Ready for a Break

This past two months has been tiring with all the business going on with my arm, but the past several weeks have been a nightmare of activity!!! 

Tonight, I am sitting in the basement coloring in price tags so they’re the correct color for the upcoming consignment sale at which I plan to sell of a bunch of baby clothes that either got dumped here in May or else were Leah’s.  So I spent last night sorting clothes and today Cindy came over and we re-sorted and tagged most of it.  Since she’s left, I’ve gotten all but the 0-3 month clothes tagged and bagged.  Which means as soon as I think I’m done, I’ll find stuff I missed.

This week we had a lot of appointments.  Penny had 2 events at school plus a meeting with her AFS liaison, and I had 3 medical appointments for my arm.  After my last orthopedist appointment on Thursday, I noticed Leah had developed some sort of rash around her mouth and wound up taking her to the doctor.  Fortunately, she is fine and has nothing more than a bad cold.  Unfortunately, she has shared the cold with her big sister, so now both girls are miserable and stuck in bed.  Happily, on my own health front, I have completed physical therapy successfully (and made a new friend in the process!) and have been discharged from the orthopedist.  I am allowed to lift up to 30 pounds and drive again (little did they know!).  The risk of re-dislocating my elbow is slim to none.  It would have to be another gross act of stupidity on my part.  So that’s a huge relief to know, although I am not terribly graceful so it’s possible I could do something else idiotic at any moment!

All this week, The Chief has been taking a class up at Quantico.  He has had to go in early, which means he has had to take the train, which means I’ve had to get up early to drive over there.  I thought today would be the last day, but unfortunately for me, his regular driver will be on a much-deserved vacation until Wednesday, so Tuesday, which is Penny’s first day of school and Leah’s first day of school (I’ve signed her up for Toddlin’ Time, a local music and exercise Mommy N Me program here in town), I also have to squeeze in a ride to and from the train station.

Housekeeping, needless to say, has fallen by the wayside.  I managed to get the rabbit cleaned out this week and I cleaned out the fridge.  Other than that: nothing.  Which means I have a lot of catching up I need to do. 

Recently, a link to The Introvert's Corner appeared on a new friend’s Facebook page.  I read over a lot of it, and really related to the idea that my energy comes from internally, meaning I need time to myself to recharge my batteries and be the best me I can be.  Keeping up with my family has not afforded me much opportunity to do so!  I admit, I am loving every minute of having Penny here, and I do think I’m going to feel a little bit (ok, a lot bit) lost come Tuesday when she boards the big yellow school bus and heads off to school.  But I am looking forward to getting Leah back on a schedule that allows me to have an hour or two each day to myself.  I am exhausted.

It’s funny, but all this has turned my thoughts towards family and expansion.  I have 3 friends right now who are pregnant and expecting early next year.  2 of them already have young children at home, and 2 of their children are not much older than Leah is.  And I’ll be honest, there is nothing in this world that could entice me right now to take on a newborn.  I think, “My God, you must be crazy!”  Leah is at a stage right now where she does not give a damn about toys or TV.  There are 3 things in the world that make her happy:  running through the house in her shoes, playing with buckets of water on the back porch, and taking walks around the neighborhood.  Period.  The idea that I could go back to getting up every 2 hours with a newborn and then have to chase around an extremely active toddler all day appeals to me not one bit.

Not to mention the fact that The Chief has been busily applying for jobs in the DC area and informed me that if he gets one, I’ll have to take him to the train every morning.  Thus did I immediately think of Steve Martin in the movie Parenthood when he utters the phrase, “My whole life is have to”.

My neighbor Lisa and I were walking today with the kids and talking about how everyone is asking about the long weekend and who’s doing what, and how every day and every weekend is the exact same to us, and what would we even dream of doing with a 3 day weekend.  I would check into a hotel on a beach, someplace warm and sunny.  In the morning, I’d get up and have my nice continental breakfast, go change into a swimsuit and shorts, grab a book, sit by the water and pretend to read while I actually slept for about 3 hours, during which time someone else would clean up my living space.  Then I’d get up and have a nice lunch somewhere nearby that I didn’t have to drive to, head back to my newly clean room and fall asleep for another 4 or 5 hours, get up, walk somewhere else for dinner, head down to the beach, call a friend or family member, and then go up and sleep some more.  I would probably feel incredibly guilty the entire time, but I’d do it.

