The Year of Betterness - A Guest Post

For some reason, we thought that tossing out the BCPs ceremoniously on New Years was a great idea.  Now it just gives us a very obvious marker of how long we've been trying.  It's been two years.  I know many people have been on this road for much longer, and I can't imagine how doing this year after year would wear on a person and a marriage.  I do know that we went through so much in 2012 alone.  Three IUIs, two fresh IVFs, one FET, one laproscopy/hysteroscopy/D&C, and two months of Lupron Depot therapy.  We are determined to grab 2013 by horns and make it "The Year of Betterness."  After all, we will find resolution this year.  Whether it's the ending we're hoping for or an unforeseen path, it will still be a resolution and we are excited about that.  My husband is much better about talking about this than I am, so I'll let him do it...

My wife casually mentioned the other day, “Will you write about our Year of Betterness?” For a brief moment, I was confused. In my defense, I was watching Iron Chef and pondering how Mortadella, a strange amalgam of pork slurry with pistachios extruded into person sized logs, constituted fine cuisine. As my daze lifted, I agreed with a half-hearted yet enthusiastic, “Uh, okay.”

A day removed, I sit in my office and try to write, yet remain confused. Allow me to explain.

Go and ask your loved one or co-worker the question, “Define better.” Chances are the most common response will go something like this, “What do you mean, better?” or a simple confused look. If the other person responds by using the word better to define better, than call it a day and send the person away.

Dictionary.com defines better as “of superior quality or excellence” which would in turn lead to the justified conclusion that 2012 was of lesser quality. By all accounts, this is a fair and true assessment because 2012 has been a disappointment. No champagne wishes and caviar dreams here. Let’s be honest, it was crap-tastic. Time wasn’t measured in days and months. It was measured in IVF cycles, injections, appointments, and a lot of wait and see. The wait and see was the worst part. It served as a reminder that as time moved forward, our collective feet were mired in concrete.

The casual reader would and rightly so interpret this to mean that it would have been better if 2012 never happened. This is where we would part company. As crazy as it may sound, I learned a lot about life, friends, and the relationship I have with my wife. Some of these lessons were bitter-sweet, but in the end I learned that my marriage can withstand anything. Love you babe.

This leads to the whole point of my inconsistent ramblings. Will 2013 be better than 2012?

1. Nothing today is promised tomorrow. So make the most of today.
2. Choose the happy. Whether we like it or not, it’s up to us.
3. More bacon. Rumors of a price increase have been dispelled. So let them eat bacon.
4. Three Little Birds by Bob Marley. Listen to it once every day and I dare you not to smile.

I have no idea what 2013 holds for us as a family, but it should be interesting. In closing, I want to leave everyone with one of my favorite quotes and true words to live by from Coach Jimmy Valvano:

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.”

Holiday Recap

We made it home for the holidays after our flight cancellation and thankfully, we ended up with a cancelled flight on the other end!  I got to make up half of my cancelled time!  Yippee!  What's weird is I moved away almost 11 years ago and this is the first time I've ever run into flight cancellations.  Unfortunately direct flights to anywhere from here are few and far between, so that's life, I suppose!

We ran into some baby situations that I don't think were handled the best and I wanted to know y'all's opinions on better ways to handle such things.  Background on situation one:  Since the beginning of time, we've spent Christmas evening with one aunt/uncle set and their kids.  As we've grown up, it's become sort of fragmented as far as my cousins go.  They have four kids.  One lives out of state so we never see them.  Another spends the day with his wife's family so we don't see them either.  The third is hit or miss.  If they do come over we only see them for an hour or so.  The fourth is always there with her husband and three kids. She and I are close and she has been a great support though our journey.  The third cousin is almost 40, as is his wife.  They just had a baby about two weeks ago.  My mom knew that J and I would not be comfortable spending our Christmas with a newborn, especially one whose parents we aren't particularly close to.  She was working behind the scenes trying to get my aunt/uncle and youngest cousin to just come over to our house to avoid the whole "dropping by with the baby" debacle  but my aunt just really wanted us to all come over and hang out with the baby.  In the end, my mom just told her we weren't coming.  Thankfully with the flight cancellation I did get to see my aunt and cousin four for lunch, but my aunt mentioned at least three times how sad it was that we didn't come over. I just kept changing the subject.

I know that eventually the baby thing will be fine and won't really phase us, but things are really raw right now.  When I see newborns and hear them cry, I just feel my heart ripping out of my chest.  I can't handle it right now.  I'm thankful that my mom knew all of this without even bringing it up and attempted to get it all under control for us, but I also hate to think that we asked others to adjust their plans for us.  On the other hand, there were apparently a few miscarriages before this baby came along, so why there wasn't a little sensitivity towards us is beyond me.

The other situation I'm the least proud of and I don't know how to approach things now.  My best friend back home.  Now, some of you may remember that she wasn't always the most supportive, but she really has come around.  A few weeks ago I emailed to see when we could get together over the holidays.  I got a heart wrenching email from her, letting me know that she is pregnant with the girl they had been trying for.  And by trying for I mean gender, not actually struggling to get pregnant.  It really was the sensitive email we would all hope to get from a friend announcing their pregnancy.  I wrote back and thanked her for the email and told her all of my fears about friends drifting away and just being in a weird life place.  She sent me an "I love you" text and I of course threw back and "I love you too."  Then I didn't hear from her until the day we were flying out.  I let her know that things were crazy with the flight cancellation and that I'd text her in the morning.  She said we could come by in the morning that day if we were free.  Time got away from us and I didn't text her.  This was partly because I honestly was trying to cram all of our family time in, partly because I didn't have a car with which to go see her, and partly because I couldn't bring myself to face the perfect pregnant belly that completes the family she'd always hoped for. They are wonderful parents and I really am happy, but I'm also tremendously jealous and scared that her life is so different from mine at this point that were drifting away.  I feel like such a schmo.  Someone tell me what to do!

