Morning Madness

It’s another one of those “wake-up at 4:00 a.m. in full-on worry mode” mornings.  That means it is likely going to be a “fall asleep at your desk if you aren’t careful” afternoons.  I am literally rationalizing why it is okay for me to just get up for the day right now, by reminding myself that I can be back in bed, napping, 12 hours from now.  Not a great way to start the day.

I had hoped my early morning panics would subside throughout the pregnancy.  I used to have them all the time when I was dealing with infertility.  Sometimes due to fear over how a cycle was progressing (or failing to progress), sometimes due to fear over the possibility of never getting pregnant, and sometimes due to the emotional upheaval that took place in my marriage during the dark years.  Once I got pregnant, I woke-up with fear over losing the pregnancy...or with those strange hormone-related nightmares.   I’m starting to sneak past the miscarriage fear, but there is always a replacement, isn’t there?  If you are the type of person that I am (a habitual worrier), even when you conquer one fear, there is always another waiting to replace it. 

This morning’s fears are ridiculous and premature.  I know that.   But the knowledge doesn’t stop my heart from pounding and my stomach from feeling sick with anxiety.  At my appointment with Dr. B, last week, she told me that if I hadn’t gotten my sick stomach under control by the end of the week, I would have to start drinking Ensure.  For those of you not familiar with Ensure, it is a very dense, nutrient-rich, canned creamy shake of sorts.  It is frequently taken by people who have just undergone stomach bypass surgery or by the elderly.  I’ve had to take it on two occasions, when illnesses landed me in the hospital for malnutrition.  It is not a pleasant-tasting drink.  In fact, I had difficulty forcing myself to drink it when I wasn’t experiencing severe food aversions and nausea.  Dr. B acknowledged as much and told me that I didn’t have to drink a whole can at a time, just a little bit on ice throughout the day.  But she was adamant that the pregnancy was reaching a point where the baby is actually needing nutrients from me…nutrients that I just can’t give it right now if I’m not able to take in more food.  I’m still down 15 pounds from when I got pregnant, which is better than the 20 pounds I was down a week ago when I needed IV fluids, but not great for the end for the third month of pregnancy.

I thought I was feeling better, as Friday and Saturday I was keeping most of what I ate down with the help of Zofran.   But apparently it was just one of those temporary “teaser” reprieves that early pregnancy occasionally sends my way because yesterday things were back to the status quo.  So, I have to come to grips with the fact that I need to drink Ensure, for the sake of the baby, even though I really hate that stuff.  Why is this keeping me awake at night?  I have no idea.  It isn’t like I have to eat live scorpions or lay in a snake pit…it’s a drink.  But still, I think my Negative Nelly tendencies have my mind off to the races, jumping from “you aren’t meeting your babies nutritional needs” to “your body is already failing the baby, just like it has failed you in the past” to “what if you can’t do this?”  That last question goes beyond my ability to stomach the Ensure, I think.

My second fear deals with my baby registry, which I started last night.  I thought it would be so much fun for my plan-loving self.   But it hasn’t been fun so far.  I am afraid that I am choosing the wrong stores to register at.  I’m afraid that I am choosing things I won’t need or forgetting about things that I really will need.  I’m frustrated that about half of my registry is on hold because I don’t know the baby’s gender now, and won’t know the baby’s gender for another two months, so I can’t yet choose gender appropriate items or my nursery theme.  I’m concerned about how quickly the “big ticket” items are adding up and about how long my registry is going to end up being.  I’m not even at 11 weeks.  Most people haven’t started thinking about their registries yet.   But I can’t stop thinking about mine…and it’s not fun!

Looking back at the beginning of this blog, I know I need to get my butt to a prenatal yoga class (a daunting prospect when napping and throwing up are your two most common activities).  I need to get a good pregnancy meditation CD and use it.  I need to grab those moments, which are now an everyday occurrence (thank God), when I feel nothing but love and joy and gratitude for my pregnancy.  I need to hold onto those moments and find a way to use them as a light to chase away the darker emotions that always want to snuggle in beside me.  I know what I need to do, but like drinking the Ensure, I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it.    

The Dangers of Radishes...and Other Important Things To Know About Cravings



Last night, as I was indulging in a 1:00 a.m. snack of potato chips and balsamic vinegar, it occurred to me that I was officially having one of those wacky pregnancy cravings that you always hear about.  I had gone to bed at 9:30, but stayed awake tossing and turning until 12:00 a.m.  At 12:00 a.m. my queasiness offered me a brief reprieve and, as I thought about what I should eat to help stave off low blood sugar in the morning, I became consumed with the idea of vinegar…until the urge to have it became so strong that I got out of bed and figured out a way to ingest the vinegar, short of downing it like a shot.  Potato chips seemed like a logical means to an end.

