My 'gift'

Every year for Christmas, baby Jesus gives me my period. I am sure you will think I am exaggerating or simply lying, but the truth is: I start my period on Christmas Day, every year. Every. Single. Year.

And lest ye think this year was any exception, I assure you it was not.

After the miscarriage, I really thought that the next time I got pregnant I would just know it. But what's ended up happening is I have known that I was pregnant for the last two months in a row, only to discover, I don't actually know jack.

Well, what I know now is PMS symptoms and pregnancy symptoms are absolutely identical. I even get nauseated during PMS. It's really the best.

My sister had her baby about two weeks ago now. As I hold little Ava and feel unequivocal love and tenderness toward her, I can't help but think some kind of magic baby dust has to be floating in the air and if I just hang around her long enough, I'll get to have my own kid.

A more likely story is I'll have to break out my trusty Machine -- the most expensive ovulation predictor known to man -- and give that sucker a whirl again. It makes baby-making really romantic. In Opposite Land.

A friend remarked last night on the dwindling of entries here on Tired & Stuck, and I could only say:  I think the three of us are getting tired of saying the same thing over and over again. This is not one of those things that gets easier as time passes, unfortunately. It's harder to think about every month. It's faith-breaking and has that deep-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach feeling you get when something is unjust; not right; unfair; straight-up wrong -- and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it.

True: there are worse tragedies in the world. We know it, and we have perspective. But when your heart wants something so bad -- your brain can't reason it away. 

Ragey

Ragey is a word I learned from Erin. I’m not sure if it has been officially added to Webster’s, but my personal definition is angry + crazy. To me, ragey is more than being mad. It’s being mad + slightly to severely unhinged. Thank God this is not how I feel all the time. It’s not even how I feel most of the time. But it is how I have been feeling for a couple of weeks.

I’m pretty pissed off, and I can’t fully explain why. Everything feels like an injustice. Everything feels like a struggle. Libby’s experience with her doctor makes me want to scream. Erin’s miscarriage makes me want to cry. Circumstances in my own life (related and unrelated to fertility) make me want to scream and cry.

The other week I had a full-blown, can’t-stop-crying, teenage-like breakdown in front of my dad. It was ugly and embarrassing, and he asked me twice if I was on my “monthlies.”

I have a friend whose primary symptom of pregnancy is emotional outburst, so after spending a day in tears, I took a pregnancy test. Negative. Since I still felt ragey a week later, I took another test. I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say I could hear the test scream NEGATIVE. It was so rude I felt like slapping it across its face.  To my credit, I managed to refrain from brawling with a pee stick and just threw the stupid thing in the trash. Two days later, I started my period.

One of the most annoying aspects of trying to conceive is how similar the symptoms are for PMS and early pregnancy.

• Moodiness
• Tender, swollen breasts
• Fatigue
• Backaches
• Headaches
• Acne
• Weight gain

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. I love being a girl, but I look at this list and shake my head in disbelief. How do we manage to put up with all this B.S. every month? It’s unbelievable.

I’ve decided I want a surprise pregnancy. I want to be so detached from my monthly cycle and my body that I don’t even notice I’m pregnant. You know, like those women who go to the bathroom at a rest stop and practically deliver a baby in the toilet. It doesn’t matter that they’ve never taken a prenatal in their life and that they’ve drank alcohol and caffeine and maybe even smoked every day of the last 10 months. Their baby is perfectly healthy and they didn’t even know it was growing inside of them.

Of course, I’m not serious. If that ever happened, I’d get ragey over the fact I missed the joys of pregnancy.  

BlogHer and Babies

If you haven’t read Erin’s post about BlogHer, you should start there. I didn’t have any expectations for the weekend, but I was definitely surprised by the number of moms, babies and pregnant ladies everywhere I looked.

It’s not like I attended any sessions specific to motherhood, but fertility is kind of everywhere. Early on I realized I needed to clarify by saying I contribute to a blog about infertility instead of fertility because that was only confusing people and making them think I knew the secret to getting knocked up.

Even the very generous sponsors were definitely targeting the mom crowd. Erin and I avoided sections of the Expo Hall for this reason. (Although we each snagged a sample of Zarbee’s all-natural nighttime cough and sleep drink for kids, just in case we needed to knock ourselves out. But sheer fatigue did the trick.)

It didn’t help that we both failed a pregnancy test the morning we left and that we were extra sensitive due to PMS. We should come with a warning: “Of Child-Bearing Age But Not Ability.” By Thursday night, I felt a little beat up. I called John just to say, “Today was hard.”

Luckily, it got easier. Unlike in real life, it was super normal to tell complete strangers I co-write a blog about trying to get pregnant. That’s the freedom of being with 3,600 bloggers. Everyone is writing about their passion --- life, love, kids, food, faith, fashion. I met a woman who writes about worms. In our case, it’s the fertility journey. And the more I talked about Tired & Stuck, the more comfortable I felt talking about Tired & Stuck.

By the time Erin pointed out Giuliana Rancic to me, I was even ready to tell her about our blog. I’m not familiar with her show, but I heard her on a radio interview awhile back and I’ve heard about her from several friends. I told her Erin wanted to meet her but was afraid she would cry. I thanked her for bringing light to the struggle of infertility, and we talked for a couple minutes about how it’s sometimes hard for people to relate. Then I took a really awkward photo with her. As I walked away, one of the women from the Tropicana booth asked for my card. She didn’t tell me her story, but she seemed happy to know she wasn’t alone.

Later that day, as I continued to discuss infertility with strangers, one woman told me how she and her husband adopted after she was diagnosed with low progesterone and clomid failed. Another woman told me how she miscarried her first child and then fired her doctor for being as sensitive as jagged stone. 

The whole experience reminded me how important it is to tell our stories honestly and to listen to others when they tell theirs.