state of the, er, cervical nation

Never thought I’d be putting this kind of info out to the entire world, but weird things happen when you are 38 weeks pregnant. According to my doctor, I am 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced. But I am not in labour. I learned that I need to include that with the previous info, cause I think I got my doula all excited, and my mother called while I was out at acupuncture, all in a tizzy. I pretty much need to make “I am not in labour” the subject line of all emails from here on out, and use it as my standard greeting when making a phone call. So while there is significant progress towards us meeting the wee bit, and it could happen any time now, it is not happening right this minute.

However, I am very, very excited. And a bit nervous and freaked out, because I don’t feel ready. My house is not the spotless shining bastion of coziness that I want it to be when I come home with a floppy newborn. You can bet that I will be working on that tomorrow, and for however many days we have left before we get to meet this little human. And also – can one ever be completely ready for a change this big? I sort of doubt it. It’s just too big for my hormone-drunk brain to fathom.

where has the time gone?

Napping, cooking, swimming, cleaning, preparing, processing, erranding, meeting with my doula, spending time with Manny. And napping.

Dear me, I think this may be a record for time between posts. So much for thinking that once I was off work, I would write more. Partly I’ve been cocooning myself as much as possible, preparing the space in my heart for what is about to happen to my life, to our life. It has taken all this time to bring some of the heavier stuff to light. I tend to work that way – the sign of a true introvert, I think – in that I just need a lot of time alone doing what feels right in the moment, not pushing anything too hard, not journalling, or thinking, or analyzing, but instead just being. And then insight will come, and things will shake loose, and the way will open up.

And the insights have come, finally. For the entire pregnancy until this week, I wasn’t feeling anything about the donor issues except gratitude and happiness that we were finally getting our chance. But on some level, I think I was always waiting for things to flare up, knowing there were things that were not completely resolved or at least that there are parts of this journey we have yet to make our way through. More the latter, really – that this is going to be a lifelong journey for us as a family. Not to say that I think it’s going to be a problem or a struggle – because I really don’t believe that – but more that our having used donor sperm to create this baby is part of our story as a family now.

So this week I’ve done a little bit of opening up to what this means to me right now, and I guess what I’ve discovered is that I have some fears about how we will connect as a family of three. In my heart of hearts, I have a lot of faith that all will unfold beautifully and that we will figure it out together with ease and grace. But there are still questions there, some vulnerability, some fear. I don’t know if it’s the hormones or a sign of my tremendous spiritual growth (the hormones, almost certainly!) but for right now, once I was able to see all of this with some clarity and could find words to express all of it, I feel really at peace with the vulnerability. I don’t need to figure it all out now or have any more certainty that it will all work itself out.

I’ve also got some anxiety about how we will handle the secret/not-secret of this baby’s origins. Lots of people close to us know, but lots don’t. I’m not sure how long that will be sustainable, but at the same time, I’m quite sure that certain people will be better off not knowing and that Manny and I and the baby will be better off with them not knowing. It just feels weird to go into this time of excitement and anticipation and joy and openness and vulnerability without being completely honest. Because I am so explosively proud of us, of our decision, of how we have worked through it all so far, and most of all, of this new life who will be joining us soon. And a secret just doesn’t seem to fit with all that right now.

Within a few weeks, my mind will be otherwise occupied and fussing over these questions will be put aside for a while. Which is fine, because there is no rush to figure them out. It feels good to know that – that I don’t have to make peace with every single part of this process before we can move forward. I remember realizing that around the time we were making the decision to pursue DI, and it is good to remember it now.

How’s by all of you? Anything you’re feeling peaceful about at the moment?

new order

Well, internets, it seems things are finally starting to shake down in the mind of annacyclopedia. I’ve had a few realizations about why it’s been hard for me to write since getting knocked up, and I’m really hoping that this will help shake loose a flood or even a steady trickle of words from my brain.  I realized the other day that I was holding back from writing about the pregnancy partly because I don’t think it’s that interesting – I’m no different from any other pregnant woman out there who feels tired, nauseous, incredulous, freaked out, bloated, awe-struck, whatever. But also partly because I was having a blog-dentity crisis.

