I did really good in August. I FELT really good. My anxiety was low, I planned G's birthday party, I kick boxed and played with my kid. My grief and anxiety were still there, but totally manageable, not a big deal. Then literally September 1st comes and I want to crawl into bed and stay there forever.
What the hell brain, way to be crazy.
I assume it's because this is when it all began. I got pregnant for the second time in September 2010 and here we are 3 years later with my calendar full of horrible dates just waiting to be acknowledged. Loss dates; December 6, December 12, December 23, April 2, June 20. Due dates; April 8, June 14, July 22, October 31. I hate that these are programed into my psyche. That leading up to them I am still so affected.
I'm sure it doesn't help we are having the falliest of falls we've ever had in my recent recollection. My glorious Northern CA weather generally allows for me to wear shorts until beginning to mid October, but according to the 700 loads of laundry I did yesterday, we've already past that point. (I hate how much more laundry there is in colder weather.) My facebook friends have noticed, so obviously I'm fairly whiny about it and should probably knock that off, but FUCK fall. And winter. And spring. Why can't I live in Arizona?!
I'm just not looking forward to the next 4 months at all. Maybe in January I'll be able to breathe again, we'll be on the downslope. Or I'll be in the thick of it. Blarg. I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of December coming. I want to leave. I want to go far far away and spend the whole month on a beach listening to G play in the sand and letting my tears come and go as the please behind my sunglasses. I don't want to put up one Christmas decoration or have the tree invade my house. I don't want to talk and be cheery, have family get togethers and stress about money spent on gifts. I don't want to do any of it AT ALL.
I will not lose a baby this December. But directly after it ends, it's decision time. If we're going to try, we'll have to start then because we'll only have a few cycles before it'll be too late. No more pregnancies during December for me. And if I don't get pregnant before it'd be all Decembery, I'll have to make choices. Wait for next year? Be done? I'm so looking forward to that.
All my blood work came back fine from the high risk specialist. There's nothing wrong with the things they could think of testing, and we've gone as far as we can with them. In their opinion we should go see an infertility specialist, they have many more tricks up their sleeve. Le sigh. I don't suppose I have to tell you our insurance doesn't cover infertility doctors or treatments, or that there's no way we can afford to go see them, it's probably obvious. I feel...guilty about my lack of effort to remedy that. If I REALLY wanted more kids I'd take out loans, borrow money, open credit cards, do whatever needed to be done. I feel like a negative defeatist I would never claim to be part of my personality. But honestly, when I think of going, all I feel is that it would be a huge waste of time and money. I have zero hope I'd be diagnosed with anything, let alone given a plan on how to fix it. Maybe it's just because I've already given up so much in this pursuit, I've finally reached my breaking point. I don't know.
So it's time to battle. Put my boxing gloves on. Play the motherfucking glad game. When they take the AC door out of my Door to Nowhere my house will be flooded with light once again. Curtains open all the time, reading in the By the Fire Chair. Dancing my heart out at the Halloween party, Seeing my BFFF. Starting early on my Christmas shopping. (Probably I should do that one soon.) I can do this. It's just a season or 2. It's just months of the year. Like any other months. Just colder. If you need me I'll be on craigslist looking up tanning beds.
This technically has nothing to do with this post, but I had the weirdest experience the other day and I just wanted to process it or something.
G's doctor is in the same building as mine, I took her in for an appointment and afterwards it was lunch time so rather than eat in the car I asked if she wanted to eat on the grass next to a water feature by the doors leading into the building. She did, we got there and there was a boy, about 2, in a stroller with an older woman I assumed was his grandma. He was clearly delayed. (I don't know how to put that non offensively, so hopefully that was all right.) He was babbling to his grandma and she was talking back to him, and because I'm a creeper of all boys around my sons' potential ages I'm very aware but trying not to be obvious I'm paying attention to him. Then she calls him the name we would have named our son had he lived and all hopes of being stealth are gone I'm just blatantly staring. I was so taken aback that had she struck up a conversation I would have 100% said something about us having lost a son that would have been his age with that name, which I don't do. Ever. I was just all discombobulated. So then a woman comes out of the building who I recognize as a fellow classmate from our birthing class with G. For reals. I'd seen her around town, (all right, in stupid walmart) so I knew she'd had a second son, but it had been when he was still a baby and in the car seats in the shopping basket. (I wonder if I'm the only one who remembers random people like that, I've never noticed anyone else from our class, just her, and I've seen her maybe 3 or 4 times over the years. I wonder why her? I really liked her dress one class? Odd.) She's with her older son and carrying ultra sound pictures. The older woman goes up to her and the classmate says; Everything looks great! Are you ready to go? And they all leave.
