Green Eyed Monster

(I suppose it makes sense that jealousy is known as the green eyed monster, since I am also green eyed).

So, unless J. and/or A. is (are?) pregnant, there are now three of my tiny little social circle who are expecting. If I promise that I am genuinely happy for you, will you forgive me this post? Hope so (update: A’s 9 weeks along. Sigh).

Anyway, so, we aren’t Trying anymore. I have literally gone from being thisclose to in vitro to debating birth control (because if I know that it’s impossible I won’t spend half the month wondering if the stars might have aligned just right, just this once. I just want to remove the possibility).

I thought I was over this. Seriously. I’d started to believe that infertility was just a really cheap form of birth control. After our Xmas trip up north, I thought I was miraculously healed from my 5 year (!) exile in Babylust City. Of course I was wrong. It’s like the Visiting Santa Claus scene in A Christmas Story, when Santa tells Ralphie that he should ask for a football but Ralphie remembers at the last second “HELL NO, I don’t want a football!” (Not sure what the football equates to in my metaphor – third dog?)

So, I’m sad. And angry. But I am not angry at any of you (mostly just me). I am truly delighted for my friends and family; I wanted this so much for each of you. I just thought that sooner or later I’d get to go on the boat, too, instead of waving to you from the shore. 

I am, however, so very very pissed off at my husband. I am so mad at him. So very mad at him. Why does his unhappiness take precedence over my happiness? Things ended so badly with his son – well, not that they’ve ended, I guess bad can just continue ad infinitum – and he understandably doesn’t want to risk his heart again. I understand that. I was patient, though. I was good. I waited and waited. Waited for weight loss, waited for surgery, waited to pay down some debt, waited to try to conceive, tried to conceive, blah blah blah.

I want to stop hurting. I want someone to say, “oh, I’m so sorry. that is terrible” instead of saying “guess what? twins!” or “why no, we never plan to move out of your parents house, freeloading assholes that we are.” I want to stop crying about this. I want the world to stop passing me by, everyone in rows of three or more. 

I don’t fit in anywhere. “Childfree” suggests someone who doesn’t want kids. “TTC” is not true. “Stepparenting” isn’t really true since the boy is not part of my life. “Infertility issues” comes close but I’m not trying to fix them. I had a fix. He took that away from me. Where is the board on BabyCenter “Want to TTC, have male factor infertility, DH refuses to even try IVF because of supposed money issues but really because his heart is broken due to his stupid seeyounexttuesday exwife”? 

(WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE)

He stole two children from me, my stepson and the child I will never have.

If I could time travel I would go back 17 years and find husband and say “You are so close to free from her [whorewhorewhorewhore], just wank it a little longer and wait!”

Or, I’d go back to 1996 and say “Don’t do it, just don’t do it.” To myself

Or, I’d go back to 1999 and say “You are so close to free from him, just wait!” To myself, again.

What would have happened? Would I be in a good marriage? A bad marriage? Would I be a mother? Would he have found me in time?

 

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Moving on…

I can’t post about this in its entirety on the main blog, so I am going to post it here because I have got to get this out.

So…well…that’s it. I do not think we will be pursuing IVF after all. (Hope is in my head, whispering “But tell them that they can laugh at you someday when you do end up pregnant!” – I am going to smack that bitch up soon, I think).

Maybe I’ll end up surprised in the new year, but I think that I would be setting myself up for disappointment. I went into this certain it would happen immediately. I used to do the math – we would start trying in April and I’d be pregnant by June and…ugh, I can’t even do the math to figure out what my due date would be. The April and June referenced above are 2007, by the way.

And then Dr. P said “Clomid or bust.” (I voted Clomid, but it turns out bust was the better choice). And a year passed. And then I said, “Hey, let’s escalate!” and Dr. P said “All clear! And while you’re at it…here’s a specimen cup.” And then the bottom fell out of the market, so to speak (would it have been unclassy to compare it to September 10, 2001? Yes, I think so). And then we got Dr. K and he said, “HELL YEAH! For the low low price of $3000-ish, please!” and I said “Awesome!” and Dr. K’s nurse Jennie said “Here is a month of a birth control pills, call me when you get your period!” and I said “How about I move in and live right here so you’re the first to know?”

