it could be a sign, a sign that another year long bleed-a-thon could be on the horizon – which I REALLY don’t want.
In all honesty, I’m not sure what to do.  Is having a quasi-normal period something I should be happy about or concerned about?  We are in a complete holding pattern regarding our infertility and aside from contacting our RE a few weeks ago to get a refill on the Metformin, which I haven’t used since (yes-I know I suck), we haven’t had any appointments or anything with them since our last failed IUI.  Should I contact them, should I contact my regular OBGYN, should I just let it happen?  I’m also wondering if this is a sign I should start charting again and peeing on magic ovulation sticks?  Anyone, have any ideas/advice?

Vacation Survival

I’m on a boat!

So, I just wanted to write a short little bit to let people know that I’m back from vacation.  It was good, it was crazy, it was exhausting.  All in all though the vacation was pretty good and much needed.  We spent a week with the hubs family to celebrate his grandmothers birthday which was awesome.  There was a bit of a hiccup the day after her birthday though when she got in a wreck and broke her wrist, luckily she is one tough cookie and is doing really well.  We were still able to do quite a bit of stuff with family and just on our own, then we spent a few days at a B&B that was near Yosemite. After Yosemite we were in Vegas for a few days then stopped a few random nights for the rest of the drive home.  Here are a few little points from our vacation:

Ikea is amazing – and I curse the fact that the closest one to where we live is 500 miles away

Sailing is amazing (even if I don’t know how to swim and clung to my part of the boat like I was going to be kidnapped by a sea lion at any moment).  We privately chartered a sail boat for about 4 1/2 hours in Monterey – it was completely amazing!!! We went with my brother-in-law who is usually completely non-impressed by anything in life and even he was amazed, we also went with one of my husbands second cousins who was awesome .  Everyone had a good time and aside from returning with a sun burn from hell it was so amazing.

Mountain air is trying to kill me

The desert is also trying to kill me

The sun is without a doubt doing it’s damnedest to kill me (granted I helped it along by not putting on sunscreen when we went sailing – it was overcast so I didn’t think I needed it – yeah I needed it)

I married into a pretty awesome family – we might be dealing with some little tidbits of finance drama but all things considered it could be much much worse and they are good people.

Vegas is awesome – especially the Wynn (if you ever get a chance to stay there do so – it was completely amazeballs)

The hubs getting sick while in Vegas was not so awesome – so we spent the entire two days in our hotel (most of it in our hotel room – luckily it was an incredibly awesome room)

Driving through Northern Nevada & Western Kansas is incredibly mind numbing.

I’m fully convinced that people in California can’t drive (sorry if you are from Cali and feel that you can drive – I’ll just call you the exception to the rule )

San Francisco traffic makes me homicidal but the House of Prime Rib in San Fran was worth the homicidal rage – seriously best food/best service ever.

 

I think surviving with your significant other for over 4000 miles in a car deserves some sort of trophy.  We did pretty well with it though and didn’t start getting snippy with each other until about 100miles from home.  Although, truth be told it was me doing most of the snipping.  I have this weird thing where I can’t sleep if someone is driving for fear of them falling asleep and driving us to our doom.  I was so tired and all I wanted to do was fall asleep but my mind wouldn’t let me so I took out some of my frustration on my poor beleaguered husband.  It didn’t help matters that I decided at that time to clean out the glove compartment and found the program from my husbands senior prom in 1997 (when we moved my husband stored random things in the car and some he had forgotten about – this was one of those things).  I decided some self punishment was in order and found the prom picture with my husband and his prom date (who was just a friend of his).  I made the comment “well, she was skinny wasn’t she” and he responded with “yes, she was”.  In my mind this was the wrong thing for him to say and I spent the last 50 miles yelling at him telling him “I didn’t make you marry my fat ass, if you wanted some skinny chick you should go back to California and get her”.  Yes, dear readers I turned into giant bitch stereotype – I hate myself a plenty for it trust me.  I was fine about 5 minutes after walking in the door and apologized profusely, so what did my husband do – he went out and got us dinner so I could take a nap and brought me back a “I love you” card where he wrote me a letter telling me that he loved me and only me and would never want to be with anyone else and that the happiest parts of his day are spent with me.  Seriously, if someone could please tell me what I did to deserve such a great man I would love to know – because I’m pretty sure there are days when I don’t deserve him – not even remotely.

