September 29, 2006
Tomorrow we camp, therefore tonight I write about adoption
And I’m going to write about a subject that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone while I was trying to get my head around it, as I had to be sure that it was really what I was comfortable doing. I told J about a week ago and he was utterly surprised. I don’t think I’ve managed to surprise him like that…well, maybe ever.
It all boils down to this: realistically, I’m probably not going to get pregnant again. I think I can accept that. I’m not at the point of acceptance quite yet, but if I don’t get pregnant, it won’t destroy me like it once would have. So we’ll most likely be adopting all of the rest of our children. And since I won’t be ready to pursue adoption until probably the spring (at least to get a dossier together), we’re looking at next winter or later for bringing home our next child. P will be at least 4 when he becomes a big brother.
I know some people want a big age difference between their kids, saying it helps minimize sibling rivalry and ensures that they only have one child in diapers at a time. Not us. J and I wanted our children closer together. We’d planned (hahaha, oh, that was funny) for 2-3 years apart. We were even OK with closer than 2 years, which is why we started TTC again when P was only 11 months old.
I don’t want P to be 4 years older than his next-youngest sibling. So we’ve decided that, if I don’t get pregnant, we’ll be adopting a toddler first, hopefully somewhere in the 18 months to 3 years old range.
I had to come to this decision on my own. J has been all for adopting toddlers the whole time, while I’ve been the one pushing for an infant. I was afraid that if I told him what I was considering, I might someday feel like I’d been pushed into it when it wasn’t what I really want to do. But, surprise surprise, I do. I wasn’t sure whether it was the right decision when it first came to me, but now it feels like it’s the only decision. It’s more important to me to have our children be closer in age than to have another baby right away. Since we’ll adopt a sibling pair after that, I’ll request that at least one be an infant (we’d be open to twin babies). We might have to wait longer with such a specific request, but I don’t know.
I can’t deny that part of me is sad that I will have missed so much of our children’s lives when they come to us as todders. That’s a hard thing to accept. But I’ll have many more years with them than I had without them.
I have gone invisible
I hadn’t had a post that got no comments at all in ages. Alas.
So while I’m on the subject of invisibility, and because I have nothing fertility-related about which to write, I’m taking a page from Menita’s book and writing about banned books. I am a librarian’s daughter, I love books–I love reading them, I love looking through them, I love the smell of a bookstore.
I was absolutely shocked to see some of the books that are on the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 list. Here are some of the ones that I’ve read that I don’t understand the challenges to. Others I’ve read and can kind of see why they’re challenged, though I don’t think it’s appropriate to ban books. There are bunches that I haven’t read and I think I’m going to use this list as a jumping off point for some new reading material.
1. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling–come on, if a child doesn’t realize that this is a made-up series with made-up characters doing made-up things, then his/her parents shouldn’t be letting them read it because they’re not old or mature enough. Otherwise, it’s just an extremely well-written and imaginative series of books.
2. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak–I’ve heard this is because there’s a picture of a little boy running around naked (I haven’t read it since I was a child myself). What can I say but ARGH! It’s a children’s book. Children are often naked, at least P is. If they’re taught that they can’t be naked, then they learn to be ashamed of their bodies. I’d rather my child know that bodies are all different than to learn that they should never, ever look at them. Sure, they learn that they have to wear clothes and that’s responsible behavior. I don’t think this children’s book is going to turn little kids into depraved people.
3. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry–maybe I’m forgetting a lot, but I loved this series as a girl. I can’t imagine what would be controversial about it.
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee–yes, heaven forbid that young adults (I think I read this for the first time in ninth grade, around 12 or 13 maybe? I reread it last year) learn about the way things used to be with racism and intolerance, and standing up for what you believe in. I’d much rather raise a naive pushover who doesn’t learn that sometimes you have to go against popular opinion to do what’s right.
5. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein–we had this one in print and on cassette when I was little. We’d listen to it on car trips. It’s already sitting on P’s bookshelf for when he’s a little older. I’m confused as to why this one’s on there. Must go reread it so that I can roll my eyes in knowledge rather than in confusion.
6. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney–I read this one when I was about 10 or so. I can’t figure out the controversy.
7. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell–give me a freakin’ break. It’s a fiction story. A silly story about kids who bet each other that they can’t eat a certain number of worms in a certain amount of time. I can’t imagine that a child with responsible parents would suddenly decide to go out and eat some worms of his/her own.
8. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford–Seriously? Why would anyone want to challenge Where’s Waldo? Am I missing some hidden sexual message? If you happen to know why, please tell me because I really am totally clueless on why this is on the list of challenged books.
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley–I don’t think that an 8-year old should be reading it, certainly, but I think it’s really an important book for older kids to read (another 9th grade book for me). I think it’s especially important, with all the advances being made in genetics these days, to be able to talk about eugenics and what kind of society that would create. And my Ph.D. research is in genetics and gene therapy, so I’m not just randomly concerned about these things.
10. Blubber by Judy Blume–a book in which the main character is a bully and tries to fit in with a snobby clique, and learns that there are some serious consequences to those actions. Um, why shouldn’t kids be learning that? Why shouldn’t kids read a book in which the child who is bullied turns out to be one of the nicest characters, and the main character learns the truth and becomes friends with her? Why shouldn’t they learn that going on appearances is one of the worst ways to pick your friends? I would think this would be a great book for parents and kids to read together, and to talk about the issues that might be hard to talk about otherwise.
I think that if parents are challenging these books because they’re afraid of what their kids might read, then they’re not taking enough responsibility of their own. Some of them are too much for a young child to read, and some are too much for an older child to read on their own. That doesn’t mean you don’t let them read them, it means you read it with them and talk about it. I don’t plan on banning P from reading anything. I may occasionally ask him to wait until he’s a little older, and there will certainly be some books about which we will sit down and talk while he’s reading them, but I can’t imagine stopping him from reading something. I want my child to question things. I want him to be informed and educated.
I just don’t think any good comes from banning books, other than an unenlightened society of sheep who do nothing but follow the orders of someone in a position of higher power.
September 28, 2006
Follicular musings and dinner with a p*rn star
I had trouble figuring out two topics that were LESS related than the two about which I’m writing today. On the u/s front, I told them when I went in that I thought I was pretty far away from ovulation, probably at least 5 or more days. Oddly enough, when they did the u/s, they found that my lining is consistent with me being at least 4 or 5 days away from ovulating. And even more so, my biggest follicle is one on the right side measuring 12mm. There was an 11 on the left and a couple of 10s sprinkled between the two but it was pathetic. These findings prompted Dr. Happy to say "I guess you know your own body–you might be 6 or 7 days or more away from ovulating!"
I could hear the crickets chirping when she said that. Somehow even an "I told you so" didn’t seem very satisfactory anymore.
Actually, I really liked that Dr. Happy asked when I’d ovulated last cycle and when Nurse L told her that it was d23, she responded, "Why are we seeing [me] so soon?" She did reassure me that an IUI done after d20 wasn’t a problem, that P is proof of that, and that some women just take longer to respond than others. If my monitor’s not reading at least high within the next 6 days, I’m to get another u/s, but otherwise, she said to just call when I get the peak reading. It’ll probably start giving a high in the next couple of days, so I’m not worried. I didn’t ask about what we’ll do about the Femara dose next cycle if this one doesn’t work, but I will when I have the IUI. At least I won’t have to deal with the dilemma of ovulating on Yom Kippur, as that’s only 4 days away.
Onto my other topic! J has a client who is a part-owner in a club downtown–he actually shares office space with this client, so they’re friends as well. This weekend the club has Jenna J@mison coming for some reason. There’s a dinner with her ahead of time and two of the people at the head table backed out, so J’s client asked if he and I wanted to go. We have plans to go camping instead (a nice and wholesome family activity, thank you very much), so we won’t be going. But I was a bit torn…I mean, how many chances am I going to have to meet a major p*rn star?
