Month: May 2008

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just anoter day in the life of me

Today my mood is strong.  The way I might describe someone’s breath… he has strong breath support.   Not really negative or positive, just solid. 

I think it may have to do with the even nature of the mix of emotions I am currently feeling.  All mixing to black or white depending on the light perspective, no colour left in the mixture.

I am feeling hopeful and dischanted, calm and panicky, self-assured and doubtful, patient and antsy, overhwlemed and relieved that my problems are so small…. I mean really my situation appears so much better than the people I meet with debilitating progressive motor disorders.  Then again my evil side thinks ‘ at least you got to have and raise kids’ or ‘ atleast you can see what is ailing you.’  And then I feel horrible because I know I can survive this, it won’t kill me, and will only change some of my dreams.

In my news

  • donor has completed all her blood work – only costed $30. We traded some babysitting by my husband to cover it
  • donor is meeting with doctor – the start of the 3 month wait – next month
  • I am meeting with a bunch of other women with POF (premature ovarian failure) this weekend for dinner, which will be my first chance at some group support.  I have no idea how I will react to that, but I am looking forward to it
  • I had a lovely cup of tea with my boss where we forgot about our work relationship and just told stories of how we each cope with our infertility – As much as I look to her story as a beacon of hope, I realize that she still struggles with so many of the issues I do (on top of the demands her young child places on her)
  • 12 more days until I finish the birth control pack – 12 more days till the tracked cycle – 12 more days until I am back in the torturous joy of ‘trying’ against all hope
  • raccoons keep trying to eat my ears in my dreams – which I find very disturbing

And so it goes.. another day, another work week (without out needing to take any sick leave – what an accomplishment)  with nothing really to report except time passing which sort of changes things.  Washes things, smoothes a bit, and occasionally emphasizes the rough bits.

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Good day

I think all the birth control has been washed out of my system (too bad it starts up again tonight with pill 1).

I feel alive, calm, happy, and myself again.

I went to a fish store. I bought yummy fish.

I walked and walked and walked through my adoptive city snapping photos.

I came home and beat my computer into submission to get the camera photos onto my computer.

And then my best friend in the whole world, the one I’ve been sending photos back and forth to, has decided to come visit me in a couple months. This makes everything doable. I will get to show her my world in my new country.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to have something to look forward to -something that has a decent probability of happening.

Oh happy day!

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not in my world

As part of the retreat I was at a few weeks ago, I shared a room with a musician.  We stayed up late chatting.  We played music together.  We swapped travel recommendations.  We chatted about the men, troubles, joys, and dreams in our lives.

And I thought back to the previous year where I slept in the same room having late night conversations with another wonderful, interesting woman. S. was 3 months pregnant at the time. S is now the mother of a healthy son.

This year one of my favourite instructors returned. I so respect and admire this instructor that I get a bit incapacitated when attempting conversation with her. At one point I blurt out, “S had her baby” completely out of context as a way to fill a nervous silence. And she awkwardly replied, probably not even knowing who I was referring to, “well that’s what normally happens.” I heard myself blurt “not in my world” and scuttled away quickly before I put my foot in my mouth anymore.

And even though the risk of losing a baby is so far from my current world of possibilities, I’ve been changed by my friend’s loss and by all the losses I’ve read and cried about in this community of blogs I find myself on the outskirts of.

I wish -oh how I wish – that healthy  babies with easy preganancy and natural births were just as blase as ‘yeah well that’s generally what happens.’  But I guess the fact that this is not our reality makes me appreciate every movement, word, and smile of my friends’ children. They are such miracles to me.

And sometimes they feel a  bit like mirages.

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Driving toward home

Another week gone

This has been a hard week. An exhausting, wearing, never ending week for me. I missed more work. I made more mistakes. I withdrew more. I cried at my work desk. My body discovered new ways to hurt.

I guess this is part of it.

I am amazed by how little energy I have this week. My husband says its the hormones – probably part of it. I haven’t felt like this since my college birth control days. But there’s more to it…

I used to be a person who gave so much that at the end of the day I just passed out from exhaustion. My husband was amazed that I could pour out my energy like that. I think he was a bit hurt that I didn’t ration my energy throughout the day so that there’d be some left for him each night. I just couldn’t imagine finding the energy that ‘rationing’ would require. I loved my life. I loved how alive I felt, how rich the memories I was laying down were, and how lovely my friendships were.

Now I am so afraid to put out any energy, because I honestly worry I won’t make it home if I don’t save it. I avoid group social interactions. I only work part time. I think very very hard before saying yes to anything. I delgate strange things. I don’t chase any of my big life dreams – like starting my own practice, getting in on a research project, spearheading an inclusive reading program at the library…

My to do list has so many energy drains – paperwork for the clinic, education session to schedule with the adoption folks, phone calls to make to clarify lab orders I don’t know how to fill, and then this grief that is consuming me. The damn grief takes so much energy and makes day-to-day tasks exhausting. Showering, eating, cooking are all doable but tiring. Tasks the required decision-making feel beyond me.

