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...

Expectations

I've been trying to distract myself by reading about anything EXCEPT infertility.

On some level, I know that the best thing to do right now would probably be to arm myself with information. But, then again, how is that information going to compete against FACT? And, to be perfectly honest, I've found the entire experience, so far, entirely unsavory.

Not that I should've expected anything else. But then - I didn't expect ANY of this... I got this book from some website/foundation called Resolve. It's an outdated copy but I thought I'd look through it to see if there was anything dealing with the actual EMOTIONS surrounding this kind of harrowing experience. I even went to the website - only to find out that you have to PAY for the "privilege" of actually accessing any of the information, support groups etc. I was so angry that I just wanted to scream! What kind of a sick, twisted organization tries to make money off of the misfortune of others? Not just misfortune, but being, in effect, denied a basic, fundamental HUMAN right: procreation.

But maybe that's the point: it's not a right, is it? Only now, after all this time, am I beginning to understand the monumental concept that giving birth is a gift. Sounds cheezy - to me, especially - but that's the best way I know to describe what I'm trying to say.

So...then I magnanimously decided that rancor was NOT the best way to approach this entire situation - that, perhaps, the reason why this website for Resolve charges a membership fee is to fund research or something (one can dream, can't one?).

I registered on www.whattoexpect.com, which has some forums for trying to conceive, infertility etc. Is it just me or is that a bit ridiculous? Seriously, how many of those of us poor souls who have to deal with the unthinkable - maybe NEVER being able to bear a child ourselves - want to be lopped together with a bunch of happy-go-lucky moms posting pictures of smiling babies, playing kids, or mothers-to-be with their countless trackers, blog bling etc announcing to the entire world, look at me, I'm a Fertile Myrtle! Cynic? Me? You're damn right I am!

Last night I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about Kenton - how lucky I am to have him, and whether I shouldn't just be grateful to at least have a loving, loyal husband instead of bemoaning the fact that we may not be able to ever have children - or, at least, not the easy way. There's a part of me that is completely scared witless at the huge responsibility of motherhood - to say nothing of the fact that your life, as you know it, is effectively over at conception. The truth is that it's "frowned upon" for women to think about the fact that a baby is, among many many other things, a time constraint. Then again, I can't imagine being like a lot of these women I've come across: lugging their off-spring around like cattle from one brain-dead activity to the next, punctuated only by early-addiction pitstops at McDonald's et al.

In my mind, I keep thinking about how I would do it differently. No, scratch that - BETTER. Yes, I know - I sound totally snooty, especially given the fact that my experience in the department of child-rearing is, well, close to non-existent (bar humoring the children of close friends and relatives). But I can't help it! When I see kids wearing an entire panoply of food groups strewn across their Walmart clothes, screaming like little banchees, I can't help but think of how I would act so differently. Maybe I'm kidding myself; maybe in NOT being able to just get pregnant, I'm safely tucked into this Utopia where our kids would be completely gorgeous, well-behaved, and of course the envy of everyone.
Why? You know, it only just hit me in writing this why I keep thinking that. The truth - as embarrassing as it is to admit that - is that I want those people who go around having a million and one babies (without then even taking proper care of them) see HOW IT'S DONE.

I have this fantasy. It's probably kind of sad, but then I'm hoping maybe someone out there can relate - and maybe that person will read this and think, Thank God I'm not alone! So here goes. I have this idea that I find out that I'm pregnant - of course, in this little fantasy of mine, there's not even a discussion or any hint of infertility issues, ergo the term fantasy, right? And of course, from the moment I find out, we're both deliriously excited and happy - and I put nothing but good food into my body because I know that whatever I eat, the baby "eats". Not like half a grapefruit because I'm more concerned about my post-baby body than the health of my unborn child. Not rounds and rounds at fast food joints so that my baby can come out looking like Ronald McDonald or, as I've witnessed more times than I can remember, learning fast food related words before ANY others. (Sad, but true: I know several women whose children have no verbal skills - yet, somehow, even without being able to talk in any coherent way under any other circumstances, they still manage to say something like "chicken nuggets". Talk about SCARY!). And then we have this baby - which, in my mind, is always a girl, always with dark eyes and dark hair - and she's just the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The sad, painful irony of this fantasy is that I have an almost tangible picture in my head - and it's really, truly harrowing. Not in so far as it would be morbid or weird, but because the entire prospect of having a baby with Kenton is so...normal, so natural - so EXPECTED.

Isn't that just the most ironical twist of fate, this play on words? What to expect when you're expecting. Except that most of us EXPECT that we'll be able to get to the point of expecting, that is, getting pregnant, in the first place!

Ok so I know this post is really confused and confusing. I'm sure most of it doesn't make much sense because it's all a bit of rambling from all the different corners of my heart: the sadness, the anger, the denial, the sheer envy. How come no one ever tells you NOT to expect that you'll get pregnant at the drop of a hat?