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Monthly Archives: April 2012

Apparently ‘not working’ for me means ‘doing everything in the house while The Daddy watches NYPD Blue’. This isn’t a significant other rant – it’s commentary on how I fail at relaxing. Day 3 of being off work and I’ve assembled a six-drawer dresser and changing table, reorganized all of my clothes, removed the suspended closet doors and tracks from the guest room, made 2 batches of ice cream for baby party next weekend, made us breakfast in bed, cleaned the kitchen 2x, made dinner for us and a friend, gone to brunch, did baby and grocery shopping, and planted some new succulents. Relaxation? What?

Every time I sit for more than a half hour, I start to panic and go over my to-do list in my head! I need a lobotomy and a bowl of ice cream.

April 22nd-28th is Infertility Awareness week. This year, I am incredibly lucky to be marking my 30th week of pregnancy during this time. I didn’t think I would be – I’d been told for many years that I’d never be here without a multitude of interventions that me and The Daddy weren’t ready to try.

I still count myself among the infertile not only because this pregnancy was a post-research trial fluke but because in order to get to where we are today, I prepared for years. I’ve been preparing and preserving my fertility for the past ten years, even during the times when I was actively avoiding becoming pregnant. I live a life of high medical bills, daily prescription medications, frequent monitoring, supplements, too many hands and wands up in my lady parts, constant risk vs reward assessments over the simplest of diet and lifestyle decisions, food monitoring, research, specialists, and appointments at fertility clinics for assessments and options for the future as well as early preservation/prevention strategies. Still though, I’m lucky for two reasons: one, I knew ahead of time and had those ten years to try and make things right and two, I didn’t have to take the next steps.

Many couples aren’t so lucky. Some make the decision to wait and try when their lives are where they want them to be, and they discover that it doesn’t happen how they had planned. Others know going in like I did, but they try for years and years with with no success. Either way, they’re forced into an expensive, stressful, sometimes physically painful, often heartbreaking situation. Even with my background, I can’t fully understand it. People who’ve never lived with the threat or reality of infertility understand even less.

Now that I’m pregnant, I often find myself thinking about my friends dealing with infertility. For those that are open about it, I follow their blogs, Facebook updates, emails, and stories with great interest, empathy, and hope. I find myself almost as excited for their potential pregnancies and/or adoptions as I am about my own pregnancy. I cry for them – even the ones I’m not particularly close to – because I know at least a fraction of their pain. I can’t imagine the full spectrum of their emotions and their struggles though, and I hope that I never have to.

To my friends struggling with infertility: I’m thinking about you, crying with you and hoping that someday you find what makes your life complete whether it be a biological child, an adopted child, or acceptance and closure on this chapter of your lives.

To my friends who have never struggled with infertility: I hope that you will take a moment this week to learn a little bit about the struggles of those around you. I hope that you will also remember that the struggle is often silent, so sometimes the best thing you can do is be aware that that great couple that you know and love and would love to see as parents might be trying and may have been trying for a very long time.

Some things you can do:

  •  Don’t ask your childless friends when they plan on having kids or why they don’t have them. They might not be ready to share their struggles.
  • As hard as it is, refrain from the “so when are you popping them out??” jokes and inquiries immediately after your friends or family get married. They may already know that they will have problems. They might have already been trying before marriage. Also, marriage does not always = desire for children. It’s best to just avoid that altogether unless you are close enough to the couple to know their plans.
  • If you have friends that you know are struggling with infertility, be there for them if you can be and they want you to be, but be sensitive in what you say.
  • Don’t tell them how lucky they are to be able to sleep in, stay out late, drink, etc. They know what the childless life brings and don’t need a reminder.
  • Don’t suggest that “It’s not meant to be.”
  • If they decide to stop trying, do be supportive in their next step, whether it be to have no children or to adopt. Adoption is a perfectly valid way to start a family and it’s not “giving up.” Remaining childless is a very difficult decision and should be respected and supported.
  • Do educate yourself on infertility etiquette, especially if you have friends or family that you know are struggling. Some things that are seemingly harmless may cause them great pain or at the very least, be platitudes they need a break from after hearing them many times before.

Some resources:

Call me crazy, but this 3-hour glucose tolerance test is kind of nice. I’m sitting outside the hospital in the sunshine, nice breeze, low 60s, and a nice view of the city. You can’t see in this picture but the Golden Gate Bridge is off in the distance. 3 hours of forced relaxation – I’ll take it.

UCSF

I just got home from our growth ultrasound. I feel very smug after baby measured exactly to the day again. The first hospital I went to kept insisting I was wrong when I told them to go by a late ovulation date rather than LMP. So far, every single u/s has been dead-on my date! She’s in the 44% percentile now, estimated 2lbs 11oz, and the doctor said if she stays on track and I have her around 39-41 weeks, to expect 7-7.5lbs. For my vagina’s sake, I hope she’s right.

I was having trouble with the idea that I’d have to give up my creature comforts in order to make room for baby. Half of my personal room is now a guest room. I’ve given up the unblemished skin on my belly. I’ve given up coffee and drinking and the occasional edible. I will soon be surrendering my breasts. Sleep will be a thing of the past. WHY OH WHY DO I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY TV AND XBOX, TOO?!

…well. Maybe I don’t. Look what’s hiding in the nursery closet.

Last Wednesday, I started the third trimester. Though the first trimester seemed to drag on forever due to bad care and the nearly overwhelming fear of miscarriage (women with PCOS will understand), now the days never seem long enough and I feel like I have a never-ending list of things to do.

There are also a lot of things that I want to write about and I either haven’t had the opportunity or I’ve gotten tongue-tied and given up halfway through an entry. On that list: PTSD and pregnancy, my experiences at the county hospital, transferring to a birth center, and being in and out of high-risk care. I’ve decided to publish some of the unfinished entries since they’re topics that are important to me. Even though I’m not able to fully verbalize some of the issues I’ve been having, I want to have a record of those experiences however incomplete that record may be. I will probably post those soon, though they’ll be backdated to when I started them since that’s when they were most relevant.

I also want to do some fun posts – nursery progression, art we’ll be hanging, gifts friends have given us…Yeah. I need to get on that. I’m kind of in a funk right now, so I’m posting this here in the hopes that putting it out there will motivate me to actually do some of this stuff. We’ll see how that goes. I’m really good at procrastinating.