For Good

I started this blog three years ago, and now, at what I think is the half point of my life, it’s time to end it. I never celebrated my blogoversaries because the reasons I started this blog were not something I wanted to celebrate. I hope this to be much more than a “life sucks because I didn’t have a kid, so I’m closing down my blog” post. I hope that this will be more than the end of a chapter in my life, but the beginning of a great new book. What I know is this; I’m not the same person I was when I started this blog or even when I started my infertility journey.

Let’s be honest. The grieving over the loss of having a child has been one of the toughest things I have ever been through. I think I have managed to alienate most of my friends by either taking my anger out on them or not engaging with them over the last three years. While I am beginning to come to some sort of acceptance about life as it is right now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t avoid acquaintances with their newborns and toddlers in tow or that I accept baby shower invitations. I’m not quite there yet. Which is the main reason I am stepping away from the blogosphere for good. It is too difficult for me to read about everyone’s successes when I’m going no where, at least in terms of building a family.

Mother’s Day this year was excruciating as always. I spent the day hiding in my house, having my own little “Dex.ter-a-thon”, because what better to make you feel good than watching a show about a psycho-serial killer? Somehow, I feel comforted that someone else’s life is more fucked up than my own, ficticious or not.

I confessed to my mother that I hated Mother’s Day, and she told me that she hates Mother’s Day too! I also recently learned that my mom’s mom had infertility too. I was chatting with my mom, and I asked her if grandma ever wanted a boy. She said sure she did, but after having my mom and my aunt, my grandma couldn’t have any more children. I know what you are thinking, “at least she had two daughters!” Still, it made me feel for my grandma that she couldn’t have more children when she wanted to.

It also made me wonder if I inherited my wonky uterus genes. After trying to ignore that I had a uterus for over a year, I finally met with my old friend, the dildocam, and discovered that my fibroid had a son. Revenge of the uterus, I suppose. I hate those women that say to me, “fibroids are your body’s way of saying it wants children.” Yeah, tell me something I don’t already know, (insert derogatory expletive of choice here).”

I have not completely given up on the idea of having children. Magic and I had a talk about it, and nothing is going to happen until his business starts making some real money. For starters, we can’t afford donor eggs until that happens, let alone me reducing my hours and salary at work to raise a child. At a minimum, that’s three years out. I shutter at the thought of being pregnant at 48, but I wouldn’t be the only woman to do that. I am conflicted about it. While I don’t want to raise a child if I can’t completely be there for her, I don’t think I was any healthier 10 years ago. One particularly popular donor egg book berates women over 45 from having DE children. The way I look at it is that our child would have an appreciation for older people more than most of our jaded youngsters. Still, waiting three years for something that might not even happen drives me crazy. Oh, and please don’t feel sorry for me because I don’t have the money to pursue having a baby. I’m beginning to get that there is a larger force at work here that I don’t understand or have control over.

This isn’t the “I had/adopted a baby, and it’s the best thing that has ever happened in my life” post or even blog. This is the “what is there to life if not to fulfill my instincts to reproduce” question? I’m grateful for the women I have met through the blogosphere and on this journey. I think the vast majority of you have moved on to family building in some way, shape, or form. I’m happy for all of you, even if I’m not showing it.

As for me, I’m still working on the answer to the question of what are we if we are not mothers. What is the purpose of life if we do not execute our built in programming to have children? I know I failed, and I understand the reasons why, which were beyond my control. I try not to dwell on my losses anymore. The tears still come, but I don’t allow myself down that dark hole anymore. I’m accepting my losses. I’m beginning to see the bigger picture of it all. I would not have been able to really be there for my child if I had not been through the tragedy I had been through and was shown how it was linked to the trauma I experienced in my childhood.

I want my life to have purpose and to make a difference. I thought that purpose was to have a baby, but it apparently isn’t. I haven’t been moved to act on anything else yet. Maybe I’m already doing that in my job. Or maybe it’s simply enough to just be. Life is a mystery that is constantly unfolding. I’m trying to be curious about the mystery of it all as the pages of my life turn. Mostly, it just drives me f-in’ crazy.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for me, you can find me working in my garden.

 

Maybe I Should Have Dropped outta High School?

This explains why I don’t have kids:

5 Unexpected Downsides of High Intelligence

Go to #4. Damn lotta good my graduate degree did for me!

C’est la Vie

I’ve been fascinated of late by Julia_Child’s life. I’ve been looking for female childless role models, who had full lives without children. Did Julia struggle with infertility? I needed to know.

