Tag Archives: conception

About turn

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27

The one thing that is readily established from re-reading these posts of mine is how much of a hypocrite I am.

Well… Maybe that’s a bit harsh. Not a hypocrite exactly, but there have been some apparent swings and roundabouts in the position I’ve held as we’ve made our slow way through this. (Just shag and it’ll happen! Keep just shagging, but also do yoga, meditate, change your diet, and have acupuncture and it’ll happen! Right back to my lazy default position of just shag! Ad infinitum…) Ultimately, I’m not too bothered by this. I think it’s all par for the course when you’re dealing with so much uncertainty, while feeling so utterly powerless to make something happen. And after all, despite how unhinged it may have made me seem, the essentially reasonable core position (just shag! Whenever and however you like!) has not changed, it’s just had different trimmings added depending on the season and the state of my psyche.

However, there has been a change lately which marks more of an abrupt and absolute about turn on an issue I thought I was once pretty clear about. A revisiting of a previous value judgement. My first lesson in how much I’d better STFU about my theoretical opinions on any and everything to do with procreation, because whoo boy, things look mighty different on the other side of an experience; certainly the feelings of this 31 year old with 2 confirmed miscarriages bear little relation to those of her naively optimistic self of 18 months ago. All of which to say that we have undergone initial (in)fertility testing, requested referral to a specialist having exhausted the little expertise our GP has to offer, and have thereby started the equally slow and uncertain process of medically intervening in our attempt to reproduce. (While still shagging. Obviously.)

Oh! My words. At least they’re tasty.

___________

In a (probably very related) move, I’ve been reading topical books again. I promised you chat about Half a Wife later this month, and that will definitely be happening, but I’ve also been very enjoyably distracted by French Children Don’t Throw Food (called Bringing up Bébé in the US), and will probably be forgetting my lessons of today and happily spouting my opinions on that as well. (Thus far very positive, so if you haven’t read it yet, and fancy giving it a once-over and wading in for discussion, I strongly encourage it!)

Cringe-worthy

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28

I suppose it’s pretty obvious by now that through sheer neglect this blog has entered a respectable state of semi-retirement (and no, not just because of what Kirsty said about those who are “trying”, although, ouch), but I thought I’d more formally put it to rest anyway.

It’s been over a year now, and in the funny way life tends to circle back on itself sometimes, despite the madness and the drama, we’ve landed up not much further on than where we started - living a pretty hectic, but mostly enjoyable life, into which welcoming a baby often seems a hair’s breadth short of utter madness, but what the heck! Life is short, and it’s what we want, so we’ll go for it anyway.

Thankfully, we’re not exactly where we started. Somehow, in the midst of everything else there’s been progress, though that self-same progress has meant, and will probably continue to mean for some time, silence on this front. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret writing what I already have for one moment. It’s clearly helped me to work through some of my neuroses, leaving me, I hope, much better placed to be the relatively chilled-out mother I would very much like to be one day. And I continue to believe that it’s a conversation we should be having, cringe-worthy or not.

But while I still do very much want to find myself knocked up one happy day in the hopefully not too distant future, it finally seems that, well, I’m just not that bothered about it. It doesn’t preoccupy my thoughts as it once did, and actually, I seem to have rediscovered that I have quite a lot else to be getting on with in the meantime. Quite a lot else that I’d very much enjoy getting on with while not pregnant, to be perfectly honest. And that all that money spent on acupuncture to rebalance my chi could instead be buying a lot of very tasty shoes.

So, please excuse me while I neglect this place further, and carry on enjoying the really rather wonderful life I do have. And hopefully, there’ll one day be joyful reason enough for me to return.

Keep moving

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14

When last I left you, I was running off into the sacred woodlands to hug some trees and commune with Gaia, hair whipping in the wind, gracelessly tripping over my too long maxi skirt and loosely tied sandals as I went. Well, what can I say other than all that tree hugging is good for the soul.