 

In news on the “fertility” front – I tried my hardest to not think about it while we were on vacation.  Trying not to think about it didn’t work though, the only time my mind felt truly free was when we went sailing, I was able to just concentrate on the beauty of everything.  Most of the time though it was in the back of my mind, I talked a bit about it with my second cousin-in-law, she was pretty awesome about everything but then at some point she uttered those dreadful words “Just relax” – after that I pretty much just took a deep breath and tuned out her “advice”.  It bothered me at weird times, when we went to Ikea I remembered how we had planned on getting a crib here and how now we weren’t.  I did buy a little stuffed bear though to keep though for “one day” – although the superstitious side of me gave it to my mom for safekeeping when we got home, I can’t bring myself to keep the items in my house (we have a couple we’ve purchased over the years).  Another time it bothered me was when we were at Yosemite, my husband was telling me about how they used to go there all the time when he was growing up and all the things his family did on those vacations.  There was a part of me that just wondered “Will we do those things with our own child someday or will we never get that chance?”.
Now that we are back we will be focusing on getting our credit card debt paid off and once that is done and the crap with the family finances is dealt with we will continue to our IVF treatments.  I really am ready to get the ball rolling!!!

Go Go Yosemite

 

 

 

 

This isn’t a real post

This isn’t a “real” post – for that kind of stuff look at the next entry and then continue down the page.  However, this is a little shining tidbit of life I wanted to share.  Currently in the process of packing for our trip, husband tries for 20minutes to convince me we can use one suitcase.  We are gonna be gone for like 2 weeks…… I laughed.  I may not be a girly girl and don’t have to take makeup and high heels (seriously how to fellow ladies walk in those things!!!)  - but still one suitcase?  really?  Men are silly.

Here enjoy this video…I thought it was fitting, and I find her hilarious.  **language warning for those with sensitive dispositions – or some crap**

Adoption is not for everyone

Welcome everyone from ICLW week – I’m on vacation for the next few weeks so I thought I would post this entry that I actually wrote a while back but just never published, it’s regarding our opinions on adoption.  Please note that these are just my opinions on adoption for my husband and I – this isn’t about other people’s decision to complete their families by adoption so please don’t read it as such.  Also, feel free to peruse some of my other entries; I look forward to hearing from people for ICLW week!

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Early on in my blogging I professed that the hubs and I weren’t interested in pursuing adoption to complete our family.  I have always pretty much been of this mindset, my husband on the other hand never had to think about it till after we had tried and failed to conceive naturally.  We talked about it a great deal and I listed for him all the reasons I wasn’t interested in taking that route.  Hubs did a little research and reported back that as things currently stand neither is he.  I told him that if it was something that at any point he wanted to do to please speak up, as it’s a mutual decision and my long standing feelings on the subject shouldn’t be the only factor.

Now what are these “long-standing feelings” one might ask, it’s pretty simple – actually no, it’s not even remotely simple.

