Dreams and False Alarms

The Tyranny of the Prenatal Vitamin

About two years ago I started taking pre-natal vitamins. It was a couple months before we would go totally without birth control, and I wanted to be prepared.  Also, it made me feel like I was joining the club, or maybe rushing the sorority, anyhow, it felt good. I was diligent. I took them everyday. I carried extras in my purse in case I forgot.  Then we started trying for real, and I was especially careful to take them every day.  During the mind-fuck cycles I was more diligent than you can imagine--military precision.  And then last January, when I got my period on day 21, the vitamins seemed to mock me on the counter. "Perfect nutrition for mother and baby."  Well my hair was looking pretty good and so where my nails, but there was no baby.  Some months were harder than others. It seemed that once my period arrived it seemed pathetic and pointless to take those damn horse pills.  In my darkest days, I would wait until the last moment after dinner so that I didn't have to see the bright yellow evidence of them spilling out of my body.

Last solo ovulation

From September to December I used clomid with each cycle. The first cycle we did as a 'test run' to see how it would affect my cycle, and then Oct, Nov and Dec we did IUI's.  Each of them had their own clumsy aspects, and none were successful. On the first day of my cycle in late December we me with our RE and she suggested not taking the clomid and doing a natural cycle with a monitored IUI.  It turned out we were out of town when I ovulated, and it was just the two of us. That cycle didn't work either, but it was so sweet to be totally alone with the possibility of getting pregnant.

I was such a mess going in to trying to get pregnant, convinced it would be hard, and also convinced I'd get pregnant easily, that I fear that there was very little of that sweet aloneness that we experienced last month.  I know, from knowing myself, that sadly I tend to get quite anxious, and that sometimes anxiety is the experience rather than the thing itself.  I hope that when or if I do get pregnant, I can be less anxious and dread-filled; it is getting sad to see myself ruin pleasure and excitement of good things with my dread and anxiety.

So today is our last solo ovulation.  A part of me really hopes that it works and that we get pregnant this month, and that just filling out the IVF paperwork is enough to flip that switch (because that always happens when people decide to adopt, right?), but realistically this is another month, and another chance, and if it doesn't work there is something good the next month; I won't be all alone trying to get my hope to trump my disappointment.

So wish us luck...

Who needs another infertility blog anyway?

I do, that's who. 

One of the many reasons I didn't start an infertility blog a long time ago (like October when I could officially count myself as TTC for 12 months with no results), was that it seems like it has all been said before in ways that are funny, sad, bitter, beautiful and in some cases transcendent. But what the heck, that doesn't seem to be stopping any one else!

I was a smug-never-tried. I'm sure that comes as a huge surprise to anyone who is close to me because I've been obsessed with infertility (my potential and others actual), for at least 5 years.  Yet at the back of my mind I thought I had an insurance policy against infertility.  To wit: Mentstrating like a motherfucker every month, even while on the mirena, no STD's even with all of the stupid sex I had in my late teens and early twenties (shudder, ew), and a really good family history of late child bearing (my mother got pregnant with me at 41 while using a diaphragm) and on and on with the late childbearing relatives.  However, what was really lurking was a fear that the bad things I done (not so much the sex, but hurting people in my haste to get my own needs met) had been not been adequately atoned for by all of my accomplishments (a shit-ton of therapy, education, marrying the right man, making it up to the people I'd hurt).   I didn't know that I'd set up pregnancy as a test of my goodness, and when I didn't pass it by my self determined date (4 months of trying), I started to lose my shit.  I'd say it in a nicer way, but it was just ugly, smelly and crazy.  Essentially, getting pregnant was to be the final sign of my redemption.   What a lot of religious concepts for essentially a lapsed Methodist...

In that 4 month time span I had 3 mind-fuck cycles. You know, the ones when you feel like your breasts are going to be crushed by the seatbelt, and you can't imagine how you ever used that dishwasher detergent because it is full of POISON, and that it turns out your uterus has feeling (like tugging and zinging).  And then your period shows up, and its all over.  Peggy Orenstien, in Waiting for Daisy, described one of her miscarriages as feeling as if a thread connecting her to th baby had broken. That captures it perfectly. I was standing in the produce section of this enormous grocery store, and the string just broke. 

Last January was when I had this last mind-fuck cycle, and even though I have a short cycle (usually 24 days), I started to bleed heavily on day 21, and I just  laid on the couch and cried and wondered "What is wrong with me that I can't get pregnant."  And when I say 'wrong,' I meant it in some horrifying, soul damned way, this was not a biological objective stance I was taking, it was a spiritual type of question,  but in a bad way where I was sure to be the cause of my own downfall.   I tried to ask my gynecologist if she thought I was pregnant or if maybe there was something wrong, but it was too early for her get concerned.  Also, I was such a wreck that she went into "you must relax" mode,  which I actually tried to do, but as you can imagine, I was sort of psychotic, what with all of the unconscious sin and shit, I think I might have achieved a sort of pained distance, but there was no relaxation.

