routers and references

Two things in the last few days have made me realize just how much I depend on the internet for social connectedness.

When I got home from work (really late) last Thursday, I discovered that our wireless router had died.  I have no idea *how* it died, but it was definitely non-functional.  Meaning, I had no internet access.  I seriously thought about driving to the 24 hour Starbucks that’s not far from home, just so I could check my email, and Facebook, and Google reader.  But I had already taken my sleeping pill, so I decided driving might not be such a smart idea.  I felt so disconnected from everything.

And then on Sunday, I was trying to start filling out foster care application paperwork.  And one of the forms wants references.  I have no clue who to put for those.  Since getting stuck in this infertility nightmare, I’ve withdrawn from a lot most of my “real life” friends.  Online friends have been my main source of support for the last couple years.

I guess it might be time to try to join the real world a little more.  I’m not sure if I’m ready for that though.

Another extended absence

I’m not doing very good at this whole blogging thing.  I feel like all I’ve been thinking about lately is work, but maybe I needed the break?  My depression has been better,I’m back on all my meds so I’ve been at my normal level of mild depression.

I think I’ve been doing a lot of processing the last few months.  After our miserable attempt an an IUI cycle, I hit that point of hopelessness, helplessness, and desperation.  Trying to decide if we should just “give up” and move on to adoption, or if we keep trying (which means more waiting, and I’m so tired of waiting).  I was feeling like I *should* give up, but couldn’t get myself there.  I think I’ve decided that I need to go through one IVF cycle before I can move on- I can’t give up when I haven’t really even had a chance.  I really don’t even expect IVF to work for us, and I still don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s something I need to do.  Is that terrible?  That I want to spend $15,000 on something I don’t expect to work, just for my own peace of mind?

I recently hit the 2 1/2 year mark of trying to get pregnant, and completed my 36th cycle.  I’m so tired of all of this.  The sadness, anger, and bitterness, being hopeful and hopeless at the same time, the constant reminders of what I don’t have, the uncertainty, and the intensity of all the feelings.  But there’s no way I could go back to not wanting this.  I’ve realized that I can actually relate to (sensitive) fertile women more than I can to my friends who don’t want kids right now, for whatever reason.  There’s something about that longing for a baby, once you get there, I don’t know if you can really go back.  My friends who aren’t in that place don’t really understand why this is so consuming.

In some ways I’m feeling more alone right now than I have at any other time in this journey.  I’m not actively doing treatment. I’m in such a different place from all of the “newly infertile” ladies- they still have hope that treatment will work.  It seems like most of my non-infertile friends are tired of hearing me complain about the same thing over and over again, and even if they ask about it, I don’t know what to say- it seems like I’m just stuck in the same place.

I’m getting to the point where I wonder if I need to not let other people’s pregnant bellies and babies bother me so much.  I know that would make my life easier, but it also feels like if I did that, it would be a sign of surrender.  Kind of like one more step toward giving in, giving up.  I know the two things aren’t really connected, but at least when I have to deal with the sadness and bitterness I know that I’m still fighting.  And that I still have at least a little hope.

Where to start . . .

It has been almost a month since my last post.  I guess I’ve been a little depressed.  And I’ve had so much internal processing going on, I don’t really even know how to get it all out.

I made it through my first injects/IUI cycle.  I started the injects 5/30; 225iu Repronex days 3-5, 150iu Repronex days 6-8, trigger day 9, IUI day 11, luteal phase: 9 days; started my period last Tuesday.  We had almost no sperm, so I pretty much knew it wouldn’t work.  Now we’re back to waiting.  Again.  I’ll send my husband to do another semen analysis in a month or so and see where we’re at.

I’m down one medication (it’s been about 5 weeks now).  I don’t think it’s going so well.  I’ve been pretty depressed the last couple weeks.  With lots of negative thoughts.  Of course all of that could be related to everything else going on in my life and have nothing to do with the medication I’m not taking.  Who knows.  I’m so tired though.  I just want a break from everything.

I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should give up on trying to get pregnant.  Maybe it’s not supposed to happen.  (There are a few different reasons I’m starting to think that, and I’m sure I’ll write about them later.)  Just thinking about that possibility is killing me.  I feel like I’m going to break into a million pieces.  And there isn’t anything that I, or anyone else, can do about it.  I just have to keep going.

My husband got mad at me last night when I got upset about something little.  He told me that I can’t handle anything.  I told him that I am handling SO much.  All of this stupid infertility stuff, making it to work everyday, helping him with some of the things he needs to do, doing some things around the house . . .  I think I’ve said all that before, but I guess he actually heard it this time.  It was so nice having someone acknowledge how hard this is; having someone be at least a little aware of the daily struggle that goes with infertility.  I apologized to him too- I hold it together all day long for everyone else, he really does get the worst of it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to come out of my hole now and rejoin blogland.  Thank you to everyone who left me a comment in the last month.  All of the comments have helped keep me going.  I’m going to work on returning comments (and getting caught up on my regular reads) during the next week or so.

A whole day

I can’t believe it.  I made it through a whole day without crying more than a few tears.  Hallelujah!  

I didn’t, however, make it through the day without yelling at my husband.  My poor, poor husband.  Anyone who knows me in real life would never believe me if I told them about my fairly frequent “temper tantrums”.  You know, yelling, slamming doors, banging things around, the works.  I’m horrible sometimes.  And my husband is pretty much the only person who gets to witness all that.  Isn’t he lucky?

I’m singing in church tomorrow, so I’m sure there will be plenty of tears then.  I don’t go to church all that often these days, but I cry pretty much every time I do go.  That reminds me, I need to put more kleenex in my purse!

