Still confused, but hoping!

So I know I posted this image earlier in the year - actually, last month. Nothing has changed so far, except maybe more stress.  I got a little excited this morning when my temp went up a little bit, that maybe, just maybe, I'm finally ovulating!  I did have acupuncture yesterday and they always do some fertility points in my ankles, and yesterday we also did some conception points on my abdomen.  I pray daily to God, Mary, JPII, to St. Jude, St. Gerard.  I keep asking for a pregnancy, but so far all I've got is this:   NOTE that today is day 42!!!

Above, is the chart from FertilityFriend, which automatically put in the dashed crosshairs for me.  Below it the same chart from Taking Charge of Your Fertility, which shows no crosshairs and no clear ovulation.

This morning, I dreamt that I was pregnant. That I was on a gurney at the hospital and that I was waiting to have our pregnancy confirmed. In the meantime, I took the doppler wand and placed it over my stomach and heard the heartbeat - I then took my pulse and the beats didn't match up, so I knew that I was listening to the baby's heartbeat!  Don't laugh, you know weird things make sense in dreams!

I'm trying to be patient, but I'm not sure if I should go see Dr. F to maybe "regulate" this cycle or just wait it out. I've read that a whacky cycle like this could go as long as 180 days!!!  I don't think I can do that.  I'm thinking a few more days, this is insane!!

Valentine's Day

Today is a day that is supposed to be filled with love, hearts, candle-lit dinners, wine and that special someone to be my Valentine. Today is supposed to celebrate love, happiness and that special bond that you have with your partner.  Today is supposed to be all about US.  


But this year, I just don't feel it.  Somehow, I'm totally focussed on next month, early March, and I can't help but think about where we'd be at this time, who we'd have with us and how our lives would be changing soon. I can't help but feel a loss, as if my heart was broken, even though I have Freddie by my side.  We did talk about it, and it seems that I'm not totally alone in feeling this way, Freddie also isn't in "the mood" to celebrate Valentine's Day this year.  We even went to the store yesterday to buy each other a card, and it was kind of stupid as we both stood there, showing each other what we would have bought each other. In the end, we decided that it was silly to stand side by side buying each other a card - we love each other and we know it, we don't need a card to show it.


 I'm sitting on the couch now, my cat happily sitting on my shoulder, "helping" me write this post (or maybe she can read? ha ha).  I don't know if this feeling of a broken heart will pass, I'm told it will with time. I'm not sure if I'll ever be fully happy again, as I think this sadness will linger in the background, somewhere, always.  I know that its also complicated by the fact that we are having no luck in the TTC area, and so the possibility that our future may not include children is certainly becoming more and more real with each day. I know that my "daily stresses" have increased recently as I'm not only dealing with my daily pain, but with the introduction of new meds I'm experiencing "breakthrough pain" more often and its hard to deal with. I'm angry at myself for gaining 6 pounds - oh I know how I did it, I get upset and I soothe myself with Lindt chocolates.  I'm stressed about the situation with my grandmother, who was admitted to the hospital last week for a cardiac episode. Although she is better, she is 90 and needs more care than we can ever provide, yet there is a difference of opinion about her care and that is creating a family wedge.  In case you are wondering, yes, you are correct in assuming that my aunt/godmother, is creating this wedge once again.  I'm also worried what the future holds for me professionally - will I be able to go back to work? Or will I have to stay on sick leave and give up all that I've worked for?   I know that I have a lot of stress on top of my daily pain and illness - but will this ever really change?
I just feel sad. I just feel lonesome for what could and should have been.  I feel a little hopeless. I feel scared of the future. I feel like my extended family is crumbling - but I do know that through it all, Freddie is right there with me and I'm so extremely thankful for that.  Through thick and thin, he's there to support me. He loves me, even when I have a bad day and I'm being difficult.  He asks how I feel and we often speak of our angel.  Freddie hasn't allowed the memory of our child to fade or diminish with time - and I love him so much for that.  So although we won't have a special dinner tonight, as I'm not feeling great today, we will tell each other how we feel, as we dine on left-overs. Then some other night we'll have a romantic dinner.  The actual date doesn't really matter, as we make sure to tell each other multiple times a day how much we love each other and to express it as well with hugs and kisses, or just holding hands while watching TV.  I'm lucky to have married my best friend, but I still feel like there is a piece of us missing.