Up to this point in the pregnancy, I have had more food aversions than food cravings.  I have, for all intents and purposes, become a vegetarian because I’ve yet to find a form of meat that I can stomach.  Sometimes all I want are baked potatoes and saltine crackers, and sometimes the idea of starch makes my stomach turn.  Fruit Punch Gatorade has been my most faithful friend from the food world, but I would certainly not say that I ever crave Gatorade.  My “old faithfuls” that I thought would be the foods I would eat guilt-free in massive quantities during my pregnancy (desserts, steaks, chicken wings, pizza, lobster) have turned into my worst enemies…leaving my picky-eating-self with few options to indulge in.

All of this makes me think of the only fairy tale that I can think of that really involves pregnancy.  In Rapunzel, the poor couple who lived next to an enchantress’s garden wanted a child very badly.  They tried for years to get pregnant without success (Hmmmm….that sounds familiar).  Then, the wife finally got pregnant and the couple was overjoyed (Yep…still with it).  The wife began having terrible pregnancy cravings for…of all things…radishes (Yuck!).  I just so happened that lovely radishes grew in the enchantress’s garden.  In one version of the story, the wife was supposedly so overcome by the cravings that it was killing her.  So, the dutiful husband hopped on over the wall of the garden and stole some radishes for his wife…not once, or twice…but three times.  On the third trip into the garden, the husband got caught and, though he begged for mercy, the only deal he could strike with the enchantress (also infertile) was that he would give his child to the enchantress as soon as the child was born, to be raised as the enchantress’s own child.  The rest of the story has nothing to do with pregnancy…just bad mothering by the enchantress and hair…lots of hair. 

Now, most people read that part of the fairy tale and think that the moral is not to steal, but I beg to differ.  I would argue that the moral of the story is to not indulge the same pregnancy craving three times in a row…and maybe not to crave radishes.  I am not certain how the wife could even have wanted to eat radishes three nights in a row.  So far, when I’ve had a craving, the craving lasted for a matter of hours and, as soon as I satisfied the craving, that food got added to the “makes me throw-up if I look at it” list…at least for a few days.  The idea of craving the same food three times in a row is preposterous to me.  My theory is that the wife craved the radishes the first night and that her husband, trying to be helpful after seeing how happy they made her that first time, just kept getting them for her.  The wife was probably ditching the second night’s radishes in the garbage whenever the husband wasn’t looking.  (Kind of like I do when The Prince brings me home a tuna sandwich or my [pre-pregnancy] favorite kind of soup).

As Real As It Gets

Yesterday, I stepped into reality.  I thought that I had already been realistic about our situation, but I wasn’t.  I had been caught up with pregnancy symptoms, the excitement of finally being pregnant, and the fear of losing the remaining baby.  Somehow those distractions kept the situation from really sinking in before.  But yesterday put an end to that.

At yesterday’s ultrasound – our 8 week and 1 day ultrasound – I saw our little peanut, only it doesn’t look like a peanut.  It has a distinct head and body.  There’s a dark spot in the skull that is the forming brain.   It has arm buds and leg buds and it was wiggling them during the ultrasound.  It is clearly a person…a two centimeter long person…but a person nonetheless.  And it has its own little 178 beats per minute heartbeat.  The Prince quipped, during the ultrasound, that Little Hamish must be a sprinter.   Cute...but I’m not comfortable calling the baby “Little Hamish,” anymore.  I can’t exactly explain why, but I think it is because the baby is no longer theoretical to me and that joke was okay when the baby wasn’t so real.  Now I am fully aware that there is an actual other human being growing inside of me and it is going to have its own identity and thought and needs.   And I’m freaking out a little bit.  Okay…I’m freaking out a lot.  I’m freaking out enough to need a new name for the baby.

Reading this, you may be thinking that I am crazy for not “knowing” this until week 8.  Don’t get me wrong.  I knew that there was a baby growing in my belly before yesterday’s ultrasound and I knew that it would continue to grow and develop.  But I didn’t become fully aware of the situation until yesterday.  Maybe I had been too blissful to think of the pregnancy in anything other than sugar-coated fluffiness.  Or, maybe I hadn’t allowed reality to sink in because I was stuck in my infertility mindset of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Maybe I was just so in love with the idea of my baby, I didn’t want to make it “real” because real things can go away.  I don’t know why reality is hitting now, but it is an amazing and scary thing.  I have never felt so connected.  I have never felt so much responsibility.   I have never felt so much fear that my body is going to fail me.  It’s failed me so many times in the past, when I was trying to get to this place in my journey.  If it fails me again, with so much at stake, I don’t know if I will ever get over the betrayal.  But for now I will try to push those fears away and learn how to reconcile reality and “over the moon” love, because that is where I want to dwell for the rest of this pregnancy. 

