The Afghanis

I was pretty depressed the years I kept not conceiving a child. The usual fixes were sought: the services of a reproductive endicronologist, a therapist, an anti-depressant medication, a new life direction (grad school), and everybody’s favorite suggestion for combating being mopey, volunteer work. (It must be said, though, that with all this, the only thing that really made me feel better about not being able to get pregnant was getting pregnant).

I decided to teach English as a Second Language to refugees and got hooked up with a family of Afghanis who lived in the run-down apartment complex not too far. Twice a week for a year I tutored them in their home. Despite spending so much time with them I never did get to know everyone very well in terms of demographic details–names, ages, familial structure–due to linguistic and cultural constraints as well as what I suspect was a sort of purposeful lack of forthcomingness and clarity on their part that I decided to respect and let go, being aware their previous and current life circumstances were not altogether happy and might not be enjoyable or simple to recount. I know at least one child of the oldest couple present had been murdered, and that mention of the Taliban made everybody drop their eyes.

What became very clear, at any rate, was the kindness of the family, and the exotic tastiness of their food (I remember a lot of almonds) and their tea (I recall a beautiful tea service). What never became clear, to them at least, was much of what I tried to teach them. The kids all got up to speed in their schools, but the adults, particularly the women, seemed so baffled by not only the language but the process of participating in educational efforts, that it felt like every week we just repeated the lessons of the week before. I had taught ESL to illiterate adults before, or at least tried to (it’s by far the most challenging instructional environment imaginable, bar wartime, disability, and total apathy), and had some tricks up my sleeve, but I’m not really sure I left them much better, English-wise, than I found them.

But I know I helped them when I went grocery shopping with them. I know I helped them when I navigated the school system with them on behalf of a child who was having trouble. I know I clarified some impenetrable INS paperwork (to the best any human was able). I know I got one lady to stop applying her nasal spray to her ears, having totally not understood the purpose of the medicine her doctor had prescribed her. I know I made them feel more at home in a new country, a friendly, American face who kept showing up, smiling, carrying confusing worksheets and insisting cheerfully upon their memorizing their phone number and address (not that anybody ever did).

My dad asks after them a lot; once I took him to meet them and he had some sort of wordless bonding with the patriarch. I wish I had kept seeing them, but I gave them up when I was sickly pregnant, working two jobs, and in grad school full-time. I don’t know if they fully understood why I stopped coming. I wonder where they are, how they are doing. I know they would have loved to see Little Girl. They would have been so happy for me; they had always seemed so concerned that I didn’t have children and my family was not close by. To them, I think, nothing (possessions, comfort) could be an adequate replacement for family ties.

Med

My grandfather was a surgeon and another close relative is a pediatrician. I never strongly considered medical school myself, mostly knowing I was not up for the gargantuan effort, and besides, I was jonesing for a baby as early as late college, but I appreciate medical arts and sciences and have had good experience with its practitioners and, yes, pretty much believe most of what my doctors tell me.

Sure, I wish medicine were more evidence-based and scientific and I recognize the unfortunate influence of drug company lobbyists (while being grateful for medications themselves, one of which, metformin, I take daily and which has hugely improved my health), and I know that my c-section wouldn’t have been considered necessary in many other countries, and that sometimes doctors make mistakes or don’t keep up with current research and have biases and strong attachment to preconceived notions just like anybody else.

Yet on the whole I am very cognizant of my good fortune in having access to experienced, educated, and kind medical practitioners, and I believe they mean my family well (insurance companies not so much). Medicine is one of the big perks of being human, and I see it as one of the super-neato ways that human intelligence and capabilities have developed in such a way as to guide our further evolution. No longer does shitty eyesight mean starvation! No longer can a small cut you weren’t able to keep clean potentially spell death! Now you can (sometimes) reproduce even against your body’s own inclination! Now, conceivably, we could be selecting for more subtle traits (in practice, though, the typically more scaled-back fertility of the more successful population–by some definitions–is the antithesis of how natural selection usually works. Now it’s survival of the least-apt to use contraception).

My appreciation of medical advances extends to topics like immunizations, so when the pediatrician finally got some H1N1 vaccine in, I immediately made an appointment. Little Girl’s not in school or around society at large much usually, but we’re about to go on a multi-state, multi-hotel, multi-tourist trap Thanksgiving trip, so I’m glad to offer her some additional protection. And to participate in the larger societal effort to reduce disease.

