Rock-Bottom

To borrow the infamous words of Rachel on Friends in an episode that in no way relates to this blog:

I really thought I just hit rock bottom. But today, it's like there's rock bottom, then 50 feet of crap, then me.

In this whole struggle, this whole ordeal, this seemingly unending, unnerving journey that's been forced upon me against my wishes, today was, without a doubt, THE WORST DAY - ever. Today was the day of my appointment at the clinic.

The day started out seemingly innocuous. I didn't sleep too well but not too badly either; I wasn't (yet) feeling any undue apprehension about this appointment which, after all, I had to wait almost a whole month for. Pulling into the parking lot of the clinic, I started to get a hint of nervousness but I brushed it aside.

The bottom starting falling out when I saw the first sign reading "Maternity Ward". Out of nowhere, my hands started trembling almost imperceptibly, my mouth got dryer and dryer as I pushed through a seemingly endless amount of double doors leading to the OB/GYN clinic. It was earily quiet at first - until I got to the waiting room. There, in perfectly harmonious homogeny, not entirely unlike walking into an alternate Stepford Wives type scenario, I was suddenly surrounded by pregnant women: women of all ages, sizes, ethnicities, in different stages of pregnancy, in different styles of clothing. And, one by one, all eyes turned to me as if to say: "What is SHE doing here? She's not pregnant! She's not one of us."

I checked in with the receptionist and sat down, trying hard not to look at all these protruding midsections. I tried to read a magazine and felt a huge wave of relief when, only mere minutes after I had sat down, a nurse called me in. Phew, I thought (stupidly!), so glad I won't have to be sitting there any longer. But this was only the beginning of my ordeal. The nurse - cold, uncaring, clinical and not the least bit warm or friendly - went through a series of questions with me that felt like I was being interrogated as a murder suspect. To say that I felt stripped bare, vulnerable and defenseless would not be an overstatement at all. I felt, to be perfectly honest, VIOLATED.

Finally Nurse Frostbite left, saying the doctor would be with me shortly. And there, without warning, without ANY real notice, I burst into tears - uncontrollably, barely managing not to turn into a squeals of anguish and anxiety. It was all just too much at that point - it was as though, once again, the magnitude of what women came there for NORMALLY, what kept eluding me, was brutally and bluntly forced down my throat. I tried to calm down in vain - I bit my lips to where they hurt, thinking GET A GRIP! To my compelte and utter shame, Nurse Frostbite then returned, just as I was struggling to regain any form of composure and wiping the smudged mascara from below my eyes, my reflection in the mirror pale while my eyes looked strained and bloodshot. I was taken to a different room - and, as if someone had gleened what could possibly send me straight over the edge, the whole room, wall to wall, was covered in baby paraphernalia: pregnancy charts, Anne Geddes pictures, checklists, diagrams...It was like my personal purgatory. Everywhere my eyes darted, like that of a caged animal, there was yet another poster, picture or other pamphlet to further break my heart.

I don't know why I was so emotional today, but for once I didn't mind waiting for a doctor to see me. As I struggled to find an arbitrary spot on the floor that I could focus on - anything to not have to be surrounded by all these buoyant reminders of just how marvelous this time of my life and this place is supposed to be since, well, shouldn't I be pregnant and coming for my check-up here? Shouldn't I be listening to helpful advice on breastfeeding my newborn?

For a moment there, to be perfectly honest, I thought I might have a nervous breakdown.

So I sat in the chair like a mental patient, rubbing my hands up and down my thighs in opposing directions, attempting to direct all my attention and focus to the synchronized movements. I started tapping my feet to an imaginary tune. I started humming. I silently reasoned with myself. Anything, ANYTHING, to try not to think about where I was and why; not to look at all these reminders about what women everywhere take for granted - what, even I, took for granted as my birth right, the right of being a woman, the right to reproduce without poking and prodding and questions by sterile nurses who couldn't care less whether you're about to curl into a fetal position and wish the ground would open and swallow you whole. I had just read, somewhere, that in order to challenge your brain you should try to do minor actions/activities with the hand/leg opposite of the one you normally use for that purpose; for example, if you're left-handed, the exercise would be to try writing with your right hand, etc. And that's what I did. I tapped out entire charts of songs with complicated rhythms, switching which foot was doing what and trying to keep going as long as possible without losing the beat. It sounds INSANE, I know - and I can only tell you that, at that moment, I really felt like I was going to lose it if I didn't get my shit together (pardon my French, it's just the best way I can put it right now).