I feel like I am floating along letting life happen to me.

Wednesday night I found myself sobbing on the kitchen floor.

Thursday I found myself sobbing on the train station platform and had to call in ‘sick’ because I couldn’t find the will to board the train.

Friday I found myself wondering a big box store buying random crap for the house.

Which brings me to tonight. I left a party early and drove home – slowly. I don’t think I ever got over 70% of the speed limit. I was relieved to be done with the party. I didn’t want to go home. I just wanted to slowly drive home forever watching tail lights overtake me and then slowly disappear around a curve ahead of me. All I could think is that I don’t want to go back and I don’t want to go home. I just want to drive towards home all night…

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Funny that

Two different people told me (in real life) that I sound so much more hopeful than I did 4 months ago.

Funny that. This feels like the worst week I’ve had in the past 4 months.

Maybe they hear me talking more about the things we could do that might lead to parenthood – donor eggs, adoption, etc. What I hear in my head is how much I must do to even create a possibility of parenthood out of the options I have and how small that sliver of possibility actually is.

And how afraid I am that I’ll lose my career, my happiness, my joyful spirit, and my friends in the process.

I already feel that I’ve lost track of who I am.

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Wednesday

Note to self:

  • dropping off letter seeking clarification from clinic doctor on logistics of tracked cycle (11 am)
  • adoption information night (5 pm)
  • recieving more paperwork from donor coordinator (neighbor drop off mail at 9 pm)
  • Trying to complete some of the paperwork at 10 pm

This is too much for you S.  At least it is too much while you are on the pill.

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Okay.. maybe mother’s day is not over

I just got 3 emails, back to back, without even a speck of spam between them, from old high school friends. All three announced pregnancies, listed their numerous children, and mentioned how they are doing extra projects like building a house on the side. I haven’t heard from any of these people since their last babies.

Now I did not cry when my best friend announced a couple months ago.

Nor did not cry when another dear dear friend from high school had her second, last month.  I just thought of the magic of being with this wonderful couple when their first was 2 weeks old and just how honored I felt that they let me stay with them and experience that special time.

Tonight though I cry… and put on a distracting DVD so I don’t blast (or god forbid send an email) like this

“Hi all, Great to hear from you all again. As you probably I know I still live in ___ (my far away and exotic sounding country – at least I think it might sound like that to them). It is beautiful and wondeful and we LOVE it. Sound like you all have been busy.

We are quite busy here too. Highlights of my calendar this week include an adoption information night on Wednesday and a 30 minute conversation with the donor egg coordinator at the local fertility clinic today. We don’t have a phone hooked up yet in our new place, so I discussed all sorts of personal things like how long ago my last smear was, whether I’ve been tested for Chlamydia lately, and whether I’d actually qualify for a publicly funded cycle in my open plan office. Luckily the guy at the desk next to me lost most of his hearing in a shooting incident awhile back so I don’t think he picked up on the fact we’re looking at donor eggs. That’s right, I may have forgotten to mention to you that my ovaries crapped out a few years ago. If do we go crazy one day and send out a xmas card with more than 2 faces on it, please don’t assume that I was sleeping around with some blond sex machine and cuckolding my husband. That would be the egg donors genes talking not mine. Oh and another thing, all that blushing you noticed when I was home for the holidays a couple years ago wasn’t the large quantities of wine I was gulping, but honest to goodness hot flashes – which by the way are called hot flushes here. I learn new lingo every day, particularly medical lingo. Man if I was ever casted in a TV show about infertility, I could pronounce all the big words just fine! Only problem is that I am still being carded so I don’t think I would be a very believable casting choice – I think most viewers assume that people who are infertile as me at least pass for 30.

Well got to run and eat more birth control because that is one of the funny ironies of my life at the moment. Does mean I can drink to my hearts content though. So tonight I will raise a glass to all 3 of you ladies who aren’t partaking at the moment. Actually I will raise a full glass to each of and every one of you and toast all your wonderful children. No one can call here anyways, so I can be as sloshed as I want.  Do send photos when you have a spare moment.

Keep the updates coming! Love, Me”

I am a good person.. honest I am… please tell me I am not crazy for feeling like this

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Sunday bloody Sunday

I had a lovely Sunday.

I also did something brave, something for me…

First the Sunday –
I know this is a very hard Sunday for many of us. I have mixed feelings about the day. Lots of things could have upset me.. for example the sweet five-year-old boy begging me to help him create the Best Mother’s Day Gift EVER for his mother.

Over all though it was a quiet day of roasting veggies, walks with friends, watching my husband do something he loves, organizing the house, and quiet. My only radio is Internet radio. My only TV are the shows I watch on DVD box sets. The only Mother’s Day invasion was a few photo links on MSN when I checked my hotmail account.

