I was out of town all week getting training for work. I didn't bring my laptop so I didn't keep up with anyone. I hope everyone is doing okay. I doubt I'll get time to catch up on my reader, I'll probably just have to mark everything as read and move on. I hate doing that, it feels disloyal.
I had a rough week filled with stories and pictures of massive disasters and dead children. It seemed like every time I turned on the TV it was a dead child/baby or that stupid "I didn't know I was pregnant" show (Really? I think that is denial) or the Iphone commercial with the pregnancy test.
Gah!
I had to hold down my little girl for shots Friday, which was traumatic after her ER visit a couple of weeks ago. When we went into the waiting room to wait and see if she had another allergic reaction (she did last time) there was a newborn baby boy. I hope the mom didn't get too creeped out by me staring with a tortured look on my face.
Right at this moment I'm watching my friends kids. She went to the ER for a suspected miscarriage - her third this year. I'm heartbroken for her but at the same time jealous. She already has two kids, the youngest is only 9 months old. I know it's not really fair, but I feel like she is asking for 100 dollars when she already has a million. I can't even get pregnant again. I guess I wouldn't trade places if I could, though. She doesn't know why she miscarries so often and that would be a whole other source of grief and stress.
More later when I don't have a screaming baby, hyper four year olds, and a fed-up husband.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Must not get excited, must not get excited
I posted before about a co-worker that started the foster adopt process after I got pregnant and already has a baby. The situation is a little different that I first believed but here is the story (this is important, I'll explain in a minute):
My co-worker (I'll call him Adam) and his wife completed their home study about a month ago. Two weeks ago they got a call about a 2 1/2 month old girl that was going to be available for adoption. She is a legal risk placement because TPR (termination of parental rights) has not happened yet. The baby was removed from her mother after police were called about neglect. Apparently the mother spent an entire day with the baby in a bowling alley without feeding or changing her. The owners called the cops and the baby was removed. The mother is a 17 year old foster child who lived with the same family from 3-12 years old and when her foster family found out their income would drop once she was adopted they abandoned her. She was adopted by another family and then kicked out with the clothes on her back (I don't know why). When she went back to get stuff that she said was hers the family had her arrested for grand theft. She became a prostitute and somehow managed to have a healthy, non-drug addicted baby that she knows she can't care for. She has already asked for the baby to be adopted so there is little chance that this adoption will fall through. The judge on the case has been working with the mother her whole life and wants to expedite the adoption and try to break this cycle of neglected children. The mother is facing several criminal charges so is in hiding until she turns 18. I'm not sure why but if she is 18 the case worker can get her to sign the adoption papers without having to turn her over to the police.
Here is where me not getting excited comes in. The mother thinks she is pregnant again. Adam does not want another baby so soon, but would be the first person the new baby would be offered to. I am starting the classes on Aug 2nd and would have plenty of time to get a home study before the new baby (if it exists) is due. When Adam told me about that I immediately thought "I'll take the baby!"
There are a whole lot of ifs in this situation. If we complete the course and homestudy, if the girl is even pregnant, if the girl sticks around long enough for us to offer, if she doesn't try to keep this baby, if our case-worker will even help us with this as it's not his/her case. If, if, if.
But it gives me hope. There is a small possiblity that we could have an infant from birth, which I never would have thought could happen. Oh please, please let this be a possibility.
Regardless of the outcome - my heart breaks for that mother. What an awful, awful thing to do to a child. It doesn't sound like she is a bad person. She just has no idea how to take care of a baby and no one in the world to take care of her. I'd take her in if it was safe with my 4 year old.
I've actually thought about that - offering to foster a pregnant teenager. Not because I would want her baby, although I would adopt it if that was what she wanted, but because those girls have had shit piled on them their whole lives and someone should take care of them, dammit! Can you imagine being pregnant and 15 with no one that gave a damn if you lived or died?
I hate this system we have, it just seems to chew up children and spit them out. Sometimes the parents, too. Adam told me that the foster parents who originally had the baby were not certified for adoption, only foster care. Even though they loved the baby and wanted to keep her, they were not allowed to. So there is another heart-broken couple out there without their baby. It's just so fucked up.
At least all of this has been a nice distraction from hating my broken body and mourning the possible end of baby-making.