Anyway, I think all this fatigue and chasing and food in my hair and the actual work of parenting, which you don’t really believe in until your baby is here, has helped assuage some of my ongoing feelings of grief over our infertility.  Or at least I no longer think “WHYYYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!” when I hear someone else is expecting.  I think, “Sucker!” :-D  But I would not trade either my toddler or my teen for all the tea in China.  I love them both dearly.

So now I am going back up to the living room to finish sorting and tagging and then will hit the hay.  Tomorrow is another weigh in and the farmers market and then I might just put The Chief in charge while I take a long nap.  Have I always had this history of biting off more than I can chew, but managing to get it done anyway?  Don’t answer that! :-D

Elbow of Doom…

Ok, so here’s how it all went down…

This past weekend was tremendously busy.  We had tons of people over to help wire up the general’s office, move furniture, put Penny’s furniture together, etc.  I mean, we were hopping!  Trips to Home Depot, running around to find tools, calling neighbors, kids running, it was a scene! 

By Monday, all the furniture was where it needed to be, the computers were back up and running, and I had had quite enough of painting for a while.  So my neighbor called around 9:30 to see if I wanted to take the kids over to the pool and to have a picnic.  I thought that sounded like a great idea.  When we hung up, I decided that it would really make me happy to come home and have all of my part of the chores done, meaning I could just hang up The General’s flag, posters, awards, pictures, etc. and be done with it.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know where the step ladder had gotten to.  It hadn’t been put away, it wasn’t in the office or any of the rooms it had been used in.  I was feeling impatient, though, so I decided to just go ahead and use The General’s office chair.  You know, the one that tilts. And swivels. 

I grabbed my staple gun and the big US flag and climbed up there.  The first staple, no problem.  Leah thought this looked like great fun, so she sat right under the chair to watch.  I started lining up the flag for the second staple, and something went wrong.  The chair tilted and swiveled at the same time, and I just remember thinking, “don’t land on the baby” a split second before I mercifully crashed to the floor and avoided her. 

Pain rocketed through my arm and Leah started screaming.  I sat up and I knew I was in trouble.  I could not see the bottom half of my arm at all.  From my elbow on, it was gone.  I pulled my shoulder around and my arm flopped into sight, hanging loose like a floppy noodle.  I knew I had to get the phone from up on the desk, but i thought I had broken my arm.  Still, I leaned on the arm anyway, and it must have snapped back into place at that point.  I called 911 and they said they would send over paramedics.

Unfortunately I didn’t know The General’s new number at work, so I had to go find my cell phone, and when I dialed it went straight to voice mail.  I left him a tearful message, hung up, and called Melissa and told her I needed help.  She said she’d be right down to get Leah and would meet us at the hospital.  In an attempt to keep calm, I tried to call Lisa back and my mom, but then my cell rang and it was The General.  He told me he had called Lisa and she was coming to get Leah.  He was getting a ride and would meet me at the hospital as well.  I sat down in the living room and pretty soon a fire truck roared up.  I thought, “No way in hell am I riding to the hospital on top of a fire truck.”  Lisa roars in, the ambulance right behind her, and I’m yelling to the firemen to come in while Lisa is screaming to them that the back door is always open and pulling her son, clad only in a diaper, to get Leah.

Somehow, the paramedics had been informed that I had ripped my arm off, which is why they sent the fire truck, apparently.  The first fireman in was a left arm amputee, and that’s when I really started flipping out.  No sooner had Lisa gotten in than they stood me up and walked me out to the stretcher and loaded me into the ambulance.  I was hyperventilating and they kept asking me the same questions over and over and telling me to calm down, which I couldn’t.  Finally they decide to run an IV, which given my fear of needles was not going to go well.  The EMT kept telling me not to hold my breath, why was I so upset, but until she injected the morphine and strapped an oxygen mask to my face, I could not settle down.