Wish it was like this...

One of the girls from another group got me started on watching the TV show, Army Wives. I know I'm behind, as I don't have Lifetime as part of my package, so I'm a few episodes back.  Anyway, last night, Roxy's character suffered a miscarriage and it was so nice to see her friends rally around her. The took her to the hospital, they took care of her kids, they stocked her fridge with groceries and were "there" for her.  In today's episode, Roxy's friend, Denise, told her that she just found out she was pregnant as well.  It was so refreshing to see a TV character struggle with such news from a good friend while also dealing with her own grief and pain.  I was so pleased to see a miscarriage portrayed realistically on TV - finally!! It was so refreshing for a miscarriage to span more than one episode and to be portrayed as an event which affects so many parts of our lives, and that it keeps coming back, that the memory or pain never fully goes away.


I remember a few months ago, just a short time after we lost our angel, I was watching an episode of The Young and the Restless, where Victoria's character suffered a miscarriage.  She seemed to go through the loss, be "ok" with it, and move on to adopting a child within a few days/weeks.  I was so annoyed that the show portrayed it as a fleeting thing which you 'get over' and 'move on'.  While I do recognize that some women definitely feel that way, from those that I've been in touch with, it appears that most of us don't just "bounce back".


So allow me to applaud Army Wives, along with Sally Pressman, for portraying our pain, our sorrow and our grief.  I cried more tears during that episode than any other. So Thank you for bringing the 'taboo' subject of miscarriages to the forefront and for showing your audience how they should treat and care for a family which has suffered such a great loss.  I admit that I was jealous that Roxy had such caring people around her, as I would have loved if someone had made dinner for us during our difficult time (Freddie would make frozen pizzas for us for a few days, as neither one of us was capable of thinking far enough ahead to coordinate dinner) or dropped in to check on us, even now.  I know I'll never meet Sally Pressman or the show's writers, and I know that they'll never know how much they touched me with that episode, but I just want to say a huge THANK YOU!

The BIG Fight!

I knew that we'd fight sooner or later.  It was just inevitable. It had been building for months now. I thought I could stifle the anger. I thought I could move past it.  And then it happened, I had a huge fight with my aunt.
 
I guess I should backtrack a little. You may recall that I've blogged about my aunt, who also happens to be my godmother here.  Our relationship over the years has not been easy, as she is such a difficult person to deal with. In fact, it seems that every family gathering sees her "butting heads" with someone.  In her opinion, she is the smartest, most knowledgeable, most caring, most friendly, most tolerant, blah, blah, blah.  In truth, its almost the opposite.  Her main fault is that she is incapable of empathy in any way, shape or form. She never understands where any of us are coming from in conversation.  She can't understand anyones pain, difficulty or sorrow.  In addition, the world has to revolve around her - we always have to adjust our Holidays, celebrations to her schedule. If she doesn't want to do gifts, we don't, to avoid an argument, but I digress.
 
Empathy, in the image here, is defined as: "Understanding what the other person is going through and being there".  It would be nice if she could simply understand.  "Being there", would be a nice added bonus!

So you may recall that she has never said a word about the loss of our baby.  There was no card, no phone call, no flowers.  Even after a while, when we finally met at a family function, she barely would even say "Hello" to me - but still no expression of condolences.  This really hurt me as I like to think that we are fairly close. We live in the same town!  The mother-in-law of one of my relatives managed to hug me and whisper her condolences to me, while greeting me at church.  I received more empathy from a stranger than from my aunt/godmother.