I picked up her autobiography, My_Life_in_France, recently. I admire a woman who is as passionate about food and cooking as much more than I am! I decided against reading the popular Julie&Julia because I read somewhere that Julia_Child did not care for its author Julie_Powell. She thought it was a stunt that some average Jane would try to cook all her recipes in Mastering_the_Art_of _French_Cooking in one year. Magic happens to own a copy of JC’s first famous cookbook. I’m someone who likes to cook, and I’m pretty good at it, but this cookbook totally intimidates me! So I have to agree with JC that I think that Julie_Powell is a fraud, not to mention a total crack pot. I tracked down her recent blog, and frankly, I don’t think she’s worth spending any money on. After she made some money on Julie&Julia and was “saved” by JC (hmmm, just noticed who’s initials Julia_Child shares with), she had an affair because she married her high school sweetheart young and never really had her own life, then when off and learned how to butcher animals, and wrote her second book about it, affair and all (while still married to her husband). While I did watch the movie Julie&Julia (on Netflix_streaming for free), I think Meryl_Streep, who I really like as an actress, blew it on her interpretation of JC. Judge for yourself:

One hundred pages into My Life in France, JC boils down her infertility to one terse paragraph. She starts off by describing a bout with stomach troubles:

“But when I continued to feel suddenly sick and gaseous, I declared: “Aha, pregnant at last!

We had tried. But for some reason our efforts didn’t take. It was sad, but we didn’t spend too much time thinking about it and never considered adoption. It was just one of those things. We were living very full lives. I was cooking all the time and making pans for a career in gastronomy. Paul – after all his years as a tutor and school teacher – said that he’d already spent enough time with adolescents to last him a lifetime. So it was.”

Hmmm, another woman who has a husband that doesn’t want to adopt. Mind you, JC wrote this when she was 91, fifty some years well past her childbearing prime and after an enormously successful culinary career. She was 49 when her first groundbreaking cookbook was published, and 51 when she started the first ever cooking TV show, “The_French_Chef”. All the reason to love her more, that she found success later in life when most women are mourning the loss of their youth. It would be interesting to know if she was really so laissez-faire about having children when she was younger.

JC was one class act. One thing she says is to never make apologies for your cooking, even if it’s completely awful. Which is why I disagree with Meryl_Streep’s interpretation of JC.* In that video clip above, the real JC does not disparage her mistake of the off omelet flip. She just states the facts, and moves on. Meryl’s JC makes Julia look like a doddering, insecure lady, which JC is the exact opposite!

I feel that JC never made apologies for her childlessness as well. I hope to emulate Julia someday, and enjoy my life sans les enfants without so much drama!

Life didn’t quite turn out for us, in terms of having children, the way I dreamed it would. None of it did. Don’t know if it ever will, but it seems to be completely out of my hands at this point. Magic says, “if it’s meant to be, it will happen.” I keep thinking, “maybe I’m meant to do something else with my life?” What would that be? I’ve already had the career I’ve always wanted. Not that I’m ready to drop-kick that. I still find great meaning to my work in my life. I can’t imagine not ever having a job to go to and being a SAHM.

I already have a very full life. I’ve thought about blogging about some of the things I am very passionate about, like cooking, gardening, and rock climbing. But that’s for another blog and another audience. If I ever decided to blog about these things, I’d probably create a whole ‘nother blog and persona so that I don’t keep identifying with the failure of infertility.

I do want it all. I want the career AND I want the kid. No apologies.

And so it is.

*I found an interview of Meryl_Streep when she was promoting Julie&Julia, and she said she thought of Julia_Child as the Dan_Aykroyd charicature he did in his famous SNL skit, which is how she does come off in the movie! http://www.hulu.com/watch/3523/saturday-night-live-the-french-chef

Grief, the gift that keeps on giving

It’s been a year since the ill fated IVF. As the anniversary of the poorly timed trigger date came just before Thanksgiving, I began to grieve all over again. We spent Thanksgiving with relatives, and I was sensitive to every reference to families, whether in movies or in real life. The best part of Thanksgiving was something my youngest step-son said. We were all saying what we were thankful for around the table at Thankgiving dinner. When it got to him, he started out ominously with this, “I just have this to say…” Wait for it…”Blood doesn’t make you family.” Then he went on to say something wonderful about family, blood related or not. He just turned 17. I love this kid!

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, my brother called. We don’t usually talk on the phone, so at first, I thought he called to ask me something. We chatted for awhile, and I stopped wondering why he called. Maybe he just called to chat? Until he said, “we have news”. I knew what it was immediately. I did a pretty good job of not losing it on the phone. But ever since then, I’ve been a mess.

