Better but not gone

I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to make of my life.  Holidays always cause a lot of "thinking" and this Easter was no different.  I really enjoy Easter activities with kids and this year I did none of them.  I tried to get some friends to come over for an Easter dinner.  Last year I borrowed their kid for some Easter egg decoration.  This year I just couldn't get any takers and my nieces and nephews are all either too far or too busy for their auntie.

DH and I were going to go to his sisters but we both ended up getting sick.  Although now I am thinking my sick was a food allergy. I have been eating an incredibly healthy diet of unprocessed food and very little grain and inadvertently had cut out corn(I was just cutting out processed foods).  I relaxed the diet a little on Friday and had my favorite puffed corn and rice product and spent the rest of the night wondering if I was starting in with arthritis and if I were pregnant since the nausea and stomach upset made no sense.  There's of course no way outside of a miracle that I would be pregnant but I still keep some test around so I tested quickly.  This is a totally ridiculous and irrational thing to do but it stops the what if thinking that could go on for days if I let it.   Anyway I felt bad all day the next day and then the following I felt better.  I had some more of that corn puffed product today and about 30 minutes to an hour later same awful issues.  My hands feel like I am well into arthritis and my stomach is upset...so I guess I better stay away from corn for awhile..or try to reintroduce again later just to confirm it's that and not some weird bug.

I think a lot about how I will keep myself busy, happy with this childless life and for the most part I am.  I still feel something missing.  I still sometimes cry about the miscarriages I've had.  For the most part though I go about my life happily.  I have a good job that I enjoy and I try to excel in that.  DH and I are having our bathrooms redone which is nice.  We bought what was a rental house a few years ago and have been living with the really embarrassing (well used) bathrooms, not just ugly but broken down and it's been really nice to see the first one ripped out and almost done and I can't wait for the second to be ripped out.

I started running again.  I ran a 5K a couple weeks ago and I did well.  I'm working up to a half marathon in September.  I enjoy it.  I think I enjoy it most because it's something I can work for and actually accomplish.  Infertility and miscarriage took so much control away from me, it's nice to be able to "win" sometimes now.

Life goes on

I've been writing to you all in my head again for weeks now so I figured I better get on here and actually try to write something.

One daydreamed post was about anger...another about resilience...then when I was feeling good I thought about how far I've come through this journey.

I can't remember anything but those thoughts so they're lost to my mind now. 

Today I feel angry and I am having some issues with feeling badly about myself, like I've done something wrong.  Instead of spiraling for months like I would have in the past I sat down and wrote out the negative thoughts and then challenged each one, one by one and realized that after each of my miscarriages I've had a general feeling of having done something wrong.  I think it has to do with how miscarriage is perceived and responded to by "others" and the fact that I take a lot of non verbal cues in my dealing with people and use them to identify how people feel about me.  It's not a good thing to do especially when people are uncomfortable that I've had a miscarriage and so act in a way that shows they are uncomfortable.  If I then take that as they are uncomfortable with me as a whole you can see where this is going.

Anyway it felt good to take charge  of those feelings and challenge them.  It doesn't make it go away but it helps it from gaining momentum at least.

In other news I am terrified to have sex with my husband...birth control doesn't make me feel safe from pregnancy and I don't want to get pregnant.  Isn't that a new wrinkle...spent all those years trying and now I am really back in my 20's in respect to my feelings around it.

Foster care is not going anywhere I've made some calls and actually read some blogs about it which scared me a little bit.  So I am still not anywhere with that. 

Other than that things are going well.  Just keeping on with life as it comes.

CD1 and stepping back into my life

Well here I am again, physically back to fairly normal.  I was actually shocked when my cycle started I had gotten used to being in the limbo land.  Well hello again...I guess I'm not "pregnant" anymore for real.