Let me give you some background first!  My mom didn’t have me until she was 38 years old.  Prior to having me she was in a craptastic marriage with a man who beat her and one of the “reasons” was because she couldn’t get pregnant. When she was a very young newlywed she often babysat for local kids and one day one of the mothers didn’t pick up her little girl.  My mother tried to reach her and couldn’t and she didn’t really know what to do – instead of contacting the authorities my mother kept silent – she raised this little girl for almost a year before the mother finally came back to get her – my mother was around nineteen at the time and had no idea that she could have gone to the authorities to show that the little girl had been abandoned, instead she turned over the girl that she had raised for a year to her “mother” never to see her again.  A few years later she heard of a family member on her husband’s side who had a bunch of children and had just had another one and didn’t want to keep the baby, so my mother (who wanted nothing more in life than to be a mother) offered to take the baby.  The woman dropped off the baby and said she would sign the adoption papers at a later date.  My mother didn’t hear from this woman for a few months then out of the blue she called and said she wanted her child back, my mother was heartbroken but since the papers were never signed she didn’t have any recourse so she gave back the little boy.  A few weeks later she got a phone call from the woman saying “I can’t take this kid crying anymore, you want to come pick him up I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign”.  My mother immediately drove over to the motel that the woman was living in with all her kids – years later she told me how she found my brother wearing a diaper that clearly hadn’t been changed for days and all the other kids were incredibly neglected looking.  The woman said she would sign the papers and mail them back to my mother, she never did.  She raised my brother without ever “officially” adopting him and always fearing the possibility of losing him.  A few years later another “family situation” happened, this time via a family friend, the woman knew someone who was mentally ill who had given birth and the father had taken the baby. However he was unable to continue to look after his child so he decided to give her up.  My mother agreed to adopt the child who was 18mths old (this was in 1971), all the papers were signed and she brought my sister home.  My mother often told me that she wondered if because of whatever my sister had been put through and her age if my sister was incapable of attaching to her.  While my brother loved my mother and was very loving towards her my sister was aloof, cried a lot and ate like a bird. As she grew up those traits grew and she became incredibly narcissistic and it is believed that she suffers from antisocial personality disorder.

My mother eventually divorced her husband and ended up pregnant via a boyfriend a few years later.  I grew up with siblings but not really, not only were they so much older than me (fourteen years and ten years respectively) we were nothing alike – it was something I believed to really be a case where nature won out over nurture – we all were raised by the same woman but somehow we all ended up with completely different moral compasses (especially in the case of my sister).

I remember growing up and being angry at them because they still had contact with their birth families, they would call their birth mothers “mom” and I couldn’t (and still can’t) wrap my head around that – my mother loved them, she raised them – she is their mother.

I realize that for many adopted children having a connection with their birth families is important to them, but I will admit I don’t understand how you can understand the circumstances of your birth and your adoption (especially in the case of my brother) and still want something to do with those people.

Maybe all of this makes me a horrible person, but this is honestly what is in my mind and in my heart.  The truth is that the number one reason I could never adopt is because I grew up with siblings who were, I felt cut off from them as family, and I felt that they did our mother completely wrong with many of their words and their actions.  I could never ever do an open adoption because of a lifetime of experience with this and after my husband researched the issue he doesn’t feel comfortable with a fully open adoption.  Since the majority of adoptions in the United States are open adoption that rules out the majority of adoption options for us.

The second reason I would prefer not to adopt is that when I was about 25 years old I took custody via the foster care system of one of my second cousins; she was 12 at the time.  I tried to give her the best home I could (with the absolute zero help/training/prep I got from the state).  She had come from an incredibly horrible background filled with every type of abuse imaginable; I thought I was doing the right thing by taking her in.  She fought with me on everything (as was to be expected), she even made up a false rape claim to excuse an absence from school (stating that she was raped on her way to the school bus – which was eventually discovered to not be remotely true), she wouldn’t go to school, she was violent and it finally came to a head when she physically attacked my mother – at that moment I had reached my breaking point.  I called social services and they were absolutely no help – at that point I told them that I couldn’t handle it and they had to place her elsewhere, I was hoping that her grandfather or one of her aunts would step up and be willing to take her but no one was and she ended up back in the foster care system.  I felt like a failure and in many ways in that situation I was – but I was also an unmarried 25 year old that had not been trained to adequately deal with a child with her magnitude of problems.  It was a situation that was set up for spectacular failure from the start; I wish it had ended differently.  However, from that situation I saw how completely inept the foster care system in my state is and how I would prefer never to attempt to deal with them again.