If we hadn’t had plans already, I probably would have said OK because it would have been a different experience. And how many people can say they’ve done that? (Of course, it’s not really something I’d admit to my colleagues, either.) Then again, part of me wanted to say OK because people think I’m a bit of a prude (if only they knew…why, just this morning, I took off my pants and let a woman I’ve only met a couple of times wand me! Nothing fazes me anymore.) and I sometimes like to shock people by doing unexpected things upon occasion.
What would you have done in that case?
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Oh, quick update–J’s not going to sue my colleagues husband! He found a way around it that will probably lead to the guy’s client suing him, but J won’t be doing it directly. All is OK for now, which is good because I really like her and our cubes are next to each other.
September 27, 2006
6 down, 8 to go
(Note: this may be the most boring blog post I’ve ever written. As I’m not naturally amusing or witty like a lot of you, that’s pretty bad. I’ll understand completely if no one comments. I think I even bored myself.)
I’m counting down the number of Wednesdays in the semester. My Wednesdays are hell. By the time I leave campus on Wednesday night, I have worked 32 or more hours already. 26 of those are evenly split between my Mondays and Wednesdays. On those days, I’m here from 9 a.m. until my last class ends at 9:45 p.m., and that’s if I don’t have any students with questions after class. Generally, it’s 10 or later before I finally get to my car.
No wonder I haven’t exercised in weeks–the idea of getting up extra early on Mondays and Wednesdays to go for a walk/jog when I’m going to be on my feet nearly all day is appalling. And I just can’t drag myself out of bed early enough on Tuesdays and Thursdays to go out before work because I’m so exhausted from the day before. I have been doing a yoga class on Tuesdays and Thursdays at campus, which has been great. So naturally, they’re switching that to new times/days in two weeks and I won’t be able to go any more.
The lack of exercise combined with the diet that I’ve been eating lately (of cookies, chips, and candy) isn’t exactly helping me keep off the 5 pounds I lost while I was exercising. I literally walk into the house on these days, put away my keys and lunch bag, kiss J hello, and go to bed. Not exactly conducive to doing anything physically active. I try to convince myself that being on my feet teaching all day is enough exercise, but the scale is determined to prove me wrong. Damn you, scale!
Tomorrow I have to get up early–u/s is scheduled for 8:30. I’m still getting a low reading on my monitor. I’m not feeling particularly fertile right now. At least, I don’t think I am…but then again, how would I really know what "fertile" feels like? In any event, my ovaries aren’t even really twinging yet, so I don’t think that the u/s tomorrow’s going to show much in the way of promising follicles developing in there. But I will let you all know once I do.
September 26, 2006
And so we wait…
Low reading again this morning. Reset the alarm and slept until 7:30 because I no longer had to fight traffic for 45 minutes to get to the clinic by 8 a.m. for my u/s. Dropped the dogs off at the vet for dental cleanings. Called Nurse L and left her a message saying that I’d skipped my u/s because my monitor was still reading low, and I’d like to reschedule it for Thursday or Friday. Ate a lot of Munckins for breakfast. The only one I regret was the last one…I feel sick now.
I haven’t given up on this cycle yet. If my wanding doesn’t look good, I will cancel the IUI. I’m already going to give my body another $400 chance with the u/s, I’m not going to spend another $300 beyond that for an IUI past d20. And since Tuesday is d20, and Monday is Yom Kippur (can’t do an IUI that day), there’s not a whole lot of time left for it to figure things out.
I’m not sure why I have this hatred of ovulating past d20. P was a d33 conception, albeit without meds (other than the Metformin) or procedures. I guess I just figure that fertility drugs should be doing something for my body that it’s not doing on its own.
September 25, 2006
I should not be allowed to grocery shop
while on fertility drugs. I usually make up a list of meals for the week, then a list of the ingredients I need to make them before I go shopping. That way I don’t have to worry about "What are we having for dinner?" or whether we have the ingredients when I get home. I plan easy things for J to make for himself and P on Mondays and Wednesdays when I’m teaching, and more complicated things for when I’m home to cook.