Melissa got to the hospital no more than 10 minutes after I did and sat with me before and after the x-rays.  It got to the point that she could answer the questions as well as I could.  The answers were basically:

1.  No, I cannot possibly be pregnant.
2.  My birthday is 8.23.xx
3.  I fell off a chair.

The General arrived and then Dr. S came in.  He offered me some more pain meds, so I just asked for Tylenol.  Of course, just like with my leg, the meds never came until the bitter end.  Finally Dr. S came back and told me the x-rays were clear and I had probably just sprained it.  Here’s 20 Vicodin, you’ll be better in a week.

Now I knew damned good and well I hadn’t just sprained it, so I told Melissa to get me an appointment with Sunshine.  She got on her iPhone and found OSC but her phone wouldn’t dial out, so she used The General’s phone and made the call.  They weren’t able to see me till Wednesday, but we got an appointment with Joe Gowaty, who had helped me with my knee a couple of years ago, so I was happy with that.

I told Melissa I wanted some chicken mcnuggets, so we went through discharge, she dropped me home, and she and Mike headed out to get the Vicodin and the mcnuggets.  Lisa was upstairs with the little ones, so i went up there and let her know I was home.  She helped me into bed, and Leah snuggled right up to me and wouldn’t leave my side.  Daniel kept running around entertaining us and Melissa arrived with my nuggets.  I fed the fries to the babies and then Melissa and Mike got back with the meds, so Lisa felt free to go home.  I popped a couple pills and Melissa offered to take Leah home with her for the night, so I agreed.  I talked to both my parents, and my dad said he’d be down the next day, so Melissa said she’d keep Leah till Dad got here.  I passed out cold.

I remember very little about the next couple of days.  I remember Melissa coming back and my dad arriving and all of us eating Chinese food.  Wednesday morning, we dropped Leah off with Lisa and went to see Joe.  He had reviewed the x-rays and agreed that I hadn’t broken anything but listened while I explained exactly what happened and said it sounded like a dislocation, but that he’d need an MRI to be sure.  He also didn’t like the sling from the ER and prescribed a hinged elbow brace.  OSC made the appointment for the MRI that afternoon, and Dad and I went and got Leah and did the grocery shopping.  Melissa came down again to watch Leah so we could do the tests and we headed to the hospital.

Apart from the pain of getting my arm up over my head, the MRI wasn’t bad.  It was very noisy, but not bad.  When I got out, we decided to go see about the brace.  The pharmacy at the hospital directed us to Homecare America, which directed us to an orthotics fitter in Old Town (Mobility Prosthetics and Orthotics on Caroline Street).  We went and met with a guy named Donnie, who gave me the bad news that our insurance had a $300 deductible on the brace that I’d have to pay up front.  I told him I would rather meet with Joe again to discuss the MRI results.

Friday I went back to Joe for a final assessment.  It was bad news:  every last tendon, etc. holding my elbow and thus two halves of my arm together is torn.  Consequently, my elbow can dislocate itself again at any time.  This is the real reason, Joe told me, that I need the hinged brace.  It will hold my arm in place, giving everything a chance to heal itself.  I asked if I was allowed to drive, and I am not for at least a month.  If I were a professional athlete, I’d be a surgery candidate, but I am not.  As such, the don’t expect I will ever gain full extension of my elbow again, but I hope to prove them wrong on that account!  In about 3 months, I should be able to lose the brace. 

So we went back to see Donnie, I ponied up my $300 and got my brace fitted.  It is a monster of a thing, and when we went to the store afterwards, people were falling all over themselves to get out of my way!

I have done a good job keeping things in perspective.  For one thing, for weeks, I have been complaining of exhaustion.  I figure this is God’s way of making me take a break.  We have had to cancel our planned trip to RI and I cannot even think about NYC at this point. 

Secondly, my dad is here.  Considering that we spent half of this year not speaking, this time together now is an extraordinary gift and chance to mend our relationship. 

