chirp

my little twirp. as annoying as she can be when i'm trying to make dinner, the tick-tick-tick of izzy's little toes on the wood floor melt my heart.

a vibrant shade of green

so, we all know the feeling. it's happened to every one of us... the call from a best friend, a sister, or a sister-in-law. on the phone last night, my brother muttered under his breath "[s-i-l]'s pregnant." i had been waiting for it. my s-i-l was pregnant a few months ago, and sadly, it didn't last. i tried my best to sound excited for them... knowing that they were having mixed emotions as well (happy about the pregnancy, but fearing it wouldn't last). they don't know that mil and i have been trying for over a year, but my brother detected the sadness in my voice. i didn't explain. i said i was tired.

somehow this time hurts more than last time... i don't know if it's because we are now officially infertile... or because my mom isn't around to comfort me. last night i was a mess of emotions... anger, sadness, self-pity. mil tried to make me feel better, but nothing can take the place of having my own child. it just seems so f***ing unfair. why does my 100 lb. (5'10"), big-busted, breastfeeding s-i-l get to get pregnant? why can't it be me? i've never really smoked or drank or slept around...

what makes me so upset is that i don't want to be jealous. i want to be genuinely happy for my brother and his wife. i know that my brother needs some of that support that he lost with my mom. i've never been the envious type before. i've always been happy with my lot in life, knowing that i've been incredibly blessed by my family and friends. for some reason this i/f thing is knocking loose my sense of self-satisfaction... and i feel like that is making it hard for me to be the kind of person i want to be.

coffee!!!

so, i admit it, i'm a coffee drinker. i don't quite know how i'd survive the work day without my first cup of joe (though odds are "face down on the keyboard"). i was reading one of my favorite i.f. blogs, and it mentioned this lovely little article about caffeine increasing a woman's risk for miscarriage. i have to say, i hate these articles. one day you read about how a little caffeine won't hurt you and the next you read how 10 ounces of coffee can double your risk of miscarriage... huh!?!

i actually loved this quote from Dr. Carolyn Westhoff in the article: “Just interviewing women, over half of whom had already had their
miscarriage, does not strike me as the best way to get at the real
scientific question here,” she said. “But it is an excellent way to
scare women.”

personally, i tried decaf coffee for a while when we first started trying to make a baby, but given that it did little to alleviate the face-down-on-the-keyboard syndrome, i went back to my wanton ways... i now try to limit myself to a small cup of regular coffee, once a day. what about you guys? any other vices that you resumed after trying for far too long? (i want some company here...)

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here she comes again

well, to be precise, she already came. a couple of days "late" -- but here nonetheless. my cycle seems to be a little less predictable than it was a couple of months ago. it had always been 28 days on the dot, but now it seems to be closer to 30-31 days. the cramps had me well prepared, but no matter how ridiculous it seems, being even an hour late brings a hint of hope. all of my typical pms symptoms were there, but the lack of af birthed a little voice... a little voice that said "maybe." well, af shut her up. thank you.

in addition to the banner, i've updated the little "about us" section and added a few links to the sidebar. i'm eager to do more... my creativity needs an outlet, but i have yet to figure out what that would be.

i realized that there are a couple of non-ttc/if things that are happening in my life that might be of some remote interest. 1) i registered for a photography course. i am very excited, but somewhat annoyed because i ordered the class textbook yesterday, and today i received an email that they had told us the wrong book. urgh! other than that though... i can't wait to improve my photography skills. maybe it will even lead to a new, more exciting career... who knows? 2) we might have found a place to live! this is far more thrilling than the photography class. we've been looking for a 2 bedroom apt since last july, but we had been looking in brooklyn (makes sense since that's where mil's med school is). well, last week we decided that brooklyn is nice and all, but far too expensive for the market. we should pay more and live in manhattan! well, it wasn't exactly that... it's a much longer, more revealing story i'm not quite ready to tell. but the bottom line is that it seems like it will happen, and it has a washer/dryer! i know, i know, such luxury!