My co-worker (I'll call him Adam) and his wife completed their home study about a month ago. Two weeks ago they got a call about a 2 1/2 month old girl that was going to be available for adoption. She is a legal risk placement because TPR (termination of parental rights) has not happened yet. The baby was removed from her mother after police were called about neglect. Apparently the mother spent an entire day with the baby in a bowling alley without feeding or changing her. The owners called the cops and the baby was removed. The mother is a 17 year old foster child who lived with the same family from 3-12 years old and when her foster family found out their income would drop once she was adopted they abandoned her. She was adopted by another family and then kicked out with the clothes on her back (I don't know why). When she went back to get stuff that she said was hers the family had her arrested for grand theft. She became a prostitute and somehow managed to have a healthy, non-drug addicted baby that she knows she can't care for. She has already asked for the baby to be adopted so there is little chance that this adoption will fall through. The judge on the case has been working with the mother her whole life and wants to expedite the adoption and try to break this cycle of neglected children. The mother is facing several criminal charges so is in hiding until she turns 18. I'm not sure why but if she is 18 the case worker can get her to sign the adoption papers without having to turn her over to the police.
Here is where me not getting excited comes in. The mother thinks she is pregnant again. Adam does not want another baby so soon, but would be the first person the new baby would be offered to. I am starting the classes on Aug 2nd and would have plenty of time to get a home study before the new baby (if it exists) is due. When Adam told me about that I immediately thought "I'll take the baby!"
There are a whole lot of ifs in this situation. If we complete the course and homestudy, if the girl is even pregnant, if the girl sticks around long enough for us to offer, if she doesn't try to keep this baby, if our case-worker will even help us with this as it's not his/her case. If, if, if.
But it gives me hope. There is a small possiblity that we could have an infant from birth, which I never would have thought could happen. Oh please, please let this be a possibility.
Regardless of the outcome - my heart breaks for that mother. What an awful, awful thing to do to a child. It doesn't sound like she is a bad person. She just has no idea how to take care of a baby and no one in the world to take care of her. I'd take her in if it was safe with my 4 year old.
I've actually thought about that - offering to foster a pregnant teenager. Not because I would want her baby, although I would adopt it if that was what she wanted, but because those girls have had shit piled on them their whole lives and someone should take care of them, dammit! Can you imagine being pregnant and 15 with no one that gave a damn if you lived or died?
I hate this system we have, it just seems to chew up children and spit them out. Sometimes the parents, too. Adam told me that the foster parents who originally had the baby were not certified for adoption, only foster care. Even though they loved the baby and wanted to keep her, they were not allowed to. So there is another heart-broken couple out there without their baby. It's just so fucked up.
At least all of this has been a nice distraction from hating my broken body and mourning the possible end of baby-making.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Giving up?
I’ve said that I am giving up on fertility treatments and moving on to foster adopt. This is the story behind that decision. If you know me in real life, please understand that these are things I don’t talk about, not even with my husband or therapist. Please don’t discuss anything you see here with anyone, not even me. If I want to talk about it, I will bring it up.
I’ve never gotten around to posting the details of my experience with IF and how my life has gone so far. I want to do that now because I feel like I have to justify my decision to stop fertility treatments after what seems like very little effort. I realize this is probably all in my head, but I still thought it would be helpful to have my readers understand where I am coming from. It also helps me to have all my thoughts and reasons laid out.
The journey so far stuff will take a long time to write so here are the cliff notes:
15/16 years old: diagnosed with severe hypothyroidism (hashimoto’s), goiter, and delayed onset of puberty. Finally began menstruating 3 months before turning 16, five years after developing breasts.
19 years old: put on birth control after a 3 month period, never having had a “normal” period. Periods became regular but debilitating.
21 years old: diagnosed with recurrent PID, no known cause. Several months of antibiotics cleared it up but abdominal pain continued. Endometriosis diagnosed after lap.
22-27 years old: no insurance, no boyfriend. Learn to live with horrible, unpredictable periods.
2001: rear-ended at 40 miles an hour, resulting in severe soft-tissue injury in back and neck. I’ve been in chronic pain since then, sometimes controllable with OTC meds.
28 years old (2004): married and ttc. Tried for over a year with no success. Started charting and using OPKs, conceived after 6 months of timed sex. Carried to term after a hard pregnancy and delivered a beautiful baby girl in 2006!
2008: dropped out of grad school, stopped bcp, got laid off, and moved in with MIL across the country.