It's Friday, I'm in Love.

When I went through infertility treatments, I was always waiting.  Waiting for AF or for my medications to arrive.  Waiting to start my stimulation medications or for my ultrasounds and blood work.  Waiting for egg retrieval.  Waiting for the phone call to tell me how many eggs fertilized.  Waiting for transfer.  Waiting for my beta test.  I thought all of the waiting would be behind me when I finally got pregnant.  I thought wrong.

I spend every day waiting for Friday.  Friday is my ultrasound day, and starting four weeks ago, Friday became the most important day of the week to me.  All week long I second guess my symptoms or the twinges (sometimes more than twinges) in my belly.  I have little mini-panic attacks and am overcome with the feeling that something is terribly wrong.  It’s easy to do when, for every week of pregnancy through week 12, I know at least one person who has lost her baby at that stage.  Every week, I need the reassurance of seeing the heartbeat on the screen and so every week I watch the clock slowly tick towards Friday.  It doesn’t tick nearly quickly enough.  Friday is still an eternity away.

To complicate matters further, this Friday will be bittersweet.  Not only will this Friday be my week 8 ultrasound, if everything looks good this Friday, I will be discharged from my fertility center to my OBGYN.  In other words, the doctors and nurses that have become like family to me over the last three years will no longer be involved in my care.  They have put up with my almost daily emails, emotional breakdowns, misdirected anger and generally neurotic behavior.  They have put up with me without ever complaining, telling me to calm down, or making me feel like I was a “problem patient.”  I think that I cannot reasonably expect the same treatment from my OBGYN.  Her office has a reputation for being very friendly and very patient, but how patient can she possibly be?  Surely she will not be as patient as the healthcare providers at my fertility center.  She doesn’t know what I’ve been through.  She won’t understand why I am irrationally fearful of losing this baby.  She won’t understand how hard I’ve worked for this baby.  She won’t give me an ultrasound every Friday so that I can survive the next week without being crushed under the weight of my own fears.

I wish I could tell all of you that the fearful anticipation that haunts many women throughout their infertility journeys ends with pregnancy.  But it doesn’t.  No matter how hard I try to be Positive Polly, I am stuck in the same familiar struggles with my own inner demons.  The one piece of good news that I can give you is that I now have an amazing secret weapon that is more powerful than any negative thoughts that plague me.  My secret weapon is the enormous amount of love that I feel for the tiny little peanut growing in my belly.  Somehow, I already have an emotional bond with the tiny form that I see on the ultrasound screen each Friday.  So, when the negative thoughts seem to be crushing down on me, I put my hands on my belly and thank that baby for giving me the gift of a love that I’ve never experienced before. I’m still impatient and I’m still afraid, but I am also filled with love and gratitude…feelings I had a hard time mustering during my infertility journey.  Maybe that is why I really count the days until each Friday…because I desperately want to be as close to that baby as I can be, even if “getting closer” is simply seeing a flicker on the screen or hearing a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh on the Doppler.  Is it Friday yet?   

*****P.S.  I am so sorry that I haven't been leaving comments.  Blogger and I are having issues...mainly that Blogger won't let me sign into my account when I am trying to comment.  It just keeps shipping me back to the sign-in page over and over.  So, as soon as I have time to look into it, I will...and I will catch-up on comments.

Change

Things change.  I’m an adult.  I know that is just the way the world works.  And change can be good.  In fact, it is probably ultimately good more often than it is bad.  But I’m not generally good with change.  I have a tough time letting go of what is comfortable and familiar to me.  It is hard for me not to see “moving on” as “leaving something behind.”   Lately, I haven’t been left with much of a choice.  Change is happening whether I like it or not. 

