Uppercase Woman

I asked for it

God is such an asshole. But then again, I asked for it.

This morning I woke up with my period—on cycle day 24, when I usually have 28-32 day cycles. This has caused my Hope Addict to go schizophrenic.

Hope Addict One (or HA1) is jumping up and down gleefully because she’s sure—so very, very sure—it’s implantation spotting. Hope Addict Two (HA2, natch) is gearing up for IVF enthusiasm.

Under the behest of HA2, I called to schedule my cycle day two blood work and ultrasound to begin my IVF cycle. Under the behest of HA1, I called the IVF nurse and asked if I should also get a beta test at the same time.

I’m telling you, it’s not the despair that kills you, it’s the hope.

I am convinced I wished my period here this early because of my frustration with waiting. I am fairly convinced that this is a real period, not some implantation spotting, because my uterus is again proving that nerve endings down there are an evolutionary flaw. So this means that the giant pile of drugs and needles currently sitting on my kitchen counter are about to become part of my life.

When I was a child I had a severe needle phobia. I was asthmatic (way before it was cool and all the kids had it—and before inhalers were invented), and the only way to treat an asthma attack back then was a huge needle in the ass full of epinephrine (I wonder if this contributed to a later love of speed…hmmm).

When I was nineteen, I got a job as a receptionist in a veterinarian’s office. I was really excited about this job, because I’d wanted to be a veterinarian up until I began drinking every day (then it just seemed like so much WORK). Within a week of starting the job, the vet lost his technician, and they asked me if I would consider being trained in the position. I was ecstatic, and worked hard to get over my needle phobia.

Over the next eight years I spent as a vet tech (up until I got fired for various drunken related things), I became an expert animal phlebotomist. My crowning achievement was getting an IV into a two-day-old kitten and saving her life. My needle phobia was far behind me.

Unfortunately, that meant when drugs entered my life, I had no fear of needles. Without too much detail, let me just say that injecting myself isn’t something I’m uncomfortable with. In fact, sicko that I am, I love it.

So starting tomorrow night, I’m going to be faced with the fact that for the first time in eight+ years I have to put a needle into my own skin. I’m a little freaked out about it. I’m expecting to dream about using drugs again (a common thing that happens to those in recovery is having dreams of relapsing), as I did when I first began having to get my blood drawn every couple of days. So I’m a little anxious about this whole thing. Top that with my general IVF fears, and the schizophrenic Hope Addict, and I’m a mess.

But the good news is, I have two important work-related meetings today! Oh joy!

Remind me when I get to heaven to kick God’s ass.

Googled!

Now, I finally understand the blogging obsession with seeing how people found your site. Here are my favorite searches that directed folks to me:

"Korean Birth Control"

"Birth Control Weight Gain Pictures" (what the fuck?)

"Bulimia Poems" (killing me! seriously! Not even spelled right!)

and the number one winner is:

"I got wasted I've found I'm pregnant"

The Four Week Wait

I am going fucking crazy. Balls out, full-on wacko.

And why, you ask? Why? Cause patience and me ain’t very good friends.

I thought the two-week wait (the period between ovulation and accurate pregnancy testing) was tough. Every month, after ovulating, I would spend all my time considering every twinge, passing symptom, and hell, even my farts as possible signs of pregnancy success. I guess this would be an excellent time to mention my Hope Addict (I bow to the inventor of the Hope Addict, whoever she is, in blogland). Here is a typical two-week wait conversation:

Hope Addict: Was that an implantation cramp?

Me: Uh…

Hope Addict: I think it was. Better run to the bathroom and check for spotting.

Guess what? If you run to the bathroom with every uterine twinge during the two-week wait, you WILL spot, cause you’ll have rubbed your poor vulva so fucking raw you’re bleeding.

You know what else? My uterus twinges, cramps, sighs and moans a whole fucking lot after I ovulate. Who knew? I never paid attention before. Turns out there is a whole lot going on down there in the second half of your cycle. Lining has to be built up, then begin to slough off. The uterus expands, slightly, then contracts again. Once you’re focused on that area (what I would give for a real view—like those cows at vet schools with plastic sides so you can see their internal organs—wouldn’t that be cool? No more dildocam needed!), you learn oh so very much about how it works.

Before this process began, I thought I knew a fair amount about getting pregnant. I knew you needed sperm and eggs. I knew it was only in a short 48-hour window each month that conception was possible. I thought that was enough! Who knew? Now I know about cervical mucous, implantation spotting, early pregnancy symptoms, and much, much more.

The internet is both an asset and a curse. The more I learned, the more I had to obsess about. I knew my friend was pregnant simply because she told me her nipples had darkened—even though she was on the pill.

