Saturday day

Happy Weekend!

Have you seen the movie Moonrise Kingdom?  Doesn't my dog look like a Wes Anderson animal character here?  I LOVE this photo!  It's a framer for sure.

Today I picked the rest of our apples.  We must have like 70lbs of apples.  So many apples...

 I'm in the process of sewing some baby burp cloths for my sister.  It's kind of silly when they are so cheap, but I wanted to make something else for her and this is something she needs.

Here's a snapshot on how I'm feeling right now:
- Must keep busy or I'll have a nuclear meltdown...
- Baby crazy.  Just want to cuddle and kiss a little one.  Lookout ladies at the grocery store... I may just have to steal one.
- Motivated.  Been to the gym 3x this week, in addition to yoga.  Plus I twisted my ankle (but still found ways to work out).
- No sex drive.  Absolutely zero libido.  Even last week when the window was open, I tried to make myself want it, but just couldn't.
- Fighting the tension of wanting to keep TTC on our own, but realizing that if it hasn't happened in 5 years on our own, it's most likely NOT going to happen randomly this month (and yet the hope still remains... go away hope!)
- I don't care.  Drinking as much alcohol as I want.  Not going to any doctor's appointments or acupuncture, or massage.
- Trying to be social, but then not wanting to hang out with people. Then being lonely.  Then forcing myself to hang out with people.  Then having an okay time but never feeling quite satisfied.  Then coming home and starting the cycle all over again.
- Wanting to cry but not being able to.  Not knowing what to cry about.
- Trying to figure out my "purpose" if I don't end up being a mom.  I never wanted to be just a "career woman."  I'm not free-spirited enough to live off the grid or go spend my life traveling.  How, then, do I be happy?
- Maybe I can fill up my days with housekeeping, knitting, sewing, drinking tea, and playing piano/singing.  Maybe that will make me happy????

Fuddy duddy

Yesterday I had a lady I know tell me I was looking really nice.

The next thing she said was, "Well it's because you haven't had kids yet."

Really lady?!?!

Just because you're a fuddy-duddy mom of 2 (children who are crazy and misbehaved), and you've given up tending to your appearance, does NOT mean that only people who haven't had children have the right to look stylish and nice!  (In actuality, she is a very nice looking lady and usually very nice... it was just a stupid, ignorant comment).

Grr!!!

I'm having a "wanting a baby" kind of week.  I look longingly at every babe that I pass by.  I want a baby to cuddle.  I want a baby to kiss.  I've actually been cuddling my dog like crazy (don't think she likes it) just for some expression of my affection.  I'm so sad about it.  But again, I can't cry.  I just want to have a big long cry, and I can't.

The commercial crier

OMG, I just cried at a Google commercial...

Have you seen it?  It's all these notes and pictures sent from a dad to his daughter, from the time she is born till she is older.  It made me cry because I wrote letters to DH from when we started dating until after we were married.  I gave them to him a few years into our marriage.  I always planned to write letters to my children and give them to them when they were older.

Stupid Google chrome toying with my emotions.  And I'm not even on clomid this month...

Recipe for disaster

So, is there a handbook on how to go through infertility without it affecting your marital relationship in negative ways???  I really wish I had a 5-step plan to follow right about now.

Last week was really tough.  I flip-flopped back and forth and up and down and couldn't seem to level myself out.  On top of that I was sick.  On top of that DH picked up a part-time job (on top of his full-time job) while he is under the deadline of finishing a bunch of assignments by the end of September...  Basically, it was a recipe for disaster.

The blow-out took place on Sunday.  It wasn't even a fight.  It was just an "I've had enough of you and I need some space but since we're together we'll bicker it out" sort of episode.  Yet there were hurtful things said (more from him than me, at least that's how I remember it).  We've made up and everything is fine, but..

I always wonder if we are handling things "right."  Like, if we're going to need major amounts of therapy 10 years from now due to the patterns we've built up and the fallout from how we are dealing with things right now.  I don't know what is the right way to deal with things now.  That always worries me.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that I'm not my normal happy self right now.  I'm trying really hard to get back to that self that I was before.  I am working my butt off to engage in the things that I know are good for me (exercise, social activities, helping others) and I can put on the happy face and even expose a level of honesty about our struggles with some people.  But nobody knows the depths of our experience the way that DH does.  So naturally, when I have some quality time alone with him, I want to talk about how things are.  I want to wallow in the despair and have him meet me there and reassure his love for me.  I want him to look at me in my struggles and in my darkest moment and say, "Even now I love you more than you'll ever know."