Recently, my grandmother was in the hospital.  For four days we weren't sure if she'd make it.  The entire situation was extremely stressful (and you might remember what stress is doing to me here).  My aunt kept hovering and driving me insane for 2 days while we were there together, while I bit my tongue, went for walks, and avoided arguing with her. On the fifth day of the hospital visits, yesterday, IT finally happened.

 We were talking about my grandma's after care and what might be involved.  Knowing that my aunt is grossed out by bodily functions, I made a joke (it's hard to understand how a grown woman can refuse to kiss her dying mother, or bathe her in her hospital bed, or heaven forbid change an adult diaper!  My mother does all of this readily and I am prepared to do this for my & Freddie's parents if need be.  That's the order of things, but I digress again!).

Before I tell you the joke that started it all, the night before, she started talking about IVF.  She claimed that she watched a TV show (she only watches one Catholic station from Europe) about IVF and proceeded to tell me her opinion, as well as what she claimed the Catholic Church thought.  We exchanged words, as I had done a lot of research on this topic when we were considering IVF, and I stupidly shared my info with her.  My poor mother kept trying to shut my aunt up as she  knew that sooner or later I'd be upset.  My mom later told me that she had spoken to my aunt after that, telling her to back off and leave me alone. Apparently, my mom explained to my aunt that losing our Angel was clearly extremely difficult for us, so difficult in fact that I didn't really talk too much about it with my mom.  My mom asked her to avoid these stupid "baby" subjects as they were very painful for me. 

So fast forward to yesterday, my aunt, my mom and I are standing over grandma's bed.  My aunt wasn't too happy that my grandma wanted to go home when she felt better, instead of moving in with my aunt.  So I jokingly, with a smile on my face, told her not to worry, that she'd still have a chance to change grandma's diapers (as we're at that point now).  My aunt's rebuttal was that I would have to change them as well since I'd have to help out, and I said "of course, I've already done it". Since she had no more to add, her reply was "Well, you should be changing a baby's diapers by now!"   And I LOST IT!  As we were in the hospital and trying to whisper, I hissed at her:  "Oh, you have an opinion now??  When my baby died you didn't have a word to say. You were incapable of picking up the phone to offer your condolences or to see how I was doing. If you didn't want to call, you could have sent a sympathy card.  You haven't said a word in days, but now 5 months, 3 weeks and 5 days later you have an opinion?  It's one thing to forget my birthday and say nothing, but to ignore that our child died is inexcusable.  Just stay the f**k out of my life!!!"  To be honest, I was shocked at myself as I don't swear often!  I've never even sworn around my grandma, mom or Freddie's parents, but I was so mad. My heart was pounding so hard that I heard the thumping in my ears, I was lightheaded and my legs were shaking.  My aunt started raising her voice that she can't "talk" to me, that I'm always upset, that she didn't say anything wrong, etc.  My mom kept trying to shut my aunt up, telling her that she was insensitive, that she had no empathy, no tact, that of course she can't talk to me after all the pain and stress I've been through, but this all fell on deaf ears.  Eventually my aunt left.  I fully expected my mom to give me an earful about respecting elders, swearing, etc., as my entire life I remember her telling me to be tolerant of my aunt, to respect her, to listen to her even if I knew she was wrong, to be polite to her - then as I became a teenager and knew she was full of it, to simply smile and ignore her, instead of causing a family scene.  Yet this time, my mom totally supported me and was shocked herself that my aunt would bring up this topic again, even after mom had a discussion with her recently. Naturally, my aunt feels like the injured party, but again, this is nothing new.