The soul I say. The body? Well, I’ve no idea. As far I know, I’ve not magically fallen pregnant in the meantime, and actually, I think a bit of break from the neverending cycle of hope and despair was much needed. So I’ve had a month of focussing inwards, wholly embracing my Traditional Chinese Medicine ‘prescription’, bracketing my days with yoga, meditation and affirmations, followed by a month of focussing outwards, wholly ignoring prescriptions of any kind, and thoroughly enjoying myself in the process. And now I seem to have found a happy medium, a rhythm where there is just enough of both, and for all intents and purposes I am content. Content in a way that I have little experienced since these vast maternal longings were unleashed within me. The worst of the storm has passed, and while I’m still picking my way through the new landscape it has left in its wake, I have made out enough of it to know that I can live here for a while.

There are some things that have helped me through these recent weeks and months. And while I continue to debate the wisdom of sharing these, because dryad that I may now be, it still embarrasses me to put them all over the internet when they haven’t even made it onto our public bookshelves (and likely never shall), I’ve never been one for hogging the good shit.

Acupuncture’s praises I do not mind shouting from the rooftops. If it is having the placebo effect my sceptic of a husband still attributes to it, then gloria in excelsis Placebo. (And how has a sugar-needle eradicated my annual allergies, my dear Boy? Try and placebo that.) The same for therapy. I’m not in therapy because of this, but as an issue that’s been writ large all over my conscious and unconscious lately, it’s gotten a fair deal of attention. Necessary attention: I am one of those typical neurotics who is all up in their heads all the time, so for me it has made complete sense to approach an issue in my body as much through my mind as with a more direct physical solution, because it has, in fact, turned out to be as much an issue about my mind, and deeply held views about my body. And with that we can leave the obscure psychobabble to one side, except to acknowledge that the fantasic one-two of acupuncture and therapy together has been a combination for the win.

I’m also not too ashamed of my charting. For the most part, it’s been incredibly reassuring that I do know the things I thought I knew about my body, and it’s been helpful to see things change, maybe improve, with all this looking after myself that I’ve been doing. (You know, some immediate gratification. After all, I haven’t had a personality transplant.) And it’s actually been much less of a pain in the ass than I thought it would be. This book, the charting bible, has rather obviously been invaluable. (As well as having a title that beautifully appeals to my inner control freak. Take charge of something in this otherwise heinously powerless state? But of course!) Helpfully for my stress levels, we’re not able to use all the temperature taking and gusset fumbling to actually time sex (all that living apart and whatnot), but no one is going to say no to little serendipitiously coincidental with my fertile window time between (or on top of, or indeed nowhere near) the sheets. And like I said, it turns out that I was right in thinking that I knew my body pretty well anyway, so my morning encounters with the thermometer won’t last.

Now this is where I kindly request you show kindness. Because I have also found this book (I always turn to books, I can’t help it) incredibly helpful to follow, a valuable home-supplement to the blessed needling. (Although, for the love of fuck, is the title off-putting. Baby-Making Bible? Seriously? Never making the public bookshelf, I tell you. Never.) I devoured it whole in those days immediately after my miscarriage, and would recommend it to anyone who had the slightest tolerance for alternative approaches, who was either having trouble conceiving for no known reason, or who knew that they might be in for some trouble due to prior health issues. It’s good, solid hippy shit, with enough evidence that the lady is well-acquainted with western medicine to keep western medicine practicioners like myself happy. And if yoga is your kettle of fish, but your crazy work hours keep you away from classes with live human instructors a lot of the time, this similarly daftly named DVD sequence is astonishingly good. And full of beautiful imagery of those woods where I was running around hugging trees, just so you know.

So. Here I am, exactly where I left you, but somehow very far removed, and moving on ever further all the time. Never mind that they be baby steps.

Unbeliever

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35

I’m not pregnant anymore. This poppyseed was not our baby.

And… I’m OK. Admittedly, I wasn’t initially, but I’ve had some time, and done a lot of thinking, and spoken to the Boy (and cried at him), and spoken to my therapist (and cried at her), and started having acupuncture, and done some more holistic reading, and gotten back into yoga, and had some much-needed rest (what can I say, it’s been quite a week!) and… I’m as OK as I can be. I really am.