And I did all of this because I assumed that when you can get a man to take a specimen cup and TCOB…twice…that means he’s in. That when a man goes to a meet n’ greet and doesn’t faint at the five figure price for (uninsured) IVF that means he’s in. What you don’t expect is – after coming up with a plan for paying for IVF with the help of a generous donor – is him saying “Hmmm, guess we can’t afford to have a kid. Here’s our budget, you subtract your salary (the same salary I’m always saying ‘only goes to pay taxes’) and figure how to pay for a kid.”

And that is when I knew that I Had Lost. This wasn’t him saying “But what about the money?”; this was like when parents say “Maybe” because they want to pussy their way out of saying “Oh hell no.” Simply, he is unwilling. How long has he felt this way?

(Excuse me, but Hope is behind me, jumping up and down and screaming “YOU DON’T KNOW FOR SURE! YOU COULD END UP SURPRISED! MAYBE IN 2010 HE’LL FEEL DIFFERENTLY! MAYBE HE’S GOING TO GIVE YOU IVF FOR XMAS!!! DON’T STOP HOPING!”)

(Would someone please hand me noise canceling headphones or a shotgun or something? I need to shut up Hope).

(It’s like holding on to out of style clothes in the hopes that they’ll come back in style someday. Sure, bell bottoms will be cool again but do you want to spend 20 years with that baggage just in case??)

Fear not, dear reader(s). I’m not going anywhere – hell, we haven’t even touched the topic of “How do I feel about abandoning IVF?”

(Here’s a clue: I FEEL LIKE SHIT)

 

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Auntie

Goddammit, I’m going to be an aunt again. My brother and his wife are having a kid (their first). I knew I was playing with fire, waiting for them to eventually, accidentally, get pregnant. My request was simple: Me First.

 

UGH. They are idiots. They live with my parents. They have NO money. And now THEY get to have a kid???? This is so fucking unfair, I cannot even tell you. Husband and I have our problems, sure, but we solve them in OUR HOUSE with OUR MONEY. I feel so heartbroken. I don’t wish ill upon them, I just wish they would not have been so completely stupid. Okay, I kind of wish ill upon them, but not too ill. If something happened to my teeny tiny niece and/or nephew (OMG, twins???) I would never be able to forgive myself.

 

Why couldn’t it be me? Why do they get all the lucky breaks? My mom is so judgmental of Husband and I (she didn’t speak to me for an entire summer when I was in college) and acts like she could not care less whenever my brother and his dingbat wife do something worse. And UGH, I know they are going to give it some entirely stupid name, like Heaven spelled backward, Jazmine or some misspelled version of a decent name.

 

ARGH.

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QotD: Window or Aisle?

Window or aisle?

That depends on so many factors. How long is the flight? If I am in the window seat, do I know the person sitting next to me? Is this the last flight of the day for me or am I going to have to grab my carryon bag and my purse and heft it halfway through some massive airport to make it to a connecting flight? Do I have checked luggage that I will need to claim? Do I already have to go to the bathroom and didn’t have time because I had to break out in a dead run, like when Husband and I flew through Frankfurt, Germany on our way to Asia? (Seriously, I was pretty well convinced I would get left in Germany).

…

Actually, I know the answer to this one and it is true 100% of the time: I want an aisle seat as far forward in the plane as I can get. I’m 32 years old, so the allure of looking out the window is long gone. (Well, OK, it was pretty awesome for the last hour of the flight from Germany to Asia, although I had a huge migraine so I would rather have just died).

Ta-da.

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QotD: RIP John Hughes

What is your favorite John Hughes movie? Bonus points: Share your favorite quote from that movie.

 

OMG… my favorite was “She’s Having a Baby”. The couple struggled to get pregnant, but they did, and in the end, there’s that amazing sequence with Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” playing in the background. When I heard that John Hughes died, I immediately went to see if “She’s Having a Baby” was on the “play instantly” list on Netflix (it wasn’t) because I just love that part. Oh, so good. 

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LaineyD talks about babies

So, I have decided that the minutiea of trying to conceive is too personal to go on my regular blog so I’m going to yammer about it over here instead. Frankly, the people who know me in real life do not need to know about this stuff. They worry about me. So I don’t blog about this at my home blog but then I feel like I don’t have any place to go to “talk” about it.