But he can't always do that.  Oh yes, I know that deep down that is how he feels (or so I hope!), but he can't always express it.  Or his own insecurities or judgments get in the way and he expresses the complete opposite of what I long for.  I still trust him.  I still have faith in our relationship.  I believe that we will come through this together, and I hope that we will be stronger for it.  But there are moments of wavering on that belief.  And that is yet another "thing" that sucks about infertility.

Sidenote

Does anyone know how to contact other bloggers apart from their blog?  Is there an option somewhere to send an email directly?

If you're reading this M, your blog over at (http://alwayswishhopethinkpray.blogspot.com/) is no longer allowing me to read it.  It comes up with the message: "Permission denied.  This blog is for invited readers only".  I'm not sure if that is the way you meant for it to be or not... I just know that last week I could read it and now I can't.  Thought I'd just mention it here in case you didn't know.

Thanks for the kind comment and I'm thinking of you too!

No emotion

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions of life, without any meaning?

These past few weeks I have been "good."  What I mean by that, is that I have not been sobbing in a mess of tears in my bed each night.  I have been going to work and doing a good job.  I've been hanging out with friends and being social again.  DH and I have been getting along great with no fights or tears.

But amidst it all, I feel so empty.  Everything I do is like a routine.  I do these things that I know I should enjoy but they do not provide any lasting fulfillment.  I'm not depressed, because I am able to get up and go out and have fun in the moment.  Just none of it lasts.

I've been trying to give myself time to grieve and experience my emotions.  I have purposefully not kept myself busy so that I have time to do what I need to.  I still have barely cried.  In a way, I feel like I have numbed over all my emotions.  The sad was too hard to deal with, so I've closed off.  I can't feel happy.  I can't feel excited.  I can't feel love.  We call kids who are like this "tuned out and turned off" in my field.  I feel like one of those kids.  I don't know what to do with myself next.  I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Or, as a friend of mine used to say: "Just keep swimming... just keep swimming..."

Time to knit

Homemade applesauce (apples from our trees)

Pecan caramel apple crumble pie (from scratch)!

Fall walks

My life is a deck of cards

What to say?  What to say?

I wanted to give a little update that I am not in the depths of despair, though I certainly was on Saturday when I last wrote.  I also realized (of course, at the end of the day) that Saturday was CD5, which for when I was on clomid was the day from hell!  Maybe it wasn't so much the clomid, but maybe it was a huge hormone drop at the end of my period.  I don't know.  All I know is that I wanted to die on Saturday and not wake up again.

Fortunately, that feeling has not lasted.  I even had a pretty good day yesterday, despite all that is going on.

Have I mentioned how much I hate change/transition.  It just irks me and makes me so disagreeable!  Well my friends, we are right in the midst of it.  My job is ending in less than 3 weeks.  I do not have another job lined up at this point.  DH's job is not up in the air, but there is transition happening there too.  As a result, he took on a second job at a cafe, partially to be safe, partially for enjoyment (he wants to learn to roast coffee on a large scale).  So now our entire schedule/routine has been uprooted, AND we do not know what the future holds.  I described it to my friend as this: it's as if my life is a deck of cards, and that deck of cards has just been thrown up in the air and I have no idea how/where the cards are going to land.  I feel like I am watching them fall and can't do anything but wait for them to land in place.  And I HATE that feeling.  I want to plan.  I want to be in control.  I want to know what to expect.

However, though it may not be the most enjoyable time right now for me, I am surviving it.  I'm not having meltdowns every day.  I am finding bits of enjoyment here and there.  And I have hope that once the cards land, our lives will carry on and we will pursue what is next.