mmm... cramps

so, even though i'm not tracking my cycle in the traditional charting sort of way, we did make an attempt to get pregnant this month. we were in houston, and since my brain was in aruba, i completely forgot all of my usual... ehum... simulants... of the mucus kind. in november i had bought a package of preseed that has yet to be opened, and i have a huge jar of evening primrose oil... not to mention the fertile aid cm pills i had been popping at mid-cycle. all were left neatly stored in new york while we were trying valiantly in houston. whether that had anything to do with the fact that i am feeling decidedly pms-y cramps today (um, two weeks later) or not is another story. i don't think i have much more of this "chill... let's see what happens" approach in me. fortunately, i'm due for a gyn check-up in a couple of months, so maybe that will coincide with my giving in to medical intervention. i sure am tired of old a.f... though i guess i'm glad she still comes on a relatively consistent basis.

btw, did you recognize any of my little toy munchkins... like the sad uterus monster?

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passing time

so, i was inspired by my 2008 calendar to make some toys of my own... here's my little collection:

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a little about my dad

i was attempting a little fun photoshopping with this photo a'la "amelie" but in reality it came out kind of scary... so i apologize, there will be no photographic accompaniment to this random post. my office is currently blazing hot... i think the heat in the building is at the same level it was at when it was 15 degrees outside, but it is, in fact, 65 degrees outside today. the heat and the stifling boredom, leave me here... feeling like melting, but somehow typing away at my keyboard... not doing work-related things, of course, but typing nonetheless.


so there was one little incident i thought i'd mention from my little holiday in houston. at one point, my dad was discussing the need for more grandchildren to help us all recover from our pity-party. i mentioned something about wanting to help him out, but being limited by nature and her vicissitudes. he then said, "you do know how to get children, right?" "um, yeah... adoption?" i said this because i had no clue what to say in response... i'm too young or too old to be talking to my dad about sex, and i figured at some point my mom probably mentioned to him our difficulty producing offspring... she was many wonderful things, but tight-lipped was not one of them. i was just in shock that he would ask this in a slightly elbow-jabbing way.

a couple of weeks later, the topic came up again in relation to my either getting or not getting a more inspiring, profitable career based on whether or not we have wee ones in the near future. we were on the phone, so i figured i'd pony up. i told him we were having some trouble in that department... he asked how long, and i told him that we'd been trying for over a year. he said he knew... my mom hadn't kept it to herself. he asked what we were going to do about it... i told him my whole theory about stress and it not being a good time to seek help. he agreed but suggested that i talk to a doctor at somepoint soon-ish. overall, it was a good conversation, but i couldn't help but think, "so, if you knew, why the HECK would you ask me if i 'knew how to get children'?!?!"

in short, my dad is loving in his own way, but sensitive... he is not. my mom was always good at smoothing out his sometimes rather rough corners. it's going to be an interesting rest of my life...

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juno

so, the holidays are over-with and done... thank goodness. they were the most depressing and dreary holidays i've ever had. we moped through the holidays with a few toasts to mom and more than a few tears. i figure having set the bar so low, 2008 will have to be better.

one of the interesting parts of my jaunt to houston was a stop at the movie theatre to see "juno." now for those dealing with i.f. or adoption, it may be a difficult movie to sit through. i know i was hesitant... the thought that the fickle teen might change her mind and not go through with the adoption made me wince (even though we have quite a ways to go -- physically, financially -- before we start seriously talking about adoption) the thought that that couple's future was in the hands of a 16-year old had me biting my nails through most of the film... and while the film was about that, it was also about so much more. it was really a beautiful tribute to parenthood in all of its forms... biological, adoptive, step-parents. it also left me wrung-out because the thought of being pregnant or adopting and not having my mom around to support me still seems far more than i can bear.

we all have some sense of what we can handle and what we can't, and there were definitely some moments that made my stomach knot-up, but, for me, at least the movie was worth it. it helped that the music was fantastic... and it had michael cera in it...