2009: hubby and I find good jobs, finally have insurance, and move out of MIL’s. Start trying to get pregnant in earnest. Periods became even more erratic – luteal phase defect.
June - August 2009: tried metformin to regulate periods (suspected PCOS), it worked a little but the luteal phase was still too short. We tried 50 mg clomid and it worked!
December 2009: so much for that. Turns out I have MTHFR and we are REALLY lucky to have a healthy, living child. Our son Aiden had every neural tube defect there is and we chose to end the pregnancy with heavy, broken hearts.
April 2010: we decided to try again. I am on Neevo prenatal for the MTHFR. Further testing revealed no indications of PCOS so we went straight for the clomid when it became apparent that the luteal phase defect was still around. Two failed cycles later I have decided enough is enough.
Now, to the average infertile with multiple IUIs and IVFs under their belt, one unassisted and successful pregnancy and two failed clomid cycles may not seem like much. But here is where I think I am a little different. I had a bad childhood with abusive parents and lots of bad experiences. Having been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, it is very dangerous for me to have sex if I don’t feel like it. I didn’t even like sex until I met my husband. This makes timed sex extremely difficult to accomplish, especially after my existing sex drive took a nose dive after my daughter was born. So that is strike one.
My pregnancy with my daughter was awful. Due to the injury from the car accident I was in pain every day, often excruciating pain. I couldn’t take anything because I was pregnant so I tried to suck it up. Then I went into premature labor at 30 weeks. It was stopped with magnesium in the hospital but after that I had a very “irritable” uterus. I was unable to do much of anything for the rest of my pregnancy. After she was born I seriously didn’t want to ever be pregnant again. I did want more children. My husband and I are in careers that we love, but they don’t pay much and jobs are often not permanent and don’t usually come with benefits. This means that any kind of private adoption was completely out of the question. After much debate and weighing the options we decided that we would try for another baby of our own making. My fertility became even worse and we were so grateful to get pregnant with Aiden. We thought we were done. I was nervous that I would have another horrible pregnancy but willing to suffer for the chance of another baby. Of course we all know how that turned out. That was strike two.
So now I am left with a hole that I desperately want to fill, but I don’t know how I should go about doing it. I wanted to give pregnancy another try, mostly because I just didn’t want it to end this way. But I find I can’t keep doing this.
I have struggled with self-hatred my entire life. I was always told that I wasn’t good enough, and for many, many years I believed that. Now I have a little more self confidence and self worth, but it doesn’t take much to knock my feet out from under me. Trying to have sex when I am not in the mood feels like rape, even if my husband is not “making” me. It makes me feel dirty and angry and worthless. Maybe with many more years of therapy I could get over that, but it is my reality now. Charting feeds my self-hatred. Every day that my body doesn’t do what it is supposed to, I hate myself a little more. I can’t seem to separate the failure of my endocrine system from my self image and sense of self worth. I know this is a common problem in IF, but it is magnified by my existing insecurity and the remnants of my childhood. I think I am causing irreparable harm to my emotional well being by trying to force my body to do something it is clearly not good at. And I have been dealing with my endocrine and reproductive system far longer than I have been trying to get pregnant. I’m sick of it.
So I think this is strike three. Part of me is keeping hope alive for another baby of our making sometime in the future. Maybe I just have more healing to do. But the larger part doesn’t want to hear about hope, it wants to move on. I want to move on. I want to stop hating myself and this useless, broken body, this murderer of my only son.
Adoption was always what I planned to do, long before the IF and baby loss crap. So why does it feel like giving up?
I do wish I could have a chance at raising another baby, I so love infants. But mainly I just want a bigger family and I will be very happy to be able to give a lost child a home.
The plan for now is to ignore my cycles, have sex when I feel like it, and take the MAPP classes starting August 2nd. If by some miracle I get pregnant* before we get a placement that will be fantastic. If not, I will be working toward something equally worthwhile and not just obsessing over my failures.
I would love to hear from anyone that is considering foster-adopt or has already started the process.
*After all this angst and hand wringing I’m going to feel awfully stupid if I get pregnant without the clomid and charting (see, hope sneaks in no matter what I do).
I’ve never gotten around to posting the details of my experience with IF and how my life has gone so far. I want to do that now because I feel like I have to justify my decision to stop fertility treatments after what seems like very little effort. I realize this is probably all in my head, but I still thought it would be helpful to have my readers understand where I am coming from. It also helps me to have all my thoughts and reasons laid out.
