Mo-oo-ooom, I Think I Killed My Blog

I hate blogging about blogging, or blogging about why I'm not blogging. But I think the dearth of content around here finally deserves a little attention.

This used to be a very therapeutic space and writing a real catharsis. Now, it feels like an authority figure that I have to answer to, an obligation. Everytime I open up the Blogger dashboard to begin a new post, my mind swims with all the weighty stuff of the past six or nine months - real honest-to-god infertility, weight gain from emotional overeating, the fact that I stopped running, medical tests that range from annoying to painful and the thyroid problems. Writing about those things doesn't make me feel good.

I know that I could just as easily keep the subject matter light, focusing on the happy points of my life (of which there are, and have been, many) in the same time frame. But the truth is that there is an unhappiness that is the silent current flowing under my days, and it comes to the surface whenever I stare down the blank white box in which to write. And I don't feel like writing about it. Or I write the kind of crap that I've been writing lately, which is not cathartic and also makes me feel bad about my abilities.

This blog has been an important part of my life for nearly four years, and though it never achieved popularity, I liked the cozy little corner of readership I had created. I like the people that blogging has enabled me to meet, grow close to or reconnect with, but it feels like it has outlived its usefulness for this part of my life.

I've been throwing myself in fantasy, literally, rereading the entire Harry Potter series, chewing my way through the Lord of the Rings books, eyeing Basil's Dune books with a lustful eye and seriously considering how to get my hands on the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on DVD. Call it escapism, call it evasion, it is what it is. Lately I have been feeling a small pull to write fiction. Which I have never really tried before, but somehow it seems appealing.

I am fine with reinventing myself a little now and then. I don't mind the idea of turning to a new phase in my life. I dream about the time when I can become a world traveler or give up my day job to run my own personal chef business. But for now, I think I have to settle for letting my blog fester and rot. I think it's run its course and outlived its usefulness.

Maybe I'll come back to this space later in life, maybe it will be too painful or it won't be a good fit. Maybe I will start a new blog, maybe I will write a great book. But for now...

I regret to announce that this is the End. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell. Goodbye.

Radioactive Medicine Tastes Weird

Never before have I been given an orange and blue pill that comes in a plastic tube inside a vial made of lead and been told I should not touch the medicine with my hands. I don't know whether I'm supposed to feel anything or whether it's psychosomatic, but I swear my throat feels oddly constricted. Of course it might be because I haven't been allowed to eat anything since last night and can't for another hour. At least now in the interim I can have liquids. Never before has a Horizon Organic vanilla milk pouch tasted so delicious.

Hyper and Toxic

I've always been a fan of answers. Part of the torturousness of this fertility journey has been the fogginess of it all. It was hard to hear what happened to the baby we lost nearly two years ago, but the answers were helpful.

But for the past eighteen months, it's been all about questions. First (and here is where I come clean with my secrets), about the second miscarriage I had a year ago. I was only 5 or 6 weeks along, but it was still hard. Especially because it happened on Father's Day. I was not able to recover the fetal tissue that I passed at home (and even if I had there is no guarantee that it would have led to answers), so there was no pathology testing. Second, about why I've been unable to get pregnant since then. So many questions.

Well, now we are getting somewhere. And it's been feeling like progress - finding potential problems and, mostly, having doctors pay to attention to me and tell me that I wasn't crazy. I was diagnosed a month or so ago with hyperthyroidism (or thyrotoxicosis) after my initial round of bloodwork.

Yesterday, I met with an endocrinologist who ordered more thyroid tests and said that we would regroup in a couple of weeks to talk about my treatment options. He said that it would take at least 2-3 months to fix the problem, possibly longer depending on what treatment option we choose. And my OB/GYN has told me, and the endocrinologist confirmed today, that it would be best if I didn't get pregnant until this was under control. I'm not even sure I could get pregnant if I wanted to at this point, but I suppose we will not try because of the elevated risk of miscarriage and the other potential problems I could have.

Now it feels like the glimmering light I was starting to see (our reproductive endocrinologist is still doing tests to check for other problems, but his initial recommendation based on our history was that IVF with PGD would be our best bet) feels like it has slipped beyond the horizon again. IVF would mean lots of drugs (including self-injections, and have I mentioned how terrified I am of needles?) and invasive procedures, as well as shelling out tens of thousands of dollars, but with the PGD, our risk of miscarriage would drop to about 5%. Not bad, eh?

But who knows when we will even be able to start an IVF cycle. It sounds like October would be the best-best-case scenario, but it will probably be December or later before my thyroid problem is fixed and I'm given the greenlight to start the actual IVF process. By the time we have another baby (assuming we stick to this plan and all goes well), Petunia will probably be six years old and in kindergarten.

As I plod my way through reading The Lord of the Rings series (while also rewatching all three movies in the evenings), I'm starting to identify with the Ringbearer. Not that I carry a great power, but sometimes it feels like my body is carrying unknown evil that is slowly taking me. Maybe if I start calling my endocrinologist (whom I did not care for) Gollum and my RE (whom I did) Samwise Gamee, it will at least make the whole stupid infertility bullshit more fun.

The Serious Questions

Verbose from the time her little mouth could form intelligible words, Petunia spends her days asking questions. If Basil and I had a nickel for every expectant 'Mama?', 'Daddy?' or 'Why?' that we had heard in the three-plus years she's been talking, I'd be writing from our summer home right now.

The other night, Petunia caught us off guard by prefacing her question with, 'Daddy, this is a serious question.' As Basil was driving, he and I held our breaths and stole a glance at each other. Petunia continued, 'How did the earth start?' She got a twenty minute discourse from Basil about the big bang theory and evolution and cells and volcanoes and dinosaurs.