Obviously, I don’t know why I miscarried early, again, and in addition to all the tree-hugging, hippie stuff already mentioned I have seen another, more sympathetic GP, and have a scan booked for next week to check out my ladyparts, so I’m not neglecting the hard science. But, I do think the overwhelming anxiety and disbelief that I experienced as my primary response to the pregnancy (instead of, you know, unremitting JOY) probably had rather a lot to do with it. (It may be stagnant Qi, or it may be chronically high levels of cortisol, but either way it has the same result. Environments poorly conducive to flourishing poppyseeds.)

So, I’ve decided that really, I’m not ready. Not quite. Clearly, I am full of Fear that I wasn’t completely conscious of, or whose strength I hugely underestimated before. So I’m calling a bit of a time out. Taking some time to work on me. To figure out what’s going on with me physically, and try to improve that, and simultaneously figure out what on earth is going on in my headspace, and see what I can do about that as well. This is not necessarily due to an assumption on my part that there’s something ‘wrong’ with me (although, a feeling of brokenness may well be part of what I’ve got to work on), rather it’s mostly an expression of my understanding that my body and my mind are inextricably intertwined, and I can’t look at the one without considering the other.

If I’m not too embarrassed by where this all takes me (see hippy, tree-hugging way of life already mentioned, and consider that I am now, I suppose, mindfully preparing for conception in a way I might have previously mocked - my words, they are mighty tasty), I might write a bit about it, because it’s already proving rather fascinating. Then again, remaining detached enough to ‘observe’ the process might be counterproductive to being completely immersed in it. And the first thing I’m working on is my optimism, and the belief that I’ll feel whole again in two twos. So, I don’t know about sharing this part. We’ll see.

There is one thing that is actually quite comforting about everything that’s happened. (And no, it really isn’t, ‘At least you know you can get pregnant!’ That might get you punched in the face, no matter how zen I become.) Because now I am fully consciously aware of this Fear of mine, so it’s out in the open, where it can be held up to the light, examined and understood. In the bright spring sunlight, so promising of regeneration and renewal, where hopefully one day quite soon, I can look it full it in the face and tell it to fuck right off.

Left field

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21

I went to see my GP today, at the Boy’s behest. And I’ve been completely unhinged as a result.

I went because of my bleeding. Ever more frequently I’ve been getting intermenstrual bleeding (extra bleeds that are totally separate and from in addition to my periods), which have been getting ever heavier as the months have passed (and ruining ever more nice pants), and the Boy thought it would be best to get it checked out. I went with thoughts of recurrent miscarriages (the bleeds only seem to happen on months when we were in with a chance, so to speak), cervical ectropions or polyps, and fibroids, expecting an uncomfortably awkward vaginal exam, and maybe some blood tests. Instead I got a brief and not very thorough history-taking session, and a referral for an ultrasound, with the nonchalant reassurance that it was very unlikely that anything ‘sinister’ would be going on at my age, but it would be best to have a scan to check it out.

I know that code. I’ve used it myself, frequently. Sinister means Cancer. Cancer had never even entered my hemisphere of thought until he said it. It came completely out of left field, and it’s really shaken me.

I know that what my perfectly adequate if not at all thorough GP said is true – it is a potential cause, albeit one that is extremely unlikely. And I don’t know if he maybe felt that the scan referral was a way of being super-cautious and reassuring with a colleague. But it seemed such a prodigious leap to make when basic and obvious things like failing pregnancies (hello! I’m regularly having sex without contraception!), or even an STI (as disturbing as that line of enquiry might be to my supposedly monogamous marriage, hello! I’m regularly having sex without contraception!) hadn’t been ruled out in any way, that I was left absolutely stunned.

On the brightside… well, fuck that. There is no brightside to a day in which you were thoughtlessly (and most probably, needlessly) told that you’d better have a test to rule out cancer. Something that I just might politely point out to my dear GP when I return for my scan results.

P.S. Life takes you to unexpected places. I never imagined this blog would end up being about my treacherous journey through difficulties conceiving and the associated health scares. I bet you came along for funny snark and clever insights. I’m afraid that all I can say to that is oopsy.

Status quo

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19

So.

