Clomid. Gulp.

August 6, 2012 7 Comments

Clomid. Gulp.

I am on day 4 of my first ever treatment of Clomid, a fertility drug that is loved and feared in probably equal measure. It’s effective for hundreds and thousands of women, but the side effects are legendary.

I feel like such garbage today. My head has been aching, I’m so bloated I can’t button my pants, I’m so exhausted lifting a fork to my mouth feels like work, and I’ve been up late every night this week with insomnia and….indelicate stomach issues.

But, so far, knock on wood, my moods have been OK. All of my friends who have made it through Clomid told me that the mood swings were the worst thing about the whole experience. I’ve heard stories of weeping over television shows, rages over missing shoes, and lightening fast switches from Mary Poppins to Mr. Hyde.

After six months of Lupron, which puts you through a chemical menopause, I’m now swinging wildly to the other side of the pendulum as I’m trying to crank up the ovulation power. With all the hard work I’ve been doing to get fit I haven’t lost an ounce of weight and I think it’s safe to assume that this crazy mix of hormones is the cause. Honestly, I’m just grateful I’m still in one piece.

Ideally, all this will result in a baby, but when you’ve been at this as long as I have, you tend to lose sight of the ultimate goal. It’s enough work just to make it to the next step. If a baby comes out of this I’ll be more joyful than I know how to contain, but for today I’m just trying to concentrate on making it to tomorrow.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, infertility is evil, mama musings

Getting back on the horse

February 27, 2012 10 Comments

Atti sleeping
The last few weeks have been tough around here. I know, I know, when are they not, right? Such is my lot in life.

Some of it is just the stuff of every day life – the chaos of a new puppy, the entire family having the flu for two straight weeks, the filth that develops when the whole family has the flu for two straight weeks – some of it is quite a big bit of health news that deserves a whole post of its own another day, and some of it is stuff that we actually planned and signed up for. The fact that it all comes at us at once, that is just classic ‘how we roll.’

Atti’s fourth birthday, coupled with some ramping up of some of the symptoms of my endometriosis, made us reevaluate where we’ve been with the whole fertility thing. We’ve been trying for baby #2 since Atti was still baking in his little plastic box in the hospital, knowing that the odds were everlastingly against us and the best possible chance we had was immediately after a pregnancy. But that hasn’t worked out for us. I have a whole bunch of friends who went through endometriosis and once that first child came they became pros at it. I have two different friends who tried for YEARS, had their first child and then had three more in three years. Not so much for us. Not even a pregnancy, let alone one that stuck around.

As each month went by, the pain came fiercer and fiercer. When I had maxed out on advil and I had used up the last of the painkillers from Bear’s wisdom tooth surgery, I knew it was time to face going back in for help. Kaiser has many virtues, especially when you’re the parent of a child with special needs, but doctors who have the time to listen to your concerns and consider your entire history are really not available. My OBGYN is perfectly nice, but is also under pressure to crank out the visits so I can’t exactly sit down and tell him every single thing we’ve been through. He wanted to put me straight onto drugs that would increase my fertility until I insisted on treating the endometriosis first.

So I am currently on Lupron. This is my third time with this drug, but I manage to forget what it’s like every time. The massive mood swings, the emotions, the hot flashes. I went to the doctors office my normal self, got a quick shot, and I came home transformed into Mrs. Hyde. Our plan, that we came up with in literally four minutes worth of doctors visit, is to do a quick three month course of the Lupron, and then go onto Clomid to increase my fertility and give Bear’s few little swimmers as many targets as possible. This plan sounds great to me, but I confess I’m a little worried. No doctor has ever suggested such a thing. And I’ve seen a lot of doctors. Does that mean this guy is a creative problem solver? Or didn’t give me the time and attention I needed to make an appropriate treatment plan? I have no idea. I just know I got the Lupron I went in there for, and I’m willing to try just about anything to have another baby.

