The Mask and the Shield

It’s been about a month since I posted last. When I began this blog I truly believed this would be more of a ‘pregnancy and motherhood’ blog, not a ‘trying to conceive’ blog. I’ve been through another disappointing cycle since my last post. I have maybe two more cycles’ worth of ovulation tests. I’m running out of drive.

I emailed my doctor last week. To see if Husband and I should have any fertility testing. We’re too young, and it hasn’t been long enough. Their reason for saying ‘no’ was that no insurance company would cover them. God bless America, right? I even fessed up to a few of my close friends about what’s going on. They prayed for me, and held my hand while I cried. I have some of the best friends.

To make it all worse, not one, but two couples at my church have announced their pregnancies in the last month. I’ve skipped church quite a bit lately. I get a bit of a pass because I also work Sundays, and I’ve worked a lot recently. Mostly, I skip because it’s hard to go. It’s hard to see all those babies, all those bellies, and feel like no one can see my pain. I feel like I do when I go to work. I work at a retirement community where my job is to make peoples lives richer, and fuller. When I’m having a bad day I frown all the way to the door, then as I walk up to the building I push my shoulders back, take a breath, and smile, I make a conscious effort to change my face. I waive at the residents, smile and laugh, and joke around with them. From the time I step through the door until I leave, I am happy, or at least I appear to be. When I go to church I do almost the same thing. I don’t make the same effort to change my face before I step through the door, but I still smile when someone addresses me, say I’m fine when asked. I don’t go out of my way to talk to people though.

When did we all decide we must put on a mask at church? Isn’t it the one place we should be able to be honest about our pain, our suffering, and our struggles? It’s 10:35am on a Sunday and right about now the music at my church is starting up and people are beginning to worship, and I’m sitting at home in my pajamas because I can’t bear to show my face while yet another happy couple announces their good news. (Yeah, that’s what’s happening today, thank you Facebook for giving me the heads up.) I know that I won’t be able to maintain my mask during that announcement. Am I part of the problem? Yes, I probably am. If I were up front about my struggles that might pave the way for someone else to be up front about theirs. The thing is, I’m afraid of being so vulnerable. I want that shield, I don’t want my inner turmoil on display. I don’t want that to be what people see when they look at me, “That’s the girl who can’t get pregnant.”

Truthfully, I’m not ready to spill my beans just yet. I’ve fessed up to a few close friends and that’s all I can manage right now. Maybe in a few months, if we haven’t got good news, we will share our struggle with the church, maybe. For now, I’ll cower behind my shield and that’s just going to have to be enough, it’s going to have to be okay.

I have unusually high hopes for the next cycle. After my conversation with the doctor, basically being told we were on our own, we started looking for other things we could try. I’ve heard of a lubricant called PreSeed, that is meant to mimic the fertile mucous that gets the sperm to the egg. Now that I think about it, years ago I seemed to have tons of mucous, now I seem to have very little regardless of where I am in my cycle. I’ve said before my cervical mucous doesn’t seem to tell me much in terms of predicting ovulation. We bought a box of PreSeed and will be trying it out this week. I’ve read so many comments on the baby blogs about how someone used it and got pregnant the very first time. I’m not assuming we’ll be so lucky, but I’m praying we will.

I have to keep reminding myself that God has a plan for this. I always assumed that I would get pregnant by ‘accident.’ That motherhood would be forced upon me. When we decided to start trying I was happy, I was being offered motherhood as a gift. Now it seems motherhood is something I’ll have to fight for, an uphill battle. I have to believe that when I finally hold my baby in my arms, it will all have been worth it. All the pain, the money spent on fertility boosting products, the tears, sermons missed, the masks and shields I’ve worked so hard to maintain, each negative test, each period. I have to believe someday I’ll be able to put this all behind me and I won’t feel the pain anymore.

