Late night musings on fertility issues...

I started posting in response to the NYTimes' multimedia feature "Voices of Infertility", but thought better of it, figuring I should edit it and repost it here. Forgive me if there is some repetition of events, but this gives more detail.

To anyone insensitive (or just flat out completely ignorant) toward those with fertility issues....

Until you have gone through fertility problems, don't you DARE say you judge those who feel "lifeless" and grief etc. because they have fertility problems. When you can't get pregnant easily and naturally, it has a way of creeping over everything in your life.

I need to find some way of talking with my boss (even though I think/hope that my boss will be understanding) of the fact that I need time to go to doctor's appointments for the situation. Seems like not such a big thing, a doctor's appointment or two. But the appointments multiply, and I know that these 1-2 appointments will become more follow-ups and ultrasounds and sick days I don't have due to side effects of medicines I'll probably be given to try to help my chances of conceiving. Thus, I am afraid to tell my boss what I'm going through, even though she/he can tell you're distracted etc. and even though I THINK they might be sympathetic, it'll still get in the way of their doing their OWN job. So I feel guilty about even bringing it up and asking for more understanding about this, because I feel incompetent enough in my job given how distracted I already am. And because I'm afraid (even if it's not exactly legal) that will eventually lead to it being suggested that I "move on from that position", when I need the insurance and the money (even if the pay isn't that great) that come with the job.

A few days ago, I e-mailed with a friend who I haven't talked to in a while, and I decided to try to open up a little about my fertility problems. He used to be a good friend of my LH's, and a friend of mine as well. But honestly, I haven't talked much with him in the 2 1/2 years since his wife was pregnant with their first child, he knew I was in a world of pain still about having not had kids with my LH, and yet he e-mailed me this joyful e-mail about feeling his child move inside his wife etc. On what PLANET was I an appropriate recipient for that e-mail?!?!

Anyway, so I told him about my PCOS and about how we were trying to decide on what treatments and when. When he wrote back, instead of even offering the platitude, "We'll pray for you/send good fertility thoughts your way," he launches into the fact that that they are 9 months pregnant with their second child. Without even acknowledging what you just said about your own fertility status. He didn't tell me, because they were afraid of how I would react. Um, like I wasn't going to find out. They could have told me (kindly and gently but directly, without undue delay, and without a lot of fanfare, is usually best when telling someone with fertility issues) when they were only 3-4 months out, but they didn't. And then the he procedes to crow about how great being a parent is, and how you and your spouse will make great parents (again, no acknowledgement that I'd already told him that we were TRYING SO HARD to join that club, but it's just not working!!!!). So that drives a further wedge into that friendship. Even though you've known this friend for 15-20 years, I start thinking maybe it's another lost friendship due to fertility issues.

An hour later, I found out that a good friend who who I have known for almost half my life and who has been very sweet and supportive particularly through my LH's illness and the ensuing 2 year morass of grief, got pregnant after only 2 months of not even really trying, just not preventing. You had both wanted to be pregnant at the same time. I was happy (or trying really hard to be) for my friend, but feeling guilty because I'm not able to be happier for her, but at the same time angry that I'm not pregnant too, afraid this will be yet ANOTHER friendship lost due to fertility differences, etc. My friend is, again, truly sweet about saying she knows it may be hard for you that she got pregnant, she understands if you won't want to hear a lot of the details, etc. She's babbling, it's awkward for her too, she's somehow trying to make it all better when you both know there aren't words to magically conjure up a BFP for me too. For much of this conversation, I'm standing out in front of a bar. Somehow I manage to congratulate her and finally get off the phone.

I finally walked into the bar where I'm meeting my husband and a bunch of other friends for dinner. I'd been doing so well. In a moment, I can't hold it back anymore. My house of cards comes down all at once, a la a tired, cranky toddler, and I burst into tears at the table. My heart is breaking open along fault lines very close to those opened up by my LH's illness, death, and the loss of our planned-for family. My husband quickly sees that I'm not going to be able to pull it together after half a minute, and pulls me outside. I sob on his shoulder, heart wounded and aching desperately. In front of the outdoor seating, how wonderful.

Are you dying of the infertility? No. But it sure as hell hurts.