Third and final reason why adoption is not for me is that I feel that you have to almost sell yourself as a couple.  You have to show why they should pick you over everyone else; I don’t like the idea of having to market myself and my husband.  Should the birth parents be able to choose who raises their child?  Of course! I’m not trying to imply that they shouldn’t be able to.  I just know that the bottom line is that in a line-up of potential parents who is going to get picked; option a.) the pretty young couple with awesome jobs, with the nice house that looks like a west elm catalog, who go to church every Sunday with the picture perfect relatives or option b.) the handsome husband with the fat frumpy wife who stays at home while her husband works a warehouse job, with the modest house that is never clean enough thanks to three dogs, who are not Christian and have the type of relatives (at least on my side) that you need a chart or a Jerry Springer show to figure out?  I don’t feel like our chances of being “picked” are that great.

I have enough self-awareness to realize that a lot of my issues might be misplaced, but it’s still our decision to make.  – I just know that I believe in my heart that adoption IS a wonderful thing just not for me.  There are so many families that are made this way and that work out and are better for it and I wish that would have been my experience but it wasn’t and I can’t change that.  So as it currently stands we will be going down the IVF route if that doesn’t work we will revisit the issue, but most likely the only other thing we would consider would be surrogacy.

Sometimes I feel like because I don’t want to pursue adoption that it might mean my dreams of being a parent never come to fruition or that people might think I don’t really care about being a parent in general as I’m not willing to do “everything” to make it happen.  As much as I like to pretend I don’t give a crap about what other people think that isn’t necessarily true (is it for anyone really?).  I always get so frustrated at the people who make comments like “well if you can’t have kids why don’t you just adopt” – like we can all just mosey on down to the local babies ‘r us and pick up a baby in the “adoptable baby” aisle.  Adoption is a choice many people make and that many other people don’t want to make, it can be heartbreaking, time consuming, expensive and sometimes even scary.  However, it can also be wonderful, full of happiness and love and worth every single minute you devoted, but it’s still a choice that isn’t for everyone.

Sadness

I didn’t want to add this next few paragraphs to my last post because it would seem haphazard and  I debated honestly even saying something but I would feel a bit like a gigantic tool if I didn’t.  So this is honestly the best I can come up with because there really are no adequate words at a time like this.

My heart seriously aches for all those people in Aurora, Colorado right now.  I can’t even fathom how something like that happens.  My husband and myself were supposed to go to a midnight premiere here in Kansas last night, but we didn’t simply because we’ve been too busy.  We’ve been to numerous midnight premieres in the past and I’ve never once felt unsafe or thought about something bad happening at any of them.  Those types of events are a time for people with a shared love of a genre or film in general to get together and enjoy something.  It’s heartbreaking to think of violence intruding on anyone like that, I’ll never understand the motives (can there even be a true motive for an act like this) of an individual who chooses to end the lives of innocent people.  Just how every act of kindness can change the world sadly so does every act of violence.

Mel said it best here - there are no words for something like this.  The human language has the words “grief”, “sadness” and “tragedy” but we honestly don’t have the words to truly explain those things or to even remotely make them better.  There is no making it better.  One person took it upon himself to end the lives of people he didn’t know, who weren’t doing anything but enjoying some entertainment.  I can’t begin to understand what would make someone do that – insanity? anger? cruelty?.  None of those things would make it okay though and none of those things will ever bring back the loved ones that were just ripped from peoples lives last night.

So yes there are no words and all I really know is that today I called my mom, hugged my dogs and kissed my husband thankful for one more day in this world.

 

 

 

Vacation here I come

So, the hubs talked to his mom a bit more yesterday.  I’d like to say that everything is magically okay and fixed now but that is not the case.  She did say she never meant to imply that we wouldn’t be able to pay her back (if she lent us the 50k).  She asked us to give her 6 weeks to get this new loan straightened out as she thinks it will really work this time because her finance guy laid everything out for the bank (why in the crap didn’t he do that in first place with the first two loans?).  We begrudgingly agreed to do so. I’ve waited three years for all this crap to be worked out, I will give her six more weeks, however we did try to stress that we don’t want to just keep hitting our heads against the wall if this loan falls through.  I understand that she wants to keep the peace between my husband and his brother, but at some point when all the other options are done we are going to have to do what is best for the possibility of our future family.

I’m not a coddler so watching his younger brother get coddled and handled with kid gloves through this whole ordeal makes me want to scream.