When I started blogging, I was desperate to find others whose stories were just like mine. I combed the blogrolls, searching for my own story told by someone else. The more similar, the better, I thought. And surprise, surprise – there weren’t very many. I found other DI blogs, which was so great, but nobody had gone through a failed vasectomy reversal and gone straight to DI. To this day I don’t think I’ve found anyone whose story matches mine on those points. But I don’t care anymore, because I very quickly realized that it truly doesn’t matter – that the sense of community and belonging I found here in the blogosphere has little, if anything, to do with how similar someone’s story is to mine. Instead, it’s about something way harder to describe – it’s the heart connections that happen the same way they happen in real life. Mysteriously, instinctively, spontaneously –  through the little jokes that I tell that someone actually gets, or the casual mention by a blogger I already read that they love a particular band, or share a particular interest of mine, or the way a woman I admire to the point of being intimidated gives me a shout-out or sends me a sweet, supportive email out of the blue.  The way some of you have taken the time to tell me that my words have made a difference for you, in some small way. The way the guts of our experience – spiritual, emotional, physical, political, intellectual – get shared either through brilliant, detailed exposition or revealing little aphoristic posts so crammed with truth they leave me breathless for minutes or hours or days. 

If all of this sounds incredibly self-centred, it is. For me, blogging has been about finding a place where I belong, where I can tell my own story and be heard and understood. I do it because it is about me.  And in some way, I think that’s true of all of us. At the very least, that’s what draws me in – the appeal of women all over the world, trying to understand themselves and their lives by writing their own stories and releasing them like a cage of doves. 

Somehow, getting knocked up and trying to write about it, I forgot all that. I got caught in the belief that my blog is for other people who might need it, and I feared hurting those women who were like me at the beginning – desperate for a mirror of their own experiences. I didn’t want to have the story someone needed to hear, only to have them show up on my blog and be faced with a post about about stretch marks and the alarming growth of my ass. I didn’t want to let that woman down.

How’s that for wanky and delusional and self-aggrandizing?

I’ve realized that my blog is for telling my story. Plain and simple. That my story now includes being pregnant and hopefully becoming a mother to a healthy and adorable baby. And while I don’t have an obligation to tell it, I do have a desire to tell it, as much for myself as for anyone else. My blog archives are some of the most precious things in my life – it is so powerful being able to look back at a record of who I have been, of what I’ve come through, of what has healed and what remains to be healed.

I realized, too, that while I don’t struggle with feelings of guilt about being pregnant, I was wrestling with some weird stuff about talking about being pregnant. I know that everyone who doesn’t get or stay pregnant easily has their moments of anger and sadness over others’ pregnancies; I’ve had plenty of such moments myself. For some reason, I was taking that on, and trying to protect those of you who are still waiting and trying and hoping. Again with the self-aggrandizing.  I finally remembered that even though I’ve had times when hearing someone else’s good news has been painful, there are lots of times when it’s brought me joy and hope, and that my reactions are largely random, i.e. that sometimes I’m able to be thrilled for a virtual stranger and yet am plunged into despair over my own sister’s pregnancy announcement. And also that all of you dear readers have free will and can click away anytime you want, with my blessing and support. 

So this post is to declare a new order here on my blog. That although I probably will never talk about pregnancy symptoms in great detail, I will no longer be holding back. I’m claiming this space as my own even though it always was. I just forgot. 

Blog-dentity crisis over.

shaken, then stirred

This is a story in two parts. The first part is the bad news. The second is the good news. So there is no need to hold your breath while reading the first part.