Take THAT Catholicism

For Christmas Mass, we ended up at the Super Conservative Church that my mom promised we'd never have to go back to.  My mother said that it was either that or the church with all the babies, and she'd made the executive decision that there were too many babies all Christmased-up at the other church for any of us to feel comfortable.  So off to the church of closed mindedness we go.

During the petitions, the following prayer was made, "For the protection of the sanctity of life, from natural conception to natural death."  I reached over and linked pinkies with J.  Just a little movement. I don't know if the words "natural conception" were enough to startle my mom too or if she saw my little finger move, but she leaned over and said the best thing ever...

"Even Mary didn't conceive naturally."

I may have laughed in church.

@*&#^!

We were supposed to be getting on a plane to go see my family in a couple of hours, but our flight has been cancelled.  There are no other available flights until Sunday afternoon.  I get 2.5 days with my family.  We've spent all day trying to find a way to get there sooner or stay later, but it's not going to happen (unless all of my Thursday patients happened to call and cancel today... which did not happen).

Most frustrating?  A dear friend from back home planned a lunch for us with friends from GRADE SCHOOL just to cheer us up and now we'll miss it.  I only see my grade school friends every couple of years.  They are amazing people and yes it is awesome that we are still in touch (we had a last minute, thrown together reunion a couple years ago and out of our class of 23, 22 showed up.  Heck, people from other classes came).  I'll still get to see my friend since she lives nearby and hopefully I can get together with the others for some late night shenanigans, but she planned it all as a surprise and we had to ruin it.

I'm so disappointed!  UNIVERSE!!!!  YOU MAKE ME SO MAD!!!  It's like you just said, "Well hello Hapa Hopes family!  What's that?  You had a shitty year and are really looking forward to friend and family time?  I can't let that happen!  I shall send in a giant snow storm to fuck with you!"  Bite me Universe!  2013 is the Year of Betterness and you can suck it!

Pressure

There have been a lot of thoughts swirling in my head lately.  Maybe it’s the upcoming visit home, maybe it’s the Lupron, or maybe it’s just reality sinking in.

In about 6 weeks or so we will start stimming again. I can’t stop thinking about how this is our last chance at making a biological child.  We will do this fresh cycle and use any frosties it produces, but if this bunch of embryos doesn’t make a baby, we will start looking at a child-free life.  So if this is it, am I doing absolutely everything I should be?  I’ve been running and eating well, but is it enough?  Should I put down the Diet Coke?  What about the cookies that patient brought in, can I have just one?  Am I doing everything I possibly can to give us the best chance at a pregnancy?  Will I feel guilty if I don’t get my weight down to the magic number and it doesn’t work?  I'm making myself crazy with this crap.

*********

The other day a coworker asked me what our next steps are.  This isn’t someone I typically share details on our journey with simply because we aren’t close, but I’m a loudmouth and frequently babble on about my reproductive status, so I figured I'd answer her.  I told her that we were doing our last IVF cycle and she said, “So if it doesn’t work, you start adoption?”  “No,” I answered.  “We aren’t looking at adoption right now.”  She said, “But there are so many children out there that need homes.”  “Not exactly,” I answered.  “Well, in other countries there are.”

I tried explaining how we feel right now.  J and I have fought for absolutely everything in our lives.  We are both the first generation of Americans in our families to go to college (well, on one side for me at least).  We both paid/are still paying our own way through school.  We were both thrust into independent adult lives well before we were ready and learned the ropes ourselves.  We both spent many years searching unsuccessfully for someone to share our lives with.  As soon as we found each other, we started fighting to create a family.  We’re done fighting.  We have so much.  We have our educations, our careers, and most importantly, we have each other.  I told this coworker that we weren’t ready to jump on another emotional rollercoaster and we wanted to spend time enjoying what we had instead of fighting for what we don’t.  Her response?  “Well, that’s a shame.”  I really think she meant that our failing to “save an orphan” was what was shameful.  It was not meant to soothe.

This really stung and stuck with me.  It’s not like this woman doesn’t know what adoption entails.  I work with several women who have adopted both domestically and internationally (and there are only about 20 people in my whole office).  The women who had international adoptions had expenses out the wazoo and emotional worries about visas and all the time those babies had to spend in orphanages without them.  She saw the failed adoptions that the women who chose domestic adoption had to go though before they brought their babies home (both of them had either a baby in their arms for days or were about to board a plane when the adoption fell through).  She knows it isn’t a walk in the park, but I should still jump right in?

Should we be adopting because that’s what the world expects us to do?  Of course not.  That’s ridiculous.  As much as I hate to admit it, I’m the kind of person who worries about what other people think.  I don’t want people thinking that we are selfish unkind people because we choose not to adopt.  I am underpaid because I work at a non-profit with children who have disabilities, many of whom are on public assistance.  I stay in my underpaid job because I love being able to directly help these families, and yet I still feel like I have to prove my niceness.  Messed up, yes?

How do I get people to leave me the heck alone and take their judgments elsewhere?