My brother got married for the second time this past July. In his starter marriage, his ex-wife was adamently opposed to having children. My brother went along with her party line. This wife is the exact opposite. I did warn him when they got engaged that they shouldn’t wait to have kids, knowing her age, which was 37 at the time. At the same time they were getting pregnant after their marriage, I was seeing my first RE after I got married, and the infertility nightmare began.

Some of you may read into this that I’m bitter. I know I have lost some readers because I have been viewed as the bitter IVF failure at BigShotClinic. I was pretty pissed off at that one and still am. I’m happy for my brother. I could have taken the anniversary grief, the inevitable grief when being around family at holidays, but this was the straw that broke my heart. I relived and still am reliving all the losses I have had since that first RE visit over five years ago. I’m grieving the loss of being able to get pregnant quickly after getting married. I’m grieving the loss of being able to get pregnant naturally, period! I’m grieving all the injustices and insensitivities that have been done to me and my body from medical intervention. I’m grieving loss after loss after loss. I could have lived through it all if there was the consolation prize of having a baby at the end of it. If all that weren’t bad enough, I’m feeling hopeless about still having no plan, and no money to pursue IVF with donor eggs.

I appreciated the comments from those of you who have husbands who refuse to adopt. I don’t feel so alone.

I thought about the donor embryo suggestions. I seem to be getting a lot of those lately, not just from this blog. At first, I felt some hope about it, but did not think I could convince my husband to agree. Then, I really focused on how I felt about it. You see, I’m terrified of getting pregnant again. Terrified. I would be much happier with someone else going through pregnancy for me. I’m not saying that to be selfish. I think pregnancy is very hard on my body, particularly my brain. I’ve been learning more about that in preparation for pregnancy again, if we ever have the chance to try again. I’ve got a lot more to say about that, but it will have to wait for a future post. I wish I knew then what I know now, but you know what they say about hindsight. I’d much rather adopt after the child is born than before. The only way I would agree to donor embryos is if my husband was gung-ho about it, which he isn’t. He always dangles some carrot in front of my face about these types of possibilites, but I know him better. In the end, he said no. It probably didn’t help that I told him I didn’t want to be pregnant again. I think I’d rather stick hot pokers in my eyes.

 I went so far as to call BigShotClinic to check on the cost of donor IVF with a known donor. For those of you who think that having a relative donate their eggs is “a lot” cheaper, let me dispel that myth right now. You save about $7,000 from an already enormously expensive procedure, but I’m sure we would spend at least 5 grand of that in our own lawyer fees to draw up an agreement, not to mention the airline tickets to fly my relative here at least twice. When I added everything up, it was even more expensive than I initially thought, which was still more than we could borrow now and for the near/maybe far future.

I’m in a place of feeling completely hopeless and sad about this predicament. I’m grieving hard, and I’m longing for a baby. No, it’s not fair. The only consolation is that I’m not alone. Maybe no one in my family will ever understand, but I know my peeps out there will.

Will I wallow in front of the TV after work? Will I resort to chocolate as self-medication while all my teeth rot out of my mouth (literally). I’m so bah-humbug about this x-mas season, it isn’t even funny. I seriously need some therapy.

I suppose I should say something

I know I’ve been gone. It isn’t you. It’s me. Let’s look at the year in review:

First, wasn’t hungry and went on a weight loss regime. Lost 6 pounds. Looked good, but didn’t feel happy.

Went back to eating chocolate for therapy. I pay for it later at the dentist.

Then, ran my first 10k. Think Forrest.Gump running across the country after his mother dies. Took a break afterward the race. Still grieving. Guess I didn’t run enough.

Tried not inhaling, thanks to Mar.i.nol. That’s a pretty good story, actually.

Tried inhaling, thanks to stepson “gifting” me with MM. Wonder why I was so obsessed with it as a teenager. Too potent for me, though it does take my mind off things temporarily.

Then, after days and weeks of coming home after work and vegging in front of the TV, I sign up for a triathlon.

Training for triathlon: still not happy, but at least the exercise keeps me from feeling depressed.

Have an emotional meltdown the night before the triathlon, feeling like a failure.

Complete the triathlon the next day.

Still sad.

Somewhere in there, I deleted most of my google.reader subscriptions. It was too hard for me to read of all the successes, either pregnancies, in many different ways, adoptions, foster care, etc. Seemed like everyone was moving on…except me. Sorry for not being there for you. I wonder if anyone is still reading this?