I’ve been somewhat inadvertently practising that conception aid widely touted by a certain breed of pregnant women, as evidenced by my absence from this place. You know the one; the if you stop thinking/stressing about it, you’ll magically get pregnant method. Well, I haven’t really been stressing about it at all (although, to be fair, and honest, that’s most likely because I’ve had plenty else to stress about), and… I’m still not pregnant. Seems that method is just about as useful as a chocolate teapot, although all that practising has been rather more tasty.

I can’t stop being self-observant, though, and an obvious pattern has emerged. It appears that I am able to get pregnant, but am not able to stay that way for any significant length of time. I’m not going to weird you out by sharing exactly how I know that, or how it is that I know (or hope) that it’s likely to be a transient phenomenon, since talking publicly about my cycles crosses a vaguely defined but immutable line for me, but intellectually knowing that this too is incredibly likely to pass, somehow doesn’t necessarily make it that much easier to cope with emotionally. It doesn’t make the hope that arises despite my attempts to not get excited, and not care, go away any more quickly, and it doesn’t make the disappointment that takes the place of those dashed hopes any less acute, dulling though the overall effect of time may be.

So, indeed.

Don’t cry for me, though. I’m OK. I’m much more OK than I feared I might be in this situation. I’ve been trying my best to view it as a valuable lesson in letting go, not needing to be in control or working to a plan all the time, and realising that this will probably be the first time of many where I will just have to wing it and hope for the best.

I don’t actually know how much that zen approach has been helping, but what has been extremely helpful is the promise of Christmas at the in-laws, which will apparently be epic, and boozy beyond belief. In which case, it’s probably for the best that my future offspring hasn’t had to spend the first little bit of its life being viciously resented, because mommy wasn’t allowed to get lashed, and was instead forced to spend the entire holiday season with her in-laws stone cold sober now, isn’t it?

Blink and you miss it

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35

Last week I was pregnant. This week I am not. It really is that simple, that straightforward, that speedily dissolved. Who knew? 

I didn’t. Not really.

So, now I miscarry. Although I remain unsure of whether what I am experiencing really deserves that term this early on. Maybe this is just an ordinary period after one of the many, common, usually unrecognised ‘chemical pregnancies’, a term that I have never liked. For one thing, that long, silent pause, as at the end of a deep inspiration, did not go unnoticed, I felt it altering my own chemistry. But, the term makes it easy to dismiss, as if it never really existed to begin with. As if it was all in my mind from the start.

The indelible plus sign that remains is the only way I have of knowing that it wasn’t.

Then again, is ‘failed conception’ any better? Because who failed? The embryo, to navigate the infinitely complicated processes of cell division and growth, invasion and implantation of itself into another host being? Or me, to adequately nurture and protect it through those crucially vulnerable early stages?

It hardly matters, now. Done is done.

So we go on into the world as if nothing more than the ordinary and the banal happened this weekend. And we tell each other platitudes – at least it can happen for us, this time it just wasn’t meant to be, our time will come. And we tell each other the truth, over and over again, so that we can be sure of it – life is fucking unfair, but that’s OK, so long as there is more laughter than tears, and so long as we know that we two are essentially enough.

Three strikes and you’re out

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16

Today is the third day of my third period since we threw out contraception.

As much as I never wanted to feel this way, and as much as I know that tomorrow I may be as fine as I was yesterday, and as much as I think that each additional childless month is in so very many ways a blessing for which I should be deeply grateful, and as much as I know that three months is nothing at all to worry about, despite all of that, right now I simply cannot deny that my heart bleeds along with my uterus.

So, I can only hope that my heart is an organ as resilient, as capable of renewal and regeneration.

The Fear, part 3

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18

That I won’t get pregnant.

Well, obviously, right? Considering what we’re trying to do here…

As thoroughly relaxed as I’m trying to be about all this (and despite the neurotic sounding worrying, I’m actually doing pretty well), and as determined as I am not to let the fact that there’s a hoped for outcome other than happy sighs of sated exhaustion affect our sex life, I still worry that this will take longer than a few months, because what will become of me then? Will I be able to relax further into this decision of ours, and forget about it for days, or weeks at a time, eventually coming to accept what is to be our lot? Or will I just become more and more anxious, finally crossing over into the obsessive territory that I am trying so hard to avoid? (We’re not currently accepting bets on the outcome, thankyouverymuch.)

