Sorrow

Something has shifted...I am starting to experiece sensations that I have in the past.
Aching in my bladder, a plucking cramp that flows along my lower abdomen...signs that things are shifting.
I have been off of birth control for about 9months now...ironic I know....that was not lost on me.
I have a dear friend that is expecting next month, we started trying at the same time....she got lucky, I got a whole lot of "hahah you're not pregnant" pregnancy tests.

I went to the doctor yesterday and had some things confirmed....no infections (damn I wanted a quick fix)
My uterus is enlarged and now tilted...that is a new one.
and yes, it sounds like I had another miscarrage.

Saying those words aloud hurt...I almost whispered it to the doctor. It seemed that saying it to someone other then myself or my husband made it really really real.
It seems pathectic that, at this junction, when things are shifting, I was pregnant for a small small time... and things have begun to go haywire again....meaning that I might be going back onto the pill to reset my uterus again, but this time until menapause. sigh

This was the last road, this was the last try...this was it.
I pulled the short straw, I lost.

Gone

My love had been planning a getaway for us for our anniversary....it was a wonderful break from his normal way of doing things. He kept it a secret and until the day before, I was not aware where we were going.
My period was late again but I thought nothing of it until it arrived. When it did, things were not the same ol' same 'ol.....in fact they were strangely familar to actions of the past.
I began to bleed very heavily and felt quite woozy, then came the signs that something was lost.
I think I lost another very early pregnancy.

This was something that I had seen before...and it didn't really hit me until months later...this time, it hit me like a sponge and I was left wet. I carried the quiet knowledge with me this time and let it slowly dry in small bits. I had gained another year of marriage but possibly lost being a mother again.

We drove many many miles and saw many beautiful things and were reminded why we love each other.
I was strangely calm all weekend...I think I was simply just quiet.
We both were.

Hot cocoa

I am propably the last person to see Angels in Ameria...it was great, well the parts I saw as I came in on the last third I think.
I was able to see the final scene with Harper and her final journey into Antartica...telling Mr Lies about her life with the eskimo...it made me cry. Knowing that she was not pregnant but had this lovely and quirky fantasy about the baby and her:
something like : Maybe it will be born with white fur covering its whole body, and it will never be cold and my breasts will be filled with hot cocoa to feed it with and we will live here and be happy....

The sweet sweet idea of what life could be like with the baby she will never have, or wishes she had.
I was in tears...taken quite off guard by it, but so comforted by it.

There is a similar scene in Casa De Los Babies, when Susan Lynch was telling her dream to the woman making her bed, about the snowy morning that she goes and wakes up the warm little wrapped lump in the bed and has a play day with them. Another beautiful dream of a child.

It is these dreams that I am soaking in...at times it feels as though I am drowning overflowing with imagined children, trips, conversations and hopes.

I am fighting, almost daily, from being broken by them.
I feel weaker at times and fear I will simply crumble...other times I have a lot of duct tape.

Autumn

It has been a while

I haven't written in a while, as I was trying to distract myself with living.

I have had a lot of other events to play with and so this constant undercurrent has been mutable.

In the last week it has been churning, maybe because I have begun to loose focus, the battle to remain in check has been just that, a battle.

I have felt so overwhelmingly lonely as of late that it makes me feel even smaller.

I tried to clean, thinking that what I needed was to simply find order again and then all those trains can run on all their own tracks and I could jump from train to train depending on my mood.

My trains keep finding junctions, forks, meeting points.

I keep having this feeling like I am forgetting something and simply whittling away my days. Thinking tomorrow I will do more, tomorrow I will be more, tomorrow will be better.

When will today be that tomorrow?

I often find myself looking in circles, staring at walls or going to my pacifier the TV to make me forget that all is not running smoothly. I am unfocused and afraid that I have really blown it.

I really want to start living, but I don't know how...

I am in fear of slipping back into a deep depression, falling behind on my hopes for my art...the trains all colliding and exploding, leaving nothing recoverable behind for me to find.

How will I find my way out of this dark, moody place I am in...