Thursday evening, we had a bit of scare. I was having a poop (my current obsession with apples is doing wonders for my digestion) and I looked down to see a drop of blood fall in the toilet. My mind froze on just one thought: “no, no, no no, NO!” There was some more blood when I wiped – not a lot, but it was bright red and terrifying. I made my way upstairs and told Manny, and somehow managed to have the presence of mind to call the health line nurse who, like all health line nurses, is an angel in disguise. As she listened to me and started to ask me questions, I could feel myself calming down. No cramping, swelling of feet, hands or face, dizziness, blurred vision, abdominal pain, fever. Nothing other than maybe 1 or 2 milliliters of blood, which by this point had stopped. She said I needed to see a doctor within 24 hours, and that if I felt I needed to go in right away, I should do that, but to watch myself carefully and if the bleeding got worse, or I was cramping or anything else, I should go to the ER immediately. I was surprisingly calm by this point; for whatever reason, I just felt like everything would be ok. The bleeding did not continue or resume, although there was a tiny bit of brown spotting through to the next morning. She also suggested I call the OB/GYN on call at the hospital, which I would never have thought of on my own, although it’s on the voice mail message of my clinic if you call them after hours, which I have inadvertently done at least a dozen times. So I did call, and spoke to the OB, who said I could come in and he could see me, but he wouldn’t be able to to an ultrasound until the morning, so it would probably be better just to come in first thing in the morning.

So that’s what we did. Manny and I were at emergency at 8 on Friday morning. After waiting for 2 hours, we finally got in for an ultrasound. My panic had returned pretty much as soon as we walked in to the hospital, and as we were waiting for the u/s, it was at its peak. For all my excitement to have my first scan on Monday, we were about to find out whether all was indeed well, and the circumstances were not at all as I had imagined. They called my name, and Manny and I went into the little room. The very nice tech told me to hop up on the table, and I had a weird moment of cognitive delay, cause I had the urge to take off my pants. I started to laugh and shared this with Manny, who laughed, and the tech, who looked at me a bit weird until I told her we had done fertility treatment to get pregnant and that I had done lots of follicle tracking scans. She tried to do it abdominally, but my bladder was completely empty, so she wound up having to ask me to remove my pants anyway. Ah, good old dildo cam – how I missed you! She had the screen angled towards her for about half a minute, but then she turned it around so we could see, saying that we didn’t have to be holding our breath.

I saw the heartbeat before she even pointed it out and I’ve never been happier or more relieved to see anything in my life. It was AMAZING! She then proceeded to give me a very thorough wanding, pointing out all sorts of things along the way – looking at both ovaries, my uterus, the baby’s arm and leg buds, the bones ossifying in its face, the developing brain. We got to see the baby moving around and gaze in wonder at the flickering heartbeat. She printed us out two pictures which I will try to scan and post a bit later. According to their calculations, I was 9w3d, and the baby was measuring 10w exactly, with a heartbeat of 176.

I then went out and waited some more – before they’d let me leave, I needed to see the OB on call. They did some blood work as I waited, but it was still nearly 3 hours between getting the u/s and seeing the doctor. However, the waiting was much easier knowing the baby was ok, and the OB was very nice. She explained that the scan showed I had a very small bleed under the placenta, and that while it could be risky if the bleed got bigger, it was not that  uncommon and would most likely resolve on its own. I was smiling to myself as I held back from saying, “Oh, a subchorionic hemorrhage, right, gotcha.” We bloggers are just so damned well-informed! She answered my questions and then told me that she was on call until 8 the next morning, so if anything else happened or I was concerned, I could call and speak to her directly. She, and everyone I dealt with in the hospital on Friday, was amazing, and I am so fortunate to have been so well cared for.

As we were seeing the baby, between little bouts of teariness from me, I was thinking about how this is my child, MY child, my CHILD. A child to whom I could one day relate this story about the first time we saw her. And how much joy we felt when we did.

I know we are a long way from holding this child in our arms, and I am not taking it for granted that we will. But the sense of connection I am starting to feel to this baby – it humbles me as it sweeps over me. I am grateful. I am in awe.

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in the spotlight

How do you know you’ve become a lazy blogger? When you miss your own blogoversary. It was on Valentine’s Day, and I had thought a lot about it before it came and then last Saturday I just completely blanked on it. The last year of blogging has been amazing, and I’m so grateful for all of you. I promise I’ll have a real kumbaya session on this sometime soon, really. But for the moment, it seems I’ve prefered to keep a low profile rather than face my glum mood over the state of my life at the moment. Nothing earth shattering by any stretch, but just the profound weariness of keeping body and soul together. And marriage and family and dog and work and support group and yoga and dancing and friendships.  Despite my best intentions, I’ve become sort of busy lately, and when I’m not busy, I’m exhausted from the emotional work of waiting and of life in general. 

