Finally Arrived

Quasi-Hiatus

Golly gee, make me eat sardines! Did you know I've been doing this blogging thing for nearly 2 years now?  A long time. Longer than I ever expected.

I've been very grateful for the support that I've received here, from all you commenters and readers, and from my fellow bloggers.  I seriously don't know how I would have made it through the past few years with my sanity intact if I had not found this amazingly down-to-earth, baby-dust-free community.  Thank you, all. 

But things change.  So many of my favorite fellow bloggers have moved on, started their families, or gone password-protected.  It is a reminder of the lack of progress in my own life.  Here I am, still "in a holding pattern."

In the early days of this blog, I posted every day or two, but now I'm down to once every few weeks.  Where blogging once helped me ride out the monthly peaks and abysses of infertility treatment, I am now finding that it doesn't help me deal with the adoption wait. In fact, I think the blog makes the wait worse because of my self-induced pressure to post something every week, despite having no news to report. 

So, while I am so very, very thankful to you all, I'm going to put this blog on semi-hiatus.

I'm not going to completely disappear, though.  I will definitely post again when there is some actual news about our adoption, such as a referral, travel call, and our upcoming journey to Korea.  But probably not until then.  For my sanity, I need to get my mind off the adoption until there is some definite forward motion.

I'm also going to take a break from reading blogs, for at least a month or two, in order to recalibrate my mental attitude.  But I expect to be back as a reader and commenter long before I make a blog post myself. I would just miss all of you too much.

I'd say about half of my readers already read all their blogs via an XML feed aggregator like Bloglines, NewsGator, my.yahoo.com.  I recommend you monitor my blog for new posts with this type of service so you don't have to keep coming back here.

In the meantime, I will still read and answer my email if you have questions about ectopic pregnancies, DES, IVF, adoption, etc...

Thanks for everything.  I'll be gone for a while, but will be back!

A Terrifying Journey Down Memory Lane

Almost exactly three years ago, some asshat nurse told me -- over the phone, no less -- that I'd probably never have kids.  She said it so enthusiastically, just giddy I would not be polluting the gene pool.  How it pisses me off that she was right.

Of course, I conceived naturally about 3 days later.  I didn't know I was pregnant for another 5 weeks, when I went to the ER with prolific uterine bleeding and mild abdominal pain.  It was a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, so immediate surgery was in order.  As far as emergency surgeries go, it was actually pretty relaxed. My life was never in imminent danger. I was not scared. I read a book while they prepped me for surgery. 

I intensely mourned the loss of the pregnancy for months and months.  I'm not one who believes that embryos or fetuses are actual children. I don't have an email signature with a tribute to my dead "angels, now in heaven."  I am revolted by all things drenched in cutesie sentimentality (although being maudlin is my speciality, a la this post).  Nonetheless,  I found it eased my pain to name this first potential child "Amy Lynn."

--------

One year ago, I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I was bleeding out from my second ruptured ectopic pregnancy.  I did not know until months later how close I was to death.  My blood pressure was 68/17. I was rushed into surgery with a cadre of doctors and nurses running alongside my gurney.  My medical records describe an OR incident where my vitals plummeted and they couldn't stop the bleeding; my abdomen filled with nearly 3 liters of blood, almost half the blood in my body.

Every day, something reminds me of that January day.  Every day, tears overtake me as I recall the peril to my life, my husband's complete despair and panic, and how terrified my family was.

I nearly lost everything.

If I had died, I know my husband would have been so wracked with grief that he would not have recovered.  He would never have forgiven himself for being 3,000 miles away when my tube burst and started spilling blood, especially since I had begged him stay home just four days earlier.  Neither would he have pardoned himself for pursuing the IVF cycle that caused it all.

My husband's heritage is Japanese.  As a result of that cultural legacy, he believes there are occasions where suicide is honorable and even demanded. So, I am pretty sure he would have ended his own life, if I had not pulled through.

While the loss of our second potential child cut me deep and left a festering, raw wound, I never named him or her.  That specific loss is not why I cry every day. 

I cry because I nearly lost everything.  Everything. And much more.

That Time of Year

It must be the holiday season. My mailbox is stuffed full of photocards of cute and not-so-cute kids wearing Santa hats and standing in front of Christmas trees.