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meltywoman

thank you for your kind notes... it's difficult to know what to say in return. i always found myself tongue-tied when talking to a friend who lost someone dear. i've always wanted to say something that could take away the pain and remind them why life is still worth living... it turns out i'm equally as tongue-tied when it is i doing the "losing." i find i'm so thoroughly encased in my own protective shell that i don't know how to respond naturally to friends when they express their sorrow and sympathy. i feel like if i open that shell -- even a crack -- i will become a pool of entrails... tears and snot. it's easier for me to act like i'm normal, creating a parallel life for myself where my mom is still quite alive and happily cancer-free. this works for short bursts of time... at work... in the store. i seem relatively functional until someone says, "i'm so sorry about your mom" or even "how are you?" at which point i turn into a babbling moron because my cellophane world is shattered, and i have to figure out how to respond without risking a crack in my protective casing. all the effort put forth to create and maintain this shell leaves me with little energy to actually use my mind for much else. ultimately, it's a very exhausting enterprise... but i don't know how else to function.

anyway, thank you for thinking of me. my mom was a beautiful human being, and i was truly blessed to have her. though i haven't given much thought to infertility in the last month, it's hard not to think of the grandchildren she will never meet... never read a book to... never roll around on the floor with. i just have to believe that when they are here she will know them and be with them spiritually.

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m.i.a.

i'm sorry that i've been missing in action. unfortunately, it has been for a very sad reason. my mom passed away last week. i left new york to be with her in mid-November when she was in the hospital getting her feeding tube. unfortunately, the feeding tube was only the beginning of her worries. the feeding tube never worked, and many other things started to go wrong. it turns out that there were many tiny, sub-radiographic tumors surrounding her organs causing strictures throughout her bowels and fluid build-up in her abdomen. she ultimately died of a cerebral hemorrhage... quickly and relatively painlessly, but long before any of us ever wanted to see her go. she was a treasure of a person. looking back, i'm not so sure she wasn't an angel. she loved every minute of every day and took pleasure in other people's accomplishments. she was never thoughtless or petty... just warm, caring, and joyful. i honestly can't think of a mean or selfish thing that she ever did or said... i'm sure there were a few times she had been pushed past her limit, but they were so rare and inconsequential, i can't bring them to mind. i hope that everyone has someone in her life who loves her as fully and unconditionally as my mom loved me.

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on the cusp of initiation

so i realize that i never really responded to my own post of a couple weeks ago. katie's comment was enough to push me over the edge -- i'm planning to toss the cbe monitor, the opks, and the bbt thermometer in the recycle bin and take a break from official baby-making for a few months. old af should be on her way any minute now. her arrival will mark the end of 12-months of ttc, and despite the ineptitude of this month's attempt, i think that that makes me officially infertile. i feel like there should be a chocolate martini party to mark this occasion. for all the crap i've been through for the past year and for all the crap that is still to come -- there should be a little interlude of merry-making to mark this rather grim proclamation. no? heaven knows, nature does quite the hazing -- we should at least be able to throw on the togas and fill-up the beer bong once in a while to relieve the stress. (for full-disclosure, i must admit that i haven't been to a toga party since my 14th birthday and i have not once used a beer bong... i think that makes me long overdue.)

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time to change that banner

though it feels more like halloween out there now than it did last week, i think it's time to bring out a more romantic, wintery banner, don't you think. maybe it will perk up my spirits just a bit.

i'll admit it... last week sucked. #1, i think mil and i completely missed my ovulation this month... thanks to #2 which was that mil had a pretty horrendous exam that kept him at the library overnight and he still thought he failed (which means summer school). and #3 well, you know #3 from my last post. when i went to houston, my mom looked so thin and tired. she barely moved all weekend -- even when my adorable niece came over to visit. fortunately, things have turned around a bit this week. on monday, my mom had a fluid infusion which gave her some energy, and the doctors thought of another medication that might get her stomach pumping again, so as of yet, she hasn't had to get a feeding tube. though we're not out of the woods, we're still in a much better place than we were last week. other good news was that mil passed his exam, so he still has a shot of avoiding summer school! yay!

ok... now that i've posted... here comes the new banner.

