What is WRONG with this picture??

I really need to understand something: what is it with people having not one, not two or even four kids but 14+? SERIOUSLY??? What the hell is wrong with this picture?? How is it that some people get pregnant more times than any one person should reasonable WANT to get pregnant (I'm not even going to get into what I think about the sheer lunacy and complete irresponsibility of having that many children) while there are some of us who'd move heaven and earth for just ONE baby, and can't even get that?

I want to know who's responsible for this complete injustice - and I want to file a complaint!! If there is a God (which, being agnostic, I'm neither denying nor endorsing), I would really like to know what kind of circus he's running here.

Recently, I learned of someone I vaguely know falling pregnant again. Nevermind that she's already got a slew of kids (where have I heard/thought/read that before? Oh yeah, on a DAILY BASIS!!!) running rampant in food-encrusted, baby sick infested clothes and wailing for a parent who's too self-absorbed to care (or, it would seem, consider having her knees sewn together since she's clearly never heard of contraceptives). Bitter, me? YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I AM! If there is someone in charge of this whole fiasco that's arbitrarily making some of us fertile like bunnies while others are growing cobwebs in our wombs, then, to borrow a line from the movie Good Morning, Vietnam then his "ass is grass and I'm a lawn mower!" (sorry about the vulgar expression, I'm having a MOMENT).

I am SO sick and tired of all these protruding bellies - preferably hanging out of skinny coochie-hugging jeans shorts that look more like belts than pants - or kids who should be in college getting an education walking around with a bunch of kids who, of course, won't learn a damn thing because their parents are idiots.



I wonder why no one has thought about making medication for the reproductively challenged - you know, the kind that suddenly makes you think everything is going to be alright, that prevents your heart from bursting into flames or shattering into pieces every time you hear a baby laugh. You know how, apparently, when you've had a baby, some (not sure if this is true of all women) women end up lactating spontaneously when they hear a baby cry, even if it's not theirs? Yeah, sometimes I think that the tear ducts of those of us who don't have much hope to ever find out whether this could/would happen to us have a similar problem.

I find myself almost daily on this journey where I feel like a trapeze artist, or more like I'm walking on this tiny rope without a safety net to catch me: on one side lies acceptance, on the other is anger and frustration. And I keep balancing between the two because I can't seem to move forward for some reason: I can see the goal ahead of me (not sure if that would be babydom or just plain peace of mind, regardless of where the chips fall) but, no matter how much I push and wiggle and twist and turn, the result is the same. I'm stuck in this ridiculously teeter-tottering imbalance, treading water, not able to turn back or move forward.

Then there are the daily challenges of not running interference when being subjected to cases of Bad Parenting (e.g. a tiny tot trying to scale a bookcase at the local bookstore, with no parent in sight). There are times when I see things like that, and part of me wants to scoop up the kid, find the parent and say: "I'm sorry but you're time's up. You clearly don't want this kid and don't care about it, so I'm taking it home with me." Other times, I just want to yell at someone. Sometimes it's someone specific (see Bad Parenting comment), sometimes I just want to yell and scream at no one in particular, just because I'm so frustrated and so tired of waiting without knowing what's going on.

Which reminds me of something the good Doctor Doolittle (literally did little, if anything) did say to me at my gyno appointment a couple of months ago: that, despite the fact that until now we thought Kenton was the one with the problem, this wonderful lady said that despite his practically immobile sperm, it should still be possible for him to knock me up. Translation? Now it's supposed to be MY fault. Nevermind that this whole ludicrous PCOS stuff hasn't been brought up to me until that appointment (gee, I wonder why that is??). Nevermind that no one has bothered to suggest maybe running some tests to either confirm or disprove her highly hypothetical analysis (get your diplomanat Quack University, didya?). Yes, this has all been incredibly helpful - not only to the mind and heart in turmoil, but to the planning stages that require ACCURATE information in order to advance.

I am so tired of this whole debacle. I want a doctor who will run every single test in the good book of medicine, who will present me with every single scenario ranging from 1% to 99% chance of possibility, who will advise me on the best course of action and will do everything he/she can to turn this disaster around and give me, for crying out loud, just ONE baby. I mean, I wanted three, but I'll settle for one - seriously. Occasionally I get so desperate, there's a part of my brain that's thinking, maybe I should go put flyers at the local high schools & colleges saying that if anyone gets knocked up accidentally, I'll be happy to take their baby if they don't want it. How pathetic and ridiculous is that???

Well, there's that then. I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster, only it's going really slow: sometimes I'm up in the clouds where there's sunshine and I feel like I'm on top of the world (or, putting it in perspective, at least feel like I can deal with all this stuff), but then I end up going through a tunnel or a valley, round a corner, take a sharp turn, and it's back to Doomsville, population: 1.

You know something? The worst part of it all is the lack of answers, the uncertainty, that cloud of "what if" hanging over my head not entirely unlike the mythical Death figure in its long black robe. I know that probably sounds really morbid, and it's not an image I literally carry around with me (thank God for small favors, right?). I just want some answers. I just want to know what's going on. I want to know if I should just give up hoping. I want to know if there's a light at the end of the tunnel, if this is just a particularly trying period in my life that I'll be able to look back on and thinking, wow that was really hard there for a while.

I can't help but keep coming back to what I've written before: sometimes you just don't know how much you want something until you can't have it, or at least it seems that way. I never questioned for a moment that I would have a baby - no one in my extended family has infertility issues - so I really didn't give it much thought at all until a couple of years ago. If I'd known the way this would all turn out, I would've tried getting pregnant as soon as I had a ring on my finger...