Tears

You know sometimes, you read a post, and the comments are all, “you brought me to tears, that was so ___” and I always figured that for hyperbole, maybe a figure of speech. But then I read something about how women on average spend 2.5 hours a week crying, and wondered. Is crying really that common? I was pretty hysterical when I realized my cat, Tang, who just died, was so sick, and I had cried a bit (maybe about ten minutes?) the night before the surgery for my miscarriage.

In fact, I can tell you about every time I’ve cried at least since getting married: when my rabbit was killed; a bunch of times during all the infertility stuff; the newborn phase, mostly for breastfeeding reasons; and weaning. That’s it. Evidently, compared to most people, that’s not a lot.

I understand each tear contains the hormones related to the emotional upset, and shedding them releases your emotional burden (I’m glad this is a blog and I don’t have to find a citation for this assertion–but I read it somewhere respectable enough). It’s possible I just don’t get as emotional about things as others, but more likely that I’m just not showing it. I’ve had enough therapy to realize that it all stems from my problems with my mother. With her, my way to assert myself was nonchalance. Whatever, mom, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was all about the sangfroid.

Husband can’t stand this about me. When we’re arguing and I’m being condescending about his upsetness instead of being hurt myself, he thinks it means I don’t care about whatever the topic is, or his feelings. That’s not true, but I also can’t let myself show any vulnerability. The way I was raised, showing your feelings was the quickest way to get them pummeled further. So now, for the most part, I do sadness as anger, and injured feelings as brittleness.

I’m trying to teach Little Girl it’s okay to be sad, but I know actions speak louder than words. Maybe her father–who is never afraid to show his feelings–will be her guide there.

Happy not to be followed

At the oncologist/hematology office today to see what’s what with that life-threatening, miscarriage-inducing, blood-clotting disorder I have which the OB and maternal-fetal specialist kept going on about, there were several sad-looking older couples who avoided eye contact. And me, with Little Girl, a stroller, a backpack of toys, a sack of snacks, and a huge folder of all my many, many medical records. I think the doctor, who primarily works with cancer patients, was delighted to give someone easy, good news, with no follow-up visit required, and no tests of any sort necessary: as it turns out, I actually do not, in fact, have a life-threatening, miscarriage-inducing, blood-clotting disorder.

It was much ado about nothing, just a weird blip from all the scattershot testing they did when I had my infertility workup. FYI, if you have untreated PCOS, that can do funky things to your measurement of PAI-1, an enzyme or something that does something or other that, despite the diagram and the four explanations to me, as I hunched there squinting seriously at the doctor, I still cannot explain to you, but anyway is involved with blood-clotting. Now that my PCOS is under control with Metformin, my numbers are normal, my genotype was, evidently, always unalarming, and there is no problem. The other doctors clearly didn’t get it, but of course that’s why they referred me to a hematologist to begin with–blood is confusing. Even this doctor carried in his pocket a well-worn cheat sheet illustrating the processes involved.

Ah, it was such a rare pleasure to leave a doctor’s office feeling ship-shape and sound.

Arrangements (updated)

I just wish I knew what happened. Was it just One of Those Things, or did my fucked-up PCOS hormones get it? Or perhaps it was my “intriguing” autoimmune/blood-clotting disorder? Would I really prefer the fetus had something wrong with it to having my own body collude in killing a new life? I feel angry with my body more than sad about losing the baby dream (and the baby reality) at this point. And what’s with my body’s obliviousness to the tiny corpse inside me, anyway? Can it do nothing right? If you’re going to kill my children at least let me know. Is this some sort of joke, repaying me for my misguided optimism this go round since it didn’t take me the years and years to conceive like it did before, tricking me into thinking my body could do things normally?

Tomorrow morning I go in for the D & E. Though it strikes me as…disloyal…to allow the flesh of my flesh to be vacuumed out and trashed, it’s not like it would be more loving to flush it away at home. And the OB said that if I stayed home, and miscarried whenever and for however long, that I should be certain to go to the ER if I soak through more than two pads an hour with blood. Um, I don’t want to soak through any pads in an hour. It feels a little, ideologically, like choosing a scheduled c-section over an unassisted homebirth, but basically it comes down to this: no, I don’t actually trust my body to handle it. Oh, and it’s not so fun showing and what is showing is my dead fetus.