And there, in the middle of Meltdown Madness, I heard a baby cry: the clear, distinctive sound of a newborn baby. It's a miracle I didn't start ripping out my hair.

Thankfully, the doctor was nowhere near as much of a bitch as the nurse was and gave me some helpful information. The said that based on my bloodwork it was possible, if not likely, that I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which, from what I understand, is basically a fancy way of saying that a woman menstruates without ovulating. Figures that some cosmic force would come up with a way to make me suffer through the pain, the cramps, the mood swings and outright inconvenience of periods without the reward of being able to conceive.

So here we are. On my way home, I bought a pint of Haagen Dazs and basically pigged out while watching a made-for-tv movie. I didn't even really cry - I think I used up everything I had at the clinic today. Now I just feel numb, like someone hit me in the head and caused me to black out - and now I don't remember what actually happened. Except that, of course, I do. Remember. Vividly, in technicolor details.

So what else is new?

I went shopping today. And, of course, there was this little kid in a stroller. Who suddenly sat up, alert, and looked at me intently with this startlingly blue eyes and broke into a big smile. I smile back and waved, trying not to assume the mom "appraised" me with pity because I was forced to make do with smiling and cooing at someone else's baby. What else is new, right?

This week I finally have an appointment to try to figure out if there may be additional hurdles preventing us from conceiving: namely on my end. While, on the one hand, this would just be yet another setback (and this after just being told, by my father-in-law of all people, how sad it is that Kenton and I don't have any kids - why don't you just shoot me??), at least I'll be able to be pro-active and ask questions that, I'm sure, Kenton failed to do during his appointment a millenia ago.

The truth is, of course, that I really only have two questions: can we ever conceive, and if so, how? To be honest, I don't really care about the biology behind it. I don't care what isn't working and why it isn't working and how or why what is preventing me from getting pregnant. I just want someone to tell me HOW TO FIX IT!!

Yesterday I was cleaning up, and I found these handmade burp cloths I bought on Ebay a long time ago. My first instinct was to pitch them, donate them - anything to get them out of my field of vision, now blurry with tears and a deep sense of injustice. But then I thought, I'll keep them for now. Maybe all is now lost yet. Or maybe I'll just have to upcycle them into something else eventually.

I see so many cases where I wish I could take a child away from someone who cannot possibly, from their actions or inaction, comprehend the miracle, the grace, the completely random gift that they are holding. There are times when hearing a baby cry makes me whince internally, where I keep thinking to myself: why is this person not picking that poor little baby up and cuddling it, reassuring it, comforting it? Why are they ignoring the cries and pleading of this little being that can't yet speak for itself? The truth is that, to them, it's just part of the furniture, part of everyday life - nothing extraordinary. So if it cries? So what, it'll cry again tomorrow, and it'll still be crying after they finish their copy of Sports Illustrated, caught up on juicy gossip with a neighbor or have had their mani-pedi completed. For these people, extraordinary becomes ordinary - becomes boring.

A few months ago, I once did something really stupid. I put a pillow under my shirt and looked in the mirror sideways. I pretended to pat the non-existing belly. And then I looked at my reflection through my own eyes, and I felt like a great big fool. I felt...childish and embarrassed that my need, my desire, for a baby had grown so strong as to make me, a grown woman, play "make believe". Sad, but probably not all that uncommon among those who want but cannot have...

Some days I feel like sleeping all day. I feel like it's easier not to leave the house, easier to just pull the covers up to my chin, hug a pillow, daydream until it's time to go to be for real. They probably have medication for things like that, but why dull something that may not go away, rather than confronting it? After all, eventually all suppressed feelings catch up with you, whether you like it or not - God knows I learned that lesson loud and hard.

Why not me, why not us?