I'm sure we all have some difficult relatives, but this one takes the cake.  Freddie readily admits that his family has aspects of "crazy" as well, but he agrees that it's nowhere to this degree.  I think that this may have changed my relationship with my aunt forever - not in the sense that my aunt will hold a grudge, as over the years she has had scenes like this with both of her sons, my mom, grandma, etc, but more

in the way that I see her.  I almost 

feel free now, released from trying to make a dysfunctional relationship work.  I feel that I no longer need to have a relationship with her because she's my aunt. I feel like I am choosing to be polite, treat her as an acquaintance, and enjoy myself. I feel like I no longer need to prepare myself for biting my tongue or for trying to find a way to keep the peace at each family function.  I feel like I finally stood up for myself and my angel.  I feel free of the expectation to be "good", then feeling guilty if I can't meet or exceed that expectation.  I feel free of the hope that my aunt would be supportive or kind. I'm free of the dream that I'll be able to get along with her.  If I hadn't had this blow up with her, it would always be between us and I would always have an underlying anger.  I feel lighter, my anger is gone and I feel good.

The bonus is that she is not my mother and that I will not be taking care of her in her old age.  Prior to this, I felt obligated, as her god-daughter, and the only female in my family (as she has a son and a step-son with a wife) to help her out. I felt obligated as her son is totally irresponsible and won't take care of her, while her step-son and his wife are very decent, but my aunt has treated them horribly over the years claiming that they weren't "her blood".  Her stepson has a large family of his own and won't have the time or space to help her out much, I suspect their interaction will be limited.  That's why I felt that I should help her, but I no longer feel this obligation. I feel free to focus on my family and have options in place for my mom's elder care. That's it.  Perhaps this huge blow-up of an argument was good in the end.  I certainly feel better!

I need ideas!

Hello there,

As I've mentioned before, my EDD is coming up on March 10th. I'd love to get some ideas on how we can memorialize that day - I don't want to say "celebrate" as it won't be a celebration, but I would like to start some kind of tradition for our angel.

So far, the only things I could think of were to release balloons, and frankly I don't know if there are "environment friendly" balloons that won't hurt wildlife.  We live in a climate where early March is still winter and there will be snow, so releasing butterflies will kill them instantly from the cold, its too cold to plant a tree or flowers.  I just can't think of anything.

If you have some ideas, or you'd like to share what you did, I'd love to hear it!!

Thank you!

What dreams may come...

I've read that after the loss of a baby its not unusual to dream of the baby or hear it crying.  I feel that I should warn you that I do believe that dreams can give us info and at times we can communicate with our loved ones through dreams.  I could recount several "strange" occurrences while awake, as well as many examples of dreams that foretold something that was coming up.

I know, you're probably reading this thinking "Oh pulheeez!", but I know this works for me. My mom and grandmother also "dreamt" and the same symbols work for all three of us.  For example, when I dream of shoes, that I'm buying or shopping for shoes, or someone keeps telling me that I need shoes in a dream, I know that I will travel and often its a last minute international trip that I was not expecting.  If I actually see black shoes, there will be a funeral of someone we know.  This has been going on my entire life.  After my dad died, I didn't dream of him no matter how much I wanted to - I should also disclose that after my parents divorce when I was a year old, I only saw my dad a handful of times so we weren't close.  Things would have been very different I'm sure if he had been able to overcome his alcoholism, but despite multiple tries at rehab he just couldn't defeat the disease.  Anyway, I do dream of my dad, not often, maybe once every 2-3 years and its always such a happy dream to see him and he often has a message for me about what is going on in my life.  For example, I dreamt of him with his younger brother, my uncle, just after my uncle's death - I saw the two of them in white robes surrounded by light and happiness and they made me understand that they were together and they were ok.

