July 7th, 2010

Turning a (Big Fat) Negative Into a Positive

Well – here I am.  13 days past ovulation on Cycle Number 5 of trying to conceive (yet 6 months in because my cycles are stupidly long.)  Another Big Fat Negative, accompanied by declining temps and a bit of spotting, means that Aunt Flo is headed in my direction.  Now, I sit and wait.  *tick tock*

Each month it gets a little easier seeing the lonely singular pink line on the stick.  Don’t get me wrong — I’m still fairly crushed, and having a hard time shaking the suffocating melancholy, which is of course aggravated by the impending PMS symptoms.  I’ve been listening to James Iha and Nina Gordon songs while laying in bed moaning as my Mother In Law watches my children.

But I also know that my body is probably being a lot smarter than my brain right now.  I’m doing too much.  Way too much. I just decided to open a business four days before I leave for BlogHer, all while finishing my CBE certification.  A few weeks after the business opens, school starts again, and I have to figure out how to juggle my writing gigs, my CBE classes and studio, and my senior year of university, all while taking care of the two children I already have.  Oh yeah, AND, I need to have law school applications in by this October.  I have no idea what I was thinking.  I’m sure my uterus is asking the same question, which is why she said “Uh-uh, Gina… you don’t need to deal with a pregnancy right now.”

So, my womb remains empty, along with that little space in my heart.  But I’m trying to trust that my body knows what it’s doing, and it will choose to keep a pregnancy when I actually have space in my life to dedicate time to one.  In the meantime, I think I should try to enjoy NOT being pregnant, so I’ve made a list of all the Positives to that Big Fat Negative.

• I can eat and drink whatever, whenever I want
• I don’t have morning sickness
• I don’t have to pee 42 times an hour
• I can sleep all night (when my kids do).
• NO HEARTBURN (omfg, pregnancy gave me the most excruciating, debilitating heartburn.)
• I can take OTC medications when I need to
• My clothes fit, and I’m feeling svelte
• I don’t have to squeeze prenatal appointments into my schedule
• Other than the few times a day Julesy still nurses, my body is 100% my own

This is all I can do.  I’m trying to play Spin Doctor to drag myself out of this empty-womb depression.  I’m sure it’s nothing that a million other moms haven’t already experienced after a few months of not getting pregnant.  This is, of course, all new territory for me though.  I suppose each month I’ll get a little better at handling it.  I hope by next month I have my sense of humor back.

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Help me out… other than what I’ve listed here, what are some other benefits to the lone pink line?

June 5th, 2010

“Gina, You’re Too Tired To Get Pregnant. That Will Be $470 Now Please…”

Last month I decided to switch our family to a naturopathic doctor.  I’ve grown sick of the standard medpros pushing prescriptions for everything I have a question about.  The kids needed their yearly visit anyway, and after a few months of not getting pregnant, I wanted to see someone more holistic for my well-woman care in hopes that she could help me figure out why I’m not getting pregnant as easily as I once did.

In  February I had a horrible experience with an endocrinologist who scolded me multiple times during my visit over the fact that I’m still breastfeeding my younger son (don’t even get me started on that whack job.)  I went to her because I used to have hypothyroidism, and thought that might be interrupting fertility this time.  As it turns out, my thyroid function is fine, but others suggested that only a naturopathic doctor could test for things that mainstream docs never bother with – like vitamin deficiencies, liver function, and such.  Since I know a naturopath wouldn’t scold me for extended breastfeeding, I thought that would be a perfect fit.

The naturopath spent an hour with me asking me ten million questions about my diet and my poop.  I was expecting a physical exam – just as most doctors give during a well-woman visit – but she never touched me other than to check my ears, nose, and throat.

After 60 minutes she announced that I had “adrenaline fatigue” (which I can believe) and that poor digestion was the cause of all the world’s problems.  She put me on a “blood type diet” and gave me a list of all the things I could and couldn’t eat.