On the responses to the NYTimes piece, some people say, "It's not like you have cancer." And of course, that's true. However, I watched my mom battle back from cancer, and only a few short months after she finished active treatment, my LH (only 28 at the time) was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. We tried everything possible to get him better, or at least get another year or two of "quality time" in remission. Neither one happened. I know the heartbreak of cancer - not from the perspective of the patient - but from that of a closest relative.

Having been through all that, I can't help but feel two ways. Could I somehow find meaning in my life if my new husband and I can't have children? I suppose so. I survived losing my LH, something I NEVER thought I could do - and also survived the worst of the mourning of not being able to have the kids we'd dreamed of having together. And what's more, I fell in love again and took the chance of getting remarried, and hoping again. I've been gradually battling back to try to reclaim my mess of a work life. All of this is more than I thought myself capable of.

HOWEVER - do I really want to be forced to completely rewrite my visions of and hopes for my future, yet AGAIN, as I had to do following my LH's death? Absolutely not!!!! It virtually killed me to begin to rewrite my life once already. I feel like I should have a pass, so to speak, from fertility problems. Haven't I been through enough?!?! I'm sure so many who find themselves with fertility problems after having been through other stuff in their lives feel similarly... it's just not fair that those of us who have already been through the wringer in other ways in particular can't just easily get pregnant and bear healthy children, and be spared that set of heartbreak!

On that topic, I have a widow friend who lost her LH to cancer a few months before I lost mine. (We met through an online group.) She had been told after she married her LH that she was already in premature ovarian failure, at age 30, and when her LH had already had a couple of bouts of cancer and was in remission. She told me the name of the girl she'd dreamed of having with him. Although she didn't talk about it a lot, I could tell it was terribly painful for her. Fast forward a while after her LH died (and before I met mine). She met a guy she liked, and who was open about the fact that he liked her, wanted to be a husband and father, etc. She told him not to date her because she was a young widow (too much baggage) and had been told years before (by then she was in her mid-30s) that she couldn't have children. He said he wanted to get to know her, and they would see. Well, several months later, she hinted something was going on... she was almost 5 months pregnant!!! They had gotten completely, accidentally pregnant when she thought it wasn't even possible for her! The baby came early but was healthy, and then they went to City Hall, baby in arms, a few weeks later. They are happy and so grateful for their son, but I know my friend has not forgotten what it was like to deal with both the cancer spouse/young cancer widow thing, and the fertility issues. I keep hoping that maybe, somehow, I will have my own version of this happiness-out-of-sadness story...

I am wearing a string around my middle most days now. It's from an acquaintance who hadn't gotten PG after several months of not-preventing (of course, I think, for goodness' sake, why didn't you chart and use OPKs long before that?!). Anyway, she's very spiritual, and in her tradition, the Old Wives recommend wearing a string around your middle to bring on the fertility. She did it - and wound up pregnant with fraternal twins! She wore it all through her pregnancy. Then she got PG again, but didn't wear the string and miscarried, so she's a big believer in the string. She cut me a piece of the original ball and told me to wear it. I figure, what the hell, can't hurt, right?! Geez. If by some chance I get prgnant while doing the string thing, I swear I'll frame the damn thing!

Anyway... I suppose I should try to sleep. I haven't had sleep issues like I've had the last couple of weeks in probably almost 2 years, since the end of my years of sleep issues surrounding my LH's illness and death.

Tonight - or why I started blogging now

I've been thinking of starting a blog for a little while (likely topics: the TTC thing, PCOS, young widowhood, young adult cancer, remarried young widows, work stuff, etc.). So, I finally did it. (BTW, "LH" in my world is "Late Husband" - it will be a somewhat frequent reference, so there you go.) This will be a bit long, since I'm trying to give you guys some background.

As I alluded to in my first post, issues of pregnancy/babies/etc. were HORRIFICALLY painful for me while my LH was slowly dying of cancer and for 2+ years after he died. I literally couldn't deal with most things related to those topics. It was like the proverbial "Why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're CLOSED!" Only, times about 100. At least.

And now, L and I are having trouble getting pregnant. I ovulated once right off the pill back in January - and then nothing since then. I'm doing the whole temping/charting THING, so I KNOW I haven't O'ed. I have freaking pretty charts and statistics (those of you doing this too will totally get what I mean). Lots of pretty pictures showing why I'm not pregnant, why I could have two martinis tonight (I was not a happy camper, so sue me). And I'm doing occasional ovulation predictor kits, not that they're overly useful for many of us with PCOS anyway, but whatever, just for sh**s and giggles.

