a good egg gone to waste

It hasn't even been two weeks since the surgery, and I do believe I'm ovulating. I know it's far too early to get back on the bandwagon, but I've been so consumed with trying for so long that it almost pains me to let this eggy go to waste.

I'm like Pavlov's dogs - see the egg white cm, jump Hubby. But today, I'm remaining firmly planted on the couch. How ironic - it's the first time I've actually wanted to get off the couch in weeks!

So, the only way that I can move forward is to plan the future, so my little brain has been ticking away all day. In order to ensure that no other good little eggies go to waste, I'm going to get my body (and mind) in the best possible shape (just in case I ever conceive again).
Step 1: detox. I just need to figure out which product to use, and when would be the best time to start, so as to best control the ensuing anal blow out. This step also means I'll have to say goodbye (yet again!) to some of my newly rediscovered best friends: junk food, alcohol, and caffeine. Poor Hubby. I'm sure I won't be a nice girl for a little while.
Step 2: sweat. I absolutely despise not being able to sweat my ass off in the gym, and since I want to be as healthy as possible before we ttc again, I will throw a tantrum if the doc doesn't give me the ok to work out. Seriously. It's the only high I have left.
Step 3: therapy. I know I need it. I've just recently accepted that. I'll leave my fears of being ridiculed for my own special brand of crazy at the door.
Step 4: acupuncture. I've read some promising stuff about it, and even if it proves to be bunk, I'll give it a try. I've never been scared of needles or anything. As a kid, I'd beg for a shot at the doctor's office, even if I didn't need one. I think I just wanted the lollipops they gave to the kids who had been stuck, or maybe I just liked the pain. Is it any surprise that I love tattoos?

I'm open to suggestions, if you know of any other steps I should include in the renovation of my womb/mind.

Laziness

Reality is going to bitch slap me again. My days of laziness and self-indulgent sniveling are about to come to an end. Mom, who flew out on Christmas day to hang out and eat deliciously crappy food and listen to me whine, will be flying back home Tuesday, after which I'll promptly return to work. Sigh.

In the last month, I have truly mastered the art of laziness. Before pregnancy #5, I was merely a novice, despite my illusions of grandeur. When I started bleeding and spotting shortly after the pregnancy was confirmed, I panicked and planted my ass (which has, surprisingly, not doubled in size) on the couch. There it has remained, with very few excursions: doctor's visits, surgery, and little else. At first, my lazy days were worry filled, but fabulous. I still thought cletus the fetus had a chance, and I was determined to give it to him (I'm pretty sure cletus was a boy. Call it semi-mother's intuition). I ate healthy food, drank lots of water, peed a lot, read lots of books (thanks to fabulous friends who gave me the whole Sookie Stackhouse series - you rock!) and watched plenty of the true crime shows Hubby hates. I told Hubby that if he denied me anything I would take pictures of the bruises on my belly caused by those fabulous lovenox injections and report him for spousal abuse, so of course he was wrapped around my little finger. This was probably quite difficult for him, since laziness is one of the things we have in common, and I'm sure I was fairly demanding. Laziness, at that point, was a Good Thing.

Then came the Tearful Tuesday, when we found out that little cletus inherited our laziness, and planted his lazy ass in my fallopian tube. What a stinker! I'm sure we would have gotten along famously! After surgery, laziness was clearly not a choice - I was in pain and nodding off like a junkie every five minutes from my narcotics for the first couple of days, and have been hobbled by sadness ever since. I have absolutely no desire to do anything other than sit on the couch. I know that I need to move on and just get off the fucking couch already, but I can't. And Tuesday looms, two weeks from Tearful Tuesday, when Mom will leave and I'll go to work and pretend to be normal and fight back tears all day. Wednesday brings the follow up appointment at the RE's, and two parties, neither of which I want to attend. But I will, for Hubby's sake. The boy needs to play with his friends, and he's too sweet to leave me all alone on New Year's Eve, even if I beg and plead (I can't play the spousal abuse card anymore - the bruises are too faded).

Life goes on, even as my world crashes around me.

green eyed bitch

Jealousy is an evil, evil bitch. During my struggles with semi-fertility, she has taken up a near constant vigil in my life. Fertiles, specifically preggo fertiles, seem to bear the fruit of my resentment. I can't even begin to describe the just-punched-in-the-gut feeling that invariably accompanies the news that someone I know is expecting. (Oh, wait, yes I can. It feels like I just got punched in the gut). Several times Hubby has had the pleasure of delivering the news, and the exchange usually goes something like this:

Hubby: I have something to tell you (looking appropriately somber.)
Wifey: Uhhm, okay.
Hubby: So-and-so is pregnant (flinching as if I'm going to hit him with a spinning backfist. I haven't. Yet.)
Wifey: (tears, snot, incoherent mumblings, all of which may last several hours or days.)