If I’m angry, Husband is sad. We both have this idea it was a girl, and he had started working up fantasies about two little gigglers running around the house. Well, I guess I had, too. We don’t plan to try again any time soon, not with the upcoming move to Sweden and one thing and another and my body’s general disagreeableness. Little Giggler #2 may never be.

This afternoon I had to go into the office for some meetings. Normally I telecommute, but before Little Girl I was there physically so people know me. Apparently my boss, whom I told a couple of weeks ago (after the heart had already stopped beating, evidently, unbeknownst to me), had spread out the word already so I had this conversation more than was acceptable:

Co-worker (arms out for a hug): Oh hiiiii! Congratulations! How are you feeling?
Me: Uh…actually…um…

But despite this kind of thing I am feeling less unhinged than I would have expected. When they told me I had miscarried Little Girl (the day before the ultrasound that proved them wrong) I was catatonic, devastated, frozen in grief. For me, at least, it really does help having Little Girl. I can just think of her growling “I a cookie monster!” with Thin Mint crumbs ringing her mouth and can’t help but smile. And be grateful.

How much I appreciate all of your comments and your sharing of experiences I can’t express. It has really helped and I thank you. The closest I’ve come to crying, besides when I told my mom and lying in bed last night thinking of the OB’s saying, while studiously not making eye contact, that “it wasn’t a successful pregnancy,” was seeing the link from Lost and Found.

I’ve prepared as well as I can for the D & E. I spent about fifty bucks on Miscarriage Food, which is surprisingly similar to Period Food, as it turns out. I already filled my pain medication prescription and there is plenty of wine and Kahlua. I plan to request really good drugs at every turn in the hospital and make the most of the thing. I’ll let you know.

Updated: Now, tonight, I’m not angry. Now I’m so, so sad. I wanted that baby, and my baby died. I want my baby back. I don’t want surgery. I don’t want my baby to be dead. I want my baby.

The results are in

And they are positive. Astoundingly.

(Do you realize it took me two and a half years to get pregnant before?)

And if we are still working on getting ourselves in a totally positive place about it, I’m confident we’ll get there. Uh, kinda confident.

Technicalities

More from mid-January:

I borrowed an ovulation predictor kit (though I guess
“borrow” isn’t the right word) and I have meticulous records
of my cycle lengths, and I think I am supposed to
ovulate between [lots of math]. Now, back
in my TTC days with Little Girl, I never ovulated or
had a regular cycle at all (and I have the temp charts
to prove it) (so TTC mostly consisted pretty simply of
continuously not getting pregnant for
two-and-a-half years, until I magically did ovulate,
thanks to the Metformin I take for my PCOS, thanks to
the RE), so I am really unfamiliar with this whole
planned-sex-ovulation-scenario that you see in sitcoms
and read about on blogs.

I’m not sure I get it, and since this is a one-shot
deal, I need advice. Do we need to have sex for every
one of those ten days? Because that is a lot of sex.
I’m not sure either of us is enthusiastic enough about
the possibility of another miserable, semi-dangerous
pregnancy (and the anxiety, oh, the anxiety) to have
that much sex. Not to mention newborns (shudder). (Or
breastfeeding, dear lord). Or can we just wait until
the really-confusing-looking OPK says to expect
ovulation? And is there something else I’m forgetting
that we need to do? I am really expert at avoiding
pregnancy through contraception and infertility so
this is new ground for me.

So what ended up happening was that I misread the OPK a lot so we ended up having to have death-march sex for something like seven days in a row. We were both so relieved when that was over that we haven’t slept together since (not to disparage Husband, or sex, in any way). Every little thing seemed so fraught for a while–if I get up from the bed right now will that disrupt something, some sperm that was just about to make it? But I have to pee. Since I wasn’t (and am not) 100% in the I-want-a-baby camp, I usually threw caution to the wind and just ruminated on the vagaries of biological mechanisms on my way to the bathroom.

Let’s travel back in time

I originally wrote this on January 14th and then got squeamish about posting. I still don’t quite know the, uh, resolution, though I have my suspicions, but I’ll bring you up to date over the next week.