A call for empathy

my response to a beautiful call for empathy:

"So wonderfully written, I am overwhelmed with its bare honesty, and beauty.
I am still working on finding my path of peace, where the deep deep pain can be a lessened. I still try to not to cry when nieces and nephews have birthdays, and many times fall on days when I get my period. All those times I had hoped for...all those days they can not share with a cousin.
Friends still offer suggestions for fertility, and although I know it is coming from a place of love...it feels insulting. Don't you think I have tried all I could think of?
Empathy is not a word I think many consider with us, but instead sympathy. "

It's that time again....

This struck me as funny, and seeing that the moon is full and my womb is not...I thought it was only fair to post something that made me laugh for a change:
Pregnant Women Are Smug by Garfunkel and Oats

Big kisses to these ladies!!

End of the line...

With this most recent cycle, I have had mini panic attacks.
I am fine one moment then in an instant I am not...I start to have a hard time breathing, I am spinning and then sobbing.

I am the end of the line....this train is going to sit in the station.
No packages to deliver, no news to send forth...no passengers to carry.

It was a photo of my great great grandparents that triggered it for me.
My great great grandmother had 11children, all lived. My maternal great grandmother, died a week after giving birth to my grandmother....I thought for years that that would be my fate too.
I would have a close call or die after giving birth to my own child.
Little did I realize, it would have been by my own doing, instead of the entrance of a child it was the loss of what can not be.

I have started photographing my family pictures, the old ones, the ones over 50years old and making CD's of the images to be passed onto others as years pass and generations become that. I am trying in some way I guess, to make a legacy of my own. I am trying to make some sort of mark in the face of all this.
For when I am gone, it will be only my photos that live on...maybe.

For now I am doing this for my niece and nephew...to let them know I was here and I cared enough about them and all who came before us.

Nothingness

I don't feel like doing anything, nothing.
I have tried, in fact most of this week, has involved me trying. Pushing forward and moving...slowly but moving none the less.

I think the level of loneliness has started to pile up on me.
I feel very alone.

A friend mentioned that they were going to gather pine cones for me. Apparently they are a symbol of fertility. I told her I couldn't do this any longer, I wanted off the roller coaster, I wanted to gain back the life lost in waiting and hoping. I told her this months ago, I think she is still hoping for me. She and I had started to try at the same time, and now she is 13 weeks pregnant and I am waiting for my late period to begin.
I know it is late, as I took another pregnancy test this morning and was greeted with another "not pregnant" on the stick.

It is only a matter of time, before she begins to realize that I am not a fertile womb. Heck it is only now that I am really coming to terms with the idea that I am not going to be a mother.

So I continue to bob in the vast ocean of this reality. My arms and legs numb, my back sore...my desire to eat ice cream on a stick- strong.

Summer is here and I am flooded with images of idyllic childhoods, and times gone by....and I feel nothing when I am not crying.

Numb all over

As I wonder into the new unknown, I find myself numb.
Numb from tip to toe...and the efforts to make myself happy are becoming harder and harder to muster.
It is an effort...I find times in the day when I am berating myself for not doing more or simply sitting and zoning out.
I have been told I have insomnia, but I have found myself sleeping better the last few nights since the news. Yesterday I could barely move my neck and today it is fine.
I am given days when all seems to fall apart and others when it is all reset again.

As the first period after my "safety time" is approaching I am not sure what lies ahead, I have a new doctor on the horizon and we have no history or knowledge of one another. Where would I go if things go wrong?

I am lost, so very lost.

Slam Bam

I have been slammed again, this time overnight.
I went to bed with the aid of a sleeping pill last night in hopes to sleep thru any changes.

I awoke to back pain once again.
I tried to do some work today, so that I didn't get pulled onto the couch for the whole day but, as the day progressed I was feeling less and less ok. It was more of a struggle to get stuff done and by 5:30 I was laid out on the couch. Slam, and bam onto my ass.

Now I have a blank mind, simply wondering what the future really holds for me. Now that I will have my period every month again, now that new friends will have babies around me as the months pass. I wonder where I will fit in this all.

I am still an oddity of sorts, a woman who stopped the process.
I still have the little voices wondering what if we tried a different way, or went further...but even still we didn't get pregnant.