But I’ve heard that the emotional upheaval of Lupron is nothing compared to Clomid. If Lupron makes me feel like I have PMS, Clomid will apparently make me feel like I have bipolar disorder. If Bear and I stay married through all this work of trying to have another kid, we’ll all know it’s true love.

The hardest part of all this is not the medications or the treatment plans or even the mood swings. It’s that in getting proactive about my fertility, we have to open this door again and face all the loss and disappointment we feel every month it doesn’t work. During these last four years there were loads of months that it didn’t work out when it didn’t bother me. It’s easy to get caught up in the stuff of life and not pay super close attention to the big empty spot in your heart. But getting serious and really doing the work means paying attention. To my body, to my fertility, and that means to heartache. It’s so much easier to just close that door and skip merrily along, but what I really want is on the other side. So I have to be brave and face the loss in hopes that someday I’ll get to face the bounty.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, baby news, infertility is evil

The Muppet Movie and Fulfilled Wishes

November 19, 2011 4 Comments

Atti and me at the movies
When I was knee deep in the mess of infertility, I was not allowed to watch the movie Matilda. Specifically for one last scene when Miss Honey and Matilda play and rejoice in their happiness together and the narrator says, “As bad as things were before, that’s how good they became.”

I would be reduced to heaving sobs, every. single. time. I saw that (which was more often than you’d think since it’s a cable staple) and mourn that that day hadn’t come for me. And doubting that anything ever could make up for the bad childhood, lost relationships, and sorrow of infertility, but so desperately wishing that something would.

Atti and Bear at the movies
Thursday I was invited to a free press screening of the new Muppet Movie, so Bear and Atti and I drove up to Sacramento, giddy with anticipation. Like most people of my generation, the Muppets were incredibly important to me growing up. Sesame Street taught me to read, the Muppet Show taught me about humor, and I watched the Muppets Take Manhattan so many times I could quote every line. They were a blissful, dreamy, happy spot in an otherwise sad childhood.

I tried to keep my expectations low and just focus on how fun it would be to take Atticus to his first movie. He’s so particular about what he’ll pay attention to that he doesn’t really watch movies, but I have yet to max out his attention span on Sesame Street, so we thought that he’d be down for the Muppets. And he was. He laughed at Fozzie, he danced to the music, and I was in heaven getting to introduce him to something that meant everything to me at his age.

Then came a part in the movie when Kermit and Miss Piggy sang Rainbow Connection, and I totally lost it. I was overwhelmed in that moment of watching my baby love something that I loved, awash in the nostalgia of my own childhood, reconnecting with what felt like long lost friends, and that scene in Matilda came back to me. As bad as things were before, that’s how good they became.

I don’t think anything can ever “make up” for hardship. That darkness will always be a part of me that I have to embrace, but now, so is the joy. Times have been hard, but they have also been great. And having my little guy on my lap, with my big guy next to me as we watched the Muppets return to us in exactly the way they should? Well, I’ll be coasting on that joy for a long time.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, Atticus, infertility is evil, mama musings, Mushy Love Stuff, The Good Life

2011 Year of Pleasures #8

February 23, 2011 1 Comment

Lucky elephant

An East Indian friend of ours gave us this present to help us through our recent bummer times. Not only is it a sweet little gift, and a thoughtful expression of support, but it means so much to me when someone reaches out with love in a way that shares something significant to them. It seems somehow not only a gesture of love, but also of trust.

Filed Under: infertility is evil, The Good Life, Year of Pleasures

A poignant moment

May 21, 2010 3 Comments

Mother's Day

I missed Mother’s Day at church since we were out of town, so I got my Mother’s Day present from Atti last Sunday. I never saw myself as the super sentimental “save everything my baby touched” kind of mom, but when I saw this card I threw all my cynicism right out the window and teared right up.

I mean, look! My boys!

When we got home I headed straight for the fridge to put it up. Putting that magnet on the fridge seemed like such a monumental moment. I could see myself repeating that act over and over again, our lives together flashing forward in front of me. I saw the artwork, the report cards, the college acceptance letter, all stretching out in front of me as we leave his babyhood behind.