We leave for our vacation next week and both the hubs and I are very much looking forward to it at this point.  We are going to try to clear our minds of all the crap that has been going on and just enjoy the trip.  We have a lot of fun activities planned and since we are road tripping there are numerous places we are stopping at (Las Vegas, Park City, San Francisco, Yosemite).  It’s approximately a 30 hr drive there and then another 30hr drive back (that’s just drive time – not including stopping), so organizing everything and packing has been a bit of a headache.  Especially considering how ridiculously organized I like being about everything.  We did encounter some frustration with making plans for stuff to do with his family while we are in Cali with them.  The hubs and I are the only “planners” in the bunch every one else figures out what they are doing pretty much the day they are doing it.  So as it stands they may attend the activities we have planned or they may not – I tried to solicit ideas from others about things we could all do as a family but got pretty much no assistance.  Not because they don’t want to do things but because they don’t plan things.  We are going to be gone for two weeks, my parents have kindly agreed to stay at our house while we are gone as we didn’t want to try to board our dogs – they would flip out.  Two week vacation but only one of those weeks will actually be in Cali with the in-laws the rest is time with just the hubs and I and if anyone deserves a vacation it is that man.  He has been working an insane amount of overtime every week and his job is incredibly physical so he’s been pretty tired on his days off.

Not much else has been going on besides trying to get a bunch of stuff done prior to leaving.  I’m debating writing a few posts to be published intermittently while we are gone for two weeks (assuming I can figure out how).  I have a few posts that I have already written that I’ve been waiting for the right time to share so perhaps I’ll unearth a few of those, either way I’ll try not to just abandon my blog for two weeks – I always worry if I do that I’ll never come back to it or people will think I’ve abandoned it. Also, I’m going to attempt to do a lot of commenting for July’s IComLeavWe this weekend, we’ll see how far I get though – but I’ve found so many new and amazing blogs through it that I hate to not at least attempt to go down the list!

 

 

 

tired of waiting

So in my earlier post I placed The Dixie Chicks song “So Hard” at the end of the post.  Love that song and it’s a song that is very fitting for infertility.  However, because my life needs an appropriate soundtrack I looked at my list of infertility songs and found one that is much more fitting to the situation at hand (I believe), plus it’s probably not as well know (I think).  Also, the title of this post probably would have been more fitting for the previous post.  Yes, I could have edited the previous post to reflect that but for some reason I don’t really like going back and editing my posts (unless it’s for glaring spelling errors). Anyhoo enjoy or if you are like me weep uncontrollably :/

I don’t know where I’m at
I’m standing at the back
And I’m tired of waiting
Waiting here in line, hoping that I’ll find what I’ve been chasing.

I shot for the sky
I’m stuck on the ground
So why do I try, I know I’m gonna to fall down
I thought I could fly, so why did I drown?
Never know why it’s coming down, down, down.

Not ready to let go
Cause then I’d never know
What I could be missing
But I’m missing way too much
So when do I give up what I’ve been wishing for.

I shot for the sky
I’m stuck on the ground
So why do I try, I know I’m gonna to fall down
I thought I could fly, so why did I drown?
Never know why it’s coming down, down, down.
Oh I am going down, down, down
Can’t find another way around
And I don’t want to hear the sound, of losing what I never found.

I shot for the sky
I’m stuck on the ground
So why do I try, I know I’m gonna to fall down
I thought I could fly, so why did I drown?
I never know why it’s coming down, down, down.

I shot for the sky
I’m stuck on the ground
So why do I try, I know I’m gonna to fall down
I thought I could fly, so why did I drown?
Oh it’s coming down, down, down.   

