One

We got one little guy...Better than none, it only takes one. Now is the worst part: we wait, and wait and wait.
It feels like forever, one week left.

Disappointed

I am feeling low. Very bloated, sore and low. At least I am having an emotion...

I have lost friends. Both virtual and local. I have lost friends before due to this whole infertility thing. But I didn't expect that this time. As far as my virtual friends are concerned, it is my own fault, I went away and I disappeared. But as far as my local friend is concerned, I have no idea what happened. Nor do I feel like speculating. It doesn't matter, but it does.

This fertility process makes me feel alone. The physical pain is real, but I don't get sympathy for it. The emotional pain is worse, and now that I have a child I don't get any sympathy either. I am trying not to be afraid, not to fear the failure. But it is hard. Although it feels greedy, I want another child. Other people can have them, so why can't I? I read once that people with secondary infertility are just as depressed as people who have not had any children. For me, the desperation is not at all the same, but my idea of a family always consisted of more than one child, and I would be unhappy if I could not conceive a second, but not as unhappy if I couldn't have any. People (those I choose to tell) keep saying to me that if it doesn't work then it's ok because I have Anise. Yet no one questions women who have no trouble conceiving who choose to have more than one, as if it were so unusual!

No one seems to realize that it is actual surgery. Here I am again, focusing on external validation. Why do I care what other people think? I rarely ask for support from people, and when I need it, I never feel like I get it. Obviously it is something I am doing that makes me feel disappointed, but what?

9 Lives

So we have 9 embryos. Nine little potential beings. We find out the results of the PGD on Friday, they day of the transfer. We may get none, we may get a few. Last time we had 10 embryos, only 2 were normal. But I am not going to speculate on the odds because there is no point in either worrying or getting excited.

Yesterday was painful. It hurt much more than last time, and I had to get more medication than usual. I was nauseous and dizzy afterwards and I threw up when I got home. Then I felt better.

When I tell people I am in treatment they sometimes react by saying "that is so exciting". I try, but I can't see it that way. Surgery is rarely exciting, and having sex to make a baby seems much more exciting to me. It is really strange, because I am not sick, but I have to take drugs that make me feel bad, and then have surgery and medication, just for the remote possibility of becoming pregnant.

The whole thing is surreal, and I am numb. I guess that is a good way to handle it. I am too distracted with Anise to really think about something else. It also helps that I am not in a rush. With Anise it was different, we were desperate. I am no longer desperate, it would be nice if it worked and it would suck if I had to go through this again because physically it sucks. Plus resting is not really an option. But other than that if I got pregnant later that would be ok too.

It has been strange this feeling of being disconnected. I am aware that my posts are boring, and I can feel that I am boring to talk to these days. I have been rereading some of my old posts, back when I had things to say. Where did I get all that energy from? These days my brain is quieter; something I have been trying to achieve for a long time. We have a nice routine going, and I am busy all day playing, feeding, smiling, going to activities. I literally have no time to think and that is a good thing. But it makes me a bore. Or I worry that I am escaping myself, hiding form emotions I don't want to confront? Ok, that was way too much thinking for me, time to go to sleep...

The Collection

Tomorrow is collection day. Otherwise known as egg retrieval. Wish me luck...

The Body Snatchers

Everyone around me is running. My sister, my potential brother-in-law, even my parents started running. My blog friend on Cheerio Road has been too. I want to run but I have a million excuses and they are all good. The only times of the day that I am not without my sidekick is the occasional afternoon (too hot) and after babe's bedtime (too tired). And I really am tired and everything hurts and I need new shoes. Maybe if I buy myself new shoes I will be inspired. It is so hard to run when you are heavy, or feel heavy. Each time my foot hits the pavement it sends jolts up to my shoulders. I am fat, and sluggish. Maybe if I only do 20 min every day? That sounds feasible, just 20 min no more no less, at 8 pm, not too early, not too late. Or maybe I should start a run/walk programme. that seems to get people going. But all of this is too much work, too much chatter in my head. Too much indecisiveness, no commitments. And that is how I feel right now. All over the place, not knowing what will be in a week or two. And nothing matters. There is nothing to do but the day to day , but it is summer! I hate routine in the summer. I want my husband home, i want vacations, I want the beach and the ocean, and I want lakes and the country. I want bbq's and campfires. I don't want the daily grind. I am just not satisfied right now, and my body is not my own. I am being pumped with hormones and it has been making me impatient. With myself and with Anise and I don't like it.

Ultra

Haircut got postponed. I hate when that happens. Now I have dirty hair. And it was hot again today.