Third, it’s not my leg or something even more serious.  Yes, the fact is that I am in constant pain.  But unlike last time, I can independently get up and walk around.  I can (mostly) shower without help.  The things I can’t do are tough, I’m not going to lie.  I would love to be able to wrap my arms around my daughter and pick her up.  I’d like to put on a bra by myself!  I’d like to be able to put toothpaste on my toothbrush and chop up a tomato and take the lid off the Tylenol unassisted.  But in 5 days’ time, I regained the movement in my fingers.  I remember I got real depressed when I broke my leg four years ago, and my buddy Joe was visiting.  I was complaining to him about everything I couldn’t do and finally I said, “Why the hell did it have to be a leg?  Why couldn’t it have been something else?”  He replied, “Like what, your neck?”  I gained perspective in an instant.  I am mindful of the fact that i fell flat on my back from 6 feet in the air and all I did was dislocate my elbow.  That’s pretty damned lucky.

Finally, my main concern away from Leah beimg Ok and my own health was being able to sing with my choir on Saturday night.  I was devastated by the possibility that I might not get to perform.  I deliberately took fewer pain medications and slept during the day to conserve energy, but I got to sing with that choir, and I sang with all my heart and a huge lump in my throat.  I was so proud of myself, and I am so grateful to Dad, Mike, Melissa, Andy, Paul, and Kris for coming to share in that moment with me.  Honestly, it was one of the proudest moments of my life, thank you for coming and recognizing how important it was to me.  I was honored to sing for you.

So that’s where things stand.  Tomorrow I will post some answers to the question I am asked most often:  How can I help?  I know that we will need the most help July 12-19 when my dad is up in NY.  I just need to get over to the PT office first before I send up a cry for assistance.  Thanks to all who have asked!!!  I will have answers soon. :-)

Report from the Oral Surgeon

Well, she stuck her finger in my mouth, pushed on the spot for 2 seconds, asked if it hurt, I said no, and she told me to come back in 3 months.

It is some sort of calcification. It is unusual for white women to suffer this type of malady--typically black women are more like to get it.

If the spot continues to grow, it will have to be removed. Removal will involve approximately 3 root canals.

Let's all pray that it stops growing.

Dental Update

I have made an appointment with the oral surgeon for Thursday at 8:30am to have the spot on my jaw evaluated. I'm hopeful that it's nothing serious, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous.

This is why I don't go to the dentist for years at a time :-)

Knee!

Today I was discharged from PT officially until further notice! WOO HOO! My knee feels so much better. I'll be seeing the orthopedist in a couple weeks to check on the situation, but I probably won't have to go back, and I'm so happy. I will have my life back! It's been good to go, but at the same time, I'm glad not to have 2 nights a week taken up with it. I have a life, ya know.

So I'm back to ship shape, and probably even better. But it was very interesting to see the way the process works and how they get you moving again. I enjoyed it. And I'll enjoy not going too.

Woo Hoo!

So on Sunday I was doing some shopping at Walmart for our adoption meeting on Friday (we needed fire extinguishers, etc.). I was heading past the electronics department and I decided I'd just have a look-see about Wii Fit. As I drew close, I noticed a fat lot of white boxes. Drawing even closer, I saw WII FIT as large as life. I hadn't even passed the Keeper of the Keys, so I asked her, "Can I buy that Wii Fit please?" And she obliged.

I felt shiny as a new penny when that thing was paid for and in my cart. I have been looking high and low since they came out, even contemplating paying extra for it on Ebay to get my hands on it. But I kept telling the General, "I suspect that I'm just going to walk in somewhere and get randomly lucky finding it."

And I was right. Who knew?

So I brought it home and figured the whole thing out--more synching with the Wii and putting the little feet on it for use on carpeting, etc. But man, is it ever fun! And just a wee bit insulting too. After it did my BMI and weight, it blew my Mii up like a balloon, and I yelled at it, "Hey! I've lost 30 pounds!" The Wii scoffed at me.