All of this information provides excellent fuel for my hope addict. So now here I am today, waiting for my cycle to start (which is a nice way of saying waiting for my fucking period) so I can begin injecting myself full of IVF drugs and get this party started. I didn’t take a single drug this cycle. My husband and I didn’t even get a chance to fool around while I was probably ovulating this cycle. But that bitch is still here:

Hope Addict: Your nipples look bigger to me.

Me: Bullshit. You say that every month, and you know what, they always get a little bigger at this point in my cycle.

Hope Addict: No, really, they do.

Me: Shut up.

Hope Addict: You seem really crampy. I bet it’s im…

Me: Don’t say implantation, you stupid bitch, I’ll kill you.

Hope Addict: That dizziness you had this morning…

Me: Didn’t eat enough food, or I’m catching that stomach flu everyone’s got.

Hope Addict: I think…

Me: (fingers in my ears) lalalalalalalalalala

Hope Addict: Just buy a test. You know you want your period to start. You know the best way to make your period start is to take a home pregnancy test.

Me: Damn it.

I am so impatient right now; I am tempted to buy a test. I’m only on cycle day 23—I could go a whole ten days before my period shows up. I know it’s unreasonable, but this is killing me. I can’t make it another week, I really can’t.

________________________________________________________________________________

So here’s some other sick shit that’s living in my head this week, otherwise known as further evidence of PMS.

I can’t get the image of my friend’s baby at her party out of my head. Not for the usual reasons, but because I wasn’t much older than that baby when my father decided to leave my mother and me. He and my mother met in Boulder, Colorado, and they were both hippies (although he drove an Edsel—my mother has said she should have known) and fell in love. My mother was young, only 18, and had run away from college in Wyoming to the scene in Boulder. My dad spotted her at a cheap motel as she was watching, with broken glasses she was holding on with one hand, a Vincent Price movie on TV.

They got married, and moved to Albuquerque (his family lived nearby). He begged her to get pregnant, so she did. She was 19 when I was born.

In the photos I’ve seen, by the time he left he could see I had his eyes, nose, and hair. Was that what scared him so badly? He not only left us, he joined the army and went to Vietnam. In 1970. I was fifteen months old. I didn’t hear from him again until I was 12.

When I saw my friend with his baby at the birthday party, I can see that my father had something broken in him that enabled him to leave. My friend could never walk away from his daughter. It simply isn’t in him.

My father’s parents were still together when he left my mom. They stayed together until my grandfather died (hence the phone call when I was 12 from Dad). He didn’t come from a broken home, so what’s his excuse?

When I asked him later, he said he was an alcoholic. That my mother told him to either be consistent with me or stay out of my life, so he stayed out. I wish I could say I knew a) exactly what I missed or b) I had the ability to forgive him. If I don’t know what I’ve missed, how can I forgive him for not providing it?

I’ve heard it said by other folks in recovery that they were born with a God-sized hole in their hearts. I know I have a Dad-sized one. Sometimes when I see a father with a daughter, being attentive and loving, I feel completely wrong with the universe and just want to cry.

My husband and I plan to go out and visit my father this summer. He’s sick with emphysema (the three packs a day he smokes really helps), and has Agent Orange from the war. I’m afraid if I don’t get out there soon, I won’t see him before he dies. He’s remarried to his second wife (he had a third wife, but she passed away) and lives in a trailer in New Mexico. Other than the hair, nose and eyes, we don’t have much in common. I’m not sure what I’ll say to him, if much of anything, when I see him. But I have to go; he’d never come here.

____________________________________________________________________________________

On a more positive note, I have never felt so energized about my writing as I have in this last week I’ve had this blog (can you believe it’s only been a week!). While I’ve been a writer for years, my head is more full of words right now than it’s been the whole time I’ve been sober. While I never completely stopped writing when I stopped drinking, the words seemed to have more trouble finding me (it must have been easy when I was lit up every night like the fourth of July). This is fortuitous since I have a reading to give next week. This will be the first reading I’ve given in eight years where I won’t feel like a sham.

The comments I’ve gotten from everyone have been so awesome. I have never felt so complimented. Moxie’s compliment is the best thing anyone has ever said about my writing. I humbly, humbly thank you, and everyone else who has complimented me, from the bottom of my rejuvenated heart.

Baby Birthdays and Infertility Luncheons

Saturday was the first birthday party for our neighbor’s daughter. She actually turned one on St. Patty’s Day, but this weekend was when the whole family could be in town to celebrate. She was quite the star, trundling around in her little dress, and there was singing in French and English, and the obligatory smearing of cake all over her sweet little face (and dress) and she actually participated quite gleefully in the opening of her presents, eliciting millions of “awwwwws” and “how cute” and other typical things.