After what I will circumspectly (and inaccurately) describe as a lot of “discussion” and “contemplation” I think Husband and I are now ready to try for another baby. Wow, right?

Just in January, though. After that we’re back to contraception.

Why yes, I understand this is a strange plan. Basically, what happened is that I have gotten all freaked out about the idea of waiting to have another in Sweden, away from my mom and friends and what I know, not to mention my baby accessories, and decided I’d rather have a baby here, even though I still don’t actively want pregnancy or, um, babies. Mostly I’m worried that time will pass and one day it will be too late in all kinds of ways.

But I don’t want to be pregnant or have a newborn while we are moving, which means I have to have a baby in the fall, which means I have to get pregnant before March, and since Husband will be abroad for work most of February, that means I need to get pregnant in January, which, as you may be aware, is going on right now.

If this thing doesn’t pan out, which it probably won’t, given my reproductive history and the fact that we are giving it only one month, I am definitely going to lease that horse. Win win! (I know this sounds flippant. It will, of course, be a big deal either way. It just all feels a fiction at the moment.)

Blogging

Three years ago this week this blog began (along with my pregnancy). A little more than two years ago I made it public. At first it was a private, infrequently-updated, boring-ass, pregnancy journal. Then a repository of milk pumping info and angst. Now it’s, uh, well, just a general, all-purpose blog, I guess.

Why do I do it? I’m not sure why I started–I wasn’t even reading blogs at the time besides a few infertility ones–but I’ve found it’s good for me in a few ways:

a) writing forces me to think through my thoughts, assumptions, feelings, experiences, leading to all kinds of discoveries–it’s like free therapy!
b) the community; the more people I have contact with, the better I fare; I don’t (just) mean the comments, but also reading others’ blogs. I have loved getting to know people through blogging.
c) I get to tell family members that, indeed, I am writing, when they bug me to write
d) I take note of facets of Little Girl that otherwise might be lost as she changes

I could do most of this without an actual blog–just with a journal–but since, until blogging, I never did anything like that, apparently I couldn’t just get these effects from journaling. Maybe it’s a sign of the times, the desire for an audience to produce, or maybe it’s just easier to get the fix of readership through blogging than through prior media, and all the diarists of old would have tried this if they could. I don’t know. But I’m extremely grateful to have this blog as part of my life, and it would literally not exist if it were not for my readers. So thank you!

(P.S.: National Delurking Week has historically been a bust for me, but if you’d like to say hi, I’d be delighted. Seriously delighted. If you don’t have a blog you don’t know how it is, but it’s extremely gratifying to have a give-and-take with readers. I know you are out there! I have statistics!)

Hmm

I seem to be depressed. It’s been a while, so it took some time for me to figure it out, but it’s there.

I think it dates back to last month’s super-exciting 6-days-late-for-my-period extravaganza. My standard deviation in cycle length is a mere 2.3 days, so by the end of the wait, I was thinking there I was either pregnant or something was wrong with me, and I wasn’t entirely sure a pregnancy would not be preferable. But I was relieved when my period came.

Sure, Little Girl would have been three years by then, which is my own personal absolute minimum child-spacing target, but neither Husband nor I have felt interested in going through another unpleasant-and-debilitating-and-occasionally-dangerous pregnancy, followed by the sheer horrifying misery of newborns and their twin terror, breastfeeding. I make ugly faces just thinking about it. I feel sorry for, if not superior to, pregnant ladies chasing toddlers. I am happy to hand drooling, squawking babies back. I get bored with sleeping newborns. Plus, I didn’t even find trying to conceive enjoyable, since it took years and years and help from a reproductive endocrinologist, though I suspect it would be easier now. I love my baby-free lifestyle with Husband and Little Girl. Basically I’m not in what I imagine to be the proper mental condition necessary to get through another reproductive attempt with anything approaching good cheer and tolerance for the difficulties and worries involved.

Which is why I am confused as to why I am moping around, pressing Husband into intense little conversations about our Future Plans. What I’d really like is for both of us to want, genuinely, a new baby; to get pregnant easily; to have a totally easy and worry-free pregnancy; a pleasant-enough birth; a trouble-free or at least guilt-free breastfeeding experience; and a child that easily and sleepily fits into our lives, all at the most convenient time and location. But apparently Husband doesn’t want to try until we are at least settled in Sweden (years from now in the current economy), if at all (perhaps you are unaware that the sun rises and sets with Little Girl, thus eliminating the need for future progeny). And since I still don’t actively desire another person to care for making me ill from inside my uterus, I’m not arguing with him on this.