I sat there in a stupor for a minute and then kinda tried to shake it off. I wasn't upset or jealous or mad, I was just completely bewildered. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever had happen I think. Just bizarre.
*My quote: A comment on my facebook status. Proof I need to suck it up.
Oh Amelia- not wanting to take out loans or max out your credit cards to try for another baby is not at all a reflection of how badly you want it... or don't want it in this case. We're not willing to do that, either. Sometimes these decisions must be made with our heads, not our hearts. Hugs to you...
ReplyDeleteOh- and I'll happily run away with you until the nice weather returns. I typically enjoy the fall (mostly because it's nice for running), but this year, I'm in a foul fucking mood. I don't care where we go, as long as the days are long and warm and sunny. ;)
Thank you, and I'd love the company! Sunny and hot would be my requirement!!
DeleteI love you Amelia, and hate how viciously hard this is for you. I have to concur with Catwoman that these things aren't measures, we're wired to be some this and some that. <3
ReplyDeleteThank you so much.
DeleteFall is tricky for me, too. The anticipation of December fucking blows. I was just telling David that I think the fall of 2010 was the happiest time of my life in many ways.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry it's hard for you, too. I don't think it's defeatest to not seek an infertility specialist. I think you're being realistic about what you can handle. But you don't have to decide everything now.
Here's to the happy parts of fall. May they be plentiful.
Thank you, and I don't need to decide everything right now, but I'm feeling...rushed. Like it needs to be soon. *shrug*
DeleteWow. Just. Wow. I can feel your internal struggle through your words. And it resonates with me. Long story short, when my other pregnancy ended so horribly, with me so ill, the high-risk OB’s instructions were to “never ever get pregnant again” because it could lead to serious permanent health issues or even death. But I’ve pestered him over the last 10 months and actually taking my chronic illness seriously (which I wasn’t doing before) and realized one of the issues really isn’t an issue and wasn’t likely the cause of all my pregnancy problems. Now, who the hell knows why I was so sick, but that’s a separate story.
ReplyDeleteSo he said we could talk about pregnancy again in a year, if I’m still in remission and if I can get off the “no way in hell should you ever get pregnant on this drug” medication I’m taking.
And I think – gosh, could I do this again? It could all end the same way, or even worse. I could be faced with all that agonizing pain again losing a baby. Or I could die. I held one of my twins last night when he woke up screaming (nightmare? night terrors? who the hell knows…he nodded “yes” when I asked him if he wanted “Baby Samuel’s song,” which is “You are my Sunshine” and is for the little brother he’ll never know…for some reason, he loves the song, says it’s for Baby Samuel and always calms down when I sing it…so I put him back to bed and then a half hour later he comes stumbling into my room, croaking out “water” like he’s been in the desert for months and downs two full sippy cups of water before crashing back into bed… apparently he was thirsty…). So I’m holding my boy. He’s three, almost four…gangly, too big to really fit neatly in my arms, singing the song he insists is for Baby Samuel, the child I’ll never be able to comfort…and I wonder…”could I really do this again? What if I left my twins because I tried for one more? Is that selfish? Or maybe it’s crazy NOT to try for something that could end perfectly well because life is never safe and predictable and I could die just as easily traveling for work…” Or maybe I’m just crazy for not being happy with my twins and being done and satisfied and not risk pain trying for more.
So, yeah, I get it on some level. (Some tiny level…) And I think you are simply incredible for surviving what you’ve survived. I’m in awe of your strength. I mean…holy crap…like HOLY CRAP…having this happen once devastated me so much that I’m still raw 10 months later…all those dates marking your calendar. I can’t imagine. Not at all.