I’ve said it before, and no doubt I’ll say it again. Being an adult kind of blows. 

I’ve sort of tipped over into the state of doing too much and not wanting to just be with myself and my true feelings. The quietness and the fuzzy brain I talked about in the last post seem to be precursors to depression and despair for me, and hopefully next time I’ll pay more attention to that. It’s just that it’s so nice to get a break from anxiety or worry or obsession that it’s hard to catch myself as I start slipping into the funk that inevitably follows those times where my brain is turned off.  And I’ve been so aware lately of how much my life has been taken over by my single mindedness – being unable to plan anything more than a month in advance, our finances, my ability to have a conversation.

In many ways, I’ve been feeling a lot like I did when I returned from Japan. Having lived overseas for three years, coming back was really hard. Much, much harder than leaving. Because when I first went to Japan, I expected to feel out of place – I knew who I was, more or less, but naturally it takes time to figure out how to fit in to a new workplace, new culture, new language. But I was bringing myself into that situation, offering myself to the experience, and extending myself compassion when I didn’t know what to do.  Returning was, in so many ways, the exact opposite. Here I was, in my hometown, surrounded by people I’d known for years, in familiar territory. The problem was that I didn’t know who I was anymore. I felt like who I thought I was had been eclipsed by my experience, by my story, by my circumstances.  I felt like I didn’t exist anymore. 

Lately, I feel like I don’t exist anymore. Like all I am is my desire to have a baby and the path I’ve chosen to try to make that happen. Like all I am is this cycle, and then the next one, and the next one. I feel like I’m in a spotlight, unable to see beyond the little puddle of light around me, consisting of acupuncture appointments and cycle days and morning temperatures and the creased foreheads of worried people around me, checking in to see that I’m ok. But beyond that it’s just darkness. Impenetrable and perplexing darkness. 

I don’t mean to say that I’m in the depths of despair. In some ways, that might be easier. Emotions come and go, I know that. But what about my life? What about me? Will I feel whole again?

quiet, love, and photos

Quiet. Things are quiet. Despite the raging hot flashes and debilitating constipation I seem to get from the Clomid, things are quiet. I seem to have hit the off switch on my brain, and I don’t know how to turn it back on. I was wondering today whether I have become completely numb or whether I’ve just reached a perfect state of calm. Probably the former, but I guess I’ll take that over angst. I could use a break from angst. 

I head out of town tomorrow to see my nephew. He’s turning 5 tomorrow and I am the proudest Tantie ever. It seems like just yesterday I was watching him be born. And now he is a beautiful boy who loves me so much and sends me emails that he types himself (copying what his mom has written down, but still it’s pretty damn clever if you ask me.) Even though it sometimes hurts to realize how much time has passed and I still don’t have my own child, the love I have for him and for my other nephews does heal that longing to some extent. Truthfully, it heals and makes the longing even harder to bear, all at the same time. That love still heals, though. 

Had my scan today and will be doing our 6th IUI on Sunday. I’m glad they’re giving me an extra day – my follicle today was 19.2mm and my lining was 5.7mm, almost exactly the same as last month, but for whatever reason they told me to hold off on the trigger until tomorrow. My acupuncturist seems to think this is a good idea, too, and I was prepared to go in, guns blazing, today to advocate for this, and I did speak up for myself to suggest it, but I let them think it was all their idea. Ha. 

Think warm and fertile thoughts for me, dear internets. Hopefully I’ll find my brain’s switch this weekend and have something to write for you soon.  Here are some pictures to occupy you in the meantime – the first is of my backyard after a bunch of snow a few weeks ago, and the second is my new haircut. Which haircut I can honestly say that I LUUUUUUUUUUURRRRVE.  

losing control

I tried yesterday to come up with some clever way of saying this, but with no success. Another negative cycle. I’m sad, disappointed, frustrated, but I’m also ok.

I keep getting signs from the universe that I need to work on acceptance. I won’t go into all my woo-woo stuff right now, but the signs have been coming from many directions. Most recently this brilliant post from Deathstar, and then the comment from Eden on my last post: “It can be good, to have no skin. Then you can really see who you are.” So many tears of recognition, and then tears of gratitude for both of them and for all my sisters out there who help me see myself and my own path so much more clearly and with more compassion.