I was already welling up, overcome by the significance of such a simple gesture, and then I took a look at the magnet. There was no forethought, I just grabbed the first magnet that came to my hand, but I have spent years looking at this magnet every time I walked through the kitchen, and sighing.

The quote reads:
One must still have chaos inside oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

During all those years of infertility I really struggled with the thought that I would be a less than perfect mother. Unhappy childhood, bad modeling, blah blah blah, fears we all have to one degree or another, and I loved the imagery of this quote and the thought that we can all turn unpleasantness into beauty. That maybe some unpleasantness is necessary for beauty.

I stood there at the fridge and just watched my life come full circle. All those years of clinging to the thought on that little magnet to get me through, and there I was using that same magnet to hang my child’s Mother’s Day card.

Life just creates little poetic moments sometimes, doesn’t it.

Filed Under: Atticus, infertility is evil, The Good Life

A case of the crazies

November 9, 2009 10 Comments

I don't know why I like this so much

My little miracle baby will be two years old in February. I kind of can’t handle it. I am so in love with this little kid, I want four more just like him. Which of course is kind of a problem.

The story is long and tortuous, so for all the readers who haven’t been here since the beginning, I’ll give you a nutshell version. I have endometriosis, Bear has male factor infertility, between the two of us we have a less than 5% chance of conceiving. Atti took us eight years, multiple surgeries, drugs, miscarriages, blah blah blah blah. The thought of opening that door again makes me physically sick, but the chance of reward is so. very. great. *

We’ve actually been trying for baby #2 since before Atticus even made it home from the hospital. With my condition, time is not my friend, and the chances of another pregnancy are much greater the closer you are to the last one. Of course things haven’t worked out that way and it might just be for the best, I kind of can’t even imagine how I would handle a newborn and Atticus at the same time. It would be like having twins except one was four times the size of the other one. It might make sense, but it still doesn’t do much to quell the panic I feel when I think about not getting to have another baby.

* Let me just say here for the benefit of any new readers. NOBODY SAY “JUST ADOPT”! I have many many friends who are foster parents and adoptive parents. There is no such thing as “just” adopting. How you get your family is a very personal thing and varies by a MILLION different variables. This is the way that we need to pursue right now. Thank you for your concern, and rant over.

I was kind of ignoring making any really proactive efforts, raising my baby, happy in my marriage, hoping and hoping and hoping that nature would take it’s course**, when finally my disease just wouldn’t let me live in denial any longer. The pain gets pretty darn intense. Like, can’t function, need to stay in bed because you have no strength in your legs but the pain is too much to stay still so you wander from room to room clinging to walls. Like, I was trying to describe the pain to Bear and he said it sounded like when he had a kidney stone. That kind of cuts through any attempts to pretend that things are just going to work out.

** HA! Yeah right!

I went to the doctor last month all geared up for a fight. Again, nutshell for new readers – I have a long unpleasant history with doctors who don’t take women’s pain issues seriously. Including being forced to see a psychiatrist who promptly told me to get a new doctor and have a nice life. So even though I have a folder full of medical records including pictures of my diseased organs, I haven’t really had reason to believe that I’m going to walk in and find someone who’s going to help me out. On my first visit I would have rated this new doctor about 75% good news, but since then I’d have to bump him up to 85% dream come true. Of course, I haven’t had to ask for pain pills yet, so that might make a difference.

After a little bit, but only a very little bit, of arm twisting, he put me on the medication that has proven the most effective in the past, plus he put me on a new medication that makes almost all the side effects go away. It’s been pretty awesome. The last time I did a course of this drug therapy I gained 40 pounds, was a total crank monster, and had night sweats and hot flashes that rivaled all my 50+ year old lady friends. This time, none of that.