The party was great fun, and I got to see the son of another friend who has grown from an infant into a boy with a capital B. He was full of smiles, and also full of screams—a noise he’s just discovered he can make. It matched his red hair perfectly!

But another young couple were there with their toddler, and when I commented on how big he’d gotten, his mother gleefully pointed to her belly… and yes, number two was on the way.

I wasn’t prepared for it, and maybe she missed my stricken look, but it was the typical sucker punch. All the air went out of the room briefly, and I had to blink madly to fight back a huge wash of rage. I imagine it’s totally inappropriate when someone gives you this news to fall to the floor in a fit, nash your teeth and pull out your hair and scream over and over “It’s not fair! It’s not fair! Die, you easily pregnant bitch!” particularly when she said, “Oh, I was sick for a couple weeks and my mom said, maybe you’re pregnant? And I was!”

Somehow, I congratulated her, and walked away. Later she told me how it took them three years to conceive the son, and I felt a little better. I am such a bitch.

___________________________________________________________________________

The other thing that struck me during the party was all the family that was there--four generations of one side, three generations of the other. Gifts were given that had been handed down for years. On the mantle was a card given to the birthday girl’s mother on her first birthday.

This family has practically adopted my husband and me; we’ve been to Thanksgiving dinner at their house two years in a row, and they greet us with genuine pleasure every time they see us. So why does this make me feel oddly lonely?

My husband and I are both only children (technically, I have half-sisters and maybe a half-brother but we didn’t grow up together). My husband’s father died at 47, when my husband was only 17, and my father left when I was 15 months old. My mother is difficult, to say the least, and my husband’s mother has Alzheimer’s. My mother cut off contact with my uncles and cousins, and it’s been a fight for me to stay connected to them, and my husband has only an aunt and a cousin. All of our grandparents are dead.

My mother doesn’t have my first birthday cards, or clothes that I wore that she will give to my daughter, or anything like that. It’s not a criticism—we moved, a lot, often across the country, and holding on to stuff like that was hard. We were also very, very poor. My husband’s mother, on the other hand, doesn’t hold on to things like that simply because she isn’t remotely sentimental—a side effect, perhaps, of being a German immigrant who lost everything in WWII (although with any luck, she still has the lederhosen she made my poor husband wear as a toddler in Brooklyn).

At the birthday party, when it was time to light the candles, a grandmother thrust her camera at me and ordered me to take pictures while she gathered with the rest of the family around the cake. The other grandmother held up a half melted candle and told the rest of us that this candle came from France and has been used for every family birthday for over twenty years. I stood on the side, clicking away, grateful for a camera to cover my expression of lust and envy.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Fortunately, I balanced this event with a completely different one on Sunday. I’ve been a member of the fertility boards for a couple of years, and while they can be a little silly, I have gotten a lot of support there, particularly on the threads dealing with IUI/IVF. Most of the women on those threads are a little less likely to discuss babydust and more likely to have had some real struggles.

A couple of months ago, a thread local to my area developed, and Sunday afternoon some of us got together for lunch. There were nine of us, one woman just pregnant with IVF twins. It was really fun, and so interesting to be in a group of people going through what we’re going through. We talked about how easy it is to feel alone in this struggle—and sitting across from them was quite empowering, and I left feeling both satisfied and hopeful.

There was a lot of laughter. The husbands, in particular, seemed relieved to discover that all the women had horrendous hormonal fits. We didn’t spend the whole time talking about infertility by any means, but the feeling of being in a raft from the Titanic was overwhelming. I really hope we do it again.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I must be PMSing right now, cause the whole time I’ve been writing this I’ve been wanting to cry.

Can I just say how fucking sick and tired I am of crying? If I never shed another un-movie related tear (I weep like a child at sad movies—I’m totally gullible to fiction), I’ll be happy. I’m just fucking exhausted with sadness and anger.

Maybe I need to get another tattoo before I get pregnant. Yeah, that’ll cheer me up. Doesn't she look like me? Oh right...well, she does.

Reasons To Consider NOT Being A Parent

My best friend has the most amazing eight-year-old you’ve ever met (she's the one in the picture with me). She’s blond, beautiful, and so amazingly sure of herself that you just want to stop her from ever becoming a self-conscious teenager.

Except, apparently, she’s already on her way. Last week, she told her boyfriend (oh holy crap she’s EIGHT) to French kiss her. He said he didn’t know what that was, so she told him. He was all, like, gross, and she said, “Do it or you’re not my boyfriend anymore.” AND HE DID. My best friend remarked, rather calmly I thought, “Perhaps she’s a bit too un-sheltered.”

