Don't Count Your Eggs

Stages of Grief part...who knows what...

It's been an interesting week. I use the word interesting when I'm not sure what other word to use. After the D&C last Wednesday, I was kind of in go mode. And slight shock. Momo had her play groups and I worked and life as usual resumed. There were moments of feeling sad or angry or whatever came up that happened in spurts-- five minute bursts of feelings when I was alone in the car driving to the market or the quiet before falling asleep where my heart felt like it was going to explode. By the weekend I felt like my feelings were getting trapped, and this is what I see often in my work as a therapist supporting people going through IF and pregnancy loss. The sad can get kind of trapped in the body because it doesn't know where to go. I help people work through this stuff all the time, and it is a pretty individual experience, but I wasn't quite sure what I needed for myself. I was up all night Saturday with chest pains. It was a tight feeling, like I was wearing a compression stocking over my heart and lungs. I couldn't take a deep breath no matter how hard I tried. I was convinced I just needed a good cry but hadn't found the time for it. Or the desire. I knew I was sad but cognitively I understand this stuff. Sometimes the heart needs a moment to catch up with the head.

So I struggled to breathe for the rest of the weekend and allowed myself to notice my process. Was it anxiety? Trapped sadness? Physical and emotional shock? Acid reflux? I knew it would pass and it did. Monday was a holiday and my parents came over to be with Momo, allowing Noah and I a little space to be with each other. I felt agitated and hormonal-- some might say angry. Then it dawned on me that duh, I'm going through the stages of grief-- again-- in a different way. I've grieved the death of loved ones and the death of embryos and what could have been in an IVF cycle, but this was my first pregnancy loss.

The shock/denial came and went. Did this really just happen? Yes. It did. Cue literal heartache and trouble breathing.  Then I was agitated and angry. Just pissed off. Noah said my energy was intense when I entered a room. I kind of wished I could have gotten into a bar fight-- but probably should have gone for a run or something. We went for lunch together Monday and between being served something with cilantro on it when I specifically asked for none and a hair in my food I was livid. CAN'T ANYTHING GO MY WAY??!! It wasn't about the cilantro. Obviously. Then came Tuesday-- bargaining.  I spent that day feeling really mad at myself that I didn't see my RE when I found out I was P. Why did I go to my nonchalant OB? My RE would have put me on baby aspirin and progesterone, even if I didn't need it. He would have monitored me closer. Then I would have felt like I did everything I could have. I know it likely wouldn't have mattered. I know that if I saw no heartbeat at my RE's office I would have felt like I jinxed our situation by going back to the office where I had so much bad news. Bargaining is a no win situation. It's our own attempts to renegotiate a situation thinking we could have controlled the outcome in some way. If only I.... I recognized I was doing this immediately and even though I felt so strongly that if only I had seen my RE my outcome would have been different, I knew deep down it wouldn't have been. So I let that thought come and I acknowledged how badly I wish I did have control over the situation, and then I let it go. Then I started throwing up. I started to feel sick Tuesday night. And just like I've done many times before, I barfed my feelings. I'm laughing about it right now. I'm an emotional bulimic. I tried to search past posts but don't have the time to find the other times I barfed after getting bad news (Thanksgiving 2012 or 2013?) or when I was so anxious about something...luckily it doesn't happen too often but when it does...

So I threw up all Tuesday night-- was it emotions? Noro virus? Bad food? All of the above? And yesterday I felt sad and run down. This is the stage of depression but I don't feel I need to linger here for too long, not because there is anything wrong with lingering if needed but because I feel like I don't need to. I am so lucky to have Momo and feel like being present with her can allow me to visit this lovely stage of grief for a brief moment and then move on. I'll revisit the sad every so often, whenever I need to really. That seems to make more sense to me this time, where other times of sad I felt like I need to really sink my teeth into it and stay a while. I have too much to be grateful for with her. When my parents were over she was running between all of us yelling, "Momo (but she said her actual name) Happy! Momo Happy!" How can I be sad? 

So that leaves me with the last stage--acceptance. The feeling of understanding this sad experience happened and I wish it didn't but it's part of my emotional landscape and can allow me to connect and understand others and my clients in a more profound way and that's that. I don't need to make perfect sense or find silver linings. I just need to remember I'm ok, and I am. That's what I'm going to work on for the rest of the week.

I see the doctor today for my week follow up. That will be my closure. I went through these stages of grief fairly quickly but maybe past practice has increased my speed. Or maybe I'll need to touch base with some of this stuff at another time.  The best thing I can do for myself, which I've already started to do, is get my team together. My group of women who have taken care of me through the years when things fall apart. My acupuncturist, my facial guru women-- I can't describe her, she rubs my face and tells me everything is going to be ok and I believe her deep in my pores, my massage lady, my chiropractor, my mom, my girlfriends-- everyone needs a team of people who huddle around you when your wounded to give you energy and love. I thank all of you here on this blog-- my cyber team of warriors-- for all your love and support. 