Tomorrow we go for an ultrasound (and I am such an idiot that I think I may have forgotten to book it, but my husband reassured me that because we paid 10 700$ they will probably squeeze us in) to make sure there are no cysts and we can go ahead with the follicle stimulating drug. I should be concerned about it, but all I can think of is whether Anise will be ok without me tomorrow. My mom will come be with her in the morning, and I have a babysitter coming in the afternoon. I have hired these college students to be with Anise four afternoons a week. Since she only naps in stroller (don't worry, I am not getting into it) I needed the break, then got addicted and dependent on the break! Anise is good with them, but has a limit of about 2 and a half hours, then she gets ancy. Tomorrow will be worse since I will have been gone all morning too. Sometimes I feel I stress her out for no good reason. I am going to meet with a colleague/friend of mine, I haven't had a chance to talk to him in ages and I am looking forward to it. So yes I need to recharge my batteries to be a better mom blah blah blah, but I still get anxious sometimes about leaving her. Is that me being crazy, or am I reacting to a reality which is she isn't entirely happy being left yet?

I have been thinking a lot about Anise's birth lately, and how can a child feel confident that their mother is coming back when their first experience out of the womb was being ripped away from their mother for 2 hours? Just when she needed me most. I want to sue the hospital for having put us through that. The repercussions are so much greater than they realize. I will never get that back, and neither will Anise, but I fantasize about going back in time and insisting that we not be separated. Maybe if I had signed consents? I am sad and angry about my birth experience, when will that heal? And until it does, why would another person want to come to me?

New look

And tomorrow I am getting a haircut.

Idling

I am singlehandedly contributing to destroying the earth. It is 40 degrees with the humidex and I am sitting in a running car with the AC on. Anise is napping, there was literally no other way today. I am sorry environment, I just may buy carbon credit for this.

After not having touched my flute in between concerts for many many months, I have been having an urge to play again. I don't have any concerts coming up until the fall, and none are my own. It feels great to be stress free (free of work stress that is) and Anise has been so happy lately. Performing is such an intense stress for me. It has great highs that accompany it, but it is like no other pressure. I think I am bad at hiding it and I certainly pass a lot of the stress along. I wonder if I will constantly be weighing the pros and cons of working until one day I will wake up and my kids will be gone and all I have is work. I will then look back and say how silly it was that I was preoccupied with so much questioning, instead of just taking 5 years to raise kids and then slowly, when the time is right, get back into things. Instead I ruminate over the same questions again and again, all the while not really having as much control as I think I do.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot Hassidic Jews with huge families of 15 children. The women start young, probably at 18 and spend the majority of their adult life pregnant or with an infant. I think of myself and my complaints about how hard motherhood is with just one, and I wonder what it feels like to have 13. They have no room for contemplating choices because their choices are limited, and that must be freeing in a way. But I can make that choice too if i wish, to just raise kids (or kid) and do nothing else. I know that choice would not fulfill me, or make me happy, but it looks easy from the outside. Yet if I made that choice my day today would be exactly the same! The tantrums would still erupt, food would still have to be cooked, house still cleaned. So what seems easy and free about that other lifestyle? Something having to do with order and expectations? I don't know, but they don't look that tired.

Round Two

It's weird, in some ways I don't have much to say. Maybe it is the heat. Maybe it is Anise's age, she is 19 months and there is no time for critical thinking. My head is pounding and the fatigue is insurmountable.

We are going through fertility treatments again. The timing isn't perfect, but we don't have the luxury of getting it all right. The opportunity came up to start earlier so we took it. With such high chances of failure it is better to get a head start. I am still nursing. Ideally I would have loved to have weaned, and lost 20 pounds, but here we are. I am being injected nightly, with 2 weeks to go until the collection day.

At first, starting treatment conjured up all these painful memories that I thought I had forgotten but were stored in my body. Now I am numb. I am not thinking too hard, which is a good thing, but I also have this strong feeling that because I haven't been thinking about it, it won't work. It is more of a superstition I guess. I haven't had time to call the little soul to us. And part of me feels that I am really not ready physically- too tired, and because of that it won't work either. I am terrified of having to go through this again. The hormones suck.

I don't know why I have been so tired. Anise sleeps through the night. She wakes up early (mostly 5am) but a lot of people wake up at 5am on purpose. I guess I am just a tired person. Strange how fatigue has never been a legitimate complaint for me, it has always been associated with laziness, as if it weren't real, an excuse for not doing things. But now I do everything, but I crash at 9pm, or do things with a heaviness that astounds me. I keep hoping it will go away.

For Real

I went to visit a colleague today who's husband is a famous baroque music scholar. In the 1960's he was responsible for the revival of the baroque oboe, and he has written a couple of books. We are privileged here in Montreal to have him around. Every time I visit him he tells me fascinating things and is actually interested in talking to me. Today I went to see him with Anise, and he was talking to me about his new thoughts and his new subject of interest (an Indian musician's opinion that there is a difference between improvisation and composition, a comment with which he disagrees). Meanwhile I was thinking how strange it is to be in a time and space where I no longer have time to think. I hardly ever think, and if i do it is about Anise. Sometimes about felting a sheep, but that is unusual. Then Anise put her hands on either side of my face and gave me multiple kisses on the lips and I thought, this is the best thing in the whole world.

Back?

Should I write again? Will anyone know I am here? (they might if they have that google reader thing).

I still think in blog form, therefore I should keep writing.

I'll give it a try.

There, it wasn't that hard!!