New direction

I got a wicked case of something resembling food poisoning, and then got my period, so I don't have much energy to write. But I read something beautiful this weekend in the Styles section of the New York Times. Margaret Gunther wrote in the Modern Love column about the adoption of her eldest son:

"Sure enough, as if it were meant to be all along, we waited not the usual six months to a year for our first child. Instead he came almost immediately, ahead of the crib and already named. A newborn whose birth mother chose us, he flew into our lives like a tiny tornado, washing away my sins and assuming, as babies do, that I was as perfect and blameless as he was."

So lovely.

Ugh

I discovered spotting this morning. On day 23. My first thought was, "Oh, shit. Not again." And then I rushed to the Internet to Google "implantation bleeding." I go through this process every month. Implantation bleeding, according to the trusty Mayo Clinic website, can happen 10-14 days after fertilization. It is usually pink or brown. It lasts one day, maybe two.

Thus, part of me is depressed, realizing I'm getting my period early. The delusional part of me wants to believe it is implantation bleeding, and a symptom of early pregnancy. I also feel nauseated (alas, a side effect of Prometrium) and I have a headache (probably due to allergies.) Unfortunately, I can't take my ibuprofen/Benedryl/caffeine cocktail that would knock the thing out, because I don't have solid proof yet that I'm not pregnant. Oh, how I long for a Benedryl, if only to allow myself to sleep all day so I wouldn't have to feel the sting of disappointment yet again.

On the upside, when my husband saw me crying this morning, he vowed to contact his sister's friend about adoption. And one of my best girlfriends informed me that her close friend recently adopted a baby boy. So, hopefully she'll connect me with her friend, and when Aunt Flo parks her Winnebago in my driveway, it won't be so hard.

Offline test

Yesterday I was walking through Target, and I started to feel queasy. I, of course, immediately attributed the queasiness to pregnancy. I made sure to buy some sparkling water and graham crackers to settle my stomach, and I headed home. Then I started to get angry. I was doing it again! I'm sure before I started my quest to get pregnant, I felt queasy at various times during the month without thinking too much about it. But now just a touch of nausea makes me deliriously happy. It's getting ridiculous.

I decided I needed a reality check. I took a pregnancy test. Now, it's a week before I'm due to get my period. And the test instructions always say to use first morning pee. But I needed to see a negative pregnancy test, just to remind myself not to get my hopes up.

Then I got very sad, because some part of me believes if I were pregnant, it would somehow show up on a test. Or maybe it's become a Pavlovian response by now: see a negative pregnancy test...become devastated.

I'm feeling better today, trying to keep busy. Counting the days until I can take a test again.

Online pregnancy tests

I just wasted twenty minutes I'll never get back taking an online pregnancy test. It's a stupid thing to do. I take them every month, in the week before my period starts, and they always say the same thing: you are probably pregnant. So we know how accurate they are. Add on the fact that the side effects of Prometrium mirror early pregnancy symptoms, and it's easy to see what a colossal waste of time these tests are. The one I just took actually contained this sentence in my results: "Pregnant women have similar symptoms, but many women who are not pregnant also experience similar symptoms." Genius!

My younger sister has urged me to stay off of the Internet during this sensitive week. There are too many websites and chat rooms with misinformation and urban legends. According to some of the sites I've visited: you should wait until the day you missed your period to take a pregnancy test, but you could also take it a week before; brown blood is definitely a sign of implantation bleeding, but also a sign of infertility; and you need to "relax" to get pregnant, but you should also take your temperature daily, check your cervical mucus, take a ovulation predictor test five days out of the month, stop drinking, don't get a massage, don't take hot baths, and be sure to shut one eye and hop on your left foot during a full moon.

Baby from another mother

Last weekend my husband and I travelled to West Palm Beach to visit my in-laws. I hadn't seen my sister-in-law in more than a year, and the last time we talked my husband and I were just starting to "try." So, it was quite obvious we were having trouble with the "succeeding" part. I told her of my adventures with Prometrium, blood tests, ovulation kits, and a hysterosalpingogram. I also told her I wasn't crazy about the idea of IVF.

She mentioned a close friend of hers who had just successfully adopted a newborn from Virginia. The process took about a year, a timeline that shocked me. I assumed it took about five years. The parents were in their mid-forties, and only married for a few months, and still were able to adopt a baby. The realization that I, too, could become a mother soon despite my difficulty in conceiving made me feel hopeful for the first time in a long, long time.

In an ideal world, I would give birth to my own child. But I also know, through my years of babysitting and volunteering, that I can love a child that is not mine genetically. I believe there's a little soul out there, waiting to become my child. It may just have to travel through another woman's body before he or she gets to me.

Prometrium

My doctor put me on Prometrium in November. I'm supposed to start taking it after I ovulate, or at least two days after an ovulation predictor kit "turns." Blood tests showed I had low levels of progesterone, meaning even if I conceived, my uterus wouldn't have what it takes to nourish and keep alive the embryo. When I first learned this, my husband and I had been trying for almost a year to have a baby. I wondered how many times we may have succeeded in conception, only to fail at pregnancy because of my body's low levels of progesterone.

This is the fourth cycle I've been on Prometrium, and it's making me fat. That may sound shallow, but I've spent most of my life as a skinny girl. To see rolls of chub develop around my midsection takes my breath away at times. I know if I become pregnant (knock wood) I would have to adjust to my body growing in strange places, and I'd welcome that. It's just gaining the weight with nothing really to show for it that troubles me. I've started to exercise more, and decrease my drive-thru visits. Hopefully that will firm up the chub a bit.