I also live a day ahead and two seasons behind those in North America. This means that my mother’s day is done before most of yours start. I guess this could mean that there are two Mother’s Days in my world, but today was a day for me. Tomorrow morning I’ll skype my mom before work, and that is the end of the holiday for me.

Now for the brave part…
I love my Mom dearly. This year I am feeling particularly lucky to have her around (well in the alive, but thousands of miles away kind of way). Another woman with POF just lost her mother suddenly this week…. This shook me and I made sure I wrote my mother a very nice note, complete with 10 great memories I have of her being a good mother, and a separate email challenging my brother to do the same if he felt so inclined.

BUT one thing that really bothers me about my Mom is that I know so little about her as a woman beyond her role as my mother. She goes on and on about how we are so close – “like best friends”- to everyone and anyone, but I never hear anything about her hopes, dreams, worries, or what makes her her.

Now I know a warm, lovely, and adult woman-to-woman relationship between mothers and daughters is probably more a myth than reality for most of us – but what gets me is that my mother actually thinks we have one of them at the moment.

So I also tacked on the following to my letter to my mother

“My favorite current memories are when you tell us bits of stories about who you are and were outside of your role as our mother. I like the stories of work, because I can relate, but the best stories are the one in which I get a glimmer of who you are outside of realm of ‘mother.’ Maybe because I am old enough that I could become a mom and learn first hand what that is about… and maybe because the possibility of that is so very tentative and unknown.”

And that is when I cried today. But it was a good cry. I felt like I was sad because I was taking a risk to try to change something, instead of just crying about what its beyond my control.

What brave thing have you done lately (or want to do)?

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One baby step forward

So I was having dinner at my friend’s house recently. We always have a lovely time chatting about everything under the sun. She is also the friend who offered to donate. I tend not to directly bring up the donation topic, not that I don’t care with my entire being about this, but I don’t want to accidentally put any undue pressure.

I also love the ways she brings it up in conversation.

We were chatting about her elbow pain and how much she is missing her sport at the moment. Every time the phone rang, she hopped up hoping it was the doctor calling her back with guidance regarding her rehab exercises. Then she mentions that the fertility clinic called to schedule an appointment with her…

As she tells it, all they said was “hello, this is the clinic. I am trying to reach_____.” So she exclaimed, “oh thank you so much for calling. Perfect timing, my kids just went outside to play. I’ve been meaning to call all day. I have this pain in my elbow that I wanted to run past you.” No response from clinic side of the phone. “uh well I think is related to the new exercises. I need to know if I should keep doing them or not and if I can go to yoga tonight or if I can go but just need to avoid certain things–” Long pause. “um you aren’t the sports medicine clinic are you?” Another pause, then a “uh no”. “oh… um… wait, does that mean you are the fertility clinic?” At which point the nurse felt comfortable continuing on.

I love that this means that we may be moving forward. I love that my clinic is so careful about confidentiality. I also am very glad that our potential donor is clever and assertive enough to navigate the system without guidance from me. How was I to know to warn her of this possible phone conversation?

In other events, I heard some good news from a fellow blogger. I went and did a happy dance in the rain. This is how I mark good news and the tentative lightness it creates in my heart.

What do you do to celebrate good news?

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“I raise my eyes…

… to say yes” is the title of a book I read in college.  It was co-writen by a woman who was placed in an institution based on a very poor (very brief) assessment of her intellect.   She was unable to speak in the common vocal-folds-vibrating-noise-through-your-oral-cavaity kind of way.  She communicated through her eyes. She looked up to say yes, as so many of the people I work with do.

Today I was training a new staff member about various AAC devices and alternative forms of communication.  I was wondering why she was so good with the families.  She just connects with them. She notices the little things. She is so incredibly aware of what another mother needs and just falls into that role.  And I noticed at one point the she was raising her eyes up.  I asked her later about it.  She said that one of the things she learned when her son died is that if you look up it is almost impossible to cry.  Looking down, and its all over…

How can one possibly respond to that.  I know of her loss. She knows of my struggles. We both laugh and nearly cry (that looking up trick is pretty powerful) together.  I am so glad that she has come into my work life.  I think she’ll teach me way more than I can ever show her.

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In case any of you have no idea what an AAC is or looks like, here is a quick sampling of augmentative and alternative communication can look like (click for a larger image)

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The sp.erm dance

We visited the fertility clinic for another counselling appointment last week.  I call for an appointment when I am struggling, there is a 3-4 week wait, and then inevitably I’m having a fairly good week when the appointment comes round.  Of course when you actually go in, you feel compelled to wisely use the time, so you dig around and of course there is something bothering you. I cry and talk and whisper and tend to walk out needing to reschedule most of my day to allow me time to recover.