This weekend, starting on Friday, was a weekend of change.   The news we received on Friday changed my “Positive Polly” perspective into confusion and sadness.  Then, on Friday night and Saturday, my relationship with my family changed drastically.  My mother (mentally ill), brother (16 with cognitive disabilities), sister (we’ve discussed her previously) and niece (five years old) came to my house, uninvited, to spend the night.  I had a nice dinner and pregnancy announcement planned, but (not surprisingly) things did not work out the way I’d hoped.  My mother’s vehicle broke down about an hour and a half from my house and it had to be towed to a service station.  My husband had to drive the hour and a half each way to pick my family up at the service station and bring them to my house.  My mother told my husband that she would just have to rent a car the next day.  She failed to mention that she had no money with her, no money in her bank account, and she does not have a credit card because she declared bankruptcy a few years ago.  So, when it was time for her to make arrangements to leave on Saturday, you can imagine my surprise when she asked me for my credit card while on the phone with the car rental agency.  I told her she couldn’t have it.  Without getting into too many of the details, I explained that she cannot have hundreds of dollars of our money because: (1) we don’t have it lying around for her to take as needed; (2) we now have a baby on the way and need to save for what is going to be a tight budget;  (3) she already “owes” me tens of thousands of dollars that I have written off because I know I will never be paid back; and (4) she isn’t entitled to our money just because I am related to her.  She yelled and screamed and then went to the other end of the house where my husband was.  I heard her tell him that I told her to ask him for his credit card!!!  I couldn’t believe it!!!  It was like dealing with a teenager who is addicted to drugs.  How could she lie like that, and think she wouldn’t be found out?  The Prince and I had already discussed that my family was not to be given any money this trip (The Prince is the one who finally made me realize I can’t keep funneling our money to them because I’m not helping their situation, I’m just enabling them).  In my not at all hormonal state, I screamed at my mother that there would be no more handouts.  She is on mental health disability and I understand she is too crazy to hold down a job, but she chooses to buy $80 mail order “real life baby dolls” and new furniture at 26% interest rates.  Those behaviors are in her control and I’m not paying for irresponsibility.  She told me that she’s glad I’m pregnant so I will get to experience what it feels like to be stabbed in the heart by my ungrateful child.  I didn’t expect my family to be as awesome about the pregnancy as The Prince’s family, but I didn’t expect it to get that bad, either. 

The Prince barely held his tongue.  I told him we were stuck because we couldn’t give her money but we also needed to get my family back on the road and heading the four hours it would take them to get back home.  I was cramping and sick and couldn’t take anymore stress.  (I should add that my sister was incredibly kind and tried to act as a buffer during this ordeal…but she isn’t really equipped to stand up to my mother, so she ended up as sad and stressed as I was).  We ended up calling The Prince’s parents and asked to borrow their extra vehicle for my mother to use until her checks clear next weekend.  My in-laws are the sweetest people ever, so they quickly agreed even though it is an inconvenience for them.  The Prince and I are scared that my mother will try to keep the vehicle, as she isn’t going to have money to get her car fixed and she has no credit card (a requirement for most rental car agencies).  She won’t speak to me on the phone…and won’t acknowledge my existence while on the phone with The Prince.   I know she’ll speak to me again when she needs money, but she crossed a line with her comments this weekend and our relationship will never be what it was before this weekend.   I’m saddened by that change, but I’m handling it better than I usually do.  I now have a good reason to distance myself from my mother’s craziness and distance is what I need right now. 

Also, after writing yesterday’s post about the comments made by my friend, I received a message from her that she was none too happy with my post and that our friendship was essentially going to be placed on hold, as I don’t appreciate her efforts to stay friends with me even though my pregnancy causes her some sadness.  I understand where she is coming from.  In hindsight, posting about the insensitive comments she made instead of addressing them with her directly was bad behavior on my part.  I think I was afraid of the confrontation that would ensue and so I took the passive (if you can call it that) approach.  But here is the thing…I’m not sorry that our friendship is changing.  I have a couple of friendships that I’ve made throughout my IF years that I really value but also realize that I have to really work at.  This friendship was one of those…I think we were both working really hard at staying friends.  A couple of my friends make comments that hurt my feelings on a regular basis, but I’ve been afraid to address the issue with them because I don’t want to lose them as friends, or I’m afraid that our friendship will change into something stiff and awkward.  But what I realized, reading my friend’s message yesterday, is that our friendship already had changed…I just wasn’t acknowledging it.  We are in such different places in our lives and our journeys, and we have been since even before I got pregnant, that we would be better served appreciating each other for what we are – two amazing strong women who have gone through IF hell - and not trying to make our relationship something that it just isn’t anymore.

So, in summation, there are some changes happening that, while uncomfortable, are healthy and ultimately positive.  You can try to swim upstream, or you can turn over, put your feet up and surrender to the current....it's going to keep flowing anyways.  It’s sad that, as usual, it has taken me so long to grasp a concept that is so basic…but at least I’ve got it now.  And while I am certainly not a “go-with-the-flow” kind of girl yet, I’ve got potential.

Uniquely Unqualified

I know I have not been leaving very many comments on other people’s blogs lately.  It isn’t because I’ve been too busy to read your posts.  My most recent wave of insomnia has allowed me to keep pretty up-to-date with my blog reading.  It also isn’t because I don’t care about what people are going through.  I still care deeply for each of the people who write the blogs I follow.