I love to cook, so I try to make 2 new recipes most weeks. And I try to make vegetarian dinners twice a week (mostly for variety’s sake). All of this takes quite a bit of planning. When I don’t do it all ahead of time, I spend twice as much on groceries because I impulse shop. Or we eat out a lot, which the ol’ budget’s not too fond of us doing.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do it last weekend. And I’m on fertility drugs–it was like that movie "The Perfect Storm". The following is a list of things I bought last week while impulse shopping:
1. Halloween candy. Three bags. No one who buys Halloween candy in September still has it by October 31.
2. M&M cookies.
3. Eclairs.
4. Whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and maraschino cherries. I was unaware that J finished off the ice cream before I bought them, so now I will also have to buy more ice cream.
5. Lest you think that I was only craving sweets, I also bought tortilla chips and salsa.
6. And popcorn.
I haven’t consumed much of it, but it sits there taunting me. I will soon have to eat it just to avoid the snickers that arise from the bag of Halloween candy as I walk by (get it–Snickers? Ah, I’m so funny.) The biggest problem is that I didn’t make up my list or grocery shop this weekend either since it was Rosh Hashanah.
I also bought some nice soft cottage cheese, yogurt, and bananas, which is good because my teeth may rot out before I ovulate.
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I’m supposed to have my mid-cycle u/s tomorrow morning but as of today, d12, I’m still getting a low reading on my monitor. If it’s still low when I check it in the morning, I’ll almost definitely be cancelling the u/s and IUI for this cycle. A part of me is perverse and wants to go in and let them wand me, just so that I can say, "See? No good follicles! I told you this dose wasn’t strong enough! Stress causing the d23 ovulation last cycle, my ass…" The more rational part of me says that an "I told you so" isn’t worth $400. Normally I’d say that the rational part would win out (I’m a scientist, after all–we die when things aren’t rational), but given the effect of the Femara on my mind this cycle, I can’t guarantee it.
September 22, 2006
Jumbled up inside
I have so many thoughts jumbled up inside of me regarding infertility. I’ve known for almost 5 years that I am infertile. I’ve been amazingly lucky in that I was able to bear a child. When I got pregnant with P, I convinced myself that it would be easy the second time around because we’d figured out what was wrong. It seemed to me that I would be easily able to move past the infertility because of that. Sure, it was tough during the 10 cycles in 16 months we were trying, 3 of them on Clomid, but I was pregnant and that pain would be forgotten sooner or later.
At first, I was arrogantly confident (dare I say that I might have been in denial?) about my pregnancy. Because of the spotting and cramping, I was terrified that I might miscarry—but at the same time, I never really thought that would happen. I acted pregnant. When my doctor told me that I could wean myself from the Metformin at the end of my first trimester, I did it and tried to tell myself that I wasn’t afraid of what might happen. I bought my first maternity clothes around 14 weeks pregnant (two shirts, one light blue and one light green). I felt P move at 14 ½ weeks. I had my first Braxton-Hicks contraction at 15 ½ weeks, 2 weeks after going off Metformin, and then my arrogance collapsed. I spent a lot of time on the phone with my OB’s nurse-on-call, trying to convince her that telling me to drink something and lay down on my left side wasn’t helping me relax when I was having some contractions every morning and evening. I was grateful as could be that P was an extremely active baby—it was rare that I ever went more than 20 minutes without feeling him move, and I could usually get him to move if I wanted him to.
Like I said, my arrogance collapsed. I was fearful and superstitious. I ordered maternity clothes online so that I wouldn’t have to go into a maternity store. The first time J and I went to B*abies R Us, when I was about 22 weeks pregnant, we walked out about 5 minutes later. We couldn’t handle it. I finally registered with the help of two girlfriends when I was about 25 weeks pregnant because my aunt was hosting a baby shower for me at 28 weeks pregnant. If I hadn’t had to register, I don’t know when I would have done it.