The journey so far stuff will take a long time to write so here are the cliff notes:
15/16 years old: diagnosed with severe hypothyroidism (hashimoto’s), goiter, and delayed onset of puberty. Finally began menstruating 3 months before turning 16, five years after developing breasts.
19 years old: put on birth control after a 3 month period, never having had a “normal” period. Periods became regular but debilitating.
21 years old: diagnosed with recurrent PID, no known cause. Several months of antibiotics cleared it up but abdominal pain continued. Endometriosis diagnosed after lap.
22-27 years old: no insurance, no boyfriend. Learn to live with horrible, unpredictable periods.
2001: rear-ended at 40 miles an hour, resulting in severe soft-tissue injury in back and neck. I’ve been in chronic pain since then, sometimes controllable with OTC meds.
28 years old (2004): married and ttc. Tried for over a year with no success. Started charting and using OPKs, conceived after 6 months of timed sex. Carried to term after a hard pregnancy and delivered a beautiful baby girl in 2006!
2008: dropped out of grad school, stopped bcp, got laid off, and moved in with MIL across the country.
2009: hubby and I find good jobs, finally have insurance, and move out of MIL’s. Start trying to get pregnant in earnest. Periods became even more erratic – luteal phase defect.
June - August 2009: tried metformin to regulate periods (suspected PCOS), it worked a little but the luteal phase was still too short. We tried 50 mg clomid and it worked!
December 2009: so much for that. Turns out I have MTHFR and we are REALLY lucky to have a healthy, living child. Our son Aiden had every neural tube defect there is and we chose to end the pregnancy with heavy, broken hearts.
April 2010: we decided to try again. I am on Neevo prenatal for the MTHFR. Further testing revealed no indications of PCOS so we went straight for the clomid when it became apparent that the luteal phase defect was still around. Two failed cycles later I have decided enough is enough.
Now, to the average infertile with multiple IUIs and IVFs under their belt, one unassisted and successful pregnancy and two failed clomid cycles may not seem like much. But here is where I think I am a little different. I had a bad childhood with abusive parents and lots of bad experiences. Having been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, it is very dangerous for me to have sex if I don’t feel like it. I didn’t even like sex until I met my husband. This makes timed sex extremely difficult to accomplish, especially after my existing sex drive took a nose dive after my daughter was born. So that is strike one.
My pregnancy with my daughter was awful. Due to the injury from the car accident I was in pain every day, often excruciating pain. I couldn’t take anything because I was pregnant so I tried to suck it up. Then I went into premature labor at 30 weeks. It was stopped with magnesium in the hospital but after that I had a very “irritable” uterus. I was unable to do much of anything for the rest of my pregnancy. After she was born I seriously didn’t want to ever be pregnant again. I did want more children. My husband and I are in careers that we love, but they don’t pay much and jobs are often not permanent and don’t usually come with benefits. This means that any kind of private adoption was completely out of the question. After much debate and weighing the options we decided that we would try for another baby of our own making. My fertility became even worse and we were so grateful to get pregnant with Aiden. We thought we were done. I was nervous that I would have another horrible pregnancy but willing to suffer for the chance of another baby. Of course we all know how that turned out. That was strike two.
So now I am left with a hole that I desperately want to fill, but I don’t know how I should go about doing it. I wanted to give pregnancy another try, mostly because I just didn’t want it to end this way. But I find I can’t keep doing this.
I have struggled with self-hatred my entire life. I was always told that I wasn’t good enough, and for many, many years I believed that. Now I have a little more self confidence and self worth, but it doesn’t take much to knock my feet out from under me. Trying to have sex when I am not in the mood feels like rape, even if my husband is not “making” me. It makes me feel dirty and angry and worthless. Maybe with many more years of therapy I could get over that, but it is my reality now. Charting feeds my self-hatred. Every day that my body doesn’t do what it is supposed to, I hate myself a little more. I can’t seem to separate the failure of my endocrine system from my self image and sense of self worth. I know this is a common problem in IF, but it is magnified by my existing insecurity and the remnants of my childhood. I think I am causing irreparable harm to my emotional well being by trying to force my body to do something it is clearly not good at. And I have been dealing with my endocrine and reproductive system far longer than I have been trying to get pregnant. I’m sick of it.