I already know that my bits and pieces used to work well, so if they don’t now, then what? My aging ovaries have given up the ghost? My ancient uterus has gone off on a cruise, never to be seen again? Previously potent hormones are now feeble and ineffectual? As if I wasn’t already starting to feel old and decrepit enough in the home stretch to 30.

But, what if (yes, those again) we really are reproductively challenged? I know how much modern medicine can do to help couples who are desperate to conceive nowadays, but actually, we don’t want to go very far down that road. For one thing, knowing the physical and emotional ordeal involved in fertility treatments, I simply don’t think that I’m robust enough to withstand any but the most basic of them. Also (and this is not at all a judgement on anyone who is able to pursue fertility treatments in this country, but is purely a reflection of our own views and principles), working within the NHS, knowing the substantial cost of the more advanced treatment options, and having seen all too clearly precisely how useful this money could be elsewhere in the healthcare system, our utilitarian hearts just aren’t up to asking for such resources to be put aside for what feels like our very private and completely selfish desires.

Of course, it’s easy enough to say that now, at the beginning of this new adventure of ours. But, I’ve already tasted how overwhelming this urge to have a child of my own can be, how it can derail well-laid, rational plans, how much of a hypocrite it can make me. There’s no knowing whether I’ll feel differently about things in 5 heartbreakingly childless years’ time. And there’s no knowing what will become of this child-sized void that has recently appeared in our little family if it remains unfilled, and the effect that will then have on our relationship. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to stand by our decision, and that if we do anything at all, it will be to try to adopt one or two of the world’s unwanted little ones. But, without actually being there, in that theoretical future place, how can I say for sure?

And so, as is my wont from time to time, I worry. It helps that sometimes I can read things like this, and look at the Boy and know that whatever happens, there will always be the two of us. And hopefully, regardless of whether we are two, or three, or five (erm, highly unlikely), that just us two will always, in essence, be just enough.

Be not afraid

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4

I had this whole other post drafted and ready to publish. It was all about my other recent fear – that I won’t get pregnant. In it I blathered on about my worry that if this is to be the case for us, over time I’d surely degenerate into the kind of desperate obsession with conceiving that I most hope to avoid, where it comes to consume the entire life of the couple involved, to the detriment of their relationship and their sanity. (Absolute worst case scenario, I know, and many couples cope with this situation with grace and aplomb, remaining admirably sane, and with a stronger relationship from the ordeal they’ve been through, but I am very good at imagining the worst.) I also wrote about my fear that when actually faced with such misfortune, we wouldn’t be able to hold to our current resolve of not putting ourselves forward for fertility treatment, and just accepting that this was to be our lot in life, but in time maybe, if an aching hole in our family remained, eventually adopting one or two of the world’s unwanted littles to take that place. I feared that instead we would go down that route, and trash our principles as well as our life.

I wrote that post, and then I sat on it for a couple days, and now I’m glad that I did.

Because, in the meantime, life intervened. We found ourselves having to move house and change jobs. And as I sit here this morning, surrounded by a sea of boxes that will be carted off to our new home later today, and looking at the farewell banana given to me on my last day at work (don’t ask), I realise that publishing that post now would be bullshit on my part. Because, right now, I am not afraid. Of anything.

I face living mostly on my own, possibly while pregnant, and returning to work that is done just for the sake of earning a living, for at least the next year, and instead of being terrified and daunted by what lies ahead, I’m excited by the possibilities open to me. I really am, even though I don’t know what they are as yet. I have a little house of our own to decorate, and learn to independently run, and a fulfilling career goal to work towards. I have some free hours in the evenings that I’ll be able to fill with things I’ve been wanting to do for some time, and a really good man who’ll never be emotionally distant, even when he is geographically far away. And that, for me, is good enough. As good enough as the mother I hope to be one day. Not perfect, liable to make a countless raft of hideous mistakes I am sure, but still, just enough.

So, I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I know that whatever happens, we’ll be OK. I know that fresh anxieties will come and go over time, and that I won’t always be in this state of content acceptance. But just knowing that I can be here, that I’ve found this place, and can come back to it, time and again, when needed? That. too, is enough.