And even though I was doing the pregnancy things—registering, wearing maternity clothes, taking Bradley classes, even the dreaded rubbing-the-belly—I never really believed that I’d be coming home with a live baby at the end of it. I thought my plane would crash going to or from NY for the shower and that would be the end. I thought I’d wake up and have dreamed the whole thing. I have a very good imagination and often use it to picture situations to help myself adjust to them but, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t picture myself having a take-home baby. Even when it happened, it took weeks to accept that it had, that I’d had a child. For weeks, I kept looking at P and then saying, "I think we’ll keep him." It wasn’t until J said, "Erin, we do get to keep him. You can stop saying that," that I realized I was trying to get my head around the whole thing.
Though we conquered infertility that time, it has never left me. I still check on P’s breathing a couple of times a night, because I don’t feel worthy of having been given this dream-come-true and it will be taken away. After all, I’m broken. In an evolutionary sense, I’m defying natural selection—my genes shouldn’t have been passed on. But at the same time, how can I say that without thinking that P should never have existed? And maybe the universe is going to try to reestablish that status by taking him away.
As much as I desperately want another child, I worry about it. If we have a girl, there’s a strong possibility that she’ll have PCOS and I’d be consigning to her these same experiences when she wants to have children. Now that I know my uterus is smaller than normal, I worry about the physical aspects of another pregnancy. My RE said that if they’d realized it the first time around, they would have worried a lot about me getting pregnant. I worry that my body said, "6 pounds 11 ounces is our max—time to eject the kid!" and that’s why P was born at 37w5d. He was already barely past preemie designation. Subsequent children tend to be bigger, which means that the baby would hit the same weight a week or two earlier and truly be a preemie. It’s more likely that I’ll have a bigger baby if I develop GD next time around, which I avoided the first time. Or maybe I won’t go into labor at the right time and my uterus will rupture.
Infertility has left me cynical, has left me with a complete inability to trust my body to do the right thing, and has scarred me where no one will ever see it.
Despite all of this, I think I’ve been making steps forward. I’ll never be over it but I think I’m making some more progress in moving past it. I’m more comfortable revealing my infertility to people, and talking about how that’s affected us. It’s been healing in its own way. I’ve seen a lot of pregnant women and that’s not bothering me much. My first response to pregnancy announcements lately hasn’t been as jealous as normal.
I used to believe that I’d never move past it, and that scared me to death. I couldn’t imagine living the rest of my life embittered by my infertility. These days, I’m becoming more and more sure that I’ll eventually make my peace with it. I think that’s what sustains me in what are likely to be our last few cycles of TTC.
September 19, 2006
Consumerism
We’ve officially become yuppies. We already were yuppies–a lawyer and a college professor, a small child, two dogs, a picket fence (NOT white–I do draw the line somewhere), a S@turn and an SUV. We do lack the massive amounts of credit card debt of most yuppies but then again, we haven’t done much in the way of IF treatments yet. And we do have the student loan debt to go along with our degrees.
The S@turn’s been in pretty lousy shape. More things have gone wrong with it since that last post, such as one of the windows constantly coming down, a coolant warning light that’s constantly on despite three attempts at fixing it, and several other problems. Plus it now has over 103K miles on it. We’ve driven it hard in the 6 years since we bought it with only 11 miles on it, and it has now earned its retirement. But man, it was nice not having any car payments.
We replaced it today and, in the process, got locked permanently in Yuppiedom. J’s job is requiring more marketing than he’d previously been doing, so he needed a somewhat more impressive car. He’s been drooling over BM.Ws and Lex.uses (used, of course) but they were way out of our price range. Surprisingly, we found a car that we could both agree on within our price range. Here it is. Ours is racing green. And really fast. J let me drive it home–I’m pretty sure that’s because he’s going to drive it forever, but didn’t want me to complain that I’d never gotten to drive it. After our trade-in, which wasn’t much on the beaten-up S@turn, it wasn’t any more than we would have paid to buy another new S@turn (which is what I’d been angling to buy). So I didn’t have any true complaints. My big criteria were on the price, on the age (2003 or newer, and ours is a 2003), and on the miles (under 40K, and this only has 25K). J did his research and found them at the dealership, and they’re certified pre-owned and in pristine physical and mechanical condition. And J’s extra happy because they replaced the grille with the one that is new on the 2006’s, so it looks identical to a 2006. Do people really notice those things?