I've struggled long and hard with my decision to chronicle this journey I'm about to embark on. Part of me shies away from openly committing to these issues; part of me hopes to find solace in trying to find others who, like me, are confused, angry and sad.

Last Friday it became official: Kenton is unlikely to be able to father a child. Staring at this sentence, I feel a wave of surreal pain wash over me. How could this happen to US? We did everything "right", the way I thought you were supposed to do things. We got educated, traveled the world, didn't rush into marriage and didn't try to conceive the minute he'd carried me over the threshold. We thought we had time. We thought we were being smart - planned parenthood and all that.

As we sat in the doctor's office, listening to him explain the lab results, I found myself nodding to indicate that I understood what he was saying. It was like having an out-of-body experience: I was there, sitting in the hard plastic chair, looking at this man who was calmly explaining to us that we may not be able to have children by conventional means. As if it was the most normal thing to say. As if he'd just told one of us to take an asprin for a mild headache.

We left, neither one of us really saying anything; the piece of paper burning a hole into the pocket of Kenton's cargo pants. I felt numb, almost as if I had been given sad news about someone else - vaguely concerned, a little sad.

I went home by myself - Kenton had to go back to work. It was, after all, the middle of the day. I sat in the driveway for what seemed like forever: tears slowly running down as my vision became increasingly blurred. Once inside the house, a sound escaped from my mouth that was like the howling of a wounded animal - because, in all truthfulness, that's how I felt: wounded. As if, somehow, someone had deliberately injured me, delivering a potentially fatal blow to our plans and hopes for the future.

The worst part was the aftermath of that day. Kenton acted as if nothing had happened - jolly-go-lucky, goofing around like there wasn't that proverbial elephant in the room, constantly begging for attention. Alone, I cried like I haven't cried in years: anguished, broken. I listlessly stumbled around search engines in hopes of finding a support network, but nothing seemed to fit the bill. I couldn't join a group of women trying to conceive - knowing that, any day, someone might post that they'd finally gotten pregnant. I started reading about infertility, options for treatment - all the while thinking: why did this happen to us?

For a while I'd had an inkling that something might be wrong with one of us - like some sort of premonition or 6th sense, I've had this nagging feeling for years that we wouldn't be able to conceive, wouldn't be able to have what most people take for granted. In a sea of people, it seemed I was surrounded by women proudly displaying variously advanced pregnant bellies: beautiful women, plain women, skinny women, large women, young women, older women. I felt like I had been snubbed; like being turned down by a maternal sorority of sorts.

I am completely unprepared and unarmed to deal with this situation - to handle the cascade of unexpected emotions. I was angry at Kenton - I still am. Not because of his condition but because he doesn't seem to care. I know that he's just in denial - when I finally cornered him the other day, amid tears, and asked him whether he wasn't even the least bit upset, he grudgingly admitted that he was, that he just couldn't dwell on it like I did. But what else is there to do? How can I possibly just brush this under the carpet, pretend everything is alright - when it so clearly ISN'T?

I try not to think about it. I try to ignore all the pregnant women around me, the little girls with long hair and April Cornell dresses...so much that I had hoped for myself. But more than anything, I feel so completely ALONE. That, more than anything else, is probably what I was least prepared for. I feel like there's no one I can talk to: not mom, who didn't even know we had talked about wanting to try; not either one of our sisters (one of whom would put-put some platitudes of no help, while the other would launch a diatribe of finger-pointing).

I can't even bring myself to call Kathleen, my best friend, the one person who's as close to me as any blood relative - who, when we talked about this subject a couple of years ago, said that if we couldn't conceive she would be a surrogate for us. I tried to write her a letter, to tell her all I was feeling and the overwhelming pain that I couldn't even begin to lend credence to in words...and I failed, miserably, because I couldn't see out of my eyes once I started to unleash the pain and anger, the sense of injustice...

So here I am. I feel empty, cold, like something is missing. I look at a magazine and an ad for The Children's Place makes me cry. I watch a woman cradle an infant in a cheap blanket and think, my baby would have something much warmer and softer. I cuddle and talk to the children of my friends and acquaintances, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. And then, sometimes, I just sit there: staring into space, shivering, not knowing where to turn.