Where do I begin...

So I feel like I've always been very honest and... up to date here on this blog, and I want to hold true to that. Noah and I had something happen at the beginning of the year that I held back on sharing immediately for work/life reasons and for the fact that my news isn't always just mine but his too and we needed a hot minute before I could share. 

That hot minute has come, so here goes.

On new years eve I realized aunt flow was late to town. Just a few days but I know my cycle pretty well and thought, "wouldn't it be ___________ (fill in the blank here) funny amazing ridiculous insane... if after ALL OF THIS, all the years of trying and finally having an INCREDIBLE child through embryo donation, if I got knocked up? Naturally. Accidentally. ?????? (And NO we haven't been trying. I let go of the idea of it, I don't chart ovulation and in all honesty, sleep is more of a priority than you know what). But anyway. I pulled out my stash of expired pregnancy tests and peed. And then I had that moment. That moment I always dreamed of but never imagined I'd get to have. That shock and excitement and pure disbelief in seeing a solid second line. I peed again. Same. And again (did I mention I have a LOT of expired pregnancy tests?)

I was one of THOSE people. The stories of people who finally found a resolution to their fertility crisis and then got P. The stories of people who adopted a child and the next day found out they were P. I felt shock more than anything, but also some guilt,  and excitement...all of it-- and yet was too distracted with Momo to have even a minute to fully process it. We knew we'd have to move. We thought about the sibling match to Momo, the last embryo from her batch, sitting in a freezer in Seattle, and I wondered what would happen with it. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief to not have to do shots and meds and put all my hopes and fears into that one embryo-- but I also started thinking about having three kids--I don't know, my mind was all over the place. We went in for the six week check and there it was, the little nugget inside me, with a strong solid heartbeat. Momo was with us. Sitting on my chest with her face squished against mine as we watched and listened to the thump of her brother or sister to be. "We have a heartbeat," I whispered to her. "Mama. baby," she said. And the room was silent. 

We made a fucking baby.

Noah and I only talked about logistics of our lives. I think we were too in shock. We didn't have much time to revel in the miracle that it was that I got P. I ordered some maternity leggings against all my superstitions because fuck it. THIS WAS HAPPENING. How could it not? I also ordered a dress. Because it was on sale and I would be giant by summer. I would get a pregnancy do-over. No bed rest. No fear. Just bliss. 

Valentine's Day was our 10 week appointment. Noah agreed that I could share after that. So here I am. Sharing that on Tuesday, the heartbeat was gone. The doctor rolled the ultrasound wand over my belly and there it was, our baby, like round balls of clay haphazardly stuck together. But there was no energy to it. It was the shadow of an old school wind-up circus monkey whose brassy clanging cymbals were stuck. Paused. Frozen. Broken. A lifeless blob of almost body parts floated on the screen. Floated in my belly. The doctor's eyebrow said "fuck" and then my mouth said it too. Fuck. FUCK. Why did it have to be Valentine's Day? Not that it mattered but FUCK. Dangling pink 'be mine' hearts hanging from window sills. Be mine, baby. 

I cried and Noah's expression looked all to familiar. Beat down. We've been here before in this space of sad-- not this particular road but ones that look just like it. We thought we got lucky. We thought we would stop circling the Levittown of IF Island, but I guess this one was last lap for shits and giggles.

After we got the news on Tuesday, we went home. Momo was asleep and when she woke up we both went in to get her. She took one look at Noah, who usually isn't around in the middle of the day on a weekday, and she yelled, "Dada," and gave him the longest biggest hug. And I watched him squeeze and love her more than anything he's ever loved in the world. Me included and that's ok. We both felt an overwhelming gratitude that we have her. Then we went to the beach, and I took this photo, without really knowing what I was taking:

Miracle Baby-to-be sailing away into the sunset.

I had a D & C on Wednesday and today I'm trying to make sense of it all. Of all my experiences on IF Island I'd never had a miscarriage. Or a natural pregnancy. Now I can check both off the list. Did I need these experiences? Do I feel grateful for the moment of pure shock and joy in seeing two solid lines on a pee test or does that make me more resentful to the whole experience? Do I tell myself it wasn't meant to be and try to find lessons learned? Or do I just add a short chapter to my narrative? 

I'm sad. We're sad, but I'm also ok. Feeling things happen for a reason is a personal choice. Knowing things happen and we can find reason is also an option. Understanding that things sometimes happen for no good reason is a truth, and we can sit in the sadness of it and then store it in our hearts and move forward. I think I've gotten good at that by now. 