The cause of my not being a happy camper tonight? Within about an hour of each other, I found out that two friends are pregnant - one, an old friend of my LH's (who I also knew going way back) whose wife is due any day now, and the other, a close friend who had been not really hardcore TTC but kind of not NOT trying for only a couple of months... and bingo, two lines. The first set already has a 2+ year old daughter, and this friend had already accidentally put his foot in it. When his wife was pregnant the first time, he sent an e-mail to me about how overjoyed he was to feel his baby move inside his wife - to his friend's widow who had already told him that pregnancy stuff was incredibly painful to her - hello?!?!?! The second friend and I had wanted to be pregnant together. Oh well.

I feel absolutely awful - almost dirty - about not being able to be happier for both of these friends. And I'd suspected it, too. I've developed a hyper-sensitive radar for pregnancies in the last 5 years. But at the same time, I am ANGRY and HURT that I can't be there with them. I hate - loathe - that my LH's friend has become one of these obliviously happy parents who just don't get (and worse, don't really respect) the fact that no everyone's lives revolve around children (even if they ARE parents!), and thus I pretty much have nothing to talk to him about anymore. And clearly they have had absolutely no problem getting pregnant either time (I know they got pregnant pretty much immediately the first time, and I can do the math with the fact that there is not much time between kids). I had even told him that my new husband and I were having trouble in the TTC area, and he barely even acknowledged it much less offered any kind of empathy when he wrote back to tell me that they were pregnant again. Um, thanks for even trying to be empathetic!

I also absolutely hate that my other friend and I will not be able to somehow have the stars align and both be pregnant together. And now I am afraid I will lose her as a friend, as has happened with so many others, especially given how hard pregnancy/kid stuff has been for me in the last few years. Not that she would purposely leave me out of her life, but kids have a way of doing that to so many friendships. Especially if you don't live really near each other, and my friend and I don't. And so of course, I am really upset that I can't be more supportive of her, happier for her pregnancy, etc. She was very sweet on the phone, saying that she knew this may be hard for me, that she wanted us to be friends but she would understand if I needed to take little breaks from her pregnancy news as long as they weren't permanent breaks, etc. Of course, that only makes me feel worse.

After all this, I walked into the bar where I was meeting my husband and some friends for drinks to kick off the holiday weekend... and promptly burst into tears. My heart felt like it was breaking in a way it hasn't - well, pretty much ever - about anything other than my late husband's death and related issues. My husband steered me back outside to the curb, and I sobbed into his chest in front of all the people at the outdoor tables. Yeehaw! How classy. Good thing I had lots of training in getting over crying in public during the intensive young cancer spouse/young widow period. It felt like something was coming open in my chest, and such painful, deep sadness was pouring out. I hadn't cried like that in a while.

Anyway, as far as our TTC, I more or less knew I probably had PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) even before going to the reproductive endocrinologist a few weeks ago. I went off the pill last December, ovulated once, and then nothing since then. I guess I never figured I wouldn't have ovulated at least 2-3 times by now. (Ah, to believe that again...) To make things even more fun, since we went on a big trip this spring (for which I had to get extra unpaid days worked into my contract) and have another "command performance" family trip next month, I have basically absolutely NO vacation/sick days left at work. So, I feel like I can't even really start medical intervention to TTC - even Metformin, a diabetes drug that helps some women with PCOS to ovulate more regularly - because I really can't take much time at all for the doctors' appointments. Not to mention possible sick days due to potential drug side effects. Ugh.

So I feel like I'm really between a rock and a hard place. Especially after news from two friends who are PG and how I felt tonight, I want to jump on either the Met or Clomid freaking tomorrow. But I feel like I'm barely holding on at work as it is (my job isn't that hard, but it's been really annoying and rather stressful for the last 6 weeks or so, and will probably not get any better in the next 2 weeks). So how would I be able to deal with all the feelings about getting treatment, how the drugs may make me feel, etc. - and still function even halfway decently at work? But I am pretty much over acting like there is "plenty of time", like it's not a big deal if I don't start treatments until more like late fall or so, etc.

So anyway... that gives you an idea of some Stuff I'm dealing with, may be writing about, etc. Thanks for "listening".