And tears also as the knowledge seeps into my bones, just a little bit more, that I’m not in control. That I cannot earn a child, no matter what I do. And it’s not that my efforts to care for my heart and my body don’t matter. It’s just that I’m not in control.

It hurts, but in the clear, fresh way it hurts to take a breath of air just newly arrived from the Arctic. Because it is the truth.  Because things are as they are, and all I can do is open my heart.

shooting up at work

Why yes, I did. I even did it in my belly instead of my thigh, just for a change. Now it’s itchy and I’m trying not to scratch. Good times. 

Had my scan this morning to find that despite my feeling crampy and bloated on the right side especially, my trusty left ovary has delivered the winner once again. A very tender 19.5 mm follicle – I was really wincing during the probulation this morning. My right side had 2 smaller ones (didn’t ask for the numbers), and my lining is at a fairly skinny 5.7, but since I’m not having my dIUI until tomorrow afternoon, they say not to worry about it as it will likely grow.  I’m not going to stress too much since there’s nothing I can do beyond whispering tender encouragement to my endometrium. Not to say I won’t do that, too, but I’m trying lately to not get caught up in the numbers. Knowing them just makes me crazy, and even though I’m compelled to ask for them anyway, I am clinging to the thought that lots of people get pregnant with a skinny lining, or a moderate follicle, or whatever, and nobody ever knows cause it happens mysteriously and in secret and spontaneously, without everybody and their dog peering in to get a look.  So there, numbers and purveyors of numbers. 

Manny has to be away for work tomorrow, so he won’t be with me for the IUI. I’m trying to think about who to ask to come with me – probably someone from my women’s group who knows the score. It’ll be weird not having Manny there, but my superstitious side is looking for things that will be different, and so I’m wondering if this will be what changes our luck so far. Also, we’re using a brand new donor with a proven track record of reported pregnancies, which our last donor didn’t have. I’m feeling very good and hopeful about it all. It was fun all over again picking the new donor – it’s sort of weird that it’s so much fun, but it is. Mostly we just laugh at the ones we would never pick, and the randomness of some of the things people include in their profiles. It went quicker this time – I guess we’re both more in tune with what we’re looking for, and more trusting of our instincts. And I’m also trusting Manny more that he’s not just doing what I want to keep me happy – that he’s expressing his own opinions, too. Which is a huge fucking relief, let me tell you. The power struggles over “Are you doing this because this is what you want or because you think it’s what I want?”  and “Why don’t you believe me when I say this is what I want?” and the subsequent hair-pulling-out-ing by yours truly and the “Well, if you had ever once disagreed with me about anything I might have a fucking half a clue that you are capable of standing up for your own desires, but since you never have, I’m constantly wondering whether I’m railroading you into a whole lot of immense life decisions” were exhausting. Really exhausting. Glad we seem to be past that for the moment. 

So tomorrow at 3:30 I will be being sperminated for hopefully the last time in a long while. Wish me luck, internets.

riding the clomid pony

Yes, I am. Today is day 6 of my cycle and day 5 on the clomid. For some reason my doctor does days 2-6 instead of 5-9 which seems to be the norm. Whatever. All I know is that I woke up twice in the night having hot flashes and have been getting them pretty regularly during the day. And I have the attention span of a gnat and a headache. Good thing my trusty pony knows the way through all these trials and tribulations. I’m really just along for the ride. 

I’m not hallucinating the whole pony thing, but it is kind of how Clomid seems to me, plodding along, enough side effects to know that something is happening, but it’s not like I’m gallopping along some windswept clifftop. Twice a day I take a little white pill with some hope that it is doing something, like performing a ritual I’ve not yet sorted out whether I believe in or not. I’ve developped a weird tic of needing to make sure it’s actually in my mouth before I take a sip of water, so I’ve got all these mental images now of my tongue with a white dot on it, reflected back at me in the glass fronts of my kitchen cupboards. 

For some reason, I’m feeling optimistic about this whole 2009 thing. I’ve never felt relieved to say goodbye to a year and start a new one. I’m taking that as a sign that good things are in store, for me and for all of us.