It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy

Today has not been a good day – not even a little.  First some back story; when my husband’s father passed away his house was willed to the hubs and his two brothers.  This is a gigantic house on the west coast – none of them could afford the mortgage on it so they decided to hire a property manager and rent the property out (the same family has rented it out all these years).  It rents very well because it’s a big house in an amazing neighborhood in a superb school district.  A few years later one of his brothers wanted his share of the money out of the house so that he and his fiancee (soon to be ex-wife) could buy a townhouse.  My husband and his youngest brother did the dumbest thing imaginable because I wasn’t around to tell them they were being stupid (and apparently no one else felt the need to do so) – they figured up how much they “thought” the house was worth and then divided it by three.  A new loan was taken out to pay for this (in addition to the bit that was still on the mortgage).  My husband’s brother walked away with $250,000 – my husband walked away with a half a million dollar loan in his name. When we got married we decided we wanted to buy a house, we obviously couldn’t do that with a $550,000 mortgage hanging over our heads.  My husband looked into selling the house and upon doing that all hell broke loose.  His younger brother absolutely refused to budge.  Their mother in a desperate attempt to keep the peace decided to “buy” my husband out – which basically involved her borrowing money and giving us $80,000 for his share of the house, with the promise to figure out a way to get the house mortgage out of his name and into hers.  This was three years ago – the mortgage is still in his name.  We took that $80,000 and purchased the home we currently reside in, we paid for it entirely in cash and because of that we have full equity in our home but no way to get that equity because of the mortgage from hell that my husband is still carrying.  The last six months we have been faxing papers, signing papers, etc in regards to his mom getting a loan to buy the loan out.  Today, we find out that loan is a bust – they won’t finalize it because it would be between a mother and a son or some bull crap.

The ONLY reason we want access to the equity in our home is so that we can pay for IVF – that is it.  My husband talked to his mother today and asked if there was any way she could just borrow 50k in equity off of her house, we open up a joint account which we would then deposit the payments in every month and the payment would be auto deducted by the bank via that account.  She informed my husband that she actually has a 115k line of credit available on her house that she isn’t using, but she thinks she still wants to go the loan route for now and keep trying.  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!  (sorry if my language offends you, but I just can’t deal with censoring myself today) . I realize that that is her money and I am in no position to “demand” it but out of all of her children my husband is so financially responsible it borders on insane.  None of our bills are EVER late, we live below our means, I am so incredibly anal about bill paying and finances (I use an excel spreadsheet that is so ridiculously detailed that it would make someone with OCD weep in appreciation) .

If we can’t get the 50k from his mom the only other choice we have is to sue his brother and have a judge force him to sell it.  My husbands family is the most anti-drama family on the earth – so having to make that choice would cause my husband severe heartache and I don’t want to be the cause of that.

I am so frustrated, so angry, so pissed off, so heartbroken.  If my body would just do what it’s supposed to do this wouldn’t even be a damn issue – we would have no problem just carrying that mortgage – but no, my body refused to cooperate.  My husband has super sperm and I’m just broken. All we want is a family, I don’t understand why it’s so hard – why every time we think something is going well some thing pops up to remind us that it’s not.

I am so tired of waiting for a chance to be a mother.  I get angry thinking we could spend 50k  and having nothing to show for it, and then I feel like people will think we “wasted” all that money.  I worry that if his mother would agree to lend us the 50k, I would feel immense pressure for it to work and if it doesn’t work then I will feel like even more of a failure.

I think about the fact that I should have been due next month and if I were still pregnant then none of this would even be an issue.  I think about the baby I lost and wonder if that’s the closest I’m ever going to get.  That alone has been really weighing heavily on my heart and mind the last few weeks, so adding this to it is just too much for me to really process/deal with currently.

The only bright spot in today was that my period stopped, but the small joy of that is nothing compared to the crap of everything else.

 

“It felt like a given
Something a woman’s born to do
A natural ambition
To see a reflection of me and you

And I’d feel so guilty
If that was a gift I couldn’t give
And could you be happy
If life wasn’t how we pictured it
…..
It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy
It’s so hard when it doesn’t come fast
It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy
So hard”

there is a marching band in my uterus

Mother Nature thou art a heartless bitch.  Since my last IUI I have had all of one menstrual cycle, today #2 decided to show up.  I go on vacation in a little over a week.  For about the last decade when my cycle does decide to show up it is either 1.) medically/chemically induced, 2.) Lasts for over a year for some unknown reason or 3.) makes me feel like I”m going to die.   Currently it’s #3.  I don’t just get cramps, I get magical cramps that make me vomit.