So you can imagine my surprise that I never dream of our angel.  Each night before I get into bed I pray for a dream of our baby...and nothing.  I've never had any baby-related dreams until this week.  I have dreamt over the last few months that sometimes I'm still pregnant or that I have a huge baby belly, but never a baby.  This week, I dreamt of twins.  I never actually saw them.  My "husband", as this guy didn't look like Freddie but I knew that it was Freddie, was taking care of the newborn bundles.  I saw him carrying a blanket with presumably the baby inside.  It was such a warm and fuzzy dream.  Freddie kept assuring me that he was on top of taking care of the twins and I could stay in bed, and I kept saying that he needed help. Finally, Freddie fell asleep beside me with the swaddled baby between us and the other baby in the crib in the next room.  I started laughing as Freddie was messing up - I noticed that he melted a plastic container while trying to warm up milk for the kids.  I suddenly heard the other baby crying in the other room and I woke up - the first thought that came to my mind was that "I guess that's what it sounds like to have a baby in the house".  

It was such a happy and comforting dream...I pray it comes true!

Clueless!

I've been feeling so clueless lately!  Allow me to backtrack and explain a little.                                                                                  Since I seem to have a weird cycle, I've started to read anything and everything I can get my hands on.  To aid my info quest, I've gone back to basics, yes, I have gone back to PAPER, in the form of books. This is greatly aided by the fact that a new community centre and library has opened near our home and I find myself there obtaining info.  So I've borrowed a few books and read about diet, emotional state, vitamins, exercise, etc., etc., etc.  At a glance, it seems that we're doing everything within limits. We have a pretty good diet, I do get a bit of exercise in the form of therapy, I take my prenatal vitamins including folic acid and I don't think I'm overly stressed by this (but who knows how the body reacts?).  

I'm now reading a book "Taking charge of your Fertility" and its very detailed.  It talks about anovulatory cycles, delayed ovulation and the possibility that if my body didn't react to the progesterone, there is a possibility that I did ovulate without a thermal shift.  This has given me a little bit of hope.  Also, counting back to when I think I ovulated and comparing that to the calendar, it turns out that I might have ovulated 2 days before my appointment with Dr. N, and I know that I was nervous about that.  Somehow, I don't think that I was nervous to the point of being so stressed as to affect my cycle, but this has been a rough month.  At the tail end of my last cycle I saw Dr. F, then at the start of this cycle I saw Dr. P and a few weeks later Dr. N.  So maybe this is just a one-off weird cycle?

So from all this reading not only have I learned a lot more than my mother ever taught me about 'AF', but I feel like I've been completely CLUELESS to what my body has been doing for years now!  It's really amazing that anybody gets pregnant with the number of IF's that have to happen: IF you ovulate, IF you time IT right, IF there is "good cervical mucus" to help move the sperm along, IF the egg is released at the right time,  IF the sperm are in the correct tube (as only one tube typically releases an egg), at the right time, IF fertilization happens to take place...wow, it really is a miracle!  Although I feel like I understand my body more (and you can tell I'm type A and need to control everything) and it makes me only feel like I'm regaining control over this situation, because knowing more still can't make this happen!

I hope that its not delayed ovulation as I don't want to ovulate any time soon. Freddie has gone on a fishing trip, and although I miss him terribly, I'm glad that he's going to have some fun.  As for me, I've rented a stack of chick-flics and plan to watch the better part of most of them.  I've also been going to the heated pool at the community centre and for the most part its uneventful, but on Thursday night, after I spent a good chunk of the day reading about my fertility, who do I see leaving the adjacent library, but couples leaving a lamaze class, I assume, as where else would you find very pregnant women with husbands and pillows?  I didn't expect to feel as sad as I did, but I couldn't help but think that WE SHOULD BE TAKING THAT CLASS!!!  Our Angel was due in early March and we should have been in that room preparing for the birth of our baby.  I shouldn't be looking at those women as an outsider, I should be one of them!

As our Angel's due date approaches next month, I'd like to do something special to commemorate, but besides buying cupcakes or a cake for Freddie and I, I'm not sure what to do.  I know my family won't even blink so I don't know how to commemorate this special day for us.  Somehow I'm focussing on that more than Valentine's Day and I was surprised that it was coming up so quickly.  Honestly, I couldn't care less about it...but our Due Date means so much more!!  If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them...