Is it possible in the Brittany Spears age to have an eight-year-old child that doesn’t know what French kissing is? My best friend thought long and hard about the situation, and decided that the bad part wasn’t the kissing, but the blackmail. After all, she doesn’t want to give her daughter any sexual complexes at this early age.

Now that’s good parenting.

________________________________________________________________________________

My neighbors began trying to have a baby shortly before we did. The result is the wonderful, marvelous, spectacular angel that is their daughter. This baby has an inherent fierceness that I just can’t help admiring. Before she could really speak, each time she had something to say, she tightened up her entire body before barking an eloquent “BAH!” Now that she can say a few words (which makes you just swoon), she seems to have relaxed, and quite easily says “Bye!” which makes you, of course, not want to leave.

Right after they had their baby, to help them out, I began taking their dog out for a morning walk with my dog (one of the reasons we became friends is that our dogs immediately bonded with each other—which is hysterical, since their dog is a twelve pound Miniature Pinscher, and our dog is a 95 pound Pit Bull mix. But they just adore each other). Even though the baby is now a year old (just turned one on St. Patrick’s Day!), I still sometimes walk both dogs. This morning I was surprised to find the baby there and not at day care—her aunt is in town and was babysitting. It was such an unexpected pleasure! As soon as she saw me, she immediately was full of smiles and came toddling over with her arms outstretched. When I left, she cried to see me go.

I’m not sure what grace of God enables me to love this child without resentment or envy. Since the day she came home (a mere eight hours after she was born at a birthing center), I have been smitten with her.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The other thing that makes me wonder if I should reconsider parenting is this: when I was visiting with the baby this morning, her aunt told me “We were watching Sesame Street, but I had to turn it off since Baby Bear doesn’t pronounce his ‘R’s’ correctly.” Course, she’s studying to be a speech therapist.

WTF? In a world where eight year olds are French kissing, do we really have to worry about how a puppet pronounces a letter of the alphabet???

I’m so screwed. My child will totally have a speech impediment, be busted making out in the back of the classroom at age six, and probably steal a car by thirteen (whoops, that was me!). We’re doomed as parents.

The Godlessness Of Infertility

Infertility drives us to all kinds of nasty questions like as getupgrrl put it “Why me? Why not me?” It becomes very easy to struggle with questions of spirituality and yes, even God, when you can’t complete the most natural act of all: having a baby. Before I started trying to conceive, I believed very much as Julie states so eloquently on her fabulous site:

I derive comfort from the notion of an absolute and eventual balance in the universe. I do believe that the universe is ultimately fair and just, not necessarily in the short term but in the vague, theoretical distance; and not based on how "good" we are as people or how "deserving" we are of good fortune, but as something of a birthright. I do believe that every one of us has the chance to feel roughly equal measures of sorrow and joy in our lives. (Whether we open ourselves to those feelings is another question entirely.)

Being sober usually helps one develop basic spiritual beliefs. Most of us stumble into recovery shocked that we’re alive. This immediately sows the seeds of some sort of belief in a higher power, because if there weren’t something watching out for us we would have died in that car accident/suicide attempt/overdose.

When I first began experiencing difficulty in conceiving, I contacted another sober woman who’d been through this. She said to me, all the while holding her baby boy in her arms, “You know, I’ve never really been able to forgive God for those first two miscarriages. Even with my son here, now, alive and well, I can’t let it go.”

________________________________________________________________

Over the years of my sobriety, I’ve become less and less sure what God is. When I first turned my life around, I quickly went from professing no belief in God at all to a being a full-out Wiccan. I boldly shared this fact at meetings, never mind the fact that I’d never once done a ritual. In fact, I didn’t like most Wiccan practicitioners I knew cause they were a bunch of lame flakes who had never had any thing really bad happen to them.

Eventually, I let go of my rigid idea of God. I began to believe in a benevolent, loving force in the universe that strove for balance. I remember hearing the story of a Native American guiding tourists through treacherous parts of the Grand Canyon during flash flood season. He told everyone that if water came pouring in, they were to try to point their feet in the direction of the flow, keep their heads above water, and above all else, never, never try to swim.

Staying in tune with my idea of God has been like that. Keep your head above water, and never swim against the current—it just exhausts you and smashes you into rocks (some days I can’t resist a good rock smashing, though, and swim hard against the current).

