6 Weeks

It’s been a long 6 weeks since my surgery, but things are getting better.  I’m sure now that summer is here the time will start flying again.  I went and saw my doctor yesterday and he says everything looks good.  Now we just wait and see if my old (not nice) friend endo comes back.  He said if it does he would like to try progesterone to treat it.  Anyone ever treated their endo with progesterone?  I should probably go look up some endo blogs.  I’m sure I can find someone talking about it somewhere out here in blog world.  My other doctors have only tried to treat it with birth control.  I have been on birth control since we stopped fertility treatments a year and a half ago.  I’m going off the pill again.  It was 8 ½ years ago when I went off the pill when we decided to start ttc.  The feelings are so different this time.  Back then it was so exciting and frightening to think we were taking the next step in our lives by having a child.  Now I just feel dread that my endo will come back and I will have to start all over with the pain.  I’m trying to think positive and hope that endo will not be back to terrorize my insides again, but it’s easier to just expect that it will be back.

Thanks to all my friends that left me the supportive comments on my last post.  It’s so nice to know that I am not alone with feeling certain ways.  I promise I will be stronger!  I think I must revert back to living life one day at a time.  Living in the short term right now feels easier.

The Bombshell (and please don’t judge me)

I don’t know what kind of reaction this post will get.  I am in no means trying to belittle or hurt any feelings to anyone who has or is in the process of adoption.   I have so far tried to avoid the adoption topic….I have been very nervous about posting on this topic.  I have also been trying not to post too much family information.  This post will probably have to be removed if my blog gets discovered by family.  It may just get removed in a week to keep myself safe.

First, adoption to me feels like the door has been shut but not locked.  After we decided to stop fertility treatments I started looking into adoption and reading and telling M about everything I found.  We always thought that we would be open to having adoption as an option.  I found an agency in our area of our state and I kept going back to them.  We started looking at the application process and realized that at the time we didn’t meet all the requirements.  We had done IVF just a few months prior and M had just changed jobs which led to some other things we didn’t meet at the time (we will leave the nitty gritty details out).  I basically had an emotional meltdown when I realized that we didn’t fit the mold right then.  Had we not had enough struggles in trying to have children?  M then asked me let go of adoption for a few years.  He thought we had lost part of ourselves and we needed time to find these parts of us .  M told me that he could live the rest of his life happy with just me and he hoped that I could do the same.

So, that leads me to where I am now.  I am trying to find out who I am again.   I am trying to embrace the childfree life.  I don’t know if we will ever try to open the adoption door.  M is happy and I think he doesn’t want to turn around in a few years and approach the adoption door.  I think it is holding me back on my process of moving forward.  I have stored the idea of it in the back of my mind and I try not to think about it very much.  I’m sorry if you think I am a poser by having a childfree/childless blog when I have a tiny piece of me holding onto the adoption idea.

Back to the present, last night I was happy and we had just gotten back from a walk with our relatives.  We were driving home the next morning and I was actually feeling pretty happy with the weekend.   M’s sister called to announce that they were adopting a baby.  This news then turned the house upside down.  Normally everyone would be excited and happy that an adoption would add a new family member.  Nope….M’s mom told her that she can’t be excited for her!  Everyone started talking loudly and over each other and everyone was upset.  People were blaming other people for withholding information, and we were just trying to get the information straight. 

The problem here is that the couple (at least in our eyes) does not have a good relationship.  No less than 6 months ago M picked up his sister and moved her, her dog and her belongings into our house because she said she was going to get a divorce.  The reason why was because her husband refused to get a job or even apply for a job.  This is not the first time this has happened either (sister moving out or her husband refusing to work).  She went back to him after a few days like the times before.  He is currently not working.  The sister has said several times before that she can’t have a baby with him until things in their relationship change. 

I think I was in disbelief at first and just thought that they were talking or thinking about adoption.  I even said out loud, “M and I couldn’t even get into adoption when we looked into it, how could they?”  Which led to looks of disbelief by all of the present family members and questions such as “When did you look into adoption?” “Why can’t you adopt?” “You wanted to adopt?”  I felt like yelling “DUH” to all of them.  Why would they think that with our infertility we would not have at least looked into adoption?  Anyways that wasn’t the topic for very long.  We were then all informed that the husband’s family knew the family who wanted to give the baby up for adoption, this baby was already born, his family was moving this girl and baby to our state to help with the adoption process, the husband’s parents were paying for the adoption (since the couple has absolutely no money), and the husband was currently in the other state and pictures were being emailed of him holding this baby.  Phew…did you get it all?  I’m not sure if I even got it all.  The topic then turned into useless talk about how this baby will be taken care of.  I opened my laptop and shut my brain down until they all went to bed.