Yet at the same time, if we’re going to make a go of it, I’d rather do it in the US, I think. I don’t love a lot about our birthing system, but at least I understand it. My mom is here. My friends. I’m way less likely to suffer depression afterwards. And as materialistic as it is, my baby crap is here. I don’t want to get rid of it all and then have to buy it for 300% more in Sweden. And if we’re going to do it here, the window of opportunity is closing, since I definitely don’t want to be pregnant/newborning while trying to move abroad.

But I’m not sure these are reasons to try for a baby. I just feel so uncertain. So in the absence of a plan that sits comfortably with me, with us–not just with any possible babies, but with our move in general, a topic I am sick of already–I’m muddling, and it’s been getting me down.

With only days until the finish line

We are having Christmas on the 21st this year. My mother has set it all up at my grandparents’ house, so I am fantasizing about its being just like the Christmases of my childhood, with the stockings opened over cinnamon buns in the den and the presents in the formal living room. I have not vocalized these preferences to my mother since she is way too overwhelmed handling everything as it is, but I do harbor hope. I expect this year, having it at their house, will make it easier for my grandmother to understand why we keep handing her presents to open. Last year she kept asking if it was her birthday, even with her poinsettia sweater on and the Christmas tree in the same room.

We’re celebrating early as we have to be in my hometown on the 20th anyway for a family reunion-type-thing so we figured rather than spend two short day trips we’d make a weekend out of it. After our early Christmas, Husband, Little Girl, and I will go directly to the family beach house for a few days. It’s practically the last house in the US with no internet (though you can steal some wireless if you sit on a bench out by the lagoon) so I will be offline, a state which I am always surprised to discover doesn’t bother me at all, considering how much I use the internet normally. Anyway, later, back at our house, we’ll do our own little celebration, with Swedish Christmas food and some friends, and go to a nearby park with a holiday extravaganza I have yet to convince Husband to visit with me due to his general dislike of humanity.

Leading up to all this is a lot of planning to make sure everything is in the right place in the right state of being at the right time. I have been obsessing over my lists.

To Do

finish scarves
finish sachets
iron scarves
finish wrapping
make/take dessert to T family as their present on Friday
haircut appointment (my second one in 2008)
pick up Rx
confirm petsitter
write petsitter check
do work self-evaluation
additional cards–send out
post on blog
groceries
library–get books on CD for drive
library–get books to read at beach
change kitty litter
check smoke detectors
shave legs
clean floors? (they’re just going to get dirty; we won’t be here to enjoy them clean; but do we want pet sitter to think us slobby?)
check wooden train set for parts (this was mine as a kid and is Little Girl’s big present this year)
post office
laundry
pack
finish photo gift for Granddaddy
pick up photo albums if ready? PLEASE BE READY

I also have lists for “Thank you notes to write” and “Things to pack” and “Things to buy.” To complicate matters, some of them are cross-referenced; for example, things that need to be packed AFTER they are done, or things that need to be done AFTER items are bought. Gah. There are also political concerns. For example, under “packing” goes “packing the potty.” But do I pack the potty my mom got Little Girl, or the one Little Girl actually uses? Obviously the one she’ll use; but then what do I tell my mother? So even one subset of one little item on a list is fraught.

I’d say I feel mostly on top of things, but the way my face has broken out I guess I’m stressed. Still, the list-making skills I learned back when I was suffering from infertility-induced anxiousness and obsessive compulsiveness can be pretty useful when there’s a lot of detail-oriented planning to do. But really I am looking forward to it all. The family, the traditions, then the relaxing vacation in a beautiful place. It’ll be great. Especially if I do laundry so I have underwear.