After an hour's worth of play, it basically kicks you off, telling you to rest. And it also told me I'm not strong enough to do yoga yet.

The genius behind it, though, is that the more you play, the more exercises it unlocks. You start out with only 3 or 4 per section (balance, strength, aerobics, yoga) and as you play more and more, it adds a new selection to one section or another. You also get a little piggy bank with the number of minutes played, graphs that show what you've unlocked and that chart your progress weight and activity wise. And it can all be password protected if you don't want others to be able to access your information.

The General was even able to get on it and create an account.

So far, I am loving the balance games--especially the ski jump. I also turn out to be a crack hula hooper. The step routine is a challenge, however! And I apparently, as I mentioned, suck at Yoga, except for the deep breathing.

So, I look forward to having a lot of fun with it and seeing myself improve day to day. I've been adding it to my other exercise, and it sure beats sitting around trying to figure out what to do besides sitting around.

Knee Update

Well, it turns out I have something called patellar-femural syndrome and I'm developing arthritis. Years of extra weight, plus overcompensating for my weaker leg, plus driving have worn down my knee's cartilage and now my kneecap is trying to find itself a new home by sliding. It would also appear I may have been overdoing it slightly with my workout routine...

I saw the folks over at the clinic where I had my leg repaired, and I would seriously trust them with my life after the great job they did on my leg. I saw someone new today, and I really liked him, although it's clear that Sunshine is the star of the show. This guy looked just slightly beleaguered, kind of like "I dare you to be disappointed that I'm not Sunshine." But I was a good patient and let him poke around, even when I thought he was trying to kill me. Seriously? It HURT. Joe (the PA) even said, "You've got a lot of movement going on in there."

They took some x-rays to confirm it, showed me some diagrams that I really didn't understand very well, and then sent me across the hall to the physical therapy department. Fortunately, the place where I'm going to have my PT is only 2 streets over from here. Unfortunately, the earliest they can see me is a week from now. And until then, the most activity I'm allowed to engage in is to walk and possibly do water aerobics (fat chance, the Y here is too expensive to join if I'm not sure I'm going to stick with it). Otherwise, I have a few exercises to do daily to strengthen my knee, and I just have to wait for PT.

The good thing about doing WW is that they were very encouraged with my losing weight and taking some of the pressure off my knees. So an added benefit of all this is that my health, even though I'm in pain, is improving. Cool.

(Cross posted to Kate's Weight Blog)

Lengthy Thoughts on Infertility

I started to think this afternoon that I was maybe going a little bit crazy. I spent most of yesterday and all day today crying. It got the point when someone would ask me if something was wrong, I would say, "No, I think my eyes are leaking" and then I'd go hide.

So tonight, I got home and I googled "The pain of infertility" and read a bunch of stuff. And I realized that nothing I'm going through is new.

Some of the more interesting pieces I read:

An article from Glamour Magazine which made the following points:

I know. I should not care about Katie or Angelina or Gwyneth. I should concentrate on my own wellness and nurture hope for the future. Should, yes. The problem is, the frenzy over pregnant celebrities is only one symptom of a larger phenomenon that—for fertile and infertile women alike—is nearly impossible to ignore: The world has become baby obsessed. “What we’re witnessing in our culture is a rampaging, almost hysterical fixation on pregnancy and babies and how having them will transform your life and allow you to reach nirvana,” says Susan J. Douglas, Ph.D., professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and coauthor of The Mommy Myth. “For infertile women, it’s like a giant megaphone of guilt and shame.”

“You cannot escape the pressure to have a baby, not anywhere you look. The barrage is suffocating,” says Sabrina Paradis, 36, of New York City, who once cried when she opened her mailbox to find an unsolicited catalog for Pottery Barn Kids. “If you’re infertile,” she says, “the ideal would be to disappear off the face of the earth for a while and then come back pregnant.”