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ugh

so. i don't really know where to begin. i feel empty right now. deflated... depressed... i talked to my parents this morning, and it sounds like my mom is going to have to get a feeding tube. her stomach hasn't started working again on its own, and she isn't getting enough nutrients right now to sustain her. her doctor is worried. the feeding tube should make her feel better though... it's just that it's more surgery (albeit small surgery) and a constant reminder that she has cancer. she'll still be able to eat what she can, but the feeding tube will supplement her diet. i imagine its something she can do at home... i don't know if it will affect her ability to travel... for some reason it seems like it would. fortunately, i just booked a ticket to houston for tomorrow, and i had already bought a ticket for two weeks from now, so i should be able to spend time with her.

on top of all this mil is in an exam right now... he's been in this exam since 10am this morning, and he doesn't even know about my mom. the one person i can really lean on. it's been a tough day... and i have barely gotten up off the couch.

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stuck

so, you know how i said that i would call the r.e.'s office "tomorrow" to get a consultation? well, i didn't. i still haven't. i looked him up online, and the reviews were not glowing. they weren't horrible... he was considered competent but with limited bedside manner and a disorganized office which is apparrntly constantly running behind. well, that's pretty much any doctor's office in nyc (i think i waited 2 hours to see my ob-gyn once for an annual exam). hearing these somewhat negative reviews did leave me a little cold. unfortunately, none of the recommended doctors were on my insurance plan.

i ended up spending the day with my mom tuesday. she wasn't feeling too well, and my dad had to go off for meetings, so i made sure she ate regularly and took her out for a short walk. with all that time on my hands, i ended up mentioning that we are considering seeing a doctor for infertility. she was surprised... she knew that we had been trying for a while with little success, but i don't think she ever considered that we might be infertile. i asked her if she had had any trouble conceiving, and she said she didn't... she wondered if, perhaps, we might be having problems because of stress... mine, given my her illness, and mil's, given the stress of applying to and starting medical school. obviously, that's possible. i've wondered it myself quite a few times. i should interject -- my mom has a bit of a "granola" streak... though in appearance she blends in well with the well-heeled suburban moms, she has always preached the ills of artificial flavors and colors... too much sugar... and unnecessary medication. i sometimes wonder if she would even have chosen to take chemo if it hadn't been for her brother who died trying to defeat pancreatic cancer with non-traditional treatments. so, that said, you can get some sense of how she might feel about treating infertility with hormones and surgery. i knew this going into it... but i wanted my mom on my side... emotionally, and possibly financially. i told her that at this point we would just go in for diagnostic procedures... to find out what is wrong with one or both of us. i was smart enough to mention that we might consider acupuncture treatment, but that we wouldn't even know which one of us needed the treatment if we didn't do some diagnostic procedures first (in all honesty, i don't know if this was being smart... or just the apple not falling too far from the tree). she agreed... and then brought up the story of some relatives who tried "all sorts of treatments for months" and "it was such an emotional rollercoaster that it was hurting their marriage" so they stopped and then a few months later conceived a son on their own. i knew this story and figured it would come up since it was the only experience my mother has really had with this sort of thing, but it still threw me for a loop... i thought about the stress... and the fact that mil has been home for a total of about 10 waking hours this week. and i became stuck.

i'm still stuck. something is holding me back from calling that doctor. part of me is ready to get this show on the road... if it ain't working the old-fashioned way, then let's get it working some other way. another part of me wants to give the old-fashioned way more of a chance. and i don't know if it's because a) i don't have the emotional energy right now to deal with the ups and downs of treatment, b) i don't want to burden mil with the time commitment of treatments (as minimal as it is for the man) and the potential rollercoaster of emotions that i might be going through in his first year of med school, or c) i'm just too much of my mother's daughter...

if we don't go to the r.e. now, i'm thinking i might just toss all the gadgets and test sticks out the window (not literally, thank you, nypd) and try my best to forget about trying to get pg for a while. i know i'm not getting any younger, but if we wait until next summer, mil's schedule might be a little better for a few months, and maybe things will be calmer in other areas of life, too. of course, mil is part of all this, and given that he's been home so infrequently, we haven't really had a chance to have a conversation about this. he seems to be of the "get-the-show-on-the-road" variety, but then again, he doesn't have any time to go to the r.e... unless somebody's office is open on weekends... haha!

