Breakthrough conversation?

It's a strange world we live in - and, as women, we share it with the strangest creatures yet: men. There are so many differences and yet so many similiarities; but often you find yourself as though trying to navigate some tropical jungle without so much as a map.

Last night, Kenton and I had one of The Talks. It was weird. I didn't cry for a change, but I had a hard time looking at him while I talked. I told him how hard it was for me to keep seeing all these pregnant women, to hear about women getting knocked up who don't even want another baby. I can't even fathom the concept of child abuse because if I thought about it, I would probably just implode from a combination of fury and incomprehension.

The world is a big place, and yet sometimes thanks to the internet, it feels like your backyard. There's something strangely comforting about knowing that there are people who've never met you but who, through some chance or circumstance, find themselves in a situation that makes them understand you even without knowing you.

I think we've sort of tabled the whole discussion for a while, in some way. I think we have to make a decision: to either rally the troops and move forward, or to deny the undeniable for a while until we both feel steady on our feet again. We get pictures from friends and family with their children, ranging from newborns to preteens. We look at them and I, for one, have started feeling old when I look at them. I start to think about my age - which I normally never do - and then I think, what if when we turn 60, there's no one left for us? It's just him and me (and in this day and age, even that's not something you can take for granted, no matter how much you love someone in the here and now), our parents are long gone, our friends have grandchildren and we...we have pets. When I think about that, there's this lump in my throat that threatens to suffocate me and I feel as though I'm engulfed in fierce anxiety, like having a panic attack. Part of me wants to scream and holler - I feel as though I'm in danger, as though I need help, need to be rescued, treated for some imaginary wounds.

Only maybe they're not imaginary; maybe they're just not visible to the naked eye. Maybe they're under the surface, never quite healing. Maybe they keep reminding me of the fact that, no matter what I tell myself, I don't think I can be happy without a child. I can learn to live without it - God knows there's a chance I might have to - but it will always be an unhappy coexistence. I will never feel at ease with the thought of not having children.

When we talked last night, Kenton seemed close to the edge too. He started talking about what I always feel too: this great sense of injustice, how we did everything "right", by the book, didn't have sex at a ridiculously early age, didn't sleep around, didn't get knocked up. We were always so careful - so trusting that our time would come, that when we were ready to expand our little duo into a family, it would all fall into place. The 2.2 kids, the child-friendly Golden Retriever, the white picket fence...the whole nine yards. No one told us that being responsible came with such a huge price tag. No one told us to guard our fertility like Fort Knox, that the thing that happens to people everywhere in the world, every second of every day, would just refuse to happen for us.

I want to cry, and I don't want to cry. I want to cry because I'm hurting, because it hurts not to cry. It hurts to pretend that everything is ok. It hurts to watch all these people have babies, watch them grow up and smile at the camera from inside a bathtub or a sandy beach, covered in ice cream or birthday cake. It hurts to feel so left out of something that shouldn't have restricted access. But then I think about how little the crying accomplishes, and how much it brings the pain right back to the surface. I think about how talking and crying and crying some more...it's not getting me anywhere.

I wish I could just sit back and examine this entire situation without emotion. To make a "battle plan" and knock down the door of every doctor until someone, somewhere, can tell me what the problem is and how to solve it. But I'm embarrassed and I'm not made of money. So, instead, I sit here and write, thinking about how much easier this all must be for someone like, oh I don't know, SJP for example. I know money can't buy you happiness, but in this case it can buy you the best doctors, the best fertility treatments - and, if nothing else, at least a better fighting chance than those of us with limited resources have. If I were rich, I think I'd fly to some tropical island and soothe away my pains.

You know how, when you were single and all your friends were paired off, everyone kept telling you it would happen for you too? And you didn't really believe them, thought it was easy for them to say that since they weren't out there looking. The old advice always came back: it'll happen when you least expect it. So now the same advice somehow gets regurgitated when you're trying to have a baby - only this time, it's not a matter of going out there and looking (or not looking, isn't that what's supposed to "make it happen"?). This time you have absolutely NO control. It's not a matter of dressing nicely when you go out because there isn't much you can do if your uterus is on strike, your ovaries are playing Sleeping Beauty or your fallopian tubes are experiencing total gridlock.

And then you have a hundred thousand quacks who try to exploit the vulnerable, hurt little you who's just asking for a chance to do what so many are incapable or unwilling to do: be a good mother. When we first started having these issues - or, rather, becoming aware of them - I went on the internet (my trusted friend) to see what information I could pool. I came across a website that, in my Google search, promised support groups and information. A couple of clicks later, it turned out to be a "members only" club with a hefty price tag. I was outraged! How dare anyone restrict such vital information or refuse to give access to any and all??

Then there are all these other websites that throw together people with the whole panoply of infertility issues - so that you're trying to sift through the "TTCs" and the "finally got knocked ups" in hopes of finding a lost soul like yourself: the '"(seemingly) lost causes".

I don't know if I find it annoying or encouraging when someone who tried to get pregnant for a long time finally does. Part of you thinks, hey maybe it'll happen to me. But part of ME thinks, come down from your high horse and stop preaching like a televangelist "THY DAY SHALL COME!" (cue melodramatic chorus).

So where does this all leave me? I don't really know. I want answers, more than anything. I want to have a good, reliable and honest doctor who will tell me exactly what the science says and how it applies to me: which tests to run, what the worst/best case scenarios are, what options are available for different problems. I want someone who is sympathetic without being patronizing, someone who, above all, is professional in a caring way.

The truth is, part of me just wants my mom - and for her to tell me that everything's going to be alright. I guess that, no matter how old we get, there's still a little girl in every one of us...

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.

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.

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.