Balls out

I knew I likely hadn't ovulated for at least two months, so starting my period four days early wasn't entirely surprising.

What was surprising was that instead of wallowing, loading up on chocolate, and uncorking the closest bottle of wine, I enthusiastically drafted my Plan of Attack for this cycle. I touched on it in the previous post, and boy howdy, it is in action.

New pee sticks for the fertility monitor have been ordered and are en route. My thermometer and the Making Babies book are bedside. I've just guzzled my second enormous mug of raspberry leaf tea today, and my innards are buzzing with vitamin B12. I've taken to walking around the neighborhood twice a day, and now my neighbors just peer at me quizzically while they water their lawns. I've lost five pounds over the last several weeks; not huge, but I'll take it. Fruits and veggies are my friends and I've managed to mostly avoid gluten and sugar (excepting a couple of transgressions on Mother's Day, but who can blame me?). This week I started a dairy detox.

Basically, I'm not fucking around here.

And as I mentioned previously, I'm giving it until July before I put my fertility issues in the hands of a specialist. If I need to go back to a doctor, I'm not jacking around with my regular OB anymore.

But if the universe is willing, I think I can make this happen on my own. I got a surge of hope, and I'm clinging to it like a life raft.

A little magic

If all the ladies I know in real life who wanted to be pregnant at this moment were suddenly pregnant, there would be around eight of us.

It astounds me that I personally know this many people who have tried for years to get pregnant, with limited success. I say "limited" because a couple of us have miscarried, which seems to imply the ability to at least become pregnant. Some of us have had surgery, some of us are taking weird medications, some of us have undergone IVF, some of us have adopted, and some of us have given up. Our physiological issues run the gamut, and some of us are not sure what exactly our physiological issues are; we just know whatever we've been trying, it ain't working.

Just recently I began feeling that old feeling I used to have. The opposite of hopelessness. A quasi-confidence that this will work out for most of us. I started to fantasize about how it would be if myself and my fertility-challenged friends all conceived at the same time. We'd be pregnancy buddies, and then mommies together, and what could be more perfect than a triumph like that?

These are dangerous thoughts. Hopeful thoughts usually lead to disappointment somewhere around Day 30 of my cycles. I'm not sure if I should try not to be hopeful. Actually, I'm not sure if I can quell it.

I suspect part of the reason for my new hope is my niece, Ava, who's 9 weeks old today. I've been taking care of her a few days a week while my sister works, and unsurprisingly, I have grown attached. I read a book that said you should talk to your baby. About anything and everything. So I talk quietly to her, and I tell her about everything. I tell her about her uncle, and her grandparents, and her mommy and daddy, and I tell her about my cats and how some day I plan to give her a cousin. And I'll be damned if that kid doesn't smile. She seems to enjoy being spoken to, and it usually lulls her to sleep. She's successfully removed a chunk of my heart and she keeps it with her, wherever she is.

Ava has renewed my hope; it's pretty certain. If a miracle like her is possible, then I suppose just about anything can happen.

Moving On

It is time for me to make peace with the fact I will never bear a child.

Typing that is hard. Really hard. It makes it more real. I guess that's why I haven't done it until then.

I actually came to this realization about six weeks ago, about the last time I posted on this blog. I was in the middle of a total nervous breakdown, depressed to the point of feeling like the whole world would be better off without me. It wasn't my normal depression, there was something much worse -- an edge to it. It was distinctly hormonal. I googled prometrium and found it can have a profound effect on those with depression. And in that moment? I knew I had to be done.

It isn't just that one medication had a bad side effect. It was the culmination of all the things I have done in the past five years in the attempt to get that double line on a pregnancy test. It was the multiple ways I have beaten the shit out of myself -- physically and emotionally -- to achieve this goal. It was the fact that for half a decade I have focused on little but this, and the realization that I could be using that energy to another end.

I am not saying that this is an "all at once" change in attitude. To be honest, I am still ambivalent. I still have all the different tests in my cabinet, and I can't help but notice the consistency of certain bodily fluids. There is still that voice in my head saying "well, maybe if you..." but it slowly be drowned out by the bigger voice saying "this can be the end, and you will be okay."

I am sure there are some of you saying "well, she has a baby, so it's easier for her." It may be, because I've never been in anyone else's shoes. I don't know how hard it has been for them, only how hard it has been for me. And it has been hard. My body has failed me at something it was supposed to do; something that would affirm me as a woman; something that so many other people so maddeningly easily can do. It makes me angry, and sad, and makes me doubt there is a God.

That's why it's time for me to move on.

It's time for me to focus on the positive -- the "cans" instead of the "cannots."

If you want, I can continue sharing my journey here -- moving beyond a different kind of "Tired and Stuck."

I think it will be a good one.