Here entered that evil green monster.  I spent the night crying after everyone finally left the living room (our makeshift bedroom for the weekend).  I had to keep it in until everyone went to bed since we didn’t have a private room.  M kept asking me why I was crying, and telling me not to take it personal.  I just wasn’t prepared for this news and it hit me hard.  I kept thinking of the blogs I have read of the people waiting for adoption and I felt so sad that this baby wasn’t going to them or a happy responsible parent.  It wasn’t that I wanted this baby to come to me.  I just don’t feel like it is supposed to be this way.  There are just so many people waiting for their baby.  I felt like all my wounds I have been working on healing got ripped open.  I felt so raw and hurt.  I cried and cried.  Over-reaction….probably.

I feel like if I have to deal with my infertility than at least our family members should be happy loving responsible parents…this made me think of my family and other hurt I have been trying to hide.  My brother and his wife lost custody of their daughters last year.  It was so hard for me to watch this happen.  M and I would never have our own children and I had to watch my own family members choose addictions over their children.  This experience broke my soul last year, and is way too lengthy for this post.  Their children are back with them now, and they are doing a lot better, but why do I have to watch this? 

Sometimes I just feel like a freak show with empty arms and an empty heart.

Support

I need to thank all my friends that left me the supportive comments on my last post.  I appreciate every one of them.  I especially loved Mali’s advice about going shopping for some items that support me and my breastsJ  Just to let you know Mali…I took your advice and couldn’t stop smiling after.

Well tomorrow we are heading home from visiting family.  Before we left on this trip I kept thinking about how the weekend would revolve around my SIL that is expecting in the next month and I was dreading this.  The weekend didn’t really turn out that way.  That wasn’t nearly as bad as I imagined.  I enjoyed spending time with my niece and nephew.  I actually thought that I would make it through the weekend relatively unscathed until a bombshell was dropped tonight.  I’m not really ready to talk about this bombshell yet…somehow I managed to walk out of the room without losing it.  But, it just proved to me how oblivious people are to our infertility situation.

I’m welcoming tomorrow.

Backsliding

The last few weeks I have felt good, physically and emotionally.  Physically I felt like I was recovering from my surgery getting stronger and emotionally I felt happier and in control of my life.  I was super busy, but I felt like I was accomplishing things.

I have been backsliding this week.  I wake up in the mornings and the first thing I think about is infertility.  I haven’t done this for several months.  I look back and question our choices, wondering if the outcome could have been different if 5 years ago we would have done choice B, or if 2 years ago we would have chose choice C.  I know this isn’t healthy, and I’m not sure why I am doing it.  I don’t know why I am doing it when I thought I felt so happy and content just last week.

I think the upcoming weekend probably has something to do with it.  We have a 3 day weekend for the Memorial Day holiday Monday and we are traveling to visit family.  There is a very pregnant SIL that will be having a baby in the next month or so.  I dread that the talk all weekend will be full of everything baby.  I’m happy for them, but I am sad about my circumstance.  How is it possible to be happy and yet so sad at the same time?

Another thing that is bothering me is that I went shopping Monday for some new clothes.  My surgery belly is being a pest!  When I returned to work I had to pull out my bigger work pants.  Which brought back bad memories.  I bought these bigger clothes when we were going through fertility treatments and my body was swelling and gaining weight from the hormones.  Back then I didn’t really mind that I had to wear larger pants.  I was hoping they would be the start of my maternity wardrobe, but they never fulfilled that destiny.  I have these larger slacks to wear to work, but I needed some larger casual clothes to wear over the weekend.  I can actually get my regular clothes on, it’s just that they rub on my incision spots and are not comfortable.  I guess I could spend the weekend in stretchy workout clothes, but I think it’s time to get out of them.  So I bought some larger shorts because where we are going is warmer than where I live.  It was just depressing to go shopping and having to buy clothes for my newly rounded belly that isn’t carrying a new life.  Not that I expected to have a new life in my belly, i just keep thinking that it looks like i have the start of a pregnant belly by its roundness.

I need to focus and occupy these thoughts from the past or finally (somehow) accept them.

Eleven

Eleven years this week M and I were married in a garden gazebo at a casino in Las Vegas.  M was 21 and I was 22.  It wasn’t what everyone thinks when they think of a Las Vegas wedding.  Most people picture a quick run into the little chapel in whatever you want to wear, and next thing you know you are married.  Ours was in a beautiful garden, I had my white dress, M wore a tux, and some of our family was with us.  I loved it.  It was simple with no big fuss.  Kind of like meJ 

After we were married we spent a few more days in Vegas and then worked our way back home to Utah and visited Zion National Park.  I hadn’t ever been to this Park and it was breathtaking. 

I have mentioned before that although M and I are not the religious type, we do come from religious families.  It was assumed that since we were married in Vegas, and not in a church setting, that I was “knocked up” and for months after our wedding family kept asking us when we were having a baby.  At the time we would laugh about those odd questions, and think up ways to answer them such as “oh, not for a few years” or “we don’t want kids yet”.  Little did we know the joke was really on us?  Well, 11 years later those family members have finally started to stop asking about babies. 

We have had our share of ups and downs just like everyone else.  It is bittersweet to hear other newlyweds talk about their life plans.  They have everything planned out and expect it to turn out that way.  I remember thinking like that.  We stalled in our lives for 7 years while we were ttc.  At times our infertility has brought us closer and also pushed us apart.  I believe that we are currently at a point where we are still recovering and grieving from our inability to have a child, but we are strong and I feel that we are getting closer.  I currently picture us stepping into our new lives, hand in hand, probably M pulling me at times since I tend to lag a little… but we are moving forward.

We are celebrating our anniversary this weekend.  As soon as I get out of school Saturday we are heading to a neighboring state where we have reserved a suite and plan on having a fun night away from real life.

Thank you M for choosing me, and I look forward to the next 11 with you.

***I look at these pictures and miss M's long hair!

A fail, but I’m ok with it

Well, as you can tell I didn’t make it very far into the May Challenge.  I gave myself the challenge to post every day before I went back to work.  Let’s just say my body is struggling to keep up with work, school, and everyday life.  I am beat!  This blog has been moved down on the priority list.  So don’t mind me… I will just continue to be an infrequent blogger.

Mother’s day is this weekend.  With my sluggish body I much more concerned with making it through each day rather than the upcoming holiday.  But, I wanted to let you all know how grateful I am to have found you.  I don’t feel as isolated as I have in prior years.

To Do List

I keep a To Do List on my phone.  It started out as my new year’s resolution for 2011.  My goal was to complete 100 items on my To Do List.  I didn’t start out with 100 items on my list.  I started out with about 40 and added more throughout the year.  I could put anything on the list with the only requirement that each item had to be something that would take more than 20 minutes to do.  Things on my list included books I wanted to read, projects I wanted to do to our house and our rental, items I wanted to make, get passports, etc.  I did complete my goal for 2011 in the last part of November, but I didn’t get rid of the list.  I have just kept adding to it since I created it.  In 2012 I didn’t want to keep track of how many items I completed so I am not counting them.  The problem is that I currently have 101 items on my list and I find even thinking about my list overwhelming.  I think last year my list helped me get a lot of things accomplished, but I had more time on my hands since I was not going to school.

What do you think?  Do you keep lists, and if you do how do you be productive and not get overwhelmed with the list?  I am hesitant to delete my list because everything on my list is things that I do want to do or accomplish.  How do you keep the rate at which you add things to your list in line with the rate at which you actually accomplish individual items?  Do you think it is obvious that I am too concerned with keeping my list and I should give up and chuck it?:)

2nd of 6

I’m the second child out of six born to my parents. There are three boys and three girls.  Yes it was a crazy, loud, messy, and chaotic house we had.  The first 5 kids in my family are close in age.  There are just about 1 to 2 years between the births of the 5 oldest kids, and then a long 8 years till my baby sister was born. 

Since my older sister and I are only a year and a half apart in age we pretty much did everything at about the same time.  We were only 1 grade apart from each other in school so we had a lot of the same friends, did the same activities, we usually wore close to the same size of clothes, and we even got the talk about the “birds and the bees” from our mom at the same timeJ  During the “birds and the bees” talk, on the subject of safe sex, my mom told us that she had gotten pregnant using every form of contraception, from birth control to condoms.  At the time this was way more information than my sister and I wanted to know about our parents.  She was trying to enforce into our minds how birth control isn’t 100% effective.  Little did we know back then that I didn’t need the help of birth control to not get pregnant, my body takes care of that on its own (oops, this wasn’t supposed to be an infertility post…but lately I find infertility in everything).

The Pros of having 5 siblings are:

·         You are never bored.  There was always something going on.

·         You never have to play by yourself.  There was always someone willing to play a game, ride bikes, go hiking, or just cause trouble.

·         Hand-me-downs.

·         There was always a sibling to go to school or church functions with.

·         You can combine forces and get chores done in record speed.

·         You can blame a younger (innocent) sibling for something you did (I have some very funny stories that go with this one).

·         Getting to experience the different types of relationships from having siblings that are close to you in age and ones that have a large age gap with you.

·         Someone else would eat the foods you didn’t like at the dinner table.

The Cons of having 5 siblings are:

·         Your stuff always gets destroyed.  Although I think this is true for me and my older sister because after me in birth order are 3 boys.

·         You have to share everything.

·         Hand-me-downs (yes this is on both lists…depending on what this is it can be good or bad).

·         Trying to find a quiet space is impossible.

·         It’s hard to be alone.

·         So many dishes after meals!  We didn't have a dishwasher and this is probably why dishes are my least favorite chore.

·         There is only so much attention that can be allotted to each child from the parents.

·         So much babysitting if you are on the older end of the birth order.  Even more so when the youngest sibling is born when you are 14.

I made it a point to make the pros and cons have the same number of items.  There were times when I was young when I really disliked having so many siblings, and then times that I was so grateful to have all of them.  I am happy to have been raised in a large family. 

During my recovery from my surgery my baby sister has been such a big help to me.  She has taken good care of me when M has not been home.  I mentioned earlier that I was 14 when she was born.  I remember when my mom told us she was pregnant.  I was disgusted to think my parents still had sex!  When she was born I fell in love with her.  My older sister and I took her everywhere with us.  We got to dress her up and give her 4 different hairstyles a day.  Poor girl!  She was just a little girl when I moved away at 18.  She was so heartbroken to have both her big sisters move away and be left with 3 older brothers.  Oh the teasing she had to endure from our brothers!  Baby sister moved in with M and I almost 2 years ago to attend the University in our town.  I am so lucky that I have been able to get to know baby sister as an adult.  She is such a special person.

My Middle Name

It’s May 2^nd. 

My Mother was given her Mom’s middle name.  I also share this middle name.  It is a common middle name, but it is another thing that I will not be able to participate in.  It is another tradition of passing something on to a child of my own.  It’s just one of those things that people that don’t live with infertility take for granted.

The May Challenge

I’m not a very frequent poster.  I feel like I have plenty of things I want to talk about, I just don’t have the time to get them written down and posted to my blog.  There are several half written posts on my laptop.  Some of them won’t get published as they have too much personal information about my family.  Others are thoughts that just got abandoned while my mind moved onto other things.  I think working full time and going to school part time has a lot to do with this, my brain is just not working at the capacity I want it to!

I do go back to work this week, but I thought it would be a good challenge for me to try to post something about myself every day during May.  They probably won’t all be about infertility or living childfree some of them will be about just me.  We will see if I can do this!

Today I will tell you about my health as of 2 weeks after surgery.  I went and saw the general surgeon last Friday and he said I am doing well and gave me a work release to go back to work tomorrow.  I sit in a cubicle and work at a computer.  He still wants me to be careful and no lifting or twisting for 2 more weeks.  He said to start eating more solid foods but to do it slowly.  He said don’t go crazy and go home and eat a big cheese burger (I must not be the only person that is craving a big greasy cheeseburger after bowel surgery) but give my bowels time to adjust to more solid foods.  He told me it is ok to start exercising slowly on a treadmill or elliptical.  I was excited to go back to the gym since none of my work slacks fit very well over my still swollen belly.  I went to the gym with a friend yesterday and walked on the treadmill for 40 minutes.  We talked and at the time it felt good.  Today I do not feel good.  I must have walked for too long because my lax stomach muscles keep cramping up on me.  I canceled going to the gym today and just laid around working on my homework.  My swollen belly is feeling better…but I still do not fit into my normal work slacks.  For the first time I look pregnant and I am not happy about it!  I have lost weight from my surgery but my belly just does not realize that the rest of me has shrunk.  Grr… I guess I am going to go to work tomorrow looking a little slobby while I wait for my belly to shrink.