So where are we at?

Adoption is out. Magic won’t agree to it.

One family member did kinda sorta agree to be an egg donor. That’s an interesting story too. I guess I was hoping the whole family thing would be really kumbya, but it wasn’t . The waiting for an answer was excruciating. One family member hasn’t responded since I asked her. I can’t even say where she is at, other than perhaps she is still too young to process it. Grateful for the new connection I have established with my one niece, who was very thoughtful about the whole thing.

A year will have gone by.  I think I am over my genes, but don’t know if we’ll ever be able to afford donor eggs. Still paying for last year’s failure IVF. I know that we won’t be doing donor eggs any time soon. I wish it would be sooner, but having to wait maybe another year or more? Being patient is hard when you feel sad about not having a family.

I’m not sure what to do with this blog. I’ve been incredibly busy these last few months with the garden and whatnot, but the garden work is winding down and I find myself not able to let go of my losses. The only way seems to surrender to the sadness, but that is getting so old.  Anyway, just thought I should say something, instead of just leaving y’all hangin’. Let me know if you have any ideas or want to hear more than the cliff.notes version of the last year, if there still is anyone out there.

I Knew This Day Was Coming

I haven’t seen a regular doctor since my last IVF failed, but one of my ticking genetic time bombs finally exploded, and I need to take care of something. I’ve been watching this vein in my leg, just waiting for it to pop. Well, it never really popped, but it started to really hurt after I would run. You see, I have varicose veins and it’s genetic. There isn’t anything I can do about it.

This made me feel old, dealing with my varicose veins. Until I found out my dad had his stripped at age 27! My sister had her’s done too, after her 4th pregnancy in her late 30s. I thought they would just be ugly. I didn’t realize that they would actually hurt. Pain is my motivation, so I started doctor shopping. I had an appointment yesterday with a new doctor. I felt excited that I was going to finally deal with this painful thing, but while I was driving down, I was starting to panic. I started to have the same feelings of anxiety/depression of being out of control that I had during IVF. When I got to the doctor’s office, the waiting room was crowded at 4:00pm, not a good sign. There were unhealthy, old people in the waiting room. After 15 minutes, I was asked if I wanted to reschedule because it was going to be “awhile”. There were three other people ahead of me. I thought I would wait since I had driven an hour to get to this doctor. As I sat there, I felt more and more uneasy. After another 25 minutes, no other patient had been seen since I had gotten there 40 minutes ago. At one point, the doctor came out and was socializing with one of the patients. I thought, if he was so busy, why wasn’t he working with his patients? I was getting more and more freaked out, having flashbacks like I was waiting for my RE, so I finally just announced, “I’m leaving.” No one asked if I wanted to reschedule, thankfully. I left and had to take a walk to let my emotions out and calm down. I was feeling like I did when I was pregnant and felt like no doctor really cared about me or what I was going through.

Today, I tried to make an appointment with another doctor who specializes in varicose veins. When they gave me their address, I though it sounded eerily familiar. I had to confirm where I had heard of this address before. This doctor’s office is right next to my old fertility clinic’s office. I don’t think I can go see the new doctor knowing I have to walk by my old fertility clinic that brought me so many unhappy memories. The stress just isn’t worth it.

Will I ever be able to live a normal life again, where my IF past doesn’t haunt me every step of the way? Will I ever go through a day not replaying all the past scenarios in my head over and over and over again about what happened during and after my IVF cycles? Will I ever be happy just being me and not waiting for a child to make me happy? Because it just doesn’t feel like I’ll ever have any peace or resolution around this.

Why I Want to Adopt

Do not attempt to adjust your computer screen. You are reading this right.

I did not realize how much training for a 10k distracted me from my grief, until I stopped running. I ran the 10k race on Memorial Day and didn’t go running again for another 10 days. In those 10 days, a new wave of grief emerged.  Four days later, I become unglued on an emotional meltdown so disorienting, I took a sick day from work. I had dinner on a pint of chocolate ice cream (dairy free, of course) and a chocolate bar. So yes, to answer Mrs. LC’s question, I do eat lots of sugary things with chocolate in them as a way to try to soothe my pain.

Then on the day of Magic and I’s wedding anniversary, instead of celebrating five years of marriage, I grieved the five years I spent trying to have a child with him. I saw my first RE just two months after we got married. I grieved the loss of having a daughter who would look like a combination of the two of us. Just when I thought I was really over my genes, I’ve grieving it all over again.