Before and after

My parents divorced when I was little and in the summers I went to stay with my father, where, unlike at my mom’s, eating was permitted without commentary. Since most of the year my mother thoroughly and forcefully controlled what was served and how much of it I ate and then how much of it I burnt off on the Stair Master, I had learned no internal monitors, and so always came back a little chubbier, much to my mother’s vociferous dismay. One fall I even overheard her lamenting the situation with my teacher. I got the message, and when I was 13, put myself on a diet of half a granola bar for breakfast, the other half at lunch (and one 1.5-calorie breath mint), a few figs and plain tea for a snack after school, and as little dinner as I could get away with. It was highly effective. I still remember the compliments Jeremy the Saxophone Player paid me that year. My mother was delighted. I was riding horses competitively then and remember deliberately tantalizing my algebra tutor by showing up to sessions in my jodhpurs, showing off my leanness.

But eventually I went off to college. The cafeteria, with its limitless grilled cheese sandwiches and amazing assortment of cereals, helped me gain twenty pounds freshman year. My sophomore year I went off the meal plan and ate a lot of boxed mac and cheese. Junior year it was pizza and enchiladas, and senior year pretzels and orange-flavored milk chocolate accompanied by Lady Grey tea with heavy cream. I went to college a size eight and left it at 16.

Then I moved and got married and fell into a series of depressing jobs and eventually suffered two and a half years of infertility. These things did not encourage me to stop eating for comfort. If something bad happened, I deserved ice cream. If something good happened, ice cream to celebrate! The fall I got pregnant I did start working on my diet and exercising of my own volition for practically the first time since childhood, and lost a bit of weight; I had just gone back to grad school, made some new friends, gone on an anti-depressant, and was feeling brighter and up to making the changes.

I got married about forty pounds north of where I am and now am nearly thirty pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight. Now I’m sometimes even wearing mediums, which is a constant surprise (have the sizes changed?). I can wear a lot of my clothes from high school. Honestly the weight loss hasn’t been very purposeful. It’s mostly just the by-product of being busy and caring about Little Girl’s nutrition and thus my own, and eliminating high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oil, and going vegetarian (and often vegan). I use an exercise bike but even for the spells I do it regularly my weight seems to stay the same, but it gives me energy, time to read, and a feeling of accomplishment. Breastfeeding was evidently quite the calorie-burner for me; I’ve only lost five pounds or so since weaning. I’m overall much healthier, though, whatever the cause; my blood work is improved, my energy, my shape.

What’s interesting now is meeting people in my average (slightly overweight) state. Like it or not, people often group themselves by appearance and assume things about others depending on their looks. I distinctly recall negative reactions I got as an overweight woman–like having to be moved from one bed to another after my c-section, before the epidural had worn off, and the disdainful look and faintly remembered comments one nurse gave another upon seeing me–and I don’t sense reactions like that anymore.

But I do others. A new acquaintance was recently very surprised when it came up that I used to weigh quite a bit more, and I realized she now saw me differently, as fundamentally unlike herself, a person drops her twins at the gym day care multiple times a week to get rid of the last few pregnancy pounds, pounds she is careful to assign ownership of to the children and not to herself. No, unlike her, I’m someone who once was fat, with all the connotations that confers, many of which were true for me. Her change in attitude interests rather than bothers me. I get it. But I am now pretty well at peace with my weight and my looks as a result of being happy with my life (rather than the other way around), and feel fortunate to have arrived at this place.

+++

I’ve been enjoying making healthful efforts, my chocolate stash notwithstanding. I’m also trying to pay more attention to Husband–to notice him, to engage him. We tried Wii Fit this past summer at my brother-in-law’s in Sweden and we all loved it (Little Girl even tried her hand at golf, and particularly enjoyed watching her daddy and uncle spar) and we’ve talked about getting one ourselves but we already have the exercise bike so it seems difficult to justify the cost. The social and competitive aspects of the game system are very appealing and I think sometimes it would be a great way for me and Husband to pay attention to each other, instead of the laptops, in the evenings, and to make exercise less of a special occasion, conducted only in the walk-in closet where the bike lives. If we had a Wii, we’d put it to good use. I’m a grown-up, now, and taking control of my well-being.

[This addendum is for Magpie Musing's Wii Fit contest which you should consider entering. The post follows its own logic and not always the contest's, as I started writing this before I knew about it. Yet since I was posting about fitness anyway I figured I should not pass up the opportunity to participate in the generous offer to win one of these systems, which I would be truly delighted to get to use, especially without an audience of in-laws.]