The reason that I have not been commenting is because I am in a strange place right now…a place where I feel uniquely unqualified to do anything…especially comment on other people’s situations.  I feel like a walking oxymoron – a pregnant infertile.  And that title is making me uncomfortable.  I don’t know that I still have the right to be giving advice or telling people to “hang in there because it will get better.”  Every time I even think those “comments,” a little voice inside of me says: “That’s easy for you to say, Princess.  You are pregnant.  No one wants to hear your two cents.  You aren’t in the trenches anymore.”  And even if I could quiet that mean little voice long enough to hit “send,” I find that frequently I can’t even think of anything intelligent and helpful to say.  I can offer support, but do people still want my support?

I remember that one of the blogs I read when I got started with blogging, in January, took a dramatic turn after only a couple of weeks, when the author got pregnant with twins.  I followed the blog for a few weeks after the pregnancy announcement, but then I had to stop because I felt like what she was writing about was no longer relevant to my situation.  Now I’m that person.  I’m becoming irrelevant to the situation that most of my blog buddies are in.  I haven’t changed the title of my blog yet, even though “the quest for the ever elusive positive pregnancy test” is now over.  I simply don’t know what to do with this blog.  I don’t know what it is supposed to become.

Do I tackle infertility issues based on my past experiences and make it a more “informational” type blog?  Do I continue to discuss my everyday experiences during the pregnancy, even though I am consciously trying to shift my focus to positive thoughts about the pregnancy, instead of the pain and grief of the three years it took to get here?  Is there a way to create a happy medium?  Can a pregnant infertile write an infertility blog? 

I used to see myself as this wise (I know…and apparently pretentious) self-made expert on infertility.  I felt confident giving advice, pointing people towards sources of information and pouring out the support that we all need and want.  But I don’t feel confident about anything anymore.  My self-given label is changing, my perspective is changing and I am feeling really irrelevant.  What does a fairy tale princess do when she’s ended one tale but hasn’t yet fully embraced the next one?  Can she exist in both simultaneously?  Do we care what happened to her in the first tale if we're reading her second tale?  I don't even feel qualified to answer my own questions right now, but they still need to be asked.

A Letter To An Old Friend...

Welcome back Anxiety, my old friend.  I would say it has been too long, but, in truth, it hasn’t been long enough.  I thought we had an understanding…that you would leave me alone, at least for the next month, so I could enjoy being pregnant before you moved in and ruined it.  You did not live up to your end of the bargain.  Instead, you have crashed my party like an unwanted guest that just won’t leave.  You’ve left me shaking and gasping for breath, as my chest gets tighter and tighter.  You have me writing a blog post at 2:00 a.m., because, for the second night in a row, you won’t let me sleep.  You have my stomach in knots and my mind racing, and it isn’t fair.  I wasn’t supposed to see you so soon.

I understand that The Prince opened the door to you the other night, but I am really irritated that you leave him alone when it isn’t convenient for him to deal with you, and yet you follow me around at work, and while I’m eating, and while I’m trying to sleep.  Even my dreams aren’t safe from you…and I’m not the one that invited you in.  You cause me so much pain, yet you are so easy to embrace and so difficult to kick out.

At least I’ve learned a lot about you over the last three years.  I know that you’ve gotten comfortable in my life the last couple of days, at least in part because I have allowed myself to consult Dr. Google on everything I fear about being pregnant and being a mother.  That stops today.  No more Googling…anything!  I also know that you are taking advantage of my fear of doing yoga this early in the pregnancy.  I know how you hate it when I do yoga, as yoga makes it difficult for you to stay with me.  Well…tomorrow I am going to add an additional morning walk to my current brief lunchtime walk…and I’m going to use my “walk time” to breathe you away.  I don’t care that it is raining straight through next week, I like the rain.  And nothing is going to stop me from walking away from you.  Oh, and in three weeks, yoga is coming back too…so be forewarned.

I won’t have you ruining my “happily ever after.”  I know you have the power to do it, but I’m not going to let it happen.  I’ve worked too hard, and waited too long, to have this moment of joy taken away from me.  And, I know that if I let you rest in my home, even for a little while, it will be even harder to make you go away.  So, you need to leave now.  I know you can’t be ignored, but you can be starved.  Our home will have a “no anxiety-fueling policy” from now on.  You’ll see how strong The Prince and I can be when we need to be.  Now leave me alone and let me sleep, so I can keep you at bay tomorrow.

Your Former Friend,

The Princess