This time my husband intervened.

At the end of the session our counselor popped out of her office to grab us some information.  My lovely husband immediately walked over to her desk and started to move some papers around. I was horrified, begging him to leave her stuff alone – for god sake the clinic doesn’t even announce it self when they call, they are so very careful about confidentiality, the school girl within me was terrified that we were going to get in big big big BIG trouble when the lady walked back in…  and that of course would mean no baby help for me.

2 seconds later (yes I can work myself into a dither that quickly) my husband spun around with the object that had caught his eye on her desk.

A 10 inch long white foam sperm shape with some drug company name on it

He started dancing and twirling and diving this thing around.  I nearly fell of the couch laughing, between breaths I was begging him to put it back as the lady was going to walk in any second, but really all I wanted was for him to keep making me laugh like that forever.

I had a brief day dream of the counselor walking in and joining us in laughter and then my husband wandering out the hall like a flower girl passing these things out, everyone laughing and joining in a strange congo line of sperm dancing – laughing ourselves silly.

Instead, he toss it back onto her desk, leaped across the room,  and dove back onto the sofa just as the lady walked back in with a questioning look in her eye.

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Spring….

My friend lost her baby.  It is a quiet time for me.  I don’t know what to say, so I send her photos of nice quiet things I see in my world.  She sends me photos too.  We’ll use words again someday…  We’re in different seasons and coping with different loses.  I feel strangely close to her, even though we are miles and miles of ocean apart.

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Does it ever get easier?

I’ve been away for a couple weeks. One week I was away on a retreat week which was heavenly and fun.  It also was far from the internet, which probably was a blessing in some ways.  The other week I spent moving to a new rental.  Our internet connection took awhile to catch up with us.

There has been no real movement since my last post on the egg donor front. The donor asked me to accompany her on an unrelated medical appointment, which really touched me, but the doctor ended up being called away and the appointment rescheduled for a time when her husband will be in town.  Its all very theoretical and far away again for me.  We had her and her kids over for dinner though and I realized how lovely they are.  If you are going to be ‘picking’ genes, even if for me its from a field of one so its not really choosing at all, I feel like this is a pretty great family to be sharing genes with. 

My mom always said you can’t pick family but you can pick friends.  Well perhaps I’ll be picking up a few genes from the friends I’ve picked.  It doesn’t exactly make them family, but it sure seems like more than friends in a way that English just doesn’t have word for…

In other news. I am SAD.  Pure and simple. 

What is complex is trying to sort out what is making me feel so sad.

Perhaps it is related to the birth control I am on for another 2 months.  The excruciating pain of the first month of the pill has past.   It has been replaced with a negative libido and strange moods.  The lack of sex drive is really messing with me.  In the past, when this has happened on the pill I just felt… I guess I would say I felt satisfied, the way you don’t look for more ice cream if you already had 1 spoonful too many.  Now I feel like I’ve had 2 bowls too many.  I also feel like I am 8 years old again.. remember how back then sex seemed like something you would ever ever do. 

This is not helping me with the identity issues I’m starting to have related to going through menopause before 30.  At first I thought that it would make me feel old before my time.  Really it is making me feel somehow pre-pubsent.  I have none of that calm wisedom that my mother and her friends appear to be gradually acquiring as they enter menopause.  They seem almost ‘intune’ with their bodies.   For me, it is much more like the bizarre process of puberty where your body morphs into something unknown and strange while siumtaneously trying to take over every aspect of your life.   

So yes – I am a hormonal mess on the pill.  I thought the cramps were bad, but this is bad in a different way.  Perhaps alternating between cramps and mood disturbances would help me get through these months.

Life also is throwing a few things at me.  All minor things, but they are overwhelming me. I feel like a 13 year old girl who flops on her bed announcing that the WHOLE WORLD HATES me at the end of the day.  When my kind husband kindly prods, I sound just like the irrational girl who would dramatically go on and on about how I’d NEVER SURVIVE the CATASTROPHIC events of my eigth grade school day to my mother so many years ago. 

Puberty sucked the first time.  I am not any more graceful with this latest round of hormones.  I just know to carry tissues now where ever I go.

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Testing… 1 2 3

I’ve decided to try my blog out on word press for a few weeks… see if I like it better.  I mostly am intrigued by the option of pass word protected posts, particularly if this egg donor thing goes forward.

I chose the user name ‘circles become me’  because at some point I will move on beyond my scar and what it represents to me.  I will continue to twirl in circles to see the stars, leaves, or clouds spin above me. I will continue to enjoy the circles of life about me, regardless of whether I get to directly experience the generational one of having children.   I will still love polka dots. I will still drift in circles in my life and I sort out who I am and where I want to go.  I will never be the linear person parts of me think I ‘should’ be.  I will wander and hopefully learn to love that aspect of who I am.