I am feeling quite lonely recently...a lost sense of me in this world.
I am simply letting it all come as it does and process it at a pace that seems real and complete.
I am doing this alone now, maybe that is why I feel so lonely.
I miss having friends that call and chat, I miss hanging out with people. I can still do that, but I have to call the people or go out and find the event.
My art is helping me with some of that....
My art is slowly saving me.

Wondering while Wandering

So now that I am continuing to swallow the reality of our childless womb, and with another cycle coming to an end, it simply leaves me wondering or Wandering...
Who can I really relate to, where are my people?
I search often for other infertility stories, online, on television...in life.
I found a treasure trove of blogs today...I have linked them here.
I felt a little less alone, a little more "normal", maybe just little.

I have a different story then others.
I have chosen to stop the insanity before I am committed, I have chosen to retain a healthy marriage, I have chosen to not allow science into my womb any longer.
I was reading a blog today that addressed the loss of modesty in the process of fact finding. I was ripped back to my own experiences and trying to keep a stiff upper lip when new and different people came into rooms to probe my misshaped womb. "Hi there I am attached to the uterus you are looking at"
Only sometimes did this work...and I got a response.

I wander daily in my mind, when I see something that I would have shared.
Sometimes get lost for hours, sometimes only minutes but regardless I get lost in the seduction.

It is only when I catch myself do I actively reel myself in again.
The fact that I reel myself back is a new advancement.

For far too long I was seduced by that dark deep pool, wondering how far down does this go, why fight the weight of the water.

I am still seduced by the sounds of the sirens; The Barreness and her sweet quiet songs.
I still allow myself to stare into the pool once a month, and mourn what I had hoped for.
What will never be.

In my well planned and imagined conversations in my head, while on the seductive wanderings, I heard myself say:
"You came to me from a dream, you are a dream come true."

New Wave

The wake of this past cycle has left me wondering when my daydreams of a child will be quelled. We have tried, in the book smart way...ovulation sticks and temperatures and counting and having sex around the clock; and found ourselves in the hospital with ovarian cysts and pain that made me blind.

We took a "break" and I went back onto the pill for a few years...

Then we re-visited it again this year...but this time tried by not trying. Our results are the same.
Given that my best chances were in the first 6weeks...and we are into the 4th cycle...it is not a good sign.

I count days and wonder, did we make a baby this time? I survey my body, wanting to feel the very moment that I become pregnant, but these have fallen short too.

Hope is the sweetest seduction.
It is hard to reel it back in once it has been cast so far out.

I feel like I have been watching that plastic little buoy for years, bobbing on the surface of the water, waiting patiently for the fish to bite.
My worm has fallen off , and only a bare hook remains...that is not very attractive to any fish.

Waves lap at the shore, pulling all else towards me, while the little plastic buoy floats on the waters surface farther and farther away.

Happy Mothers Day...everyone else

This is what I was greeted with....yesterday morning.
I got my period later in the day.
I like to think that I have developed the ability to take a good kick in the gut.

Today I decided to stay in and watch crappy TV all day.
Happy Mother's Day, everyone else.

oh my aching back

I don't notice it all the time, but mostly when I sit still.
I have been off the pill for three months now...this is when I wanted to check in with myself and see how I was feeling.
Well I am three months out and have found that what I experienced the last time I went off the pill to not be the same this time out.
I still have handfuls of hair falling out of my head.
I still seem to be holding onto the extra weight from the pill
I still seem to have zero sex drive
I still am not pregnant.

What I am noticing is that I am developing month after month a lingering ache in my lower back...sometimes higher...but lingering ache.
The ache was the first thing I remember mentioning to the doctor when things started spiraling last time.
I am due to get my period this week, so i expected some additional ache...but the ache seems to be present before and after.

Maybe it is from the ache of all that I have been carrying...all this information, all this disappointment.

All is quiet

All is quiet...my period arrived and with it a slamming backache.
I guess I am going to experience the classic low back pain of endometriosis with my cycles.

I was moody and exhausted, but spent time in my studio trying to forget that I will not be a mother in this life. I was trying to compensate for my lack of fertility with another outlet of creative making, my art or gardening.
I get joy, (a feeling I am re-introducing myself to, as the feeling has been absent from my knowledge base for some time) from creating something tangible. My art is real, my food is real.