Therefore,
I do not ovulate on a regular/reliable basis. Up until this month, I have had regular, every 29 days or so, periods.
Husband’s semen volume is super low and what is there is mostly super dead.
We have been trying to get pregnant now for 24 months.
Four clomid cycles (2 @ 50 mg, 2 @ 100 mg).
1 HSG (clean!)
1 Semen analysis (a mess!)
1 positive ovulation prediction test (out of about 12)
0 big fugging positive pregnancy tests (out of about 40 – 6 of those were that very first month because it turns out that peeing on a stick is hard)

I don’t have a diggity-damned clue what’s next. Husband’s urologist said that he should stop taking his vitamin C supplement because Vitamin C can be detrimental to sperm but he didn’t say anything about if husband should take any of the supplements I have heard about on the internet. I think I will call and ask the nurse.

My ob/gyn mentioned me coming in after my next period, but why? I’ve spent most of the last two years believing that our inability to conceive is due to my ovulation issues, so hearing about husband’s issue is like being blindsided. Totally did not see that coming (he has a kid, a teenage son). So now it’s a dual issue. I feel like maybe it’s just about time to try and get us sent up to the big leagues, to a reproductive endocrinologist, someone who can say “oh, you want to be pregnant by Xmas? Let’s start looking at IUI right now”. I like my ob/gyn but I feel like he hems and haws. Husband turns 40 in a week and I’m already 32 and it feels like the time for waiting around is past.

 

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Life, August 2009

This week, I have…

Watched exactly 0 hours of live TV (we cancelled Dish Network – we aren’t destitute, we just want to save money after going through 3 unraises this year)

Processed payroll 1 time (successfully!) 

Nearly bodily threw out a payroll salesweenie from my office Thursday. Seriously. If every time you call me to sell me your payroll service, I HANG UP on you, I do not want your service. You suck!

Took the afternoon off on Monday for a followup to our big July Medical Adventure (If anyone asks, an HSG is not nearly as painful as the internet would have you think. Getting less than promising results on husband’s semen analysis? Just as painful as you can imagine).

Been deeply angry at my body. Seriously – what the fuck? TMI Alert (dad, this means you!): What the hell kind of body decides that THIS is the month to deviate from its usual every 29 days cyclical perfection? We all know that being knocked up is a medical improbability (and, why, yes I have tested three times – big fugging negatives) so… for fuck’s sake, Auntie, stop looking at the bus schedule, the train timetable and the different plane fares on Orbitz. Get here and put me and my hope out of our fucking misery. Goddammit. (Edited to add: Aunt’s here. Thirty five day cycle. Incredible!)

 

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This is bullshit…

Everyone is having babies.

Husband’s best friend and his wife just welcomed kid #2 this morning.
College roommate welcomed twin boys on Friday.
FaceBook friend from high school is in the hospital right now having her first.

Why??

Saw my gyno today. He wants me to have husband’s sperm analyzed. Good luck talking him into THAT. I could barely come up with the words to suggest it. After that, he wants me to have a test called an HSG, where they shoot dye into my tubes. Oh boy.

 

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Escape

I want to run away from home. Usually when I feel this way it’s because husband and I have had a fight, I want to load up our car with my stuff and the dogs and go home. But this time I want all 4 of us (Husband, me and the two dogs) to escape together. I want him to get transferred so that we have to move. At this point I’d even accept a move to a foreign country. I want out of this life and into a new one.

Do I particularly think it will solve our problems? No, not really. I think that a permanent change of scenery would benefit us both. This is the house that husband’s kid lived in when he visited us every other weekend (or EOWE, in stepparenting lingo), this is the house where we spent days painting his room so he’d say “WOW” when he saw it for the first time. (He did and I was there to witness it). But now, the house is just full of ghosts. The kid’s room is half converted to an ersatz home gym (treadmill and Wii Fit) but it’s like he’s still there. And my home office (ha! ever since I bought the laptop I haven’t been in that room for more than a half hour) was where the baby was supposed to go. I had a little mockup of the nursery on my old laptop. Crib there, changing table/bureau over there, book case next to the rocking chair, cheerful themed artwork on that wall.

(I have a $300 stroller and a capsule Gymboree wardrobe but no child to enjoy any of it).

There are ghosts in this house and I want to escape them. I want to wake up tomorrow, look out the window and see something other than our town. Ideally (albeit foolishly) I’d like to live in the Asian city we visited last year. I guess it was an ideal situation because I didn’t have to do any work and we lived in a hotel room. Any fool can make that awesome. It would probably be worse to live in a country where you don’t speak the language (well, I can hail a cab – “teksi!”). At this point, I’d live anywhere just to roll the dice and give us another chance at happiness.

 

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