I think I’m beginning to get used to this pattern. Just when I think the grief is resolved, it hits me again, when I’m least expecting it. Just when I thought I was over believing in miracle pregnancies, here I am, believing it might just happen for me…again. Denial. As Magic says, it’s his favorite river. Apparently, I’m fond of this river too. Sigh.

I told myself that after the BFN of the last IVF with my own eggs, I would give myself 6 months to grieve and not think about anything baby-making related. While the weight-loss regime and 10k training served as distractions, I admit that I was not very good at not thinking about my next scheme about having a child. I thought about it a lot.

Now, it’s six months post-BFN and I have arrived at a place I really didn’t think I would be. I have always thought about adoption. When I realized what IVF was all about 5 or 6 years ago, I would have rather adopted, but Magic was adamantly against it. Now, adopting seems so right for me for many reasons. Let me list them here:

1. Genes do not make a family. Yes, it’s kind of a nice perk, but I can’t say that genes have made my family particularly close. As a stepmom, I’ve been in training for years to love children that aren’t “mine”, at least not in the genetic sense. I know I can love children that are not genetically related to me.

2. Pregnancy is a bad idea for me. As much as my body wants to be pregnant and tells me it wants to be pregnant, my brain knows it’s a really bad idea. Part of what unglued me a week ago was reading a tragic story of a local woman who most likely has post-partum depression/psychosis and killed her 6 month old son. I could see myself in this woman. I knew it could have been me. Just the short time I was pregnant with the prenatal depression and anxiety I experienced is enough for me to know that I would have been the post-partum train wreck. The other thing that triggered me about this woman’s tragic story is that I believe it could have been possible that my mother tried to smother when I was an infant. This never even occurred to me until I was pregnant myself, and I started having unexpected vivid flashbacks of my young childhood. Memories that are very difficult to access. I’ll never know if this suspicion I have is correct, because I think that even if it did happen, it’s not something my mother remembers or will ever acknowledge. This isn’t just the run-of-the-mill trying to dig up some trauma to blame my parents on. I had a recurring nightmare as a kid of being smothered. It was a very abstract dream, so it took me a very long time to make this connection (42 years, to be exact). It’s either one of two things: 1) birth trauma, possibly from being born breech, or 2) someone tried to smother me at a very young age. Long story short, pregnancy = mental illness for me. Not something I want to try at home ever again.

3. Cost. Getting practical here, donor eggs is going to cost $40k minimum. I don’t have that kind of money. Nor, do I want to gamble that much money on something that has the chance of not working. Which leads me to…

4. IVF sucks. I think I can safely say that I’ve been traumatized by IVF. I don’t think I could go through another IVF cycle without some guarantees, which isn’t going to happen. My body cringes when I think about going through it again. I don’t particularly like that putting one embryo back doesn’t guarantee that you end up with one child. I don’t like that wildly out of control whoops-your-embryo-split kind of surprise. You can have too much of a good thing. I could suck it up and go through that all again, but it brings me back to #2, and with the artificial hormones, that makes prenatal depression and anxiety all the more likely.

5. Human beings are hard on the planet. This is a big one for me. Everyday, I see how we are poisoning our world. I think of that big oil slick in the Gulf, and I get sick at the idea of creating another human being who is going to be using up lots and lots of resources. I work in the environmental field, and it breaks my heart to see natural areas being bulldozed for housing developments. I read stories of floating islands of plastic in our oceans. Climate change is here, and it is undoubtedly from the amount of fossil fuels we are burning at an astronomical rate. Being in the environmental field, climate change and how to manage for it is a huge unknown topic that is looming large in the scientific and applied sciences right now. There will always be children to adopt. I feel better making a difference in the world through adoption rather than adding to the world population crisis.

6. I want to be able to ask for one girl and get one girl. I know this sounds picky, but we really want just one child and we want that child to be a girl. I know several people who have adopted and have been able to ask for the particular gender of the baby they wanted. They may have had to wait a little longer, but in the end, they did get what they wanted. If you’ve been following my story for a while, you’ll know why it’s so important for us to have one girl.

7. I like the idea of open adoption. I think this can be very healing for all involved. I think because of where I am at now in life, I can have compassion for what a woman would go through to give her child up for adoption.

I don’t know if I am going to adopt. For the first time ever, a crack has appeared in Magic’s wall of opposition to adoption. He sees how sad I am. I explained to him my reasons that I have listed above, and he agreed that they made sense, particularly the part about PPD. He saw what I went through when I was pregnant. He gets this part more than probably anybody else could.