Except on the first couple of days after the shot. I get one shot a month and for the few days after that I am just ridiculous. RIDICULOUS! Saturday night I made Bear put all the dinner preparations in the fridge and go to the store to get me chips and salsa and green olives. And then I spent all day yesterday crying. I’d sit there sobbing and saying, “I know this is totally unwarranted, I recognize I’m being irrational, but I can’t he-he-help it! :sob:” I cried because Bear wrote an email I really liked. I cried because my favorite podcast is having a live show. I cried because Atti cried.

I just keep reminding Bear that living with me in this state should make him extremely grateful I’m so even keel when left to my own devices. I never feel like I get enough praise when I get through a regular bout of PMS without him noticing. Maybe now he’ll see the way things could be and buy me presents of appreciation.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, infertility is evil, mama musings

Another reason I love my husband

September 10, 2009 9 Comments

Even once we had Atticus, we never really got off the infertility roller coaster. In fact, we started trying for Baby #2 before Baby #1 even made it home from the hospital. Since Atti took eight years to conceive, we knew that time was not on our side. Oh how I laughed and laughed when the discharge nurse gave me a contraception lecture. Yeah, not really an issue, thanks though.

Over all those years I’ve done all the charting and graphs and measuring of mucus viscosity and waving burning sage over my womb, but right now the easiest thing for me to do is use one of those ridiculously expensive ovulation predictor kits. The kit cost me about $80 used off of ebay, and that’s at a discounted price to get over the mental ickiness of knowing someone else’s pee was inside a plastic wand that touched the inside of this contraption. But after eight years, you’ll deal with the ickiness and the cost just for a measure of convenience.

The predictor measures your hormone levels on a scale of 1 to 3, and on Monday it declared that this was the big night, complete with a little LCD picture of an empty womb with a little egg floating inside and a big fat flashing ‘3′. The big night does not come around every month, so this was a red letter day.

As luck would have it, Bear and I got in a **HUGE** fight on Monday. He’s a big muckety muck at work, work that is very important and has been steadily encroaching upon our family time for years now, I took umbrage to how it had been encroaching, blah blah blah, same fight couples around the world have been having since the first caveman wanted to go back out for another try at the mastodon while cavewoman whined about how she never gets to leave the cave anymore.

The problem with this is that we do not have one of those feisty marriages where people have a little fight and then enjoy the making up. We have a ridiculously sappy shmoopy woopy marriage. So when the blue moon shows up and we actually get cranky with each other, it takes us time to mope around and feel our feelings before we’re ready to come back for more ridiculous sap.

To make it through eight years of charts and graphs and doctors and the big fat ultrasound wand, you have to do all you can to protect your relationship from clinical insensitivity. It’s all too easy to wake up one morning and realize that you can’t remember when it happened but somewhere along the way your loving act of intimacy morphed into a medical procedure no more remarkable than a throat culture. It takes a careful balance to get the timing of optimal conception lined up with all the warm loving feelings that are supposed to be there. So on Monday, after the fight, when I discover that The Big Night was upon us, I called Bear and told him, “I don’t really know what to do. I’m a three.”

He didn’t have a ready response, being sensitive to my feelings and letting me make the call, so we dropped the subject and went on about our day. I brought it up a couple more times throughout the night. “What do you think Bear? I’m a three.” “I don’t really know what we should do, I’m a three.”

Finally he put his hand on my face, looked me in the eyes with all his earnest devotion and said, “I know I can’t get you back down to a zero tonight, but I’m hoping you can at least get down to a two.”

Wait, what? “What do you think I’m talking about?” “A three means you’re really mad, right? I wasn’t really familiar with the scale, but I figured it must be really bad if you assigned a number to it.”

Filed Under: infertility is evil, mama musings, Mushy Love Stuff

If I wasn’t living it, I’d swear I was making it up.

September 12, 2007 4 Comments

For the past two weeks, I’ve been absolutely useless. It’s been all I could do to eat three meals a day and keep it down. I haven’t accomplished a single useful thing, and even when I try I get about two steps in and then the exhaustion just forces me back on to the couch.

