IUI

IUI (intrauterine insemination) was done about an hour ago. No turkey baster which was a little disappointing on the comedic end but it wasn't too physically uncomfortable. Emotionally is another thing.

It was so cold, sterile, awkward. 

I keep hoping its the sperm from Thursday nights sex that does it but really I shouldn't care. The important thing is that a perfect little person comes from it.

Right? 

What do I have in common with this turkey?

Just got word that I"m not "surging". This mean that though I have a 23mm follicle, my body hasn't decided its time to have a Lutinizing hormone "surge" which would tell the follicle to get the hell out of the ovary. So tonight I take the plunge. Almost literally. I (or more likely my husband) will inject something called Ovidrel into my stomach via syringe. It will do what my body is too uncoordinated to do on its own. It will tell the follicle to finish ripening and emerge.

Then hubby gets to jizz in a cup....

Then in two days hubby gets to jizz in a cup in the doctors office and I get a nice turkey baster up the hoo-hah and gods willing we'll make a baby.

I"m the turkey in this scenario

This is so unromantic and unsexy it is hard to believe so many people do it. Then again, people poo in each other's mouths for pleasure so I guess this isn't so bad. But it's seriously unfair like so much else. 

I get to lay on a cold table naked from the waste down with my feet in stirrups and have a stranger shove a cold metal speculum inside me. Then the doc will use a catheter to  inject the "specimen". I get the speculum...

HE gets to have an orgasm!

How is this fair?

Seven

My daughter turned seven this morning with much less effort on my part than her birth required. In fact there was no effort, besides a late night scramble to get some gifts together and wrapped. I didn't have to do anything....she just....got older.

She's so proud of turning seven as though she has spent the last seven years waiting for this birthday. Actually she has her birthdays planned out years in advance so I guess she has been waiting a long time.

My daughter is desperate to grow up. The world is full of all these things she has to wait to do and to her that is a huge injustice. She is often uninterested in childhood things and spends lots of time pining for the things she is going to do "someday". No amount of me telling her that she will have plenty of time to do those things and she should enjoy the endless summer of childhood while she can makes any dent. 

Her first baby tooth has started to wiggle. I am almost certain it is the same tooth that was the first to come in. She likes to show off how much it wiggles and gives me reports hourly. "Look mom, now it wiggles even more!" I dutifully examine her little finger as it wiggles the tooth back and forth and congratulate her while whistfully remembering the pain of that tooth chomping down on my breast. I'd go back there in a heartbeat, pain and all, for the then unappreciated joy of of those first months. Just us. 

Somewhere along the way, around the time her brother was born two years later, I lost my baby girl. She changed from the sunny toddler with the easy smile. No longer would she fall down, get back up and dust herself off. She was friendly and outgoing. The smiles 
have been replaced with ugly grimaces. She is shy of talking to people and of going places on her own. The sunshine, like the song we used to sing, went away. She closes the heavy curtains in her room which used to be the sunniest place in the house. She prefers it dark.
She takes everything so hard, and to the worst imaginable (to her) place. And she routinely refers to herself as stupid. A word that has never left my mouth (in regard to her or anyone else) and could not be farther from the truth. I know negativity, depression, quick tempers, and a tendency to worry first and most runs in my family. I know the dark side of myself and I work on it all the time. More and more as I get older. So why, during the time of my being the least like that I've ever been, has my daughter become a condensed and saturated version of the worst of me?

I remind myself, she's a Leo. She's choleric. She's very smart. Her father is melancholic...and a former and now closet goth. But I worry, as is my way. I worry that she has inherited the negative traits in our genes and behavior but has not taken notice of  the positive changes and decisions I make. How I turn myself around when I'm thinking dark thoughts. How I calm myself down, cheer myself up, and shoulder on with what needs doing. If children are such sponges of modeled behavior why does my sponge of a daughter only soak up the sad, bad, and angry

Ow ow Ow ow Motherfucking Ow!

Dream Journal

Fucked up dreams again last night. I began cramping as soon as I went to bed but with a little help from MJ it just didn't seem to matter and I fell asleep anyway. The dream was another big one in a structure in which I only recognized some of the rooms. Friends from childhood but grown were sitting around a children's school table gossiping about other people and nonsensical things. Alyssa D., the girl who I thought of as being the leader of the "cool" girls when we were children was still at the helm. Still looking adorable and still dressed far better than I ever was/am. And there was water. Water like an ocean that was flooding into the building. As usual no one was listening. No one was as concerned as I was. Even though it had happened before and it was devastating no one seemed moved to get the hell out of the way, seek higher ground, build a raft. Just overwhelming agreement that I was the one over reacting. But how could they not see the water flooding into the rooms, the level rising slowly but steadily.

And then I was awakened....

By my children coming in of course. And then there was the pain and the silently begging my son not to climb on the bed and start jumping, my daughter not to start whining, and the universe to let me go back to sleep where it was troubling but didn't hurt like hell.