And then last night, I was reading her a few select pages from The Train of States and was giving her a little background about South Carolina, as we'll be heading there over Independence Day weekend. She got a thoughtful look on her face and asked if this was the same place that people were fighting at in the movie she saw at the Hall of Presidents in Disney World. I explained that it was and then had to answer a few more questions about the Civil War. Though she never questioned me about what slavery was when I told her that people were fighting about slavery, she did decide that the people who had killed President Lincoln were bad.

Science, history, morals - I didn't think we'd get into this stuff until much later in Petunia's life. She is indeed asking 'the serious questions' now, and it's amazing and sort of overwhelming. I think she's also trying to process death, as our friend from church died last week, a woman that Petunia knew primarily as someone's mom I think the idea of a kid's mom dying is planting some scary ideas in her head, because she has become sort of weepy and clingy whenever I drop her off at school. Last night, I tried to talk to her about my leaving her at school and how it was okay because I always come back, and she got teary-eyed and said, 'But I just love you so much, and I don't want you to go.'

This morning, she seemed a bit worried because I didn't eat breakfast with the family as I usually do. I had to fast this morning before getting fourteen vials of blood drawn (by an incompetent phlebotomist, I might add, who left me with three band-aids on two arms) as part of further fertility testing recommended by our new reproductive endocrinologist. I told Petunia that I had to get some blood drawn as part of a blood test and that I couldn't eat before the test. In doing so, I worried that as Basil and I go through more tests and doctors appointments, Petunia may start to think I am sick. Given the speed at which her brain seems to be churning these days, I may need to proactively sit her down and try to answer the questions that haven't quite formed themselves in her mind.

I should have known that this consciousness was on its way. During our fabulous trip to Disney World, Petunia behaved mostly with the innocence you'd expect from a four-and-a-half year old. She hugged characters, she screamed 'Dreams come true' when Mickey Mouse asked the audience for their help and she got a little frightened at the scariest attractions. But after we were walking away from Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, she said, 'Why they didn't talk to me?' And I shuffled my feet and made up something about how superheroes have to save their voices for crime fighting, and Petunia bought it.

The next time we go to Disney World, the veil will have fallen away a little bit, as it's obvious that the veil is falling away from much of the world for Petunia. Or maybe the world is just coming into view more clearly. I'm certainly proud of the way her mind is growing, and I'm happy to have a little person to really talk with. But it is bittersweet to see her becoming a big kid and starting to lose some of that preschool wonder at everything.

(PS-If I ever start a band, I'm going to name it Incompetent Phlebotomist.)

Mothers Day Snapshots

It's the Friday before Mother's Day, which means that the Social Security Administration will release its report on the most popular baby names of last year.

Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar announced to the world that they're expecting their eighteenth baby. Discovery Health already has a poll up where people can vote with J name the Duggars should use for the newest member of their family. I voted for Juliette and Joel, not because I like those names but because I think they fit the hillbilly, fundamentalist vibe the family puts off.

Yesterday, I had my blood drawn to measure my hormone levels, the first step in infertility testing/diagnosis. Maybe the blood test will highlight a problem, maybe everything will be fine, maybe I'll need more tests, maybe I'll get pregnant this month. Maybe, maybe, baby maybe.

Petunia's school had a little breakfast for mothers, and Petunia gave me the flower card she made and a heart-shaped pin painted purple and covered in sparkly confetti. The picture she drew in the card is of her birthday, and Petunia is standing at a table with a cake and I am off to the side. There are balloons and fireworks in the sky above, and Petunia wrote "I love u" inside.

On Wednesday, I mailed off fifteen Mothers Day cards - to our mothers, my (not really) stepmother, my grandmother, Basil's aunts (one is a nun, two are married and childless, one has children but is Basil's godmother) and my sister (a new mom as of April 26!). It gets hard to find that many cards each year without repeating them, especially for the aunts.

My department's assistant, some 37 weeks pregnant, reported cheerily that her doctor did not expect she'd have the baby tomorrow but who knows about next week. This is her first baby, so I told her to plan for three days after her due date and get excited if it's earlier.

A woman at our church has cancer that came back late last year, and in the past month it has gotten much worse. She has three children - one each in high school, middle school and elementary school. I keep thinking about what will happen to her kids if she doesn't get better, and I can't stop crying about it.

Growing up, my church would give roses to all the mothers present in church on Mother's Day. Then, during the announcement part of the service, they would give additional flowers to the mother who had the most children, the mother who had the most children at church that day, the oldest mother, the newest mother, etc.

Mothers Day usually makes for some great sermons in church. I love the weaving of a Billy Collins poem into this sermon, and I love the retelling of the story of Anna Jarvis in this one. I hope that I am not disappointed this year.

Whenever Basil asks what I want for Mother's Day, I usually say the same thing - fresh cut peonies and brunch with my family. I am not into jewelry or even really into gifts very much, but a moment or two of loveliness is enough to make me happy.

My mind wanders to a girlfriend of mine. Her very, very premature baby died in early December, just two days after he was born. My friend had very severe pre-eclampsia (she told me that just before delivery, she couldn't breathe and was sure she would die on the operating table), and she probably would have died if they had waited much longer to deliver the baby. If she had been able to carry the baby to term, she would have a two-month-old right now.

Growing up, I guess I always thought Mothers Day was roses at church. Now I know that it is also gaping holes of grief for lost children, fear of losing a mother, bruised arms from fertility tests and dreams of children that never came true, as well as gratefulness - so much gratefulness - for children and grandchildren, comfort in the security of family, joy at the promise or arrival of new life and hope for the future.