Awesome.

Seriously, this better be done with by next week.  I’m road tripping my happy butt clear across the country with my husband for two weeks.  Part of our trip is at a romantic bed & breakfast, pretty sure if this is still going on there isn’t going to be much romance happening.  I am not a happy camper.

There is a part of me that wants to try and look at it in a positive way and think “Huzzah, Metformin you are doing your job!!” – but seriously, the timing is pretty sucky so realistic me slaps down positive me every time I try to tell myself that.   Even my husband who is usually Mr. Sunshine & Rainbows couldn’t even manage to put a good spin on this.

A picture of my uterus currently

It’s a little bit of everything

Yesterday I wrote a bit about an infertility story line in a TV show.  I wrote it so fast and my mind was just not working correctly so I’m pretty sure that what I wrote came out as barely comprehensible word vomit.  I’m hoping to expand a little bit on the subject in this post.

I wish my life were like a TV show, the type of sitcom where everything gets resolved in a few half hour episodes.  Where people are beautiful and everything somehow magically works out in the end.  Life isn’t like that though, it never has been and it never will be.  It would be easier though, I wouldn’t have to stress about the possibility of never or of trying to figure out how we are going to pay for something that people are just supposed to be able to “do”.

I watched a show where a couple struggled for a bit to have a baby before being successful, I watched it and saw the scenes that were supposed to be emotional (and cried) and the scenes that were supposed to be funny (and cried).  None of it was funny though, it was like venturing through the uncanny valley lugging my emotional baggage behind me.  My husband and I sat on the couch in silence, neither of us wanted to be the first person to point it out or bring it up.  I finally broke the silence by pointing out the stupidity of how a pregnancy test process was presented.

It also made me think back to earlier this week.  The hubs and I are not the most social of butterflies – we tend to stay at home and prefer spending time together.  The only real friends we have is a couple P&N.  P has been my best friend for about 14 years, we met when we were college freshman and him and I worked at a grocery store together.  He’s seriously one of the greatest guys I’ve ever met in my life and his wife N is completely amazing.  We all four truly enjoy each others company, dinner & board game nights tend to be our favorite activity to do together.  The hubs and I have always been very forthcoming about our infertility journey and this is especially true with P&N.  N is finishing up her schooling and they are hoping to start a family in the next two years, however here lately she has expressed some concern over how long it might take them or if they will have issues conceiving naturally.  There is nothing in her cycles to make her think this, the only reason she worries about it is because they have bore witness to our struggle.  This breaks my heart.  I want to tell her “oh, you have nothing to worry about”, but every time I go to tell her that I can’t bring myself to do so.  Even though it is very likely that they will have no issues what so ever, I know that it is a possibility - it is always a possibility.  I HATE having this knowledge, I HATE that my issues have made her worry about their chances.   I’ve always said that it would be so much easier if my mind was just full of rainbows, bunnies and unicorn farts instead of the crap that clogs it up currently – it’s more true than ever.  My worry has infected someone else, and I hate that.  When they decide to start trying and are able to be successful I know that they are going to be such amazing parents and I’m hoping that our IVF works and they have no conception issues and our children will then be able to grow up together.  My husband and I have been denied so many things in our journey to have children, I would like this one little thing to be a possibility.

So whether it’s watching a TV show that deals (not always accurately) with infertility or talking with a friend, it’s the knowledge that gets me.  It’s being a quasi-expert on a subject I wish I didn’t have to know shit about.   I wish I could have watched those episodes last night and laughed where I was supposed to laugh and feel sad where I was supposed to feel sad.  I wish I could have coffee with a friend and talk about what we are going to name our kids without feeling that nagging “what-if”.

“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything,
It’s the matador and the bull,
It’s the suggested daily dosage,
It is the red moon when it’s full.
All these psychics and these doctors,
They’re all right and they’re all wrong,
It’s like trying to make out every word,
When they should simply hum along,
It’s not some message written in the dark,
Or some truth that no one’s seen,
It’s a little bit of everything.”