Through each step of our fertility treatment, my husband and I have gone forward very cautiously, wondering if we were doing the right thing. When I asked my sponsor about moving on to IVF, whether or not that went against God’s will, she said, “Well, you have to put your faith in something. You might as well put in these doctors.” It seems easier these days to believe in the doctors than God.

It’s almost better to not believe in any sort of God than believe there is one that is thwarting you at every turn and trying to repeatedly fuck you up the ass. Cause that’s how this feels. It started slowly, with each negative home pregnancy test (not to mention that one false positive), but then as we got more information, it got worse. When the andrologist told us, “Yes, your husband’s overall sperm count is up after three months on Clomid. However, his sperm doesn’t wash well. IUI really isn’t an option for you. You should consider IVF,” I could see God in the background getting out the lube.

In the last couple of weeks, as my first IVF cycle begins, I’m filled with anxiety. I lie awake at night with my brain running in circles like a NASCAR racetrack. I spend my whole day at work researching the frequency of cerebral palsy in IVF twins. Then I go to the fertility boards for some hope, and find all the members of my little IUI circle have miscarried.

When I told my sponsor this, she laughed, and said, “Well, stop. Stop researching stuff that makes you crazy. Before you do that, pray—but not to your higher power. Pick someone else, someone benevolent, like the Dalai Lama as a child.”

So yesterday, I was thinking about this, and I heard the bells chiming from this huge cathedral across the street from my job. Now, I’m not catholic, by any means, but it seemed to me that perhaps the Virgin Mary would be an appropriate higher power for me until my God and I are back on speaking terms. After all, she’s basically the current incarnation of the Goddess, and it took a miracle to get her pregnant, right?

So I called a recovering priest I knew to make sure I wouldn’t be stepping on the toes of the Catholics of the world if I went over there and made on offering to the Virgin. He laughed and said no, so I went on over.

It was incredibly quiet, with the exception of someone running a vacuum in a back office. After I paid my dollar to the poor box and pushed the button to light the little electric candle (ok, whose stupid ass idea was it to get rid of real candles? I was all prepared with lace over my head and everything), I sat in front of the statue of Mary for fifteen minutes, trying to open myself up to feel a connection. I felt comforted, mostly by the mere act of not thinking about anything for a few minutes (except why were Mary’s feet bare? Aren’t there a lot of rocks in the desert?). I left and had lunch without a side order of terror and anxiety. It was nice.

Poems

Infertility

As I once again
spread my legs for yet another
prodding of my insufficient parts,
I brace for the familiar agonizing stab from
this faulty and unforgiving uterus.

I have decided
it is clearly an
evolutionary flaw
that the uterus has
nerve endings.

Surely, the few butterfly
kiss flutterings of a
half-formed child are
not worth a lifetime
of menstrual cramps--
not to mention labor.

My husband’s tests have included
only one humiliating session
of manhandling
and many visits to a small room
with bad European porno videos
that our joke-cracking doctor
says you need quarters to view.

It hardly seems fair
that he enjoys his pornography
while I take drugs
am stabbed with needles
and am repeatedly vaginally probed with
a ridiculously huge ultrasonic wand
(a condom kindly contributing to this parody of sex).

I need no further evidence
that God, laughing his ass off,
is a man.

To One Not Allowed To Exist: my baby not born

Occasionally I picture you
standing ankle deep
in blue moon water
after rain.

You are joyful–
nothing impeding
this fraction of time.

A honey Goddess,
you sing.
Voice drifting up
to the purple moment
of sky, worshiping
like music.

Your face a shiny peach rose tree.
Your beauty a garden.

We’ll meet in that
hazy pink dreamscape
so I can finally learn your name.

For now, though,
the harmony for your songs
will remain tattooed
on my heart
waiting to be sung.

There are two end-of-the-world crimes women can commit in America:

1. Being fat
2. Being childless

Well, thrown on the cuffs and lock me away, cause I’m guilty, guilty, guilty.

We’ll talk about the second one first. I know several women that have made the decision not to have children, for a variety of reasons—reasons I don’t know, don’t need to know, and are none of my business. In fact, I spent much of my life believing that I didn’t want children. When I told my high school girlfriends that my husband and I had started trying, they were shocked. I was vehement in my youth; adamantly opposed to “bringing a child into this world. It’s selfish!” I’m not sure what’s changed; maybe there is some truth to the whole biological clock thing, or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I was lucky enough to fall in love with a man that will make the best father the world has ever seen. I grew up fatherless, and convinced that all men were scum and left their children. I know my husband won’t leave (unless I do something really egregious, like have sex with a whole football team or something—not likely, cause I hate football), since I told him to leave about 565465 times in the first two years we were together, and he didn’t.

I was reminded of my youthful vehemence recently when I read my work at a pro-choice poetry reading put on by a student group at a local university. I read poems both about the choice I had to make at 19, and a recent poem about my struggles with infertility. The three young women who read after me ranted at great length about how selfish having babies is “in this world where humans are cattle.” I didn’t take this personally, thank god, but I remember being so young, so sure, so… definite. Was it easier back then? I don’t remember. Course, I was drunk a lot.

Anyway, deciding not to have children can be just as brave as having them. Women that don’t are frequently hassled by strangers and family and are forced to defend themselves. Now if I were arrested for not having a child, I’d probably get off since I’m at least trying. But there is still a certain smugness some people have. You can see the comments in their eyes: “Why did you wait so long? You’ve been married for eight years after all. Now you’ll probably have to adopt. Serves you right.”

So now let’s talk about that other great crime, being fat. I don’t remember NOT being fat, although most of my early life, I wasn’t. By third grade, though, boys had learned that if you called a girl fat, no matter what size she actually was, it would hurt. So when the playground was ringing with cries of “Fatso! Fatso!” I believed it—regardless of the reality of my weight, which was COMPLETELY NORMAL for my age. In some ways, it may have even been a prophecy I felt compelled to fulfill.

In middle school, I began dieting for the first time. When I look at pictures of myself at that age, I’m completely flabbergasted. I want to reach through time and shake that young girl hard and make her wake up—and while I’m back there, slap my mother for letting me diet before I even hit puberty (a fact that has been shown in studies to cause obesity in adult women).

In high school, when I began earning my own money, I was able to buy myself junk food. And I did. And I began to gain weight. By my senior year, I was in a size 14/16 and the year after high school (after I moved out of my mother’s house and in with my young alcoholic boyfriend—yeah!) I kept going up. Most of my adult life I’ve been wearing fat clothes and been over 200 pounds.

I have had lengthy periods of time where I was comfortable with my body. Years even. Once I moved from a small mid-western town (where I’d gone to high school) to a large east coast city, I was surprised to discover that my weight wasn’t as much of an issue to men. I first learned this from a very reliable source—my garbage men. I would be leaving for work as they collected the garbage and they would all say “Mmm, mmm, MMM!” which was about the best compliment I’d ever heard. Then, I discovered bars, and suddenly found myself the proud owner of a series of micro-relationships and one-night stands. Someone wanted me! In fact, several someones! Maybe not more than once, but heck! Who cared? I was an alcoholic woman living in a city full of men that wanted to have sex with me. I was able, for a little while, to love my body.

One of those micro-relationships (which meant you met at the bar and slept together more than once) turned into a real relationship, and suddenly I was faced with my body. This particular guy wasn’t exactly supportive. He was the kind of guy that answered the never, never should be asked question “Am I the best sex you’ve ever had?” with “Well, there was this time with two girls…” Plus he watched porno. A lot of porno. Three + movies a week. There is nothing more effective at creating body shame than porn.

So I joined a gym and discovered the power of exercise bulimia. I would work out for three or four hours and then go home and eat for two. It was insane. I had no idea back then that I was an addict (or that I was a drunk) or that over-exercising could be a problem.

When that relationship ended, so did the gym membership. I went back to whoring it up at the bars, until I found myself head over heels in love with the man that would become my husband.

This man loves me no matter what size I am. I’ve been well over 300lbs in this relationship, and he still would whisper into my ear how sexy I was. This is no chubby chaser either—all the other women in his life have been scrawny and petite. In this relationship, I was able to find sobriety, and sanity about food (if you’d like to know more about how this happened, please email me). So I was able to fall in love with my body again—it was strong, thick, and beautiful to me.

And this lasted until I began to try to get pregnant. I felt so betrayed by my body as month after month passed with no pregnancy. It wasn’t long until I began to eat more again, both as comfort and revenge. I regained weight I’d lost, and began a long cycle of unforgiving self-hatred. I hated myself for being fat; I just knew, somehow, that being fat caused my infertility--even when the doctors told me otherwise.

When I was at my highest weight, I began to have breakthrough bleeding. Basically, I got my period every two weeks, so I only had two week I didn’t bleed a month. I finally went to my gynecologist’s office, and was seen by the world’s smallest Korean woman. I swear, during my pap smear, she had to go in up to the elbow. After nothing was revealed during the exam, she squeaked, “Maybe it’s your weight. Severely obese women produce too much estrogen!” I was horrified and convinced she was wrong. But after the weight began to come off, sure enough, my cycle returned to normal.

I was a proud member of Weight Watchers when I began taking fertility hormones. Nothing big, no injections or anything, but Clomid and progesterone. My ability to lose weight came to an abrupt halt, and in fact, no matter how much I exercised or how little I ate, I GAINED. It was awful.

So I resigned myself to getting even fatter, all in pursuit of having a baby. So in my head a constant war rages on—“I’m fat, that’s why I can’t get pregnant” battles with “I can’t lose weight cause I’m trying to get pregnant”. Now, I just try to practice sanity about food—don’t eat six bags of M&M’s from the vending machine cause my beta was negative; eat just two. So far, it seems to be ok.

More of the beginning

So, the first fertility clinic we went to told us right away to pursue IVF. I balked at that for a lot of reasons(about $15,000 of them) but also because of a Ms. Magazine article published, I believe, in Oct of 2000 (I tried to research this to no avail. Ms. did publish an article on infertility then, but the one I remember may have been published earlier).

In this article, the authors went into great detail about how fertility treatment is an industry hungry for money and praying on the fears of professional women. That twenty years ago, no one was declared infertile until they had been trying to conceive for five+ years--but now the diagnosis of infertility comes after a year or even six months.

At the time of the article, we hadn't started trying yet, and I remember thinking I would never pursue fertility treatment because I didn't want to support such an obviously sexist and money-hungry industry.

What they didn't talk about in the article is that if I'd waited five years after we first starting trying to be diagnosed I would have been 39. I didn't have five years to wait and see if some divine intervention was going to get me pregnant. Most women who avail themselves of fertility treatment are in my age group, and THAT'S why the diagnosis is being made so much earlier.

The article also went into great detail about the variety of procedures utilized in fertility treatment and diagnosis, describing each one as an "invasion" and a "mini-rape." The examples they sited were the vaginal ultrasound, the ultrasonic guided needles used in egg retrieval, and the HSG test. Now, there's no doubt that these procedures are invasive--no one enjoys any of these tests. But mini-rape? Doesn't rape imply someone denying consent? Me, I'm quite willingly spreading my legs for each of these tests, so that kinda eliminates the rape factor.

So, anyway, a couple of years after reading that article I discover that we have some fertility issues. My resolve to not pursue treatment took a while to weaken, but several months of negative home pregnancy tests (with one false positive—the agony!) took the wind right out of my sails. After trying on our own for about six months following our male factor diagnosis, we knew it was time to consider trying IUI (intrauterine insemination). But I wasn't too excited to go back to the big hospital (it was so hard to park there, plus I didn't like our doctor).

So it was completely fortuitous for me to meet a lovely woman and her infant daughter at meeting one day. I'd shared about our struggles, and she approached me and introduced her miracle IVF baby. And she told me about this doctor that she just loved that ran a small private clinic. She said he's awesome, that she got pregnant on her very first IVF cycle, and most importantly, that all the other fertility doctors in the area hate him because he's not all that interested in making money.

I was sold! I made an appointment to see him the next day.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Greeting us as we walked into the clinic on that first day was a huge brass statue of a hunter sporting a bow and arrow, complete with a lion skin loincloth with a paw hanging provocatively between his legs. My husband and I thought that it boded well for the whole male fertility issue.

The doctor, I kid you not, talked exactly like Jackie Mason. He handed us article after article that he’d published on our issues, and shuttled us away for more testing. He asked my husband for another sperm assessment, asking him if he was “in a sperm producing mood” and then wisecracking “You got quarters? Cause I own the franchise.” They took 86643276865 vials of blood from both of us, did a vaginal ultrasound, a pelvic exam, cultures, and more. We were there for three hours, and we left with the most precious commodity of all—hope.

They set up several appointments to monitor my cycle, and soon we had more bad news. Not only did we not have enough sperm, my eggs were releasing prematurely. When they told us this, I had visions of my poor little egg being a ten-year-old girl sent off to marry into the evil sultan’s harem. The poor little eggs! So young!

This fact surprised me, cause I don’t let go of anything without a struggle. So you’d think I’d hold on to my eggs for too long, not let them go too early. Oh—except I do hold on to them for too long as well—turns out I didn’t ovulate until three weeks into my cycle, right about the time that my darling husband and I were quite sick of sex (ok, maybe more me than him). So just when we’re taking a break, out comes my sad little premature egg.

The good news, I guess, was this could be corrected with Clomid. So as my next cycle came along, they put me on this drug for five days. Immediately, I became dizzy and nauseous, so of course I was convinced I was pregnant right away (but you haven’t ovulated yet! said my ever reasonable husband). Plus, I immediately gained about 30 pounds of water retention, allowing for really fun games of “Let’s put dents in my legs and see how long they stay and how deep they can be.” Then, after I did ovulate (and yes, a nice, mature egg, ready to become a slave in the harem), they put me on progesterone gel.

Now, I don’t know what evil human invented progesterone gel, but there’s nothing good about it. I’m guessing it can’t be exposed to the air, hence the atrocious package design. You have to snap a small part of it off, after shaking it down like a thermometer, and then push a little bulb at the end to inject this stuff into your vagina. It never fails—every single time I do it, I rip out at least one pubic hair and pinch my labial skin--and I have to do it twice a day. Maybe it’s cause of the way my body is shaped (round and fat), but my vagina happens to be very long, and I have to put the whole dispenser thingy up there to get it anywhere near my cervix--hence the pinching.

Secondly, we found out later from my cultures that I had a low-level yeast infection when I began using the progesterone. Now, I don’t know this at the time, but apparently, when you have a yeast infection and use progesterone gel, you have all the ingredients necessary to bake bread in your vagina! How convenient!

Progesterone gel always causes a disgusting discharge—more like cottage cheese than bread (I found out in later cycles) but combined with the yeast infection, it’s hell. I immediately went to the drug store and bought one of those giant blue douche bags so I could flush the stuff out. Later on, I learned the helpful hint of nightly “digging” out the discharge.

The other issue I had with the progesterone is that it made me very, very tired. At first, I'd notice at the gym that I couldn't possibly do level 6 on the elliptical. Level two was more like it. Then, by the end of the two weeks I used it, I was basically in a coma. I'd fall asleep during meetings, at work, while my husband was talking to me, just whenever.

As you can imagine, this wrecked havoc on my sex drive. Oddly, it had no apparent effect on my husbands. This is particularly remarkable since he began taking Clomid as well—to help raise up his overall count. He, of course, had no side effects.

After a few months of clomid/progesterone and no pregnancy, we decided to try IUI. After two failed IUI’s, we had a long talk with the andrologist. More bad news. Even though the count is up, we have both sperm antibody and penetration issues. IVF with ICSI is our only option. “The good news is” spouted the cheerful andrologist, “you’re excellent candidates for IVF! I’m sure you’ll get pregnant that way!”

So, we scheduled another consultation with Dr. Jackie Mason (this one was spent mostly talking about how he was going to trip over his phone cord. Reinforcements, in the form of his surly receptionist, had to be called in) to get our IVF protocol.

This brings us up to date. Now, we’re in limbo, awaiting my period, so we can begin the injections that start off the IVF protocol.

And it begins

So last night was PLANET MELTDOWN at my house. I lost my shit and had a total tantrum. It started because my husband was wanting to have sex and I soooooo didn't-- and went on from there. I ended my fest by slamming the bedroom door, falling on the bed weeping, and hurling my prenatal vitamins at the door (they didn't break, more's the pity), all the while wondering why my husband wasn't coming into the room to comfort his violent and psycho wife.

And this month I'm not even taking any fertility hormones.

_________________________________________________________________

My husband and I began to try to get pregnant in May of 2002. We'd been together nine years, had gotten sober together three years into our relationship, and decided we'd finally grown up enough to be parents.

But God (don't worry, this isn't some scary christian blog. My God is alternately a gentle breeze, a tough ass lawyer chick, or Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia, or a complete neglectful jerk) has a funny sense of humor. You've heard the jokes-- wanna make God laugh? Make plans! Well, God, that asshole, had best be laughing his butt off, cause nearly two years later, we ain't pregnant.

Ever the patient ones, we waited a whole seven months before going to see a doctor (you're supposed to wait a year-- so of course, we lied). We went to a clinic connected to a major university hospital and were soon sitting across from a lovely young resident. She glanced at my charts (I quickly succumbed to charting and temping fever-- and just as quickly abandoned it as crazy making) and agreed that yes, I did ovulate regularly. She recommended a sperm assesment, and the obligitory vaginal ultrasound (is it possible to see a fertility doctor and NOT get a visit from the dildocam? But, doc, I just wanted to pay my bill. I'm not even trying this month. Let go of my pants!!!) .

About a month later (ok, it was a week) we got the news: my husband had an extremely low sperm count. The nurse spouted a bunch of numbers for me, motility, morphology, etc. I had no idea what it meant, just that it was bad. Three days of non-stop internet research later, I knew how bad it was.

So we coerced them into doing a little more testing on me, some bloodwork, and HSG (more about that at another time). And we decided to wait. Try naturally, for a while, and see what happened. My darling husband gamely repeated the sperm assesment several times, with the news the same, or close to the same, each time.

And thus began the longest and most painful limbo period of my life. And yep, still here.