Taking a Break

I was almost talked out of it.  But last month when my period came again, I really crumbled.  The pain, both physical and emotional, hit me so hard that I called Husband and begged him to agree to stop trying.  It was too much for me to bear.  It was a very emotionally driven decision, not logical or level headed at all.  We agreed to take a break for a month, to allow some time for rest, and recovery.

We took a vacation (one that we’d already had planned).  It was nice to not think about it, it was always in the back of my mind of course, but it didn’t consume me the way it normally does.  I’ve thrown myself more into my work which has helped to take my mind off ovulation and symptoms.  It was wonderfully freeing to not open my cycle tracking app twenty times a day.

The blissfulness of not worrying ended Monday.  I knew my period was coming any day, but likely not till later in the week.  I knew there was a chance I was pregnant, but not a very good one.  I was content to wait.  Then I noticed some blood on my toilet paper.  I thought it was my period, it wasn’t the normal color for my period but I didn’t think much of it.  I’ve mistaken each period with implantation bleeding and I had to tell myself to stop holding out false hope, it just makes it harder.  I grabbed a liner from my bag and went about my day.  Each time I went back to the bathroom there was less blood until there was none at all.  Could I really have implantation bleeding?  Could I really have gotten pregnant the one month we didn’t try?  Could I be that lucky?  My hopes soared.  I started looking at baby stuff again.  The sight of bellies and babies gave me a pang of nervous excitement rather than a cringe of heartache.  I said nothing to Husband. I didn’t want to make it real in case it wasn’t.

I had a nervous, excited, blissful three days.  When I went to the bathroom before bed Wednesday night I saw the slightly browned yellow color that signaled the beginning of a new cycle.  I shed a few tears, and went to bed thinking I could sill be wrong.  The next morning dawned with the familiar pain of a vice clamped around my hips.  I wasn’t wrong, the dark red blood in the toilet confirms it.  I fessed up to Husband about what had happened.  This month was supposed to be a break for me, he was sorry I didn’t get one.  “It’s okay,” I said, “it was only a few days, I’m disappointed, but okay.”

Now as I’m writing, I’m shedding a few more tears but at least not sobbing into my toast the way I did a month ago. (That’s an improvement right?) I don’t know that I have a conclusion for this post.  I suppose my advice would be to take a break if you need it.  My real advice would be to not try to get pregnant, just stop trying not to.  It’s a little late for me to do that, and if you’re reading this blog it probably is for you too.

I’m back to looking away when I see bellies and babies, and trying (unsuccessfully) to get rid of the baby ads on my facebook feed.  The best part about thinking I was pregnant though, was the hope that I wouldn’t have to go through another month of ovulation tests, scheduled sex, tracking, and false hopes.  I’ve become rather pessimistic about this process, haven’t I?  Husband and I have been doing this for six months now, can you really blame us?

I wanted a spring baby.  Now I’m hoping for a summer baby.  On the bright side, at least I won’t have to buy a maternity coat.

Trying to Conceive is it’s Own Form of Torture

Where to begin?  Well, I live in a huge city with my husband and our cat.  We’re both Christians and our belief and trust in Jesus affect every aspect of our lives, especially this part.  We’re in our 20’s, my husband is a performer (with a day job) and I’m an artist (also with a day job, but mine is part time.)

Up until about two years ago I had no desire whatsoever to add to our little family.  I’ve never been a kid person, I did not babysit in high school and if you approach me with your child and expect me to engage with him/her I will smile awkwardly and maybe say ‘hi’.  Please do not expect more from me.   Yet, something changed in me, God seemed to be giving me this desire I’d never had before,  suddenly I wanted to be a mom.  From there, it’s been a long, hard exercise in patience to get where I am now, to the point  where my husband and I are actually trying to get pregnant.  I’ll begin my story here.  I’ve already found a midwife (or more accurately, a midwife group) that will care for me during pregnancy and birth.  My birth control pills lay forgotten at the pharmacy, and we’ve long since run out of condoms.