To Sabrina, to me, to anyone who’s dealt with infertility, baby mania appears magnified. “Women going through infertility are in so much pain, they’re sensitive to any reminder of what they want and can’t have,” says Alice Domar, Ph.D., author of Conquering Infertility and founder of the Domar Center for Complementary Healthcare in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Infertility is very, very lonely. Every woman in my close circle of friends has children, and none struggled to get pregnant. I’ve actually put myself into infertility quarantine, distancing myself from some friends—bless them for understanding—and asking a couple of them (nicely, I hope) to take me off their seemingly near-daily dispatches of baby photos. I have trained myself to look away from pregnant bellies and speed by the local smarty-pants kids’ bookstore and hip-yet-crunchy children’s clothing shops in my neighborhood.

The heartbreak that infertile women deal with is not a new phenomenon, I know. Surely my great-aunt Bessie felt, as I often do, that she’d failed as a woman or let her husband down as a wife (mine is quick to reassure me otherwise). But what’s new now is the strength, and number, of forces that can make the hurt worse.

For infertile women, the obsession with pregnant celebrities is excruciating on many levels. “I get frustrated and angry with all the stars who I feel are ‘unfit,’ or at least questionable, parents,” admits Ashley White, 28, of Durham, New Hampshire, “Britney Spears driving around with a baby on her lap? Not fair! I would never endanger a baby like that! I’ve wanted this for as long as I can remember, I can’t get pregnant—and she gets two?!”

For the entire article, visit http://www.glamour.com/health/feature/articles/2006/07/31/infertility06sep?currentPage=6

I hadn't meant to c/p that much of it, but so much of it fits with how I'm feeling.

A snippet from The Adoption Guide really, really put it into words for me:

Infertility is a prolonged shriek of pain that makes no sound. It is the woman who averts her eyes each time she passes a baby in a stroller, wells up at the sight of a diaper ad, goes numb when a friend announces that she’s pregnant.

An article in the UK's Observer states:

It is weirdly easy for people with children to write rather blithely about childlessness. It is oddly common for men and women, whose own lives have been changed by becoming parents, to think that infertility doesn't matter that much; it's just one of those things. Life's unfair.

When I raised the question of costs with Professor Winston, infertility guru and New Labour peer, he responded furiously, saying it was 'stupid, fatuous'. 'Infertility,' he says, 'is like a pain in the chest. It is a symptom of something wrong. It covers a range of problems; it might be genetic; it might cause a miscarriage; it might be something serious or trivial.'

'Do you have any idea at all,' he asks, 'of the pain that infertility causes? What cruelty leads us to label it a lifestyle choice?'

And for those of us who've managed - been randomly lucky - a certain complacency sets in. I think that many women, even those who conceive naturally and swiftly, feel the little shudder of doubt and dread as they wait for the period they don't want. But we forget it - just as we later manage to forget the pain of giving birth - and the thought of infertility quickly blows away, a little ripple of cold wind. For whereas cancer (or strokes or heart attacks or BSE or a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky) might always be waiting round the next corner, waiting to ambush us, infertility only matters during a certain passage of our life, and after we give birth becomes something that we do not need to fear or think about.

Yet for men and women trying to have a baby, the clock ticks like a time bomb. It ticks away their hopes. The year is divided brutally into periods. The mood swings between hope and despair, hope and despair. Around them, they see pregnant women, babies in prams. They see the birth of the future. They feel they are outcasts from the only life that they really wanted and that other people so easily have. They deserve to be listened to.

Some words from a pastor who struggled infertility with his wife:

Grief is a real part of infertility. It may be heightened in miscarriages or stillbirths, but it is just as real when a couple cannot conceive. The sorrow Kerrie and I experienced the day we received our lab results was as deep as the grief we would have felt if she had called to tell me her parents had passed away.

Scripture confirms the close connection between the two losses. Proverbs 30:15-16 tells us the grave and the barren woman are two things that are never satisfied. The sense of loss from infertility will frequently resurface whenever life situations – such as a menstrual cycle or the birth of a child to another couple – trigger painful feelings of the opportunities lost.