I'm so glad that everybody we have ever met in college, graduate school, and throughout our professional careers have been so successful in populating the world.  Really I am.

But if you're going to send pictures of your proverbial mansion to a homeless person, shouldn't you at least have the courtsey to sign the card WITH YOUR OWN HAND instead of via some crappy mass-mailing from cardstore.com?

Oh, and don't get me started on the close friend of mine, who, fully aware of all our struggles, neglected to tell me she is pregnant AGAIN when I talked to her on the phone last week.  Instead, I learn about it from her fucking mass-mailing Christmas card:  "Merry Christmas from X, Y, Z (age 2!), and our new baby due in May 2006!"

Did I mention that just a few months ago, she whined to me about how she'd rather get tenure (she's a professor) than have another baby?  She needs to concentrate on her career but her husband was pressuring her, it's all so unfair, blah blah blah. 

As you can imagine, I was highly sympathetic.

I Am Happy

"You're happier these days than I've seen you in years."

So said T as I did a living room performance of the Tango with my dog, Mr. F.  (That little dog, he does not like to be dipped... his eyes open so wide they look like iPod click-wheels. His barely perceptible whimpers would break the heart of a less sadistic individual.  But not me! We do the airplane game too.  And the baby game.  He hates them both, but it's how I get my jollys.)

T was right.  I was indeed happy. 

But while subjecting my dog to indignities is always a freakin' hoot for me,  it hardly makes me, well, happy.

So, it's not the dog. It's the adoption. 

On the adoption road, the odds are overwhelmingly in our favor that we will have a child in 12-15 months.  The end is in sight!  We will not be in this childless hell forever!

As for the infertility treatment road that we spent 3.5 years exploring... well, my chances of success with IVF #5 were less than 10%.  And with donor egg/donor embryo/surrogates, etc... there would be a zero % chance of a baby in a year (we'd need time to to find a donor and scrape up the money, and then there'd be a good chance that none of it would work anyway).  Who knows how long it would take?

So I am happy.  But it's not because I think about adoption all day long, fantasize all day about our future son, or am shopping for cutie shwoopy baby outfits, etc...   No.  I am not there yet.

It's because I am now thinking about things OTHER than infertility - Christmas, my husband, my job, my hobbies...  I am suddenly more productive and far less tired than I have been in years. You won't believe what I've been able to accomplish lately - tasks that have been hanging over my head for YEARS.

I hadn't realized how much of my thoughts and my physical energy were consumed by constant research, consideration of possible treatment options, making plans A, B, and C, and feeling guilty, inferior, broken, disconnected, etc...

Now I am free.

I am truly happier than I've been in years.

Yet Another Adoption Anxiety Dream

What do you get when take an extreme pessimist who is also an egomaniac to the Nth power, make her drink several glasses of wine, work on adoption paperwork, and read Soper's blog, all while this repeats over and over on the television, and then send her to bed?

That's right. Even more fucked-up dreams.  But this time, they were of the "I am the most important (and most incompetent) person in the world" variety.

I dreamt that T and I adopted a beautiful, red-haired girl from Kazakhstan named Moonpie.  But the day after we arrived home, my carelessness and lack of experience killed her.

In Kazakhstan, Moonpie appeared to know how to swim; we saw this highly advanced one-year old doing the freestyle crawl and backstroke, on her own, in water way above her head.  She even had a wee pink bathing cap and tiny little goggles! How CUTE!  So, naturally, once in America, I decided to hone her pre-Olympian skills and let her go swimming in the local reservoir while I watched from the beach. And she did great, swimming like a tiny Janet Evans, doing the butterfly and everything.  She had really excellent form, if I say so myself.

Until she suddenly sank like a stone.  And drowned.

I was distraught beyond all recognition, and so angry with myself for being such an IDIOT and letting a one-year old go swimming.  Really, how beyond STUPID! You shouldn't even let an 8-year old swim alone, never mind a one-year old, even with a pink bathing cap!  And to think that I had done this to my beloved daughter, that she no longer existed, would never grow up because of me... I just wanted to kill myself. 

I was arrested and charged with murder.  The Kazakh government thought that I intentionally killed this child, in order to harvest her body for organs on the black market.  Believing all westerners to be similarly malicious, they suspended their entire international adoption program.