Trying to get pregnant is its own form of torture.  I’ve read that it takes most couples 6 to 12 months to conceive.  You’ve got to be kidding me right?!  Six months of this!  I’m trying to pray for God’s will but at the same time praying for this part to be mercifully short!  Every month, on the first day of my period it begins.  I have a nifty little app on my phone (thank goodness for smart phones right?) that I plug information into so I can keep track of everything.  It tells me when I’m most likely ovulating and when to expect my period.  I tell it when I got my last period, then each day I record my basal body temperature, bleeding, cervical mucus, when we’ve had sex, if I have a headache, tender breasts, cramps, backache, what my mood is like, and any fatigue.  It can be even more thorough but I’m too lazy for all that.

Recording all that is the easy part, I also have to be hyperaware of my body.  I’ve seen pictures online of women checking cervical mucus with their fingers…is it just me or does the prospect of handling mucus from your vagina seem gross?  Although, I am also the person who uses a Diva Cup to deal with her period so I guess I can’t really talk.   By the way, my cervical mucus doesn’t really seem to tell me a whole lot.  (Should that worry me?  I don’t know, everyone’s different, right?)  I also have to remember to take my temperature, which you’re supposed to do the second you wake up and without moving.  I often fall asleep while doing this, and this morning I had to do it over again because the beeping that tells you it’s done did not wake me up and the reading was gone by the time I realized it.  Other mornings I forget until I’m already in the bathroom and then it’s too late.

While trying to make a baby seems fun because that means more sex, when you’ve had sex every day for five days in a row and then get up for work every morning, there is nothing you want more than to get in bed knowing there are no expectations.  You get to put on that ten-year-old t-shirt and the baggy pajama pants with the cats on them, sink into bed and drift off.  It’s heaven.  Please allow me to give you this piece of advice, don’t have sex every single day, give it a rest, you need sleep too.  That said, I do enjoy my husband and sex is great, but there is such a thing as too much.

So, the deed is done and now comes the waiting game.  That time between ovulation and the magical test day, it’s what I’d imagine purgatory is like (if I believed in purgatory).  Waiting, hoping, praying, looking for any sign of bodily changes, and Googling every minute detail to see if it’s an early pregnancy sign or just gas.  When I was little I remember seeing a commercial on TV for a pregnancy test, the one that tells you 6 days before you miss your period (3 whole days sooner than the competitor!).  I thought it was stupid,  why can’t you just wait?  After all, 3 days is not that long,   I am currently in purgatory with 2 days to go, if you told me I had to wait another three days I might just rip out my hair and use it to strangle you.  Three days is in fact, that long.  Oh, and don’t test too soon, you’ll more than likely get a negative whether you’re pregnant or not because the hormones haven’t built up in your system yet.  I KNOW it’s tempting, but you’re not doing yourself any favors, it’s a wasted test and those things aren’t cheap.

Are you ready for the longest two minutes of your life?  That’s how long it usually takes for the test to work.  I’ve taken a few so far and they’ve all been negative.  The first one I ever took was a whopping one month into my marriage.  My husband and I were naturally elated to see that one lonely little line that meant we could go ahead with our plans to move to the city.  But now that we’re trying, that lonely little line looks more like a dagger bound for my heart.  I bawled my eyes out the first time.  I can take one in a few days and even though I feel something inside me, some nervous excitement that a precious life is growing in me, I keep telling myself there’s not, so maybe it won’t hurt so bad if it’s just one lonely little line.  Everyone says it’s no biggie, you can try again next month, but I think it’s ok to be a little heart-broken and shed some tears.

I’ve crocheted a dozen hats and booties, little sweaters and blankets.  I have a stack of kids books in my closet and a stroller picked out.  I have a stuffed Peter Rabbit doll for my mom, a song book for my dad, and a scrapbook for my in-laws all ready to reveal they’re going to be grandparents.  I am ready for this baby.  No, I don’t have it all figured out, I’m not even sure where we’re going to be living when this kid’s born, but I am ready to be a mom.