The doctor asked me if I wanted to genetically test the...tissue. I opted not to. What good would that information do me? If I find out it was a girl with trisomy 13 would that help me move forward? Could it happen again if I miraculously was able to get pregnant again? Sure. Could I still have a diamond in the coal mine of my ovaries? Perhaps. If I found out there was nothing wrong would I then blame myself? For being so depleted and tired that I couldn't give life to this little miracle that was trying to be a person deep inside me? I don't see how the information could help me, so I let it go. As the anesthesia set in before the operation I said bye to what could have been, should have been our baby. And I thanked it for trying and I told it I loved it and that was it. 

What the past few days has made us realize is that we really want another child, a sibling for Momo. It also made me realize I need to take care of myself because I am really really running on empty. So we will do both things. I'll get my ass into shape-- physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. And we will start preparing to go back for the last embryo-- Momo's genetic sibling. Hopefully by the summer. No pressure little guy.

So that's where I am. A little wounded, a lot grateful, and decently hopeful that our second child is waiting for us in a freezer in Seattle. I think I'll likely keep processing and writing about this a few more times, and then I'll get back to the book. 

Thanks to everyone for all your love and understanding always. Sending love this weekend. M

The Origin of Shame

The concept of shame comes up a lot for people on IF Island and I've been thinking a lot about why. Is it because it has to do with problems with private parts, and that is inherently shameful in our society? Is it because many of us are used to working hard and being successful in reaching our goals and not being able to conceive because of a medical issue is some how seen or internalized as failure, and failure in our country is shameful? I didn't think I thought I felt shame because I couldn't get knocked up. I never really associated our fertility problems with who I was as a woman, but I do understand the ideas of womanhood and manhood feeling...threatened. I think there is also some shame in feeling jealousy towards others-- because who wants to adit they're jealous, right? But its such a normal feeling and experience, right?  I always leaned towards being more of the confused-pissed off-sad type. But as I've been editing and reading over my writings, I see the origin of shame creep in. 

I posted what is essentially the next chapter or section of the book as a blog post in April 2013. It's a little different and cut down but is about the year we tried. One year whittled down to a few pages. Crazy how that goes. It helps as a reminder that so much of what feels so big and so scary at the time turns out to be just a tiny dot on the timeline of our life. This year was intense and I was spinning but still had a sense of humor. I talked (a lot) about our fertility challenges because I'm a talker and I wasn't embarrassed.  But I think I was also convinced that soon something was going to work.  But this sentence kind of stood out to me as the root of shame with all this stuff, see if you agree:

"In the beginning of our journey I was open about it, joking with co-workers about doing it all the time.  But as each month went by with the same result—no result-- I became more reserved, more embarrassed and essentially more alone."

It's almost like as shit gets more real and more scary, you start to feel more desperate and withdraw. Desperation + withdrawal = shame? I'm not sure if that's an exact equation. So that's kind of what I'm wondering about. 

Why do people on IF Island feel ashamed? 

 

NOT WHAT WE EXPECTED

Apologies for the delay. Momo has hand-foot-mouth virus and it's terrible. Poor gal. Anyway, it's set me back a little but I'm trying to push forward. The comments are REALLY helpful and I hope this process helps to connect us even more as a community as we see and notice the similar feelings and experiences shared.

Shame is a big topic. I hear ya. But before we even get to the point of shame or anger or panic or feeling cursed, I think there is a quiet lull of unease in just not knowing what's happening and being thrown off by things in our life not going as we thought-hoped-planned-expected. 

Here's a short introduction that comes after the preface (going in order here), that gives a little background about Noah and me. It's kind of...just there and I'm not sure if I should do away with it completely or if it helps to get to know us and our history a little. I keep asking myself, 'what's the point' and then I think about the "take-away." And by "take-away" I mean what will a reader take away from this little intro, and what can I add to help it be more useful. 

What I'm thinking of adding is a little section or little box at the beginning or end of each chapter/segment that can include things to think about, ways to expand our own perspective, coping tools etc. So the following is what I have written as it is, and the added "THINGS TO THINK ABOUT" are some ideas of questions that might help with the process. Thoughts and feedback are always helpful! I realize I'm a little disorganized but this is the storm of my brain that will hopefully, eventually, become calm and coherent.

Here goes:

When I first met Noah, I can’t say that I knew I wanted him to be the father of my children. 

We met during my sophomore year of college at UC Berkeley.  He was a junior.  We had two classes together—The History of German Cinema and The History of Buddhism in America. He thought I was two different girls because I wore glasses in the Buddhism class. He liked the girl with the glasses better and had I known he was that confused by a simple pair of glasses I may have been able to save myself years of trying to figure him out.  