Catching Up...

In the last month or so, I've found myself staring into space a lot: at the ceiling when I'm lying in bed at night or first thing in the morning; at the wall when I'm somewhere in a room, a building; into just plain oblivion most other times of the day. I feel like I'm just trying to survive every single day.

A few weeks ago, I had quite possibly the worst day yet. I had to go to the hospital to have some blood tests done in what I imagine will potentially be a long battery of tests to determine whether or not I'm reproductively challenged - which, of course, will affect not only the course of action for the doctors as far as Kenton is concerned, but also our decisions based on that. We've talked about it a little, and I've already told him that I'm drawing the line where surgery is concerned - if that's the only hope for having biological children, then I guess we'll have to pursue other avenues. I'm not putting his or my life on the line on some small fraction of "maybe, someday".

So I spent about 6 hours in the hospital. Surrounded by mothers, women with heavily pregnant bellies, nursing infants and baby cries. It was literally like someone had scripted my worst nightmare and cast me in the starring role: Alexa, Infertile! Thankfully, I had brought a book so I was barely able to keep it together. Yet every time I heard a baby crying, something inside of me felt like needles and pins - like all I could think about was MY baby crying, the baby that's not even conceived and may never come to be, the baby that I would take care of and love and never neglect. Not that, in this instance, I'm saying that the cries came from neglect of course - it just hurt me, physically as much as emotionally.

To boot, when I later when to do some shopping, a woman said to me: "Oh, you smell good! Is that baby powder?" I think I probably looked at her like I'd missed a vital dosage of my anti-mental medication. Of course I tried to get a grip, give her a thinly veiled smile and told her that it was probably my shampoo.

Baby powder. Those little, insignificant, basic things that are of absolutely no importance to mother other than a product regularly purchased along with toilet paper and butter. To me, these things are taken on near-iconic status:

"BABY POWDER - now only for those who CAN have babies!"

I'm having these movie-type moments where I imagine these blasts or blips in some spoof-type, retro voice-over - and I'm sitting here, little pile of misery, advertised as Coming Soon To A Theater Near You. I imagine this black and white scene with beautifully coiffed, perfectly silhouetted middle upper class 1950s housewives with their 2.1 children whispering behind upheld hands, eyes wide open, aghast at The Woman Scorned By Nature.

And, still, Kenton is not getting the picture. I feel like I'm sitting on hot coals - and he keeps throwing these things into everyday conversation like "what are you going to do when we have kids" - like that's just assumed, like there's no hindrances, like there's a bun in the oven as we speak. INFURIATING!! I know that he has a different way of dealing with this, but I am so damn mad at him. I mean, I keep trying to EXPLAIN (read: beat into his male brain) that I have a limited amount of time left IN THE BEST OF CIRCUMSTANCES, which clearly isn't even the case with us. And I told him, I cannot, cannot, CANNOT go through life without a child, not completely. He keeps throwing adoption in there like that's supposed to make it all better - like that's not just one of those things we might not even be able to afford.

So then, the other day, I'm talking to this 21-YEAR OLD GIRL who tells me that they're having issues because she's been trying to get pregnant - without success - for two years. Part of me wanted to throttle her because I felt like saying: WTF YOU HAVE NO CLUE!! And there was that evil, disgusting, horrible part of me that thought: good, serves you right. I can't even begin to describe the shame and horror I feel when these kinds of mean, selfish and pathetic feelings overcome me - but I keep thinking that, whenever I'm confronted with something like that, there's this little voice that's telling me, seeeeeee, you're not the only one, it's not your fault, it's not you're fault. Because, somehow, I still feel that it's all my fault. It's my fault.

I go through these phases of wanting to do a lot of stuff just so I can block out the pain and these feelings of...what is it? Being incomplete, a failure, dysfunctional, BROKEN. I feel broken. I feel like something got ripped out, trampled on, and then put in a totally dislocated place so that I can never be the same again. God and, for such a long time, I didn't even really think about any of this - even until a couple of years ago it wasn't this bad. Now all I can think about is that little wiggly thing that's not in my arms, those tiny hands not clasping my fingers, that tiny little face not smiling up at me. I AM BROKEN. I feel shattered. I feel not whole. I feel like part of me is dying a little bit every day - and Kenton doesn't get it. HE DOESN'T GET IT. I just don't know what to do, don't know what to say, don't know how to deal with this.

And then there was that consultation with a doctor who, quite obviously, couldn't have cared less about my concerns or my issues. My regular doctor was out of town, which I hadn't known - because, trust me, there's no way I would've seen this guy if I'd known what I was in for. He didn't bother to read my file, didn't even really look at the blood test results, but only told me that the starting point for an infertility workup is a hysterosalpingogram:


http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/guide/hysterosalpingogram-21590

http://www.advancedfertility.com/hsg.htm



Aside from the fact that I'm not really that crazy about letting someone loose with a bunch of tools in my reproductive organs, there also seems to be no information whatsoever about whether or not this is PAINFUL. There's all this clinical blabla which, when it's all said and done, tells me precious little other than that it's the first step to determine whether, in addition to Kenton's problems, I might be throwing my own in the balance. Thanks, that's really helpful. NOT! I feel violated just thinking about it.

So that's where it's at. I'm sorry I've been silent so long - your comments continue to give me hope and something to hold onto in these trying times. Thank you for not giving up on me.