And this could totally be a blog post in itself but my husband’s ex is stalking my blog…which is so sad and pathetic and twisted that the one place I ooze all my angst is now unsafe…and the fact that I can’t even imagine doing the same thing myself (because WHO CARES?!?!?!?!?!) but now I’m faced with letting her read into my soul or limiting my voice a bit with her as an audience which is why my stream-of-consciousness is here and not there where the person who cost us $75,000 in a custody suit to keep custody of the kids SHE WANTED NOTHING TO DO WITH until she had to start paying child support… Which is so very unrelated to everything else…like the fact that my point is that you are amazing and should be moping around because HOLY HELL you’ve been through hell and NO ONE would question if you needed to take care of yourself for a physical pain and you should be just as able to practice self-care for emotional agony.
Sending love. Lots and lots of love. Because there’s not really anything else to send…
Bless you, and may the decisionyou make -- whatever it is -- be the right one for you.
DeleteYou know I'm with you on the sadness anticipation. It seems like along with the weather, my mood worsens. Spring is genuinely nice. Like literally a breath of fresh air. And then summer is good and busy. Then BAM. Weather gets cold and I get cranky.
ReplyDeleteLove to you. So many dates. I hate that. :/
Thank you for your kind words, sending you love as well.
DeleteI lived the first seventeen yers of my life in what some consider northern CA but technically probably isn't. We started in out-lying bay area communities. My parents lived in Pinole when we were born. We then moved to another little hick town called Antioch. From there we went to Fairfield (way too manyMormons!), then to Vacaville, and ended up in Davis for the final eight years before our move to the central coast, with two one-year stints in the San Joaquin Valley. I may as well have been a military brat at that rate, but I wasn't rally bothered by the moves. We were very young formost of them, and once we were school-aged, we always moved in the summer. the last in the big series of moves was whenI was nine, and it was to a much nicer house than any in which we had lived previusly, and with a pooI. my mom is paranoid about pools and wouldn't move into a house with one until then. It was a great incentive to be positive about the move.
ReplyDeleteThe ironic thing about all our ,oves when we were little was that my parents, now that they have no kids to beimpacted by the moves, will probably remain in their present home for the rest of their lives.
I don't know if you're in part of CA that is a fog pit in the winter. I hope not, as fog really bothers people who have any hint of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Much of central CA is butt-ugly. If you're anywhere north of Sacramento, it's probably prettier than most of CA. Fairfiled and vacaville hve to be among the uglier locations gopd created. there's one major exception, which is this place in the high desert called Trona. Their high school plays on a dirt field because nothing grows there. (You'd think they'd hold a few car washes or bake sales and purchase artificial turf. It's not THAT expensive.)
If I were told (which I can't be anymore since I'm a legal adult) that I had to live in Trona for the rest of my life as a minor, if I couldn't find another way out of it, I'd commit a crime that would get me locked up, as Trona is too small to have its own juvey.
I'm actually south eastish of Sacramento, but I do consider that to be my 'home' as I lived there the longest and would move back in a heartbeat. The rest of my county is fairly foggy but we're lucky to live on top of mountains so are above it for the most part. I'm intrigued by Trona now! Hahaha!
DeleteYour part, the east-ish part up in the mother lode, is pretty and above the fog. I would probably go to medical school in Grass Valley, or maybe even Rocklin, if there were such a thing as a medical school in either place. Im NOT going to Davis (even though the med school is in Sacramento) just because of bad memories of the place even though the vast majority of everything that happened to me there was good. A few powerful negative memories can overcome the positive ones.
DeleteAlso, I'm closer to where the perptrators live and am much more likely to run into them. I can't very well amend the restraining order to read that I'm moving back to their county and/or the abutting county and they have to stay away from places there to which I wish to go. It's enough that all they're allowed to do in my county is to get off the freeway to refuel vehicles or pick up fast food within one-quarter-mile of the freeway exit. (It was a good restraining order. My attorney wrote it very well and the judge was sufficiently impressedd to let it stand unchanged.)
I totally understand! You need to be where you feel safe!!
DeleteDo you read Dooce? The only reason I ask is because she feels (and it seems a lot that read her blog do too) that the second the date clicks to Sept 1 she starts to feel that depression grabs hold of her a little tighter. Now obviously that's not for the reasons that you list here where dates have meanings and decisions loom. But I tend to agree, as soon as it's autumn I feel depression clutching me a bit harder and it's bit more of struggle to get out of bed every day (ok, WAY more of a struggle). I have no words of wisdom. Clearly. Just rambles.
ReplyDeleteI do read dooce and I read that as well!! As much as I'd prefer everyone to be happy, it is a comfort to know I'm not alone, I appreciate her words, and yours. Thank you.
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