Five infertility factoids

This was in today's US News & World Report:

5 Things You May Not Know About Infertility

Men and women are equally likely to be infertile, and other facts to know about fertility problems
By Michelle Andrews
Posted March 17, 2009
1. Infertility affects roughly 12 percent of people of reproductive age in the United States, or about 7.3 million women and their partners.
2. Infertility is gender blind: It affects men and women in equal numbers. The most common problem in men is low or no sperm count; for women, it's problems with ovulation.
3. Nearly all cases of infertility—85 to 90 percent—can be resolved through traditional medical treatments like drugs or surgery that repairs reproductive organs.
4. In vitro fertilization and similar procedures account for under 3 percent of infertility treatments.
5. The average live delivery rate for IVF in 2005 was nearly 32 percent per egg retrieval, slightly better than the 20 percent odds that a reproductively healthy couple in any given month will get pregnant and carry a baby to term.
Source: American Society for Reproductive Medicine

That time of the month

OK, well not that time. I'm at day 13. I believe I've already ovulated, if two ovulation predictor kits, testing of cervical mucus, and feeling mittelschmertz are any indication. My temperature doesn't seem to have spiked, but a nurse at my doctor's office told me a few months back that sometimes the rise in temperature can be very subtle.

This is also the time of the month where I start to wonder if I've conceived. I start to feel psychosomatic pregnancy symptoms, symptoms I couldn't possible feel yet because even if I had conceived, I wouldn't be pregnant yet. I start to play with the idea of how completely wonderful it would be if it FINALLY happened. I imagine how I would tell certain people the news. And then I realize how far ahead of myself I am, and that I need to reign in my overactive imagination until I get a little more evidence.

Is it right?

At least ten killed in a shooting rampage in Alabama. At least eleven dead in Germany, also killed by a deranged gunman. It's a day like this that makes me wonder about bringing a child into a world like this. I know that's a trite sentiment. But listening to the Sheriff's deputy whose wife and baby were killed in Alabama sickened me. At my core, I'm faced with the knowledge that creating a new life in these circumstances is a purely selfish act. Society views couples who choose not to procreate as selfish. But how could they be?

I guess it's an evolutionary thing. The desire to have a child of my own, to carry on my gene pool (and my husband's) overrides any intellectual argument against having kids. More later.

Maternity Avatar

I'm a superstitious person. I've tried to shake myself of this, which of course makes me think I'm bringing bad luck upon myself just for doing so. Anyhoo, a few weeks ago I changed an avatar of myself connected to one of my email accounts to be pregnant. My avatar is still at a disco with R2-D2, but now I'm wearing a black sequined top that's obviously covering a very pregnant belly. Not that if I ever became pregnant (knock wood) I would start wearing sequins and visiting 70s-era discos. But I like the thought that somewhere out there, even if it's only in cyberspace, there's a pregnant version of me.

But here's the weird part. I also gave my avatar short hair. Right now, I have long hair. Every five years or so, I chop off all my hair, and it makes me feel really good for some reason. Maybe it's something weird like, even if I don't have control over my life, I still have control over my hair? Wacky, I know. But in order to create a self-fulfilling prophecy (or self-fulfilling avatar?) I'm getting my hair cut today. Short. Not just because of the avatar...it was something I was thinking of doing anyway. But it can't hurt, can it?

Woman Tea

Sometimes I feel like I'm being tested, like if I jump through enough hoops I'll finally get pregnant. Case in point, woman tea. It's not actually called that. It's a herbal tea made of raspberry leaf or bark or something, and according to the box (and the American Pregnancy Association) it's been used for "millenia" to help regulate a woman's cycle and keep her woman parts healthy. OK. It's not disgusting, not too sweet, so I've started drinking it. The trouble is, The Directions On The Box order me to drink it at least three times a day. And I must steep it between 10-15 minutes before drinking. So that's a good hour of my day devoted to the woman tea. But if I miss a dose, that will be just one more thing I can blame myself for not doing during my cycle to get pregnant when Aunt Flo parks her Winnebago in my driveway. So, pardon me, I must get to brewing...

Oh, but here's a link to some tea info: http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyhealth/herbaltea.html

I've become one of Them

I had an epiphany when I was 27-years-old and working as a TV reporter and living in Reno. As I drove to work, I listened as some author on NPR whose name I can't remember talk about the decision to have children. The writer said she feared many women (and men) end up having children because they reached a point in their lives where they hadn't really accomplished anything they'd set out to. Their lives had no purpose. So, they create a new human being just to give their lives meaning.

I vowed to myself that I would never become one of those people. Someone who got pregnant because nothing else was working out in her life. And frankly, I couldn't imagine any other reason to have a kid. I had spent my high school weekends and college mornings babysitting for other people's kids. It was fun for a while, but ultimately exhausting. I wanted to be someone in my own right, instead of staking my claim to fame on being someone else's mother.

But then Skyler came along. My niece was born in 2004, about six weeks after I met the man who would one day become my husband. The overwhelming, instant love I felt for her as a wiggly, colicky infant has grown exponentially as she's developed into a witty, brave, strong, and compassionate four-year-old. I am never as happy as I am when I'm with her. Those unexpected feelings, along with marriage to a man I knew would make an outstanding father, turned my world upside down. I wanted to become a mother.