Ehow.com has an excellent list of things to think about and do to help yourself with the grieving process of infertility. For more information please visit this informative article: http://www.ehow.com/how_2205394_grieve-infertility-losses.html

What really got me about the article was the part which read:

Identify your losses. Take some time to think about the infertility losses that you have experienced. Some of those losses include the loss of experiencing pregnancy, the loss of connection with friends who have experienced pregnancy and the loss of a child with your eyes and your husband's nose.

What I feel sad about is that even if my husband and I adopt, we will miss our child's first breath, the first time he/she opens his/her eyes, their first cry, their first blanket, their first article of clothing. We may miss their first smile or their first word or the first time they roll over or the first time they crawl. We will not pass down our superior genes. When people say, "Well, you can always adopt" they don't think of these things. I crave that experience of feeling my child kicking me from the inside out, and I will never have it. And I do feel myself distancing myself from friends who have become pregnant. It's too painful. I shut down in their presence. I don't want to look at ultrasound pictures and listen to the names you've picked out. I don't want to hear your pet names for your fetus. I most definitely do not want to hear you complaining about being pregnant. I would endure years of morning sickness if it meant at the end of the day I would have a baby of my own in my arms.

A woman shared a few thoughts on her own experience with infertility:

Grief - now that’s interesting - I find not many people give me credit for experiencing grief. How can you grieve for something you’ve never had? I am grieving for something I’ve never had; for lost hopes and dreams.

I find that my grief is cyclical on a monthly basis - not surprisingly! Calendars and counting become a way of life, making sure you make love during the critical time - very romantic!

Shower parties - I’ve been to a few. Pre-infertility I didn’t have much fun there - too many mothers telling you their horrific birth stories with relish - seeking out the uninitiated! Post-infertility? Well, I only went to one for a very close friend who knows my situation. She was filled with incredulity at what I had to experience there, putting herself in my shoes for a moment. I don’t blame those who don’t know about me, as they wax lyrical about all things pre- and post-partum, but the silence of those who do know is hard to bear.

At times it is difficult for me to feel excited at future plans for things happening at work or church - it just doesn’t seem as important as having a child.

Anyway, that's about all I'm going to say here on this blog about all this. This is intensely personal and I want to respect my husband's feelings as well as my own. I know so many people are only trying to help, but the worst things you can say to me at this point are, "The doctors are often wrong..." (yes, because I've been through all this for all this time and I want to keep believing in something that is obviously not going to work so I can keep on driving myself crazy) and "You're going to make a great aunt" (I don't want to be an aunt, I want to be a mother, thank you very much!), and "Well, you can look for other experiences in life besides having children" (this one has me in tears just writing it, I don't even know how to respond to this one) and "Well, there are other options" (yes, I am aware of that, and yes, we will look into it, but wouldn't it be nice not to have to pay some bureaucrat 20,000 dollars for the privilege of a child? Wouldn't it be nice not to have to worry how my husband's disabilities or our crappy carpet affect our chances?). Oh, and my personal favorite, "I'm so sorry, I don't know what I'd do without my children." (Yes, rub it in my face, thanks.)

Anyway, that's all from here.

Oh What the Hell...

Everyone else is doing it. I might as well jump off the bridge too.

This morning, I roused myself out of bed at 6:00am and at 6:30 stepped through the front doors of my first Weight Watchers meeting. It was slightly terrifying and the group leader was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a morning person, but they managed to make me laugh, which was good considering where I'm starting from and where I'm looking at going even for my initial 10% goal.

I'm sitting here debating between the core and the points business. I'm leaning towards the points only because it feels a bit more structured and I feel like I need some structure. On the other hand, the muffin I am eating for breakfast just turned out to be 5 points. But at least, I get to eat a muffin.

I think it's probably going to be tremendously boring for you all to listen to me blog about being on Weight Watchers, so I'll just keep a little running total to the side somewhere when I begin to REMOVE weight, not lose it (the instructor says we always start looking for what we lose). And we'll see how it goes. My mind is a whirlwind "But I have book club!" "but I have Judy's wedding reception!"

Yeah, but I also have the whole rest of my life to live. And I'd like to see it last a while.

So wish me luck. I officially start tomorrow with the counting and portioning and so forth.