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so long, month 11

like clockwork. cd 27 brings cramps... cd 28 light spotting... and cd 29 = cd 1. yay. fortunately, i'm not surprised. i just no longer believe that we're going to get pregnant without some medical help. what's sad is that i've somehow managed to lose mil's s.a. referral. (there's probably something freudian in all of this.) i called my ob-gyn's office to find out if there are any other labs that my doctor works with that accept our insurance, but they didn't seem to know (and couldn't even find the original referral). instead the woman gave me the names of some r.e. clinics that they work with... hmm... i'm very tempted to just call these clinics and start there with someone who specializes in i.f. but i'm not sure if i should wait the 1 extra month for i.f. to be official. i'm tired of waiting. in my heart, i know something is wrong, and i want to know what it is, so we can do something about it. i feel like every month we wait to do something, is a month we could have had a real shot at making a baby.

anyway... i'm going to discuss with mil and see what he thinks. seems like it might be a waste to start with the ob-gyn, just to be transferred to an r.e. a month or two later (and likely repeat some of the same tests). and it doesn't hurt that the r.e.'s office is literally down the block from my apartment... you ladies have had the best advice so far... any tips on making sure you've found a good r.e.?

lucky

lately, i've been feeling a little sorry for myself... sorry that i don't have the perfect job... sorry that i have to work so hard just to get pregnant (and i know i haven't seen the half of it!)... sorry that my husband studies so much... and most sorry that my mom has cancer.

then sometimes, i read a blog or two or talk to a friend who recently lost her mother, and i realize how lucky i am. no matter what happens next week, next month, or several years from now, right now i have my mom. i can call her when i feel like it. i can spend the day reading a book with her while she naps on the couch. i can convince her to go out for an afternoon walk with me when she'd rather keep napping. i can tell her about my friends who are engaged to losers or talk to her about what a pain it is not to be able to get pregnant when i want to... i can give her a hug and get one in return. how can i not be happy? how can i let myself get down about a future that may or may not be?

temp(t)ing

i've ovulated! woo-hoo! i'm in that happy phase of thinking that i might be pg just because i ovulated. makes sense, right? ok, maybe not. i guess i was just worried for a couple of days there and good news is good news, right? now i'm not sure whether to take myself up on stopping the temping thing till old af comes (or doesn't... please don't). it's just that it's nice to have something to do while you're braving the tww... something that feels like you're still trying. but then again, it's nice not to have anything to remind you that you're in the tww, and every dip or peak can mean something (or, most likely, can mean nothing at all). (can you tell i like parentheticals? and ellipses? i do. this is how i think, too. no sentences, no clear trains of thought... just jumbles of parentheses and ellipses.)

has anyone else tried ditching the thermometer for the tww? is it just an exercise in futility to think that you can ignore the tww? it was easy when i was in germany and didn't have the thermometer handy, but i had a lot of other distractions... like, i was in germany!

oh, and i have a question for the more experienced ttc-ers out there... i finally called the s.a. lab to ask if they take our insurance (i'm slow... i know), and they don't, so even though our insurance covers it in-network, we'd have to pay the full $250 since these folks are out of network (and we haven't touched our deductible yet). if necessary, we can afford to part with the $250 (i know that's nothing compared to the services that will likely come later). anyway, the woman said that other larger labs probably take our insurance, but usually they are not as good as the smaller labs... i don't know what this means exactly. would it be a waste of mil's precious time to go to a big lab to have them potentially do a poor analysis that would later have to be done by a better, smaller place anyway? is there a big difference in analysis quality between labs?

