Another Day

So another birthday party last night.  It was fun and great and super laughy and all.

A friend of mine tried for 7 years to get pregnant with her 2nd child.  She was luckily successful last year and now has a 7 week old baby.  She brought her to dinner.  Everyone was passing the baby around and cooing and kissing her.  It was very sweet.

And so so sad.

I am so happy for this friend of mine, OBVIOUSLY.  I just had the slightest twinge of jealousy, which doesn't usually happen to me.  I most often find myself cooing along with the others, making funny faces and breathing in that delicious baby smell.

I'm not sure why I was struggling.  Maybe it was because I wasn't feeling well and didn't have the energy to be positive.  Maybe it was because I'm (still) on my period, which is like cycle 30-something.

Or maybe I'm turning into a bitter old hag who can't be trusted around small children.  I'll be the friend who you're afraid to let hold your baby because I might caress it Lenny-style or put it in my trunk and run away with it.


On the optimistic side of not being pregnant, the sushi was divine.

Surrender

It's an interesting time for me when I get to the end of my rope. There it is, staring me in the face, and yet, so far, I've always been able to will just a few more inches out of it. Yes, I am sick to death of thinking about my eggs and sperm and what day it is in the cycle, but my mind still can't wrap itself around the fact that I will not have another child someday. I think it's because every beat of my heart tells my head that it's not true. (Maybe they could get a conference call going with my uterus.)

Well, today is different. I've somehow hurt my back and I've been in pain for well over a week now. I'm trying to give up sugar for a couple weeks so I have a protesting headache because my addiction hasn't been fed. And the negative pregnancy test is the icing on the cake. It's the last of my Clomid cycles and my doctor wants me to take a 2 month break from fertility meds to let my body get back to normal.

I don't know what's next.

Cry Baby Cry Baby

I'm pretty sure I'm not pregnant. It's only 11 DPO but I can just tell. But that's not the point.

Today was my baby's last day of kindergarten.

I went to his school party and as I was watching him play duck, duck, goose, I was talking to another mom that I have become friends with over the year, and I just starting CRYING. In the classroom! I'm glad my son didn't see.

I just watched him and mourned how quickly it is going by and how he looks like a real kid and not a little kid. I cried because I have been pregnant 3 times since he was born and he still doesn't have a little sister. I cried because the other moms were there with toddlers in tow and pregnant bellies and seemingly no knowledge of what it's like to have their child graduating from kindergarten and being no closer now than we were 3 years ago to having another.

I cried tears for the babies I have longed for and lost and the thought that I may never see another one of my children on his last day of kindergarten, or feel little feet kicking me from inside or the incredible love at first sight when my baby is born. I cried because I feel bad that my perfect, beautiful son doesn't make me feel complete as a mom. Not because he is anything less than phenomenal, but because I thought there would be more by now.

I cried more because I feel defective and alone and misunderstood and depressed and sad and scared and empty. The sadness is palpable and I'll be okay tomorrow but today I am crying, crying, crying for as long as I want to.

Mean Girls vs. Nice Girls

When I was in the fourth grade, I decided to grow my bangs out. Now this was right during the horrible bang movement of the 80's and way before the growing out your bang revolution of the 90's. I was innovative. Nobody else was growing out their bangs yet. My mom, who was a part of the 60's and 70's hippie hair movement and had some experience in this field, tried to help me accomplish my goal. She bought me some barrettes and showed me how to part my bangs and pull them back while they were growing. I improvised and also sprayed a ton of hairspray on them to keep them from coming out of the barrettes.

One day at school, I was getting on the bus when a 6th grader approached me and demanded to know why in the world I was growing out my bangs. I stuttered a little and managed to get something out about how I didn't like curling and ratting my bangs. She said flatly, "Well, you look dumb without bangs." Stunned, I came back with a defeated answer of "Well, I look worse with them." I wish I could say that this reply was my way of standing up for myself and telling her how freaking awesome my hair looked and that she could suck it, but sadly, I really didn't think I was pretty either way. As if that wasn't bad enough, this horrible 6th grade girl then DEMANDED that I take my hair out of the barrettes so that she could be the judge of which hair style would make me look less repulsive.

I promptly went home and told my mom to cut my bangs. I don't think I told her why. She tried to convince me that once they were grown out that my hair would look really cute but I didn't believe her. A few years later in junior high, all the girls were growing out their bangs. I didn't dare to try again until I was 18 and in college. I believed for all those years that I looked HORRIBLE without bangs.

It's funny how one mean girl can affect you. I have no idea who that 6th grader was and only had a 4 minute conversation with her, yet it left me with a belief for almost a decade - an opinion that wasn't even true!

Although it's unfortunate that it affected me so poorly, I think it also taught me a lesson... words hurt. Something negative you say to a person can really punish them for a long time without you even realizing it. I'm sure that the horrible 6th grader never thought about me again. (I'm also damn sure she grew her bangs out a couple years later.)

My point is that I believe the positive stuff you say to a person can also have a lasting effect. So to my 4th grade self - you look HOT with or without bangs and my god you are pretty! And to all of you... thanks for your support and willingness to share your stories and positive attitudes with me and for continuously (figuratively) telling me how great my hair looks.

Expectations

I have been reflecting a lot today. About expectations. More specifically, about expectations that are not met. You might think that I am talking about not being able to get pregnant, and although that is a part of it, my focus is more general. What do you do when your life's expectations are not met?

I had an idea of marriage. Of my marriage. And what I would want it to be. I have had this idea forever. Whether it was deciding what my parents showing me was right or wrong or dreaming up what my home or children would be.

I had an idea of money. I went to college and earned a degree so that I would always have a successful job and make enough money to sustain our lives as well as save for the future.

I had an idea of family. How many children I would have, what their age differences would be, what their names were, what sports they would play, and what kind of education I wanted to provide for them.

So, the good news is that I have a marriage and a lovely, lovely child. Although I don't have a lot of money, we somehow seem to make ends meet each month.

But it is not what I expected.

I knew my husband and I would have hard times, but I never expected it to be as hard as it is, as often as it is. We are both very stubborn and tend to butt heads quite often. We also have different expectations about where our future will land us and that makes me nervous for us. And although we make ends meet each month, we are still in debt and can't seem to create a savings account or a college fund. And the children part, well, I can't really control that but it does add some increasing pressure and sadness to our lives that we can't seem to get another one.

So my point of this very depressing post is this: How do you adjust your expectations without feeling like you are settling for less than you deserve?

I am working very hard on focusing on the big picture. My husband has a successful business so one day it should make us some better money right? My son is amazing and smart and super good looking and he gets to live with his mom and his dad every single day. Although my marriage isn't what I expected, it does make me happy most days and my son deserves a family.

So I'm thinking I have some small piece in the happiness puzzle. I mean, if there's some object or person disappointing you constantly, you could probably give that up. But this is my life! I can't just quit it. I just have to find a way to fine tune it I suppose.

It Didn't Work

So, the first cycle of Clomid, monitoring, and trigger didn't work.

I'm sitting here at the keyboard, trying to decide what to type about how I feel about that. In all honesty, I am just not surprised, and therefore, somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing.

I guess I'm just one of those lucky optimists that can move on to the next cycle rather easily. I have already spoken to my doctor and increased my dosage to 100 mg for this cycle. I will go back for monitoring again in about 2 weeks to see if the increase will help with more follicles, and I have scheduled some dental work that I was holding off on until I knew if I was pregnant or not.

I'm. Not. Pregnant.

I guess it does sting a little.