I went to bathroom with the certainty that my moon had come. There are things that have to be done today. There a two little people who need me, and a husband depending 
on me to be his partner and do my end of things. I want to lay in bed drunk and on pain killers while alternating between ipad, nap, and a book until sometime two days from now when the pain will cease. 

I know there are women who barely notice their moon. It does not inconvenience them at all. They go on with life as if little or nothing is happening. I am not and have never been one of those women. Though my current situation is improved from when I was a teenager and would cry and writhe on the floor of the bathroom wishing to god that I had been born a boy (and my mother either not knowing what to do for me or not believing me because she never had such problems) it still sucks. Now at least i can take drugs and i 
can drink wine. Had I the knowledge I have now and the luxury of laying about that I had 
then my Moon would feel like a highly sedated vacation.

97.7

97.7

That was my basil body temperature this morning.

I wanted it to say 98.5 or 98.7 even a 98.3 would have been acceptable. But, as has happened for the last several months my body has betrayed me once again. I am NOT pregnant.

For anyone who hasn't struggled to have a baby....well fuck you....but more importantly I should explain that what these numbers tell me is that my temperature has dropped which means my progesterone level has dropped which means my Moon (re: period) is coming. Also coming are the recurring feelings of loss, sadness, guilt, and questions that continue to go unanswered. The empty space where my baby should be. WHY? Why baby? Why won't you come to me? Its been over four years of waiting, wishing, hoping, and trying to get you to incarnate and still you don't come. Why? You are already loved, all you have to do is take advantage of one of these albeit not-so-ample opportunities to come. 

Why not-so-ample?

I have something called hypothyroidism
I also have something called PCOS (Poly-cystic Ovaries)
Combine those together with probable estrogen dominance and I am a soup of something called secondary infertility. That means someone who already has had a child but is having difficulty having another. I do not often ovulate. No egg = no baby. In fact the more I learn about my body the more I realize that the conception and successful gestation of my son (now almost 5) was a complete miracle.


Maybe thats the problem. Maybe we only get one miracle.

And yes, I have two beautiful, healthy children.

Every well intentioned (re: person who has NO idea what this feels like) person reminds me of that fact as if I don't know it. Of course I fucking know that! Of course I am grateful for them. What these well intentioned people don't understand is that it doesn't matter. Each cycle I mourn the loss of the unborn. The child(ren) I know in my heart I am meant to have. Imagine having a child but the child lives on the moon. You can't see them, you can't hold them, you can't be with them, but you know they are there. Imagine that pain and that longing....THAT is what it is like.

All I've ever wanted was to be a mother. A mother of a large brood. To me large is 4 or 5. So reminding me I have 2 doesn't help. 2 that were difficult to come by on their own. 2 may be fine for you. Perhaps 1 is fine for you and you knew you were done and didn't want anymore. Perhaps you have other aspirations, a career, or money to experience things and see the world and you had your 2 kids and now its on to those other things. I feel like my life is on hold waiting for the next child. Like a promotion that always seems just around the corner but leaves you locked in your place for years. Thats where I am. Middle management. But like a ballplayer my years are limited. I've already crossed the line. Any child conceived at this point will be born after I turn 35. No big deal you might say. Its a big fuckin deal to me. 

When we started TTC (trying to conceive) over 4 years ago when our son was about 6 months old people told me I was crazy to rush, I was young, and had plenty of time.

Guess what people! - 4 years later and what do I have to show for it? Two miscarriages and a reproductive system of someone 10 years older than I am.

And now when I talk to doctors what do I hear? "Well, you know, after 35 its much more difficult to conceive." FUCK YOU this has been going on for 4 FUCKING YEARS. What would have been your excuse when I was 29, 30, or 31?

But now I'm 34 1/2.

And I still want my baby.

And I'm pretty much out of options.
And I'm completely out of ideas.
And I'm tired of swallowing pills
And drinking nasty tinctures
And getting transvaginally wanded every few days
And getting blood drawn even more often
And of taking my temperature
And of charting my "mucous"
And of timing sex
And of trying to fall asleep with a wedge under my ass
And of peeing on sticks that never give me the answer I'm hoping for
And of being told "just stop trying and it'll happen" FUCK YOU its been 4 fucking years! What do you mean stop trying. Stop taking all the herbs and tinctures? Stop taking my temperature and monitoring fluids? Guess what? I have PCOS - I have to do all this shit anyway just to ovulate! But yes! Lets take away the dangling carrot of pregnancy. That will make all those pills way easier to swallow both literally and figuratively.

Not for me.

I want to revel in my Moon. I want to drink wine with my advil, eat as much chocolate as I want and lay around and read. Take care of me. I want to raise my daughter to respect it not hate it the way I did. And its hard to set that example. I've always had a rough Moon. The pain is extreme, the symptoms are many, and flow is heavy. And I hate it. Not because of what it is but because of what it isn't. It's not my baby. It is the warm rich place my child should be growing in. It is the safe cocoon that bridges heaven and earth. And it's flowing out of my body once again.