Thank god that man often gets to see me at my best, because jealousy most definitely brings out my worst.

Sometime later, when I regain the ability to breathe, and thus talk, (much, I suppose, to Hubby's horror) I break out the "Why I'd Make a Better Mommy than So-and-so" game. It's rad - winner gets to feel like a total fucking asshole just for playing. I pretty much always win.

I have no idea why such happy news produces such an incredibly visceral reaction in me. I know that somebody else's pregnancy does not mean that I'll never have a child. It makes absolutely no sense that I feel like it does. Jealousy defeats reason, KO 1st round.

I think all of that is a fairly, or at least somewhat, normal response to the shit that we have been dealing with (not that that stops me from feeling ridiculous and asshole-ish for reacting in such a dramatic way). What really keeps me awake at night is not the because-so-and-so-has-it-better jealousy, but the because-so-and-so-has-it-worse jealousy. There, I said it. It seems even more asshole-ish written than it did in my head, but there it is. I wouldn't say that I wish I was that person dealing with the loss of a spouse, child, lover, friend, family member. I've experienced some of those losses, more than once, and they suck. I do, however, wish that the people in my world would understand (or acknowledge, for fuck's sake!) the depth of our losses. While my children might never have walked this earth, or been held in my arms, or kept me up all night, screaming, while I chugged from the flask in my bra just to deal, they are missed. Surely, sorely, they are missed.

the holidays

Christmas is ruined.

Two years ago, on Christmas day, I had my 3rd miscarriage. The year before that, I was pregnant, but soon to have my 1st miscarriage. This year, I am recovering from surgery to deal with an ectopic pregnancy.

I was never a real nut for the holidays, probably because of one particular Christmas when I was a little girl (maybe 3 or 4 years old). My dad, as per usual, overindulged in the, ahem, spirits, of the season, and sustained a black eye from a street fight with the wall in our apartment hallway on Christmas Eve. My brother and I were asleep after a fun filled party (and an even more jovial Christmas Eve Mass) with stuffed tummies and visions of loot in our heads. We woke up the next morning to find Dad with a shiner (and probably a wicked hangover). He told us Santa had beat him up. This was the beginning of my disillusionment with the fat guy, but my brother's had begun years before.

Until I came along, he was the youngest of the cousins. The next-youngest cousin was a girl, and so, predictably enough, my brother developed a fascination with Barbies. They played with the Barbies a lot, and even though he was pretty young at the time (maybe 2 or 3, but really, I have no idea. I wasn't born yet), he surely dealt with some teasing from the older male cousins and their dad. I think this was probably harmless enough, until Christmas that year. Our uncle dressed up as Santa and passed out gifts to all the kids. My brother got a dress. To this day, he still remembers an almost uncontrollable desire to punch Santa right in the nose.

The year after the whole Santa-breaking-into-our-place-and-beating-up-Dad incident, I put two and two together and realized that the fat man is a myth developed by adults to keep kids in line: I found the Sears price sticker on one of my presents. I certainly had never seen an elf standing in line in a Sears, with a cart full of goodies for the nice little boys and girls of the world. I did know that my mom liked Sears. A lot. The whole thing was a sham.




I've tried, as an adult, to find some magic in the day, but never really with any enthusiasm. Hubby seems to have caught my malaise. We always wait till the last minute to buy gifts (this year we were traipsing through Target one and a half hours before our family Christmas Eve shindig). We've tried putting up a tree, though it seems to function as more of a cat magnet and endless supply of new doggy chew toys than anything else, so it hasn't been de-basemented in several years. After the turn of recent events, it seems even more depressing - after all, the whole holiday is about the birth of an infant (for the religious) and the spoiling of children (for the secular), and I am confronted yet again with my body's inability to function as it should.

When I found out about this pregnancy, before we knew that it was the right zygote, wrong place, I had visions of a joyous Christmas spent exchanging meaningful looks with Hubby, drunk on our secret bean and visions of next Christmas, our baby's first. I should have known better than to indulge.

Next year, we're boycotting the whole thing. I'd like to take the money we would have spent on gifts (okay, plus a whole lot more) and escape to someplace warm and wasteful, with a beach and lots and lots of alcohol.


Anyone want to tag along?