The US State Department was also aghast at my horrifically inept conduct. They took it as an indictment of the poor caliber of adoptive parents in general.  Therefore, they suspended international adoption of children from all countries.

So, not only did I lose our beloved child just one day after finally becoming a parent, I single-handedly took down the entire international adoption programs of two countries! All those kids who would no longer get parents. All those infertile couples, now left without children, some of them years into the international adoption process.  Because of me and my extreme incompetence.

All my fellow adopting infertiles blogged about that c&#@, that utter cretin, from California who destroyed international adoption. Karen devoted an entire entry to me, and there were 342 comments from everyone who now despised me. You were all so pissed off. You called me an asshat of epic proportions.

I was completely mortified that I had so vastly betrayed everyone. I debated "covering up" my identity in the blog world and posting something like "Yeah, I kind of know her, and I can confirm that she's such a moron that she makes those vacuous contestants on The Bachelor look like Mensa members!  I've seen her at the Starbucks and she is SUCH a fuckup -- she can't even put in a simple order for a grande-non-fat-sugar-free-vanilla latte without screwing it up! And she has no idea how to punctuate either -- can't use a hyphen to save her life, and uses too many exclamation points! She can't even parallel park! Seriously, it's a good thing she's not polluting the gene pool, or the human race might devolve back to one-celled organisms.  How this woman passed her homestudy, I have NO freaking idea."

Furthermore, Ang@lina J@lie's latest adoption was halted because of my antics, and she spoke angrily to the tabloids about me and my absolute lack of parental fitness.  As a result, my face was all over the media. The news outlets spoke about me constantly and reporters were parked in my driveway. My IQ was discussed at length on Larry King. I was fired from my job. I received a constant stream of hate mail for destroying international adoption as an option in this country and for killing an innocent child.  My family disowned me.  Worst of all, my husband left me.

It was so NOT a good time.

Infertile Poetry

The Childless Mother’s Lullaby
by Ella Rhoads Higginson, 1925

Oh, many’s the time in the evening
When the light has fled o’er the sea,
That I dream alone in the gloaming
Of the joys that are not for me;
And oft in my sorrowful bosom
Swells up the mother-love flame,
And I clasp with my arms that are trembling
My child that never came. . . .

The hours swim on the midnight,
The moon looks over the hill,
And the u-lu-lu of the night owl
Sinks mournfully and shrill;
The solitude aches with rapture,
And my heart with the mother-love flame
As I sing alone in the gloaming
To the child that never came.

From A BOOK OF LULLABIES  (Elva S. Smith ed., 1925).

-----------------

Mother’s Day
by Margaret Rampton Munk

So many times, I’ve waited,
Hoped,
Believed,
That God and nature
Would perform
A miracle
Incredible but common,
Nothing grew.
And oftentimes I feel
The mystery of life and growth
Is known to all but me,
Or that reality
Is not as it appears to be. . . .

My Secret Shame

I have a pretty good director-level job.

It comes with a good-sized private office that overlooks the mountains, and every afternoon I watch the fog roll in from the ocean. 

I am respected throughout the organization, and regularly called upon to help with key customer issues. 

I'm 35 years old, an industry veteran with over 13 years of experience.

I have a tough, no-nonsense reputation, and some of my colleagues think I eat nails for breakfast.

But sometimes...

...sometimes...

...I crawl under my desk, where those passing outside my door can't see. 

Literally.

Then I bring my knees to my chest and cry.  And cry and cry.  As quietly as I can manage.

You know why.

It is no longer a rare occurrence.

My Dreams Are Haunted by Adoption Anxiety

This is my dog (note: the photo of my dog has been removed to protect our privacy, but trust me, my dog is very, very cute), Mr. F.   He is the cutest.  Now, now, I know you're going to tell me that no, Mr. F. is not the cutest, that your dog is in fact cuter.  Well, let me break it to you gently.  You are wronger than wrong. Wronger than an RE who compliments you on your Brazilian Wax.  Wronger than... I don't know... the chairman of FEMA obsessing over his wardrobe instead of coordinating Katrina relief efforts? But I digress...

Anyway, last night I had TWO effed up dreams that I simply MUST tell you about.