the other annoying thing about this lab is that they only to s.a. on thursday mornings. so we'd basically be waiting for mil to have a free thursday morning before they could do the test anyway... thoughts?

meandering

one of the blogs i read pretty regularly recently announced that they have become pregnant with their second child. when i first saw the announcement, my heart sank. i know how selfish that sounds. i was also truly happy for them. just from reading their blog, i know that they are warm, smart, caring parents... just the type any child would be lucky to have. but... i also knew that i would be reading pregnancy posts for the next several months. posts that, while insightful and entertaining, would only remind me how empty my womb currently is. i hate that reminder... whatever form it comes in. and yet i can't hide from pregnancy. i want to find a way to make peace with this journey i've found myself on. i believe that life is in the living, and we can't live for the future... my mom's cancer is a constant reminder of that. i think this means i have to put some time and effort into myself, right now, who and where i am at this moment. mostly that means i need to figure out what to do with my career... i need to be doing something i love, not something that just pays some of the bills.

little things*

nagging things. like my mom not feeling well yesterday... after a month and half off of chemo. could be she just ate something funny (she did have half of her digestive tract rearranged less than a year ago)... or it could be something more foreboding.

or like my job. it's not too bad, but it's also not too good. i don't feel like i have the energy or inclination to work hard at something new, but i'm also bored beyond tears with what i'm doing now. i know i'm on the wrong track, but i don't know what the right track is. so far the townhouse development i'm supposed to be helping with has maintained the breathless pace of molasses.

oh, and then there's the apartment search... remember how we were going to move to brooklyn? yeah... so far, we've looked at a lot of places. but buying? buying doesn't seem to be happening. so every weekend i either go out to look at open houses or i feel guilty that i haven't... either way the result seems to be the same.

yeah... and everyone seems to be pregnant today. something about beautiful weather and the upper west side seems to attract the uber-fertile and their bugaboos. i also made the mistake of meeting a friend at le pain quotidien... that place is like the fertile woman's sorority house. i think i saw 3 pregnant ladies and 2 newborns in the brief hour we were there.

*i had actually planned to post this on my other blog, but i just couldn't get myself to hit "publish post" without including the part about being peeved about all of the preggos in this city. and i'm just not ready to have all my friends ask me about the baby-making business.

es geht mir nicht so gut

yup. another period. at least there wasn't much of a rollercoaster this time... mostly because i was on vacation with my family and therefore didn't have the time to think about (or anyone to talk to about with) the dreaded tww. also because my niece had a bit of a fever at the beginning of our trip, so i lent my bbt to them... which i have yet to get back. it's bad enough that they flaunt their fertility in front of me, now they're hijacking my baby-makin' thermometer... kidding, kidding. it has actually brought me one good thing. i think from now on, i might just dump the thermometer after i've confirmed ovulation. nothing good seems to come from keeping track.

so now we head into month 11. even though i'm not technically infertile yet, i feel like i'm as good as there. we've definitely timed our dancing pretty well at least half of those months. of course, as my darling mil states, being infertile doesn't mean that we definitely won't get pg naturally... it just means that it's gonna be dang hard (and dang long)... if it happens at all. i still need to find a way to gently nudge him to make an appointment for semen analysis. he's super busy, and i know he doesn't really want to think about this stuff, but i'd like to start figuring out what the heck is wrong... so maybe we can do something about it. i'm really not fond of the jealous wannabemom i've become. i have started glaring at the bulging bellies of the pregnant ladies in my building, and even being with my niece is a little painful. super fun, but, you know, it still hurts... being the aunt and not the mom. i think i might even be avoiding one of my good friends because she's pregnant with her second. i was so much more excited for her the first time around... long before we began our own attempts at parenthood. i want to be that way again. i've always been so happy with my life... and i am. i just don't know how to deal with all of these ugly feelings.