So, what’s next? Magic and I need to explore this more in counseling. I know the perfect person to see. I just need to make the appointment. I haven’t made the appointment yet because I want to make sure this is the right thing for me. I want to make sure that this is my heart speaking, and not just my hormones and not just my instincts. That’s a very hard thing to pull apart. Let’s just say, I’m not there yet.

Race Results…and Drama

Cowbells, marshmallows, and bacon. That’s what I remember from my first 10k run last week.

First, the race drama. I rested two days before the race. That turned out to be a mistake. I was so wired the night before the race, I didn’t sleep well. I had to get up at 3am and do a workout just to get to sleep! I think I slept 4 hours total, which did not bode well for my heart rate. We also did not allow ourselves enough time to get to our wave start. We hurriedly worked ourselves through the crowds to get to our wave about 30 seconds before it started!! We were in wave MR, which I think stands for “Move to the Rear”. There were a total of 88 waves, so our alphabetical order will give you an idea of how far back we were. When the gun went off, Bear asked if we were starting, and I said, “this is it!” Forget the warm up, we were off. I was too distracted to notice that Dr._Oz did not start our wave. He was one of the race starters, and runners, but he was up in wave MA for his race.

The Blues Brothers greeted us half a mile down the road. Elvis was somewhere around mile 1.5. Most of the other 28 bands on the course sucked. Let’s just say I was glad to have my i.Pod with me! I really liked the male belly dancer though! The marshmallow toss was somewhere around mile 2.2. I dodged them, and tried not to get a marshmallow stuck to my running shoe. Somehow, I missed the slip-n-slide around mile 3, and the tater-tot toss. I did see people plunging into a sizable baby pool, but skipped that. I just wanted to meet my goal! The giant bacon sign at mile 5, with “Pork is the new Powerbar” written over it cracked me up. I think the best thing about the race was seeing everyday people cheering you at different parts of the course. I remember the grandma somewhere past mile 3 cheering me on, the squad of pom-pom girls, and the drunken dancers next to the mobile homes. Some citizens were offering beer shots. I gagged at the Gatorade I accidentally grabbed at the first aid station, let alone beer! (though I think the beer would have tasted better) It was also cool to see how many people I was running with when looking down on the top of a hill! Just over 50,000 people finished the race. That’s about half the population of the town I live in!

Bear totally killed the race. He finished under an hour, with 9 minute miles! Pretty amazing for someone who maybe ran once a week to train. Oh, to be 16 again!!

My time: 1:14:54

That’s right, 6 seconds under my goal of finishing in 1 hour 15 minutes! It was a rush running into the university stadium at the end, sprinting the victory lap! I would have had my complimentary beer offered at the end of the race if it would have been gluten free. I ran 12 minute miles, which is the best I’ve ever done, considering this was the first time I had ever run 6.2 miles!

I was pretty happy about how I did, until I got to work the next day and discovered that one of my co-workers who was in the second wave finished in under 40 minutes AND did beer shots along the way. This is what happens when you live in a town of athletic overachievers. Dr._Oz also killed it in under an hour, even though he’s a flat lander. He also went on to do a peppy TV interview later, while I was watching it from bed after waking up from my nap!

Part of the other drama about the whole race was whether or not Bear was going to run it with me. I hadn’t been paying attention to who’s holiday weekend it was, and the ex got really pissed when she thought I was planning this race without asking her if Bear could come with me. It was an honest mistake, and I dropped it. Bear really wanted to do the race, though. He said that if he went away that weekend with his mom, he wanted to be back for the race on Memorial Day!! I also learned that the ex was thinking about walking the race, which I would have been totally fine with. Bear told me how she would have walked it if she gave him a ride to the race, but wouldn’t if he got a ride with us. His reaction to that was that he didn’t understand why what his mom did around the race depended on him. I think he had respect for me in that I was going to do the race whether he ran it with me or not. Him running it with me was just the icing on the cake. He basically appreciated that what I do in life does not depend on what he is doing. That was an eye-opener for me. In one way, it reminds me that if I have a child, I should do it not to base my life happiness on it, or that child could end up resenting me later in life. Having a child should be my icing on the cake on the life happiness scale.

I haven’t been running since last week, but not because I haven’t wanted to. I’m too busy trying to get my garden in! All that training and race preparation time took away from gardening time, and I’m paying for it. I may not have children to fuss over, but I have my tomatoes and basil.

T-Minus 10k: Help!