I have to come clean....a couple of weeks ago I took a pregnancy test and it was positive and I decided to keep it.  After the ultrasound where the Dr. definitively announced this pregnancy as a miscarriage I had thrown away all of my pee tests...there were a lot.  Then I regretted it.  But really what was I saving them for?  Peeing on a stick and seeing the positive made me feel better.  How freaking odd is that?  The only thing I can figure out is that it made it real and not something I'd imagined....in a "see I really was pregnant" kind of way.  I think it's an antidote to the world around me that's acting like nothing's happened.  Starts to make a girl feel a little crazy, if you know what I mean.

The tears have come this week.  I cried myself to work two days this week and definitely cried on the days I worked from home.   I don't mind the tears.  It feels real.  It feels justified.  I am fairly confident the tears will give way to some sort of acceptance at some point.  I'm just riding it out until they do and trying to steer clear of stupid comments from well meaning but misguided people in the meantime.

I did a lot of research into the foster to adopt program this week and am realizing it won't be easy.  I think I am ready to face the challenge though.  I find myself wishing my husband already had children, from a previous marriage and isn't that so strange? I guess I just WANT to mother regardless of genetic ties, I want to mother and I think it's time to make that happen.

Lonely

..just lonely.

Energy

I read a great post today http://lifewithoutbaby.com/2013/06/03/children-in-my-future/ which talked about the soul needing to heal along with the mind and body.  So touching and relevant to me.  Also there was a comment about two people having met over many lifetimes and the writer says " Lately, when the subject of children comes up, I tell people that in our next lives, my husband and I will have children. But this lifetime was meant just for us and I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can."  What a fantastic way to think and it really touched me.

I've always felt I knew my husband on a deep level even the first day we met.  I felt an immediate level of comfort and ease that is usually a long process for an introvert like me to get to.  I like the idea that maybe this life is just for he and I.

Hormonal Roulette

I am on a roller coaster of hormones.  I am up, then I am down.  I am exhausted, physically wrung out.  I don't remember this...but maybe having the last bits of this pregnancy ripped out of me is different than the slow decline from the last two times.  I could not get out of bed this am.  I am achy and tired and cranky. 

I hope this passes soon.  I'm tempted to use a small amount of the progesterone cream to ease me over the hump..but then I can't figure out if that will even help or make things worse and totally confuse the heck out of my body.

I forgot to tell this part of my apt.  I was so traumatized by the actual procedure.  During the US my Dr. asked us if we had thought about what we might do next.  I was confused..oh maybe we'll go grab some dinner...depending on how I feel.  No.  She meant what we might do next about having children.  I was kind of surprised that she would ask that.  Although she is the one who told me at the last apt. that she had a patient who had many miscarriages and two children.  So maybe she thinks there's some small level of hope.

I think I am done.  I mean maybe if I were 40 or younger I could contemplate this again.  I think if I weren't still recovering maybe I could contemplate it.  But really I feel more done than ever before.  I feel at this point that it's really not a good idea for me to pursue this again.  I think if we did pursue it, the only way I could feel good about it would be to use a surrogate and PGD or donor egg.  I did look into that the other day.  It comes with about a 50K price tag.  That's likely the minimum.  I hate to put a price on it but for me that's just too much and I am physically worn out. I don't know that I could go through multiple IVF cycles to get enough embryos for PGD. 

I think at this point actually foster to adopt is the way we will look.  I actually feel a little excited thinking about it which is new and quite different from how I felt in the past.  I don't know that I've given up on being a parent but I am fairly certain that I've given up on giving birth to my own biological child.

Endometrial biopsy

I finally figured out what my endometrial biopsy  felt like. It was like having someone dig at an open wound with a fork.

I had what I hope was my last ob apt yesterday and the miscarriage was still incomplete. I had taken vicodin before as suggested and was feeling pretty loopy. It didn't help  I think I actually left my body during the procedure. My husband broke out in a cold sweat. It literally only lasted 20 seconds and it was physically  the most painful 20 seconds of my life.

Ironically I woke up today feeling great.

Trying to get back on track emotionally as well.