Here’s the short list – the things in bold are my absolute favorite foods that I normally eat on a daily, if not weekly, basis:

Essentially, everything on the “Not Allowed” list was the food I live on, and according to this doctor, my body couldn’t handle any of it.  Seriously – BANANAS are no good for me?  Black beans too?  How can this be?  All of this leads me to wonder how in the world people are supposed to live healthy diets if even healthy food – like vegetables, beans, and nuts – are supposedly slowly killing them?  Growing up poor, I know how impossible it is to eat healthy with no money, and I thought I was doing a really good job with my family’s diet lately.  If I’m killing myself with freaking bell peppers, what hope do impoverished families have of ever being healthy given that most poor people don’t even have access to fresh fruit?  This whole game seems so elitist and priviledged, and having come from desperate poverty myself, it all really pisses me off.

Well, after I got my blood work back, it turns out that the only deficiency I had was a Vitamin D deficiency, which I probably could have diagnosed myself given the very obvious mood and fatigue symptoms I cart around.  She also said my white blood cell count is “shockingly” low – so low that an MD would diagnose me with an immune disorder.  According to her, the low white blood cell count indicates that my body is working so hard to digest food that it’s drawing resources from my immune system to get the job done.  Apparently a simple digestive enzyme supplement will fix that right up.

After all of that, I said to her “So doc, do ANY of these lab results explain why we’re not conceiving?” And she said “My opinion is that you’re just too tired to get pregnant.”

A week later I got a bill in the mail for $470.

Gee.  Thanks. After my panic attack, I called the office, then the insurance company, trying to figure out why in the world I’m being charged $470 out of pocket for a simple office visit, especially when I knew that every dollar of the lab work was covered by insurance.  As it turns out, the office visit actually cost a whopping $535, but insurance picked up $65 of that because I had a few bucks left in my “Health Care Account.”  The rest – as bad luck would have it – was NOT covered as a well-woman visit the way I thought it was going to be, and the office never told me they charge half a month’s rent just to walk in the door.

So now what?  I don’t know any more about my situation than I did a month ago, except that my insurance isn’t going to pay for me to try to figure any of it out.  I’d like to try acupuncture for fertility, but insurance won’t cover the $60 weekly visits.  They WILL cover $10,000 IVF treatments though!  Someone explain that backwards nonsense to me.  We’re nowhere near that point, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ll still be blogging about fertility issues this time next year, in which case, IVF is exactly what we’d be looking at.

This is all getting so depressing, I just can’t even stand to think about it any more. And we’ve only been trying since January.  The problem is, it’s now consuming most of my waking thoughts.  I don’t know how others, who’ve been trying for YEARS, can handle this.  The frustration, and the uncertainty, is eating me alive.

My readers seem pretty smart – what do you think of the doctor’s “diagnosis?”

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FYI: I am 15 DPO, no AF yet, but temp dropped Thursday and all tests are negative.  It’s imminent.

UPDATE: AF arrived at 11:30 pm tonight.  I knew she was on her way. I welcome the start of a new cycle.

May 14th, 2010

Reasons I’m Not Getting Pregnant

Well, my plans for a 2010 baby are clearly shot to shit.  I really could have used the extra tax deduction this year too.  At this point, I’m worried that we won’t even have the baby before the Hyphenated Husband leaves his job next year to start his very unpaid teaching hours.  There goes the insurance that woulda covered my homebirth midwife.

But when I sit and think about the reasons this probably isn’t happening for us right now, a number of non-biological factors start to emerge.  I’m a pretty big believer that the universe (not god, the universe) leaves me subtle clues to help me navigate this crazy life.  No matter how badly I want something, or how much it sucks when it doesn’t work out, I always discover that there was some reason things went down the way they did.  Everything happens for a reason.

So what is the reason I’m not getting pregnant?  We’ve been trying since January, and so far, nada.  Now, I know that the truly infertile people are probably throwing rotten tomatoes at their monitor right now, and trust me, I know we’re not considered “infertile” yet.  However, getting pregnant has never exactly been a problem for us before.