In less than 24 hours, I’ll be running my first 10k. But don’t worry, I won’t be alone. I’ll be running with 54,000 of my best friends. It’s a big deal here in Woo-woo-ville. It’s the second largest race of it’s kind in the country and voted the best race of it’s kind by a well known running mag that shall remain nameless. I figure it’s a right-of-passage for living here. Of the four offices that surround me at work, three of them will be in the race, either running or walking. Hey, race talk is better than baby buzz talk at the office any day!! I ran 5 of the 6.2 miles on Friday, and dang, was I sore afterward!! Running on pavement sucks. Plus, it’s a lot of uphill. Ok, the total elevation gain is only about 100 feet, but when you are already at over a mile high, it’s no trivial feat. Plus, you have to run a steep uphill right at the end of the race, but at least you are running into a large football stadium with crowds cheering you on. Bear will be running it with me. He has the ability to smoke me, but not the endurance. I think I can run the whole thing. I know he will be walking part of it, but he could still smoke me. We’ll see if his pride will let me beat him.

I started running after my failed IVF in December, mostly because I wanted to get in shape for skate skiing (also called nordic skiing in the Olympics). Then, running became a way for me to work out my IF anger and frustrations. At some point, I decided to have a goal to work for, and this 10k was it. My goal is to finish under 1 hour, 15 minutes. That would be a 12 minute mile for me. Yeah, I know it’s slow, but you have to start somewhere!!

I also started watching “The_Biggest_Loser” shortly after my BFN, because I felt like the biggest loser at that time. I’m trying to change my frame of mind over this, and be kinder to myself. I hope to post more on that later. I watched the whole season of BL. Let me back up a little. It first started with my lack of appetite after my BFN. I was grieving deeply, and that manifested as not eating. I love food, so when I don’t eat, I know something is wrong. I also knew enough about yo-yo dieting from my mom that I could really screw my body up if I just fasted, then binged. My mom is obese, so I have a few issues about never wanting to be as big as her, which unfortunately, seems to be the trend where my sisters are going. I was at the bookstore last December and I picked up Jillian_Michael’s “Master_Your_Metabolism” book. I vaguely knew her from The_Biggest_Loser, which I think I had watched once previously just flipping through channels. I cynically read part of her book in the bookstore (“what does a Hollywood celebrity know about eating right?!”), and ended up buying it because I agreed with everything she was saying about eating organic and getting toxins out of your diet. It’s an excellent book and great reference. This particular book is not so much about calorie counting than eating whole, healthy food.

I also joined up on Jillian_Michael’s website for about 6 weeks. After obsessing about numbers with IVF and IF, it was a natural transition to obsess about other number related to my body. I began tracking my calorie intake and weight. It was hard, but I lost 6 pounds. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but if you know me, you know that 6 pounds shows on my petite frame pretty significantly. It was also comforting to get a daily e-mail from JM so that I could be distracted from my grief. I know it sounds weird, but it was good for me to obsess about something other than IF and reading IF blogs everyday. It was very inspirational to watch The_Biggest_Loser finale last Tuesday. The actual finale was kinda boring compared to the weekly shows, but it was inspiring to see how the fattest man (526 lbs!) and woman lost half their body weight and found their confidence in their lives. In similar ways, I think that IF and IF treatments, especially when they fail, can feel like being so overweight that you don’t know where to start with your failure, so you just give up on yourself. I had lost my confidence in myself and my body after really feeling like I had a few good eggs left in me. I dieted and worked out (a lot) post-BFN as a way to control my body, since during IVF, all that control is taken away from you. You put your trust in a bunch of people you barely know, and also hand over a huge chunk of money that may or may not be managed correctly, depending on whether you get a BFP or a BFN, or maybe something else goes wrong, like an etopic pregnancy or multiples that your body can not handle.

So back to where you can help me now. I’ve been listening to the same tunes for a couple of months now, and I need some new ones to help me on my race. We are allowed to wear i.Pods during the race. Here’s what’s on my current, wornout playlist. It’s heavy on the Para.more and Linkin_Park tunes. I love their grindy, angst filled lyrics, cuz I have a lot of IF angst to work out, yaa know. But it’s time to celebrate now, because I’m a different person than where I was 6 months ago. I want to celebrate this little victory of mine, instead of grieving, for once! (Note: I inserted . and _ in my lame attempt to keep people from searching for these names and coming up with my blog).

Heartless by The_Fray (the warmup for the warmup, just cuz I like to feel bitter about how I was treated by some heartless people during my IF treatments)

Ramana by Chintan_&_Prem_Joshua (the warmup)

1901 by_Phoenix (love the name of the band. Cadillac anyone?)