In other news, I am so so so so so frustrated over not feeling well.  I finally had my period and wanted to get on with life and lose weight and get back in control of my body.  But with my period, I felt so horrible and yucky that I couldn't do much.  And now since it's over, I have been fighting a flu or something and I can't seem to shake it.  All I want to do is go to the gym and have a huge sweat to let it all out!  I want to go running.  I want to go hiking.  I have all this drive and ambition, but my body is letting me down.  I've started eating healthier again.  (Side note: I actually heard a girl at the hairdressers talking about having ovarian cysts and she did a month of no cow products - milk, beef, etc. - and the cysts went WAY down in size.  So, just in case there is anything lingering around inside my uterus, I decided to try a month of no cow products, limiting caffeine once again, and limiting alcohol.).  Overall, I just want to be well and it is proving to be so difficult.  I want to have energy.  I want to be in shape (and look like it!).  If I can't have a baby, well damn, I want to be hot!

Horrible week.. please be done soon

This week is almost over.  But it couldn't quite end without one further jab to make things worse.

My brother called tonight.  My little brother - 4 years younger than I.  My little brother who was the first to bring a grandchild to my parents.

They are pregnant again.

Hooray.

My sister's baby is due in less than a month.

Hooray.

My job is ending.  I don't have a baby.  We may not continue treatments.  We do not have money to do anything fun or exciting.

Hooray.

As much as I want this week to be over, I don't even want to go to bed tonight.  I don't want tomorrow to come, or the next day, or the next.  Why can't the world just end tonight?

Thank you!

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the kind comments and thoughts and prayers.  You really don't know how much it means for me to sign on and see that someone has left a little note.

I survived today alright.  Last night I had to go out for a meeting at church.  One of my friends who was going to the meeting had texted me.  She is a new friend and went through infertility and IUI with a donor sperm to get her rainbow baby.  Anyways, she found out that my cycle was negative and brought me a batch of homemade brownies!  How sweet is that.  She also told me that when she got her negative, she stayed home and cried all night long.  That made me feel a bit better and though I was exhausted last night, I was glad I had gone out and sought support from a few friends at the meeting.

I feel so wiped today too.  I guess it's a combo from the weekend camping, the BFN, busy work week, and lots of blood loss (I don't know why but it's a lot this time).  I don't feel quite as panicked as I did yesterday, but a lot of those thoughts are still there.  I really feel like I need to mourn, but I can't cry.  I try and try, but right now I can't.  I think that once this week is over and I finally "stop" the emotions will flood in.  I'm trying to not plan too much so that I can let this weekend be what it needs to.

One note I wanted to make about the comment about feeling like I am giving up.  I do not think that stopping TTC is giving up at all!  I honestly also plan to pursue adoption, whether we get pregnant on our own or not.  So that is NOT giving up.  I think I feel some guilt, or something, because we DID get pregnant through IUI.  Sure, the pregnancy failed, but we did it.  I feel like stopping trying, when there is still a chance we could achieve pregnancy is failure.  Does that make sense?  I almost would rather have been told that there was no way on earth that we were ever going to be able to get pregnant.  I'd be able to mourn it and move on.  This way, I feel there will always be this chance of hope hanging over me.  The "what if.... we did one more IUI and got pregnant?"  You know?  That is why I have such a hard time reconciling this and stopping, even though everything in me is crying out to just stop.  To give in.  To give up.  To stop this madness of trying to conceive!

Heart = Broken

I woke up this morning to a big drop in my BBT.  Great.  Then I went to the washroom to find that AF decided to make an appearance.  Double great.

Today was testing day.  I'm so glad I didn't waste another damn $15 on testing early yesterday.  I still had to go for the blood test today.  I was not a happy camper.  I think the nurse at the lab must have been able to tell because as she took my blood she asked me, "So is this going to be a positive."  I said no.  End of conversation.

I have a million thoughts flowing through my head, and nothing all at the same time.

Yesterday my friend commented that at least I was not numb to my emotions.  Today I want to be numb.  I wish numbness could take over instead of pain.  When I showed up at work, I realized this is going to be harder than I thought.  I feel like a ticking time bomb of emotions that are bound to bubble out at some point in time.  I wish I could go home, pull the covers over my head, and never leave my bed again.

For lack of coherency in my thinking, I'm just going to jot down all the things running around inside my head. Maybe that will help give me some perspective.  Maybe not.