In the first dream, Mr. F's original owner showed up at our house and wanted him back.  She said she had a legal right and the court papers to prove it.  We might have adopted him from the shelter at age one and taken care of him ever since, but by golly that didn't matter one iota.  She was the first owner, so she was taking him away.  In the dream I believed I had no choice but to comply with her demands. In fact, the county sheriff was overseeing the process. As I prepared to give my sweetheart, my munchkin, my beloved furry friend to this bitch of a woman who planned to keep him chained up in the backyard, I felt a blanket of numbing grief descend upon me and envelop my entire being. At 2am, I woke up screaming and sobbing, my face covered in tears.

Half an hour later I fell back to sleep. This time I had a "TV" dream, where I am not even really participating in the dream but am just watching it on TV. (Does anyone else have these dreams, because I do all the time and I'm thinking it's strange?) 

So in the dream, I'm watching TV and Sex and the City is on.  Charlotte is taking her adopted baby home from the hospital and is unbelievably happy. Then we cut to a few days later.  The birth mom shows up and says she wants the baby. Charlotte is very upset to lose the child, but fortunately she is good-hearted and, above all, she is rich.  So she does not mind having paid the pregnancy and birth expenses for this woman she would never see again.  "It's the best thing for the baby," she says, "I could never take a child away from his mother who loves him, and I'm just happy that I helped her get the prenatal care that she needed.  That she wasn't forced into homelessness and didn't end up giving birth in an alley in Chinatown." 

In the next scene, Charlotte is over the incident -- perky and optimistic as always -- and all set to try again.  And then I woke up.

No interpretation necessary, methinks.  The anxieties underlying both dreams are so obvious they might as well be posted to a highway billboard.

Natural Selection

Despite my frequent travel to Kansas, I believe in evolution and Natural Selection. 

But it was only this morning I realized that I am probably on the losing end of this belief.  Nature has clearly NOT selected my genes for further propagation, even as I've spent the last 3.5 years trying to override this selection with drugs, procedures, and surgeries.

I might be smart enough to obtain advanced degrees, a good and generous person, physically able to run a half-marathon, and inclined to be a devoted and caring mother. Nevertheless, Mother Nature has deemed my genes "unfit"; if she has her way, my genes will not contribute to the future evolution of the human race.  Instead, crack whores get the nod.

Eat me, Mother Nature.

Seeking Comfort at a Strip Mall (Part 3)

>> Continued from Part 1 and Part 2....

The next day, the crater in my soul had enlarged. The pain was crushing. Hoping that caffeine would give me a lift, no matter how minor, I headed out for coffee. At the nearby Starbucks, kids in their Sunday-best ran about and played.  I looked on while tears streamed down my face.  Again, I hid my face behind my hair. I wrote in my journal. I wallowed in my sadness.

Occasionally, I almost made eye contact with someone.

I once had an acquaintance who intuitively knew what was going on with people. He would approach someone, and within minutes she'd be confessing how disappointed she was that her father never acknowledged her and she'd then detail the deepest regrets of her life.  He would listen and listen, and ultimately leave her feeling understood and ready to move beyond her immediate pain.

Part of me hoped a similarly-gifted sorcerer would see me sitting quietly at my corner table.  She would see that I was empty inside, that I was acutely suffering.  She would approach me, say she didn't mean to pry, but maybe it would help for me to tell her my story.  I would protest, of course, but she would persist.

And so I'd tell her the whole story.  How much I wanted children, not just for me but for my husband and whole family.  And how, despite 3.5 years of trying everything, despite losing two pregnancies, despite bleeding out and nearly dying on the operating room table, despite four IVF attempts, despite numerous career and personal sacrifices, despite all my prayers, promises, and hopes, I had still not been blessed. All that suffering, for nothing! How distraught I was that I had let everyone down.  How I believed I was being punished for something, but was frustrated because I did not know for what. How I felt it all to be so very, very unfair.

This woman, she would listen to the whole thing, through my sobs and tears.  She would tell me she agreed; it was so profoundly unjust. That I was incredibly strong for having been through so much thus far, and I would get through this as well, somehow.  That I had a right to feel so very lost. That my life did have meaning, and it will continue to into the future; it just might be in a different way than I expected. And then she would hug me -- this woman I hardly knew -- and I would sob on her shoulder. And she would gently stroke my head and tell me that it was all going to be okay. She promised.

And I would believe her.