Let’s Get it Started by Black_Eyed_Peas (one of my favorites right now for running – I love when they say “Get stoopid!”)

Dirt off Your Shoulder/Lying from You by Jay-Z/Linkin_Park (one of these hybrid songs – I like this particular one, though not a Jay-Z fan. Best part is the “BEATCH” at the end!)

Brick by Boring Brick by_Paramore

In the End by Linkin_Park (I pretty much love anything by Linkin_Park and have worn out other of their angst filled tunes. I used to hate LP, until I started listening to their lyrics and realized how brilliant their angst was. Pretty much all the lyrics of this song remind me of the waste and failure of IVF.

“I kept everything inside and even though I tried, it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when

I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter”

And these lyrics are for my doctor:

“I’ve put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
And for all this
There’s only one thing you should know

I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter”

Decode by_Paramore (I always think of Twi.light when I hear this song, the first book I read post BFN. Nothing like a vampire love story to distract you from your IF grief. I love the lyrics, “how did we get here? I used to know you so well.” I think of myself with those lyrics and how I lost myself through IVF.)

Jai Ho from the Slumdog_Millionare soundtrack (Another of my favorite running songs, but I’ve pretty much worn it out.)

Ignorance by_Paramore (are you seeing a pattern here? I love a girl that can rock!)

Lying From You by Linkin_Park

Misery Business by_Paramore (another IF twist to the lyric: whenever I hear, and this is the way I hear it, not the actual lyrics “Whoa, whatever makes you brag, but I got it what I wanted now! Whoa, it was never my intension to brag…but, god, it just feels so good, cause I got it what I wanted. And if you could you knew you would, cause god, it just feels so good.” I think of all the women who have succeeded in getting pregnant, mocking me, where I have failed. Just listen to it, and I think you’ll get what I mean.)

What I’ve Done by Linkin_Park (I won’t even go into what this means for me, but you can go ahead and guess)

Crushcrushcrush by_Paramore

Durga_Ye by Chintan_&_Prem_Joshua

I hope you can send me some rockin’ tunes ASAP to run to tomorrow, cuz I know you don’t have anything better to do on Memorial Day weekend! I’ve got to load it up tonight because race time is 8:46am tomorrow morning!! It will be all over but the tears by 10:00am! Please leave me your favorite rockin’ workout tunes in a comment, and THANKS for staying with me on this crazy ride!!

P.S. My friend Mrs. Last Chance IVF has a great analogy about IF and races on her blog here: “The Longest Race”

P.P.S. A cord match may have been found for Devan!!

How to Save a Life

I got an e-mail from an IF friend of mine Tuesday. She is organizing a bone marrow donor drive for 4-year old Devan, pictured here.

Devan has a rare form of high-risk leukemia. The best chances for his survival is with a blood and/or bone marrow transplant, but they can’t find a match for him. Doctors have 11 weeks left to find a match. You can read about his story here: Be Devan’s Match, Save His Life

I signed up to be a bone marrow donor on Tuesday. I got my package for my cheek swabs in the mail today. I read about what you have to do to be a donor, and I figure it’s no sweat compared to going through IVF multiple times. The most common form of donation these days is by blood stem cell. You get injections daily for five days, then on the 5th day, they take your blood. Sound familiar? I figure I’m a pro at this by now. I might as well put my IVF skills to use. Marrow donation involves an outpatient procedure where they put you under and remove bone marrow from your hip bone with a needle. Doesn’t sound any worse than an egg retrieval to me. If it means saving someone’s life, I’ll do it.

For me, I feel like I want my life to be useful in some way. Giving someone part of my healthy cells to save their life would mean so much to me. I know that I too may use a donor, an egg donor, someday (if I win the lottery) and I know how grateful I will be that someone was willing to give me the gift of life.

It is insanely easy to sign up to be a marrow donor. However, it takes about 7 weeks to get your typing results up on the bone marrow database from the time you sign up to when they process your results, so you need to sign up TODAY if this kid has a chance of finding a donor. How do you sign up?

USA Sign up: Be the Match

UK Sign Up: The Anthony Noland Trust

Rest of the World: Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide

If you are pregnant, you can also donate your baby’s cord blood: Parents Guide to Cord Blood Foundation

Please leave a comment when you have signed up! Thanks!!

Updated 5/17/10: I forgot to emphasize that registering to become a marrow donor is FREE. When you register on the “Be the Match” website (US), you will be asked to donate to cover the cost of the testing. However, you are not obligated to pay anything. I paid nothing. Registering to be a marrow donor is FREE and easy!