- Well, this means that I can have wine when I go out for my friend's birthday on Friday night.  I miss wine.
- What the heck am I going to do with myself once my job ends?  I had a bum interview yesterday (I was overqualified for the job and it would have been more than half the amount of pay I am currently making).  I don't want either of the two offers I have been extended.  I only would have accepted them if I knew it would only be for a 9 month period until I was on mat leave.  Now I don't want to do anything!
- How are we going to be able to afford adoption???  We are $20,000 in student loan debt, plus mortgage, plus credit card debt on top of that.  We are NEVER going to be able to afford a kid.  And I don't just want one kid... I want a few.
- We should plan a vacation for Christmas.  Somewhere hot and sunny and stress free.  Wait, we need to save our money because we don't have the luxury of just *surprise* having a kid... we have to PAY FOR ONE!
- Maybe we will change our mind and decide we can go through with more cycles of treatment.  Right now it just seems like a big waste.
- Are we failing if we decide to give up "trying" to get pregnant?
- Who can we talk to about finding out WHY this is not working.  There must be something more they can do to pinpoint where the problem is so we're not worthlessly throwing out money on treatments that aren't going to work.
- I know, I know... I should talk to a counsellor or something.  I've said this before, but it's not that easy to find a counsellor you can trust when you ARE  a counsellor practicing in a small town.  And I don't just want any counsellor.  I want one who understands the struggles of infertility.  Plus, I don't even know if that would help where I'm at right now.  I don't need to talk more.  I just want to feel better.
- My sister's baby is due in exactly one month.  My baby would have been due approx. one month after that.  My best friend's would have been due 2 months after that.  This sucks!
- I feel like everything is going to shit.  My job is ending.  I am not pregnant and may not ever be.  Things at DH's job are going through some tough hurdles.  What is there to live for right now?
- I should just go home and clean my house.  That will give me some semblance of control.
- I don't even want to clean my house.  Who even cares?
- I'm totally drinking as much coffee and wine as I want.  I'm not doing stupid acupuncture anymore.  I will eat bread and dairy and red meat.  Heck, I'm just going to enjoy myself and do whatever the hell I want.
- But I want to be thin...
- What do we do now?

So there you have it folks.  I'm a sad bastard of a human being right now.  I guess I had more hope that this would work than I realized.

Weekend

I'm off on a camping trip with our young adult's group this weekend.  I am actually looking forward to it a lot, apart from being a little nervous since it's mostly people I have never travelled with or spent the night with.  But, the weather is nice and we will be by the ocean, so I really can't complain.

Testing day is Tuesday.  I'll keep you posted.

Happy Weekend!

One week in

We are one week into the 2ww... one week to go.  I've actually made it pretty well so far.  I guess it's a busy time of year, and I've had lots of other stuff to keep my mind occupied.  I am about 99.9% sure that this cycle did NOT work.  Sigh.  I really have no symptoms.  I had a sore lower back for a few days, but think that was more from wearing these new minimal zero drop running shoes than anything (I've been walking lots lately to keep exercising but also take it easy).  My temp. rose slightly this morning, but it would have to sustain that rise for quite a while longer.  One day does not say much.  I've been a bit tired some days, but I think I have felt that way for months, so I can't tell if it's extra tiredness or not.  I pee a lot, but then that is always true of me (and I'm starting to drink more tea these days).  Overall, there isn't too much that is giving me hope.  In fact, when I try to visualize and imagine a pregnancy, I get nothing.  I actually feel like there is nothing going on down there.  Even less than nothing... like negative nothing.  It feels like a barren wasteland.

So, I'm trying to put my eggs in other baskets.  I'm applying for a potential job offer.  I've been making some new friends.  DH and I are trying to have fun again.  It's not all that I want right now, but it's all that I've got.

Summer's end

I don't have much to say today, so I thought I'd share a selection of pictures to show you what I've been up to over the last little while.  Enjoy!

Date night out

We found a beautiful private beach last time we were in the city

Okanagan peaches

Made into peach chutney!

 

Bought a new shelf for our living room.

Picked some hydrangeas to dry

Repainted a seat/table for our front entry (am going to recover the cushion too)

Bought pretty fabric