I’ve been non-stop queasy. I haven’t thrown up yet, thank goodness, but instead I get completely nauseous after every meal. Every time I eat so much as a cookie I have to go lay down and be still for a few hours, and then it’s time to eat again. Bear’s had to do everything for me because all I can do is lay there and not throw up.

But mainly, I can’t do anything because I am an electric bundle of anxious nerves, and I spend most of my days wandering through the house worrying and wondering and praying and hoping and counting down the seconds until my eight week appointment to see if it’s going to work this time.

Today was the big day.

And I woke up to the phone ringing with a call from the doctor’s office canceling the appointment.

I immediately start weeping huge racking sobs as some anonymous girl tells me she has no information for me but she’ll leave a message for someone to call me which of course they don’t do.

I sat there with the phone in my hand rocking back and forth and crying until 11:30, and then I started making phone calls. 40 minutes later, I finally find someone who can help me after sobbing and explaining the whole sordid story to about six different people. Angel nurse Louise actually knew what was going on, so when I told her about the last miscarriage happening right about now in the pregnancy and that I was on the verge of jumping off the roof if someone didn’t tell me what was going on in my uterus, she tackled the nearest doctor and forced me into their schedule.

I’ll basically have to show up, strip down, get the lovely wand ultrasound, and hightail it out of the room before the next person comes in. But I don’t care. If I see a little flashing light showing the heartbeat, it will be worth it. And if not, at least I won’t have to be nauseous for much longer.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, infertility is evil

Update

September 5, 2007 3 Comments

Can I just get away with saying ….Ug.

I feel like such hot crap. Luckily I haven’t been throwing up constantly like my poor friend Bev, but I have been constantly nauseous. Especially after I eat. Oh gosh. I’m here at 2:15 and still sick from eating breakfast at 10:30. It sucks.

I’ve also had a ton of sciatica pain. It is just the weirdest thing. All of a sudden I’ll get this shooting pain in my upper butt. It doesn’t feel like back pain, it feels like I’m being stabbed in the top of my butt. It just takes my breath away and if I don’t listen to the pain and lie down immediately, then it will just progress until I literally can’t walk.

I’m bored stupid because I have to spend most of my day laying down, and being too sick to even work on anything while I’m there. Instead I just flip channels and want to cry over the state of daytime TV.

Although it sucks, all these symptoms are very bittersweet. I felt great with Bookcase. I felt healthier than I ever had before, and they say that if you feel different symptoms, you can often expect a different outcome. So I’m remaining skeptically optimistic.

I have an appointment a week from today and then I’ll be eight weeks and we should be looking for a heartbeat. Maybe after that we’ll be able to drop our guard and be ecstatic.

Bear’s taken a couple days off of work, so we’re going to go sit at the beach and I’ll keep trying not to throw up. Gosh this entry sucks, but it’s all I can do to sit here long enough to type out these few staccato words. I just have to keep reminding myself: The nausea is my friend.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, infertility is evil

This explains why I still feel like crap

August 29, 2007 9 Comments

P8272466

If this works out, I’ll be due April 23rd. Which makes me 6 weeks pregnant.

I’m so dang sick I can barely bring myself to even look at food. I’ve just been shoving it down my throat and then laying down for a few hours to deal with the queasiness.

I had a whole post in mind about our fertility options and what we were going to do and yadda yadda yadda, because this is the month that Bookcase would have been due, and I couldn’t help but notice that and obsess about the whole situation. Now I guess I won’t be needing that.

If I said I was just overjoyed, I’d be lying. My reaction has been pretty much, “Hmm. I wonder what’s going to happen with this.” I have my first appointment in two weeks, and that’s when we should be able to find out a few things. If I can just get a heartbeat, then I’ll rejoice. Right now I’m just afraid to cough.

Filed Under: Are you kidding me?, infertility is evil
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