The first baby was a “my-period-is-late-so-stop-and-get-a-test-OHMYGODHOLYSHIT-PLEASE-TeLL-ME-THOSE-TWO-LINES-MEAN-NEGATIVE!!!” sort of situation.  Our second boy was well planned.  Planned so perfectly, in fact, that we said we wanted to get pregnant in August and have him in May, and that is exactly what happened.  We got knocked up on the very first try.  Yep – we were those assholes.

But now, oh, the tables have turned.  And I figure there could be several non-biological reasons that we’re not seeing the two pink lines.

One of them could be my Outlook Calendar saying,

“Uhhhh, Gina?  Hi, yeah. What are you, fucking stupid?  Do you NOT see that you have NO time to complete all the crap you’ve obligated yourself to do as it is?!?!  Where exactly do you plan on fitting morning sickness and sleep deprivation and childbirth and all-night nursing sessions into this mess?  Snap out of it, lady!  We’ll never make it out of law school this way!”

Or, perhaps, it’s the memory of my second degree perineal tear, along with my cesarean scar, looking up at me saying,

“Uhh, Gina?  Hi… remember us?  Yes, darling, well, we wanted to remind you that if you put a baby in here, it’s gonna have to come out of here, and have you totally forgotten how that worked out the last two times!?!?  In case you need a reminder, just glance down at your lady regions and we’ll wave to you.  Hi!!  There we are!  The violent exits of those children!  Now snap out of it, girl.”

And then, of course Murphy’s Law chimes in with,

“Come on Gina, you knew this would happen.  Why did you go ahead and buy a new bassinett and $90 ring sling before you even got the positive test?  Tsk, Tsk.  Also?  I know you desperately need some new clothes, and you know that I’m obligated, by the laws of irony, to save your positive pregnancy test for the day after you buy the new clothes and throw away all the tags.  Go ahead – go shopping.  I dare you.”

And of course, my waistline throws in her two bitchy cents with:

“Darling – we just got re-aquainted for the first time in nearly 5 years!  We are finally back to a place where your prepregnancy pants will button, and you want to throw it all away?!  How dare you even consider it!  I will not stand for it.  The answer is NO.”

As you can see, all these mother-effers are conspiring against me.  Every month, they take a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to my two pink lines, and turn on the dreaded menses hose.  All I know is that no matter what the universe is trying to tell me, I still want another baby.  Call me crazy. I’m sure I am.  But I also figure if I want it this bad, that must be the universe telling me something too.

Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking…

March 3rd, 2010

Wordless Wednesday – Disappointment Style

February 5th, 2010

You Guys are Making Me Cry

A couple days ago I posted a virtual cry for help here, and a request for help here, after feeling an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, anxiety, and apprehension about a third birth ( my second VBAC.)

But you, my dear friends (cyber and otherwise) responded to the call with an outpouring of emotional support, encouragement, and generosity.  While a few simple chearleading comments was the most I had hoped for, some of you went above and beyond the call, and responded to my cry with more than I could have dreamed.

♥ One of you sent me your Hypnobabies CDs, along with the VBAC tracks, saving me well over $150.

♥ One of you offered to let me and the Hyphenated Husband attend your Bradley class, at no charge, because you said I deserved it for helping so many other women through their VBACs.  *tear*

♥ One of you offered me your Hypnobirthing book and CD, along with a ton of other resources to help me learn about hypnotic birthing methods.

♥ One of you gave me some other positive pregnancy materials to help me get into a more peaceful mental state during this impending gestation.

♥ And many more of you left lengthy, thoughtful, and kind comments and suggestions to help me feel safer and more secure in my decisions.

So what I have learned this week, if I didn’t know it before, is that women in my community care about each other, and they care about me.  Each time someone has come through for me, it makes my chest buckle, my eyes well up, and my throat squeeze closed.  I’ve been doing a lot of crying this week – in a good way.

When my chips were down, and I was the one that needed the help instead of being the one who gives it, you swept in and lifted me up.  My faith in sisterhood, community, and humanity have been restored this week.  Thank you all.

Now stop making me cry… It’s ruining my contact lenses.