Our first date consisted of going to a beach in Marin County so he could take photographs for a film project. We drove the long windy road in his beat-up blue Toyota Camry, listening to Bob Dylan and talking  about all the places we wanted to travel. It was overcast when we got to the beach so we walked a while until he found a few spots where the light felt right to him. He took pictures while I set up camp on a little blanket, and neatly spread out all the snacks I had brought. As it began to get dark we went for a walk and climbed some rocks, where we sat looking out at the ocean and watching two older men play paddleball in the nude.

For our second date he brought over a six-pack of Pyramid Pumpkin Ale and the movie Bottle Rocket, which we watched on my futon until I passed out. 

For our third date, we moved in together.  

That’s not entirely true. I just can’t remember ever going out on a “real” date with him. We just kind of became friends and eventually moved up to friends with benefits. Noah was painfully shy, so moving forward with any kind of relationship scared him. I 

had just broken up with my high school sweetheart, so I basically transferred my previous three-year relationship onto Noah, whose introversion I mistook for playing hard-to-get.  No doubt I scared the crap out of him with all my emotion and analysis of everything, but I think he was too confused and terrified (but perhaps slightly intrigued) to know what to do.  By the end of the school year we decided it made perfect sense to move in together.  Not just the two of us, but with five other people.

My best friend Gabe and I had found this seventies shag-pad in the hills of Montclair, about a 10-minute drive from campus.  It had carpeted walls in the bedrooms and multiple nooks and crannies that may or may not have once hidden murdered prostitutes.  We had four roommates confirmed and needed three more people to fill the seven bedrooms, and Noah just happened to need a place to live with two of his friends.  The math was easy, but the living arrangement was hard.  We quickly learned you should never make a relationship decision based on a tight real estate market.  We all moved into this house and it turned out to be complete chaos. One roommate began doing cocaine and made rent by stripping, another roommate had a bitchy girlfriend who basically moved in rent-free, then several people moved out and were replaced by even weirder people. The house always smelled of sweaty gym socks, ramen and pot.  It was a nightmare.

One day I walked into the kitchen where one of our roommates had accidentally put dish soap into the dishwasher, which caused a huge overflow of bubbles all over the kitchen floor. Noah was standing in the middle of the mess, chewing a sandwich. 

“What the hell happened here!?” I yelled, panicked.

“Ian put dish soap in the dishwasher,” Noah responded between bites, bubbles snaking up the calves of his pant legs.

“Why’d he do that?” I asked.

“He’s an idiot,” Noah said. He had some thick pieces of bread in his hand and was having a hard time swallowing each bite.

“What are you eating,” I said, more an accusation than a question.  (I often ask questions the way a woodpecker drills into a tree.)

             He looked at me blankly and shrugged.  “Bread sandwich.”

That was the moment I knew I wanted him to be the father of my children. Not consciously, but in the core of my being I had a sense that he would be the voice of calm and ease to anchor my spinning anxious mind. He would make me smile and laugh when it seemed like the house was being flooded, or when it was actually flooding. He would take whatever life presented him in stride and wouldn’t worry about things unnecessarily. 

“Bread sandwich?” I repeated, probably rolling my eyes, maybe smiling just a little.

He pulled apart the two slices of bread with nothing in between and smiled, both dimples puckering, and confirmed it was indeed a bread sandwich. 

We walked away from the mess as good roommates do, deciding it was best for Ian to deal with it.  He gave me a bite of his bread sandwich and I promptly made dinner for the both of us. This is how we learned to take care of each other. This was when we started learning the balance that we each needed. This is when I learned that Noah calls things exactly as they are, and he’s often right.

One wedding and sixteen plus years later, we are still doing the delicate act of balancing each other, and we’ve almost perfected the dance.  My mind and emotions still spin at times, and he’s still there to be the calm and definitive sense of reason. 

Plain and simple as a bread sandwich. 

                                                                    THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

One of the hardest things about being on a “journey to parenthood,” is that it isn’t what we expected. We all have ideas about how our life-career-family is going to play out, and when the scene starts to look drastically different from what we imagined, it can be distressing. If we are lucky enough to find our partner at a reasonable age, we often imagine our perfect offspring as a combination of each of our best features (highly unlikely) and we are thrown off by the concept that it might not be as easy as we thought to mush our parts together and create the family we always dreamed of. It’s important to take a little time to sit with the sadness of things not going how we want, that’s ok. That’s normal, that’s life. And then as we work to move forward, here are some things to think about:

1) Why do I want to be a parent? 

2) Do I want a child in my image or a family, are those different things?

3) What is my fantasy and what is the reality of my situation and how can I look to reframe my thinking so I can lessen the gap?

4) How can I be more flexible and open about the process?

5) How have I coped with unexpected challenges in the past that can help me now?