If I had started a blog then, it would have been full of "it's not fair" and "why me" and all of those other things, which actually make for much more interesting reading.  At this point I feel humbled, and clean and a bit raw, but not psychotic.   In this state of mind I feel self-protective; I am staying away from infertility bulletin boards where there is too much information about what goes wrong with IVF, choosing when to talk about infertility, and with whom, and when the crazy thoughts start to surface, I'm able to keep them at bay with a mixture of fingers-in-the-ears lalalalala and rational self talk.  Frankly I need a break from Crazyland. I have been there for a long time, and I feel like I'm on retreat. 

On thing I am really working on with the Crazy is "its not fair".  As trite as it is, I am finding solace in the fact that life is not fair. I know, shoot me. But really it isn't.  It isn't anymore fair for my mother to have gotten pregnant 4 times and to have felt completely at the mercy of her body; its not fair that children die, its not fair that people who love each other can hurt each other so badly. But, I feel so much more peaceful when I can know, in a really deep way, right down where crazy lives, that it isn't a question of fairness, it is just the hand I've been dealt, and the cards I'm playing.  Lets see if I feel that way at the end of my first IVF cycle when I've been obsessive about every detail and it still didn't work. Honestly, a break from the land of crazy is just what the doctor ordered; so even if this is just a vacation, I'm glad to be here.

Is this thing on?

Hello out there,

Well, after 5 years of being a blog reader, I've decided to try my hand at being a blog writer.  I've hemmed and hawed about starting a blog for so long that I've lost track of what it was to be about.  Firstly it will be about me trying to get pregnant (I know, yawn, yet another infertility blogger).  Secondly it will be about food, and my love hate relationship with cooking excellent food and the consequences of eating said food. Thirdly, it will be about general funny, irritating, or even inspiring stuff. 

Firstly:

I am 37 years old, duly analyzed, and not pregnant, even after 18 months of peeing on sticks, hiking my hips up after the procedure, and trying an IUI or 3.  Essentially, I'm just old, and there isn't anything 'wrong'.  That is a relief, and a disappointment.  As any of you who are going through infertility know, if you can't be pregnant with a baby, the least you can do is be pregnant with activities and paper. That being said, actually having a 'problem' sucks, so there is really no preferred way to be infertile.  Except to wake up from a bad dream that you are infertile to find out that you've magically become pregnant without any grief along the way. Uh, yeah, that happens all the time.

So next month, around Valentines day, I'll start popping birth control pills, learning how to shove needles in my belly and watching my husband turn pale as he contemplates giving me shots in the behind.  FUN!

Secondly:

As for cooking, at the moment I'm on WW, trying to get rid of 15lbs I packed on during 18 futile 2-week-waits. So more on cooking later.

Thirdly:

The name of this blog comes from the Joni Mitchell song Amelia.  This song has always spoken to me, no matter what stage I am at in my life, it just gets to me and makes me think and usually cry.  As I was sitting at my computer trying to come up with a blog name, I knew that there was one in that song.  I started with "beautiful foolish arms", a reference to the line about Icarus, but my husband pointed out that Icarus died, and that was not the goal of the endeavor (damn him and his Ivy league education--I bet I forgot to read the end of the myth...) and that wanting to have a baby isn't foolish. Which made me cry--another sign that I was on the right track. As I looked further the idea of 'dreams and false alarms' started to make more sense. In the song she talks about thinking she sees one thing (vapor trails are really the strings of her guitar), but realizes it is a false alarm, and that it is really much more real and concrete.  For me, the dream of getting pregnant turned out to be so much more tangled up in my past (both the parts I created, and the parts I was born into) than I could have imagined.  So the dream part of the title refers to what I want, and the false alarms refers to what I thought I saw, and tortured myself with, only to realize later that it was a false alarm, a fake test, and not the arbiter of my souls progress.  More on that when we know each other better, 'k?

So a few ground rules:

(Yes, I am going to have the hubris to imagine that someone will actually comment on my blog.)

-Be nice to me and each other

-There will be no talk of "If you can't get pregnant on your own, you don't deserve to be a mother."

-Cussing is ok, as long as it funny or is used to agree with me when I think someone is a an asshat (see that was funny!)

-Any and all ground rules that I deem to be necessary.

Welcome, thanks for reading. See you soon.

Here is Amelia:

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
it was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture-post-card-charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Oh Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms