Discontent

Another pregnancy announcement of another friend who will probably only talk to me out of a sense of propriety ever again, after all who would intentionally include someone as broken and bitter as me in their happily ever after? And my  first reaction... Try to wish myself out of Exsistence (it's a good thing I still value my life, or we'd have real issues) and to be angry and bitter and jealous and to mourn because I have probably lost another friend.

It's not like I like being bitter, but I can't bring myself to to be happy for the fact that everyone around me keeps getting the only thing i ever wanted and leaving me behind in the process.  And I can't bring myself to stop wanting it.  And there doesn't seem to be anything more I can do to facilitate it.  Ive been going back and forth on going back to the RE since we're coming up on another year of trying...but Outside of my surgeries, which i agree are significant (but which are also over), the RE has been of no help to me.  And if I did, should i see my old RE in Pittsburgh, or a new one that works at my new preferred hospital in Morgantown? On one hand maybe it'd help to have one that knows my history, but a new perspective might be nice too.  Or maybe i should invest the time in money into some counseling and get my crazy straightened out.  But I have no idea if that'd help.  I just want a baby.  Who'd have thought it'd have to be so hard.

5 Years

I saw on pinterest last week, a suggestion to new brides that they make a "where I see myself" sheet for the next 5, 10, 15 years and make a kind of time capsule of it.  Open on the intervals and see how u measure up, and how your outlook has changed.  

Mr. Fix-It and I are quickly coming up on 5 years of marriage.  Everyone around us keeps commenting on "how fast it all goes by"...but for me the last 5 years have been slow and miserable.  Don't get me wrong, there have been plenty of good times and my husband is an incredible man who I wouldn't trade for the world.  I'm not sure how I caught him, and I certainly don't deserve him, but he's my everything.

But if I had bothered to make one of those time capsules, I know exactly what my goals would have been: Move back to the general vacinity of my hometown, own a home with plenty of land, be the mother of a 4 year old, a 3yo, 2yo, a 1yo and have another on the way.  Bury myself in raising them and loving my husband, whatever that may have meant. little league, swim classes, etc.  To some people, I'm sure that seems small or anti-feminist, or unrealistic, or insufficient... but I knew exactly what I wanted.  I have no desire for a career, or glory... I wanted my legacy to be my children.

5 years later, I have accomplished a grand total of one of those things.  In my grand "life schedule", I was actually a year ahead, having completed college and gotten married a year ahead of schedule.  But I haven't really moved ahead since then.  I an 4 years behind schedule.  I guess you could say I do have 4 children (who would be almost 3, almost 3, 1.5 and 1) tho I can't claim another on the way.  But burying myself in these children means burying myself under grief and pain and an ocean of what-ifs.  I can't say I don't do it at times, but I can say that it's the epitome of unhealthy and I get lost and suffocated so easily.  I come out with no idea who I am or who I was.

5 years seems a good point to re-evaluate... a GREAT time to re-evaluate, but I can't bring myself to it.  Of course, I have to keep shoving things back since the rest of my life goals depend on accomplishing these ones first, but I can't bring myself to want something different.  So often, I feel so lost.  I feel like the last 5 years have completely torn down who I used to be to the point that I can't remember who I was, and left me as no one, empty.  But when you ask me what I want for my life, I still know the answer. (maybe there's still a little of the old me left.)  The only problem is that now I'm very sincerely afraid that I may never get even a glimpse of that life.  What was once steering merrily off into the sunset is now driving myself off a cliff.  I may yet have the opportunity to live the life I've always wanted, but I do have to ask myself  "What if I don't?" because I get no say in it anymore.

How do you change the inmost desires of your heart?

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep that have taken hold.  ~ Frodo, Return of the King

"Wait 'til you have kids"

Or the ever popular
"You should have kids"

It's an annoying pain in the ass to hear it from someone who doesn't know better...but from those who do...

Seriously?

And when I respond that I have 4 children, they're just dead I get an eye roll as if to say "that's not what I meant at all Angela".

No one says that to parents with severely disabled children, even though they probably understand parenting a normal child about as much as I do. But they've seen and interacted with their children and can't deny their existence, even though what they actually mean to say is "wait til you have children like mine, wait til you experience parenting like me".

How very self-centered! No two parenting experiences are alike and choosing to deny mine is to deny the validity, the realness of my children's lives and that is something I simply will not stand for. I am a mother, their mother, and I don't care how many eye rolls or scoffs I get, I will not let anyone do that to my children.

Menstrual migraine

... Because bleeding out the vag, the return of endo-level cramps, and once again not being pregnant did not quite suck enough. Thanks, God, for clearing that up.

My Own Breed of Crazy

I've always lived my life a little on the quirky side of things, but infertility and RPL have pushed me quite decidedly over the line into crazy town.

• This week, I honestly got jealous of a pregnant stick figure my soon-to-be-cousin-in-law drew in draw something.  
• I miss morning sickness (and let me tell you, last go round i had it in a pretty big way)
• Small children are hard to be around, and babies nearly impossible.  Ironic considering my life's only goal for the last 4+ years, no?
• I can't even pretend to be happy for my friends anymore and they're all pregnant or have small children so i just keep them at arms length.  They don't need my rain on their parade anyways.  
• Sometimes, I lie awake at night trying to will my tummy flub to turn into a person.  No luck on that one... yet.  
• They say the mark of a truly crazy person is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  I think TTC falls pretty firmly into that category these days. For one, I'm trying desperately to plow through ptsd-esque flashbacks for regular BD, which never seems to result in pregnancy...and even if it did, It's equally crazy for a person in my shoes to think pregnancy=baby.  But i still think like that most of the time.  Hope desperately that somewhere, wherever the end of this tunnel is, there is a baby there.  

No Hyacinths For You!

Yesterday, while in my hometown to have my dad look at my car, I decided it was high time to get my Easter on in the cemetery.  I get really paranoid about getting behind on the upkeep A. so people don't think that I'm neglecting it because I don't live right down the street, and B. because when I'm not, other people do it for me...and I know they mean well, but I get really hurt when they do.  While the rest of my friends are out decorating nurseries and picking out frilly Easter dresses, this is all I get to do for my daughter.  I wish everyone else saw that and left it for me.  

The grocery and home improvement stores here are full of potted Easter flowers.  It only seemed reasonable then, that the ones an hour away would also be so, and its much easier to buy flowers there than to have them spilling over and getting dirt in my car on the ride over.  

Boy was I WRONG!  One nursery told me they wouldn't have Easter flowers until mother's day, explain that one to me.  The hyacinths (which are really what I was after, but I'd have taken tulips or daffodils) in my yard are almost spent, so it's silly for them to tell me they couldn't have blossomed yet.  I went to every grocery store, hardware store, and nursery in plum and I found no bulb flowers whatsoever.  Only one place had any flowers at all.  So I wound up with pansies that are probably dead already from last night's frost and I'l have to plant some more flowers next spring.  I did at least find some mixed gladiolus bulbs at the dollar store and planted those, so at least Lizzie has some perennial summer flowers now and I put in some new mulch.  

Epilogue

*Warning: Extreme Hunger Games Series Spoiler Alert*

I just got done devouring the Hunger Games trilogy.  I really, truly loved them.  But the ending really stands out to me.  So often, characters go through truly horrifying experiences and tragic loss and because the greater goal was served, they all live happily ever after.  It makes you feel like all is right in the world.  "And the scar on his forehead never bothered him again"...

But that's not reality.  War, traumatic loss, torture... they change people, down to their very core, haunt them daily...

In the epilogue of Mockingjay, Katniss and Peeta are watching their children frolic in the meadow that is actually the mass grave of the citizens of their district, burnt until unrecognizable during the rebellion, and this is what katniss has to say to us: "It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree.  But Peeta wanted them so badly.  When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself.  Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it.  Carrying him was easier, but not much."

This is a woman who spent her whole life knowing that if she ever had children, they could (and once she became a champion, definitely would) be taken from her and essentially murdered for other's entertainment.  And then she experienced the horror herself, not by losing a child but by being the child who was almost lost...twice.  It's no wonder she swore off having children and it took 15 years of freedom to convince her otherwise.

Who in the recurrent loss community can't relate with that?  The fear of having your children taken from you that's so strong you put it off for long period of time, and the even stronger fear that envelops you when you learn you're expecting and can't help but love your child entirely from day one, even though you know how poorly it could all end.

Thank you, Suzanne Collins, from all the people on this planet who are fucked up by what life has put us through for not exempting your heroic and loved characters from the same fate.  For acknowledging that it's not only the weak , but also the epically strong who are forever changed and even broken by life.

Humor Me While I Rant

I went to a very conservative Christian college, where the student body busied itself, during it's rare non-studying hours, with charitable deeds.  Amongst those many charities, were a few adoption fundraising groups.  And these young women, who would wed as soon as they graduated if not before, would be taught all about the expense of adoption and the children waiting for adoption and the families struggling to pay to adopt them.  Then they'd be given their buckets and sent off to fundraise.

Fast forward a year or two when, newly graduated and married, these couples start discussing building a family. They have somehow, within only a few years, been blessed with not only the purchase of a house but still having an excess of money.  They consider having their own children and frankly would probably have no trouble at it, but instead decide it would be cruel to bring another child into the world when there are so many who need homes.  They immediately go off and spend copious amounts of money to purchase adopt a newborn from a hard up mother.

Sounds like a great story of social responsibility, no?

But of course, those adoption fundraising groups did a world of hurt by criss-crossing their figures.  There really are a lot of older children waiting to be adopted.  There are also a lot of couples waiting for years at a time to spend rediculous amounts to adopt an infant, and the longer you wait the more you pay.  You see, most unwanted infants simply aren't born anymore.  But because of this misled info, people who could be giving birth to their own healthy infants are removing the few that are in the pool from people who can't have children of their own and wouldn't struggle to provide for a child on a day-to-day basis, but do struggle greatly to come up with the $20,000-$100,000 that comes with infant adoption.

If you have the money and want to do good people, give it to a couple who really needs it or adopt an older child.  That's the socially responsible thing to do.

Smells Like Morning Sickness

4 pregnancies in 4 years, and they've all been in the spring. I walked outside yesterday, in the middle of a wonderful warm spell and thought to myself "it smells like morning sickness". Not spring, or rain, or plants beginning to grow... But morning sickness.

It's little things like that that make me wonder if I'll ever be sane again. Spring is supposed to be a time of life and the light finally returning, and all I can think about is morning sickness, which with my past isn't about life like it should be, but death instead.

And crazier still? I want it so badly it hurts. Spring is always our lucky time. Hope it doesn't let us down this year.

My sincere condolences go out to MO and shmerson on the loss of precious little Nadav.  No parents should have to live though this hell, and I'm sorry that you are.

Taking one for the team

Facebook is flooded with pregnant people. I mean, MORE crowded than usual. And it's been pissing me off more than usual too. It took a while, but I finally figured it out. All those smug, taking it for granted bitches owe me one big time, and the least they could do is be sensitive.

You see, one in every 5 pregnancies ends badly. That means, for every dead baby and grieving mother there are 4 healthy happy babies in the world whose mothers have no idea how lucky they are. I'm not asking for money or thanks, all I ask is that you don't post every little kick and craving. After all, I took 4 for the team and because of me 16 little lives are free from the stats.

Emissary

In the opening double episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Commander Sisko comes into contact with a race of aliens who exist outside of linear time (the Bajorans consider them prophets).  They perceive humanity to be primitive and even violent and cruel at first.  Cmdr. Sisko enters into a dialogue with the "Prophets" on the nature of linear time and humanity.  How we live on in the hearts and memories of those who love us, how our past helps us understand and deal with our future.  The virtue of not knowing how things end up, because it wouldn't be worth experiencing otherwise.  And after each section of dialogue, they take him back to the scene of his wife's death at Wolf 359 and argue "but you live here".  He says humanity is not violent, and they show him dwelling on this point.  He says the mystery is half the adventure, and they show him dwelling on this point.  The eventual conclusion is that he dwells on that terrible time in his life, "lives there", because it was the one thing his past did not prepare him for, or give him insight into how to deal with.  So, while his linear nature pressed forward (what choice did it have?), his heart was left to dwell in that moment, having no idea how to press onward.  In the end, the "Prophets" share some unknown revelation with him, which helps him to move on with living his life in the present instead of the past and the show marches merrily onward.

So often, I find myself feeling like Cmdr. Sisko... Suck living in a moment of extreme pain, not because I enjoy it or the torture that comes with it, but because I have no idea how to move forward from it. Too bad the all knowing entity I worship isn't a big fan of magical fixes.