I feel so pretentious now. We own a freaking J@guar. That was always my dream car, the one I figured I’d buy as my midlife crisis car. Never in a million years did I think we’d buy one before either of us turned 30. All the ownership papers use British spelling…we keep snickering over it. We’re way too immature to own this car. At S@turn, they give you a new customer barbecue. The J@guar dealership gives you membership in a J@guar club and a webpage so that you can post pictures of your car and keep maintenance records up to date. It’s ridiculous. Who posts pictures of their car? I’m tempted to post pictures of ours with P’s carseat in the back…it just looks weird.
But damn, it is a beautiful car.
September 16, 2006
Femara flashes
As of my Friday check, the ol’ uterus is the same as usual–not pregnant, thinning lining due to copious bleeding, and all ready for some Femara! Today was cd3 and I took my first dose of Femara, and have already had my first hot flash. Despite the fact that I’d asked Nurse L if we would be going up in dose this cycle (since I ovulated on cd23 last cycle), I am on the same 2.5 mg dose. I’m not too happy about this. Despite this, we will proceed with an IUI this cycle. My concern now is that I’ll ovulate on Yom Kippur (cd19), because I won’t do an IUI that day.
I was also somewhat dismayed about the fact that Nurse L seems to have no idea of who I am. Now, I know they have a lot of clients. And I know that I’m not one of the biggest clients, seeing as we’re only on our second Femara cycle after 4 unsuccessful Clomid cycles and have only done 1 IUI previously. But I called twice last cycle about the fact that I was ovulating so late and was that normal on Femara. Yet when I asked if I could postpone my mid-cycle u/s to cd13 instead of cd12 (because cd12 is a Monday, which is my second busiest teaching day–I could have done it but it seemed silly not to push it back a day when I probably won’t ovulate for 10 days beyond that), she looked very concerned and said "Well, we don’t want to miss it…when did you ovulate with it last cycle?"
If I’m not at least getting a high reading on my monitor by cd13, I’m cancelling the mid-cycle u/s and probably the IUI. I refuse to spend $1500 and pin my hopes on a cycle if my medication isn’t helping the way it’s supposed to. I’m not going to do a cd23 IUI when even the clinic thinks that’s pretty late for ovulation. I would have pressed about the dose had I noticed it before I picked it up today.
In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a little ticked off at my clinic right now. I don’t think it’s asking a lot for them to spend 30 seconds reviewing what happened during my last cycle before charging $460 for an E2 and one-minute u/s. Am I being unreasonable? Does this happen to most people?
September 14, 2006
All right, we’ll call it a draw
My body and I, that is. I refuse to keep up trying to "one-up" each other with it. First, it gave me light spotting and chicken aversions, so I took the upper hand by refusing to get my hopes up.
It gave me my typical pre-cd1 migraine on my heaviest teaching day. But I had a test scheduled for that evening and didn’t have to walk and talk.
Then it refused to respond to my Dr. Pepper treatment for post-ovulatory migraines (which usually at least helps keep them at bay for a few hours). But I trumped it again by not crying and not crashing my car or running out of gas on the way home.
Then my period started, so it was up one. Yet I prevailed–I took my migraine medicine and fell asleep despite the Dr. Pepper 3 hours earlier.
And then it went up on me again by waking me up at 4 a.m. with cramps (fairly mild, which was a nice change) and not letting me go back to sleep. But I went up one again by getting some things done in those early hours, and feeling nicely energized after my yoga class.
Now I’m calling a truce. I’m not waving the white flag because I refuse to surrender, but I think a cease-fire needs to be called. I’m well aware that my body could be permanently up by just refusing to get pregnant every single cycle, but I’m hoping that we can reach some sort of agreement in which I allow it to do some of the things it wants (eat chocolate more frequently) and it allows me to do some of the things I want (get pregnant). Without all this petty "you started it" bickering that’s going on within me lately.
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Anyone who can identify the movie from which the title quote comes earns my undying admiration for appreciating fine film!
PCOS Baby 