I catch myself breathing deeply while working on a new project, reminding myself to be in the moment, be present. This simple act seems difficult at times, but one I am working with...as my daydreams lead me down dark paths of things to never be and times I will never have.

My hopes for divine intervention from relatives gone before me, has left me feeling alone and forgotten, and absolutely lost.
What happened to wishes from heaven, miracles or magic....

I can only believe in nature now...Mother Nature and The Barreness, these are the only real things I know now.

Awaiting the disapointment

As time continues to tick away, I have found myself thinking less and less about the idea of a baby.
I think I am in a new part of my personal grief about the loss. I still can not really wrap my mind around many facts, but mostly I am sad.

I have no clue when my period will arrive, it is on a schedule I am not familiar with or aware of.
It arrived late last month, so I am not sure what to expect this time as well. It should be here this week, but has yet to arrive.
I sometimes freak out that I have grown another HUGE cyst and that I am a ticking bomb. My cyst waiting for our insurance to run out, so that it would happen when it would cost the most damage physically and financially.
or
I have grown nothing and that all of my past pains are a thing of the past and now I get to simply have the loss instead.
Sometimes that pain justified it all to me, made the loss more real, more understandable and more angry.
With no pain and no anomalies, I am simply left with the loss and a surreal sense of undone. How pathetic and sad.

Branded and cast out of the village.
Barren.

Come and Gone

6 weeks has come and gone and I feel a strange sense of empty.

Mind you, I am familiar with the empty of not having kids, but this seems different.
I feel like I have started mourning all over again. I am retracing my former steps again.
I have become aware that my drive to "try one more time" seems like beating a dead horse.

I have lost my chance to be a mother, I think the idea of riding that roller coaster all over again has come and gone. I am a solo rider...I am on this road with my husband and if we are lucky we can have a few young people close to us.

For now, I simply am going to introduce myself to The Barreness and tell her how I am going to play this game.

Day by day for now.

Same stick different day

In the face of all the risks and low chances....we went for it, taking the best chances of getting pregnant in the first 6weeks as a sign, I had lots of eggs ready to release, we had sex (unknown to us) during my most fertile time in the cycle) and I had loaded up on prenatal vitamins for a few weeks...we were relaxed and not thinking about anything but having sex and fun.

We jumped off the cliff without a parachute...not knowing fully what we were going to face.

So we decided to try and not try....I am on no birth control and neither is he.
We had a lot of fun and now my period is not here, not even in the late version.

We were terrified, and excited....but mostly SCARED beyond words...
Does this mean we really don't want to be parents after all? Does it means that we are selfish to want to just settle into our lives and not have kids after all this?
The dreams of and about children the last few night lead us to believe otherwise.
But aside from the fear we were ready to face, head on all the challenges and risks in the face of all the terror and fear.

I peed on the stick and began to cry, and left the stick in the bathroom... I was sure we were pregnant.



Turns out we weren't.
again

and so we begin again...

After days of tears and another meeting with the doctor to ask questions ....which seemed to confuse her.
I took a prenatal vitamin tonight.
I am not even sure I want a kid, in fact at times I know I don't have it in me....but there are other times when I think I might.
It seems like I want to be in this group of women and at other times I don't want to be.

My automatic response is aversion...but I think that is learned.
If I think about it, it is not that bad.
And sometimes it is.

I am still not sure where I stand...all I know is that I have decided to not take the pill for a cycle of three months to start with and see how things go from there.
I dream of loosing weight and my hair looking normal and staying in my head and sleeping a real sleep and wanting to have sex all the time.
I almost assume that I will not get pregnant, in some ways it is a comforting feeling. I know I can check that box off in my head again and for good.
Then the idea that I might get pregnant enters my head and I freak out and wonder...about way too many things.
all that can go wrong mostly...I don't immediately see all that can go right....but what I will endure and survive (hopefully) thru.
I want so badly to speak to a friend about this, and my doubts and feelings...but I seem to come up short.
I still feel so alone in this process....
I have a "baseline" ultrasound on Monday to see how big and where my fibroids are.
I am anxious...and will most likely go alone.
I have a blood test too...I will likely go alone.

I am alone in a lot of this....and hopeful that my husband will find a job soon.
Please let him find a job...