So I think this is strike three. Part of me is keeping hope alive for another baby of our making sometime in the future. Maybe I just have more healing to do. But the larger part doesn’t want to hear about hope, it wants to move on. I want to move on. I want to stop hating myself and this useless, broken body, this murderer of my only son.
Adoption was always what I planned to do, long before the IF and baby loss crap. So why does it feel like giving up?
I do wish I could have a chance at raising another baby, I so love infants. But mainly I just want a bigger family and I will be very happy to be able to give a lost child a home.
The plan for now is to ignore my cycles, have sex when I feel like it, and take the MAPP classes starting August 2nd. If by some miracle I get pregnant* before we get a placement that will be fantastic. If not, I will be working toward something equally worthwhile and not just obsessing over my failures.
I would love to hear from anyone that is considering foster-adopt or has already started the process.
*After all this angst and hand wringing I’m going to feel awfully stupid if I get pregnant without the clomid and charting (see, hope sneaks in no matter what I do).
the end of the virus from hell
I am finally mostly better. Still pretty stuffy but given how I felt last week, I'm happy about that. I'm very thankful my eyes weren't permanently damaged. They still get tired easily but I am able to read now.
I have a lot of writing and thinking to do about where I go from here so look for a long post when I can squeeze out some time for myself. Overall I am pretty sad this week. Everything is a reminder of what is missing and it's hard to give up on what I thought should happen now.
Being so very sick during a fairly momentous time in my life made everything seem a little unreal. I keep having to remind myself that the last cycle failed, that I'm not pregnant, that I have to be moving on now. The high fever I had for days caused some really bizarre dreams and it is still hard to remember what was real and what wasn't. Looking back I can't believe I was that sick and not in the hospital.
I wish I could be more coherent, I am still very sleep deprived and have no energy.
Thanks everyone for the support the last two weeks. When I was able to see I kept clicking back through the comments, they helped pull me through.
I have a lot of writing and thinking to do about where I go from here so look for a long post when I can squeeze out some time for myself. Overall I am pretty sad this week. Everything is a reminder of what is missing and it's hard to give up on what I thought should happen now.
Being so very sick during a fairly momentous time in my life made everything seem a little unreal. I keep having to remind myself that the last cycle failed, that I'm not pregnant, that I have to be moving on now. The high fever I had for days caused some really bizarre dreams and it is still hard to remember what was real and what wasn't. Looking back I can't believe I was that sick and not in the hospital.
I wish I could be more coherent, I am still very sleep deprived and have no energy.
Thanks everyone for the support the last two weeks. When I was able to see I kept clicking back through the comments, they helped pull me through.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
still here, still really sick, still devastated
Not much else to say right now. I still can't read for long. My eyes are swollen and sore. I still haven't cried much, despite my mother's efforts on that end, but I still think this illness has just sapped everything out of me. I guess that's a blessing in a way, I can't feel how crushed I really am because I am still really hoping someone will put me out of my physical misery.
Oh - and I'm having a lovely endo-enhanced period on top of being sick with the virus from hell.
Thanks so much for all the support on my last post. It helps so much to know that everyone here understands, even if my family doesn't. Thank you.
Oh - and I'm having a lovely endo-enhanced period on top of being sick with the virus from hell.
Thanks so much for all the support on my last post. It helps so much to know that everyone here understands, even if my family doesn't. Thank you.
Monday, July 12, 2010
I'd be crying, if my head didn't hurt so badly
14 dpo, not pregnant.
This is the end. I'm not trying anything else. I don't have it in me. I wish we could afford going to an RE, but it's not going to happen. Off to foster-adopt we go.
I think being so sick is cushioning the blow. I am too weary and in pain to care about much else right now. Maybe tomorrow I can cry all day.
This is the end. I'm not trying anything else. I don't have it in me. I wish we could afford going to an RE, but it's not going to happen. Off to foster-adopt we go.
I think being so sick is cushioning the blow. I am too weary and in pain to care about much else right now. Maybe tomorrow I can cry all day.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
yet another way my fucking body can kill a baby
High fever around 4 weeks can cause neural tube defect. Fuck.
I haven't taken a test yet, I'm just too sick. Cramps today, so who knows.
I can't do that again. I just can't. Please don't make me.
I haven't taken a test yet, I'm just too sick. Cramps today, so who knows.
I can't do that again. I just can't. Please don't make me.
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