I am soooo grumpy!

Warning:  This is going to be a total venting post.  Full of b!tching and moaning, whining and complaining, and a whole lot of self-pity.

I am STILL dizzy and nauseous from that stupid clomid!  It’s been getting better, but I am so tired of feeling seasick all the time.  The nausea is pretty constant.  The dizziness just randomly hits me.  Often enough that I’m still feeling like I shouldn’t drive.  So I have been stuck in the house ALL weekend.  By myself, essentially.  My husband works nights on the weekend- so when he’s home, he’s asleep.  And I get to entertain myself.  That in itself is enough to drive me crazy- being by myself with limited human interaction for a whole weekend.  And when I’m not feeling good?  And feeling like I’m stuck in the house?  Not pretty.

I have been overreacting to everything.  Getting irritated and mad at whatever my husband says and does (or doesn’t say and doesn’t do).  And I’m taking everything as a personal attack.  That anything and everything bad is my fault because I’m screwing something up or not doing something well enough.  Do I get to blame all of this on the clomid too?  I would like to, but to be honest, I do this some of the time even without clomid.  Although not this bad, so maybe clomid is playing a role.  Or maybe my irritation is increased because I’m still feeling crappy clomid side effects.

I was talking to a friend yesterday.  She asked me what exactly my dream is, what I’m trying to fulfill by trying to get pregnant, trying to have kids.  My answer?  I want to be a mom.  And part (or a lot) of the reason that is so important to me is because I feel like, in a lot of ways, I didn’t have a mom.  And I’m hoping that by being a mom I can fix some of that.  Not repeat the same mistakes.  Be there for my child, make sure that he or she knows how special he/she is, how loved and cherished he/she is.  If I can give that to someone else, maybe it will help fill some of the holes in my heart in the process.  A good thing for me to think about, but NOT on Mother’s day weekend.  It’s just even more of a reminder that I’m not a mom.

Another thing I’m worried about- I reallywant to be pregnant.  I have seriously wanted to be pregnant and have a baby since I was in high school.  I know we can “always adopt”, but if I miss out on the pregnancy part of it that is going to be a HUGE loss for me.  And with my FSH high, and my husband’s low sperm count, getting me pregnant is most likely going to be a very expensive endeavor.  And we don’t have the money for it.  We won’t for a while.  And by the time we do, it might be too late.

Which leads me to worrying about money.  My husband is such an impulsive spender.  And he gets very irritated if he feels like I’m trying to *deny* him things or control him.  So I always feel like I’m walking a fine line- making sure all of the bills get paid, but trying to give my husband enough freedom so he doesn’t get upset.  I’m partly to blame, I spend impulsively too sometimes, but lately my impulsive spending has been more because I start feeling like it’s not fair that he gets to spend money and I don’t.  At this point, every extra thing we spend money on feels like money that isn’t going to pay for a baby.

Laptops.  My husband and I both have laptops that we use a LOT.  My husband is going to get a big financial aid check sometime in the next month and we’re tentatively planning to use most of it for new laptops.  Both of our current ones are dying.  Mine is almost 4 1/2 years old and the connection to the backlight for the screen isn’t working so well.  So half of the time when I open it up the screen stays black.  So far, if I close it and open it back up again it fixes itself.  But I have a feeling it’s going to get worse.  I use my laptop ALL the time for work, I really do need a new one.  But again, it feels like money that isn’t go toward fertility treatments.  The nagging voice in the back of my head is asking which is more important- a new computer or a baby?

Another thing that has been hard and stressful lately is that my husband has been depressed.  He’s almost done with his Masters degree and part of him is really fighting that.  So he avoids doing things he needs to do, he flakes out on his internship, and he spends most of his time sleeping.  I know he can finish this and get a good job, but he doesn’t believe in himself.  And that’s what is really important.  I need him to finish this degree.  I need him to get a good job.  We’re used to living off a smaller income at this point.  When he gets a good job we should be able to save a significant amount of *baby* money every month.  So at this point, him not finishing his degree feels like me never getting to be pregnant.  I haven’t told him all of this, I don’t think he needs any more pressure, I’m just trying to be supportive and encouraging and to help him with what I can.

So that’s most of what I’m stressed and worried and irritated about right now.  How is your Mother’s day weekend going?

Oh yeah . . . I got tagged

Excuse my spaciness, I almost forgot, I got tagged by Lost in Space.  I can use a distraction right now too, so here goes.

4 Things I Did 10 Years Ago (1998 )

1. At the beginning of the year I was living in Istanbul, Turkey.  I lived there for 5 months (9/97-2/98).  I was there as a nanny for a family I babysat for ALL the time in high school.  They moved to Turkey due to a job change and about a year later I went to help out with the kids.  (Actually- the family is one of those “Just adopt and you’ll get pregnant” stories.  The older two kids were adopted and not long after they adopted the second one they were pregnant with #3.)  It was a great experience for me, I had just finished high school and was planning to go to college in the same town I grew up in.  I think the five months in Turkey helped differentiate my high school life and my “adult” college life.  For my last week there, my mom flew over to visit and I got to take her around to see all of the sites and show her everything. 
2. I “officially” started college.  I’m kind of a nerd, so during my senior year of high school I had four classes at the high school and two classes at the university.  But in 1998 I was officially a college freshman.  Of course I was only there for the spring quarter of that year, but with the units I got in high school and a few AP units, I actually finished the school year as a sophomore.
3. I moved out of my parents’ home.  And into an apartment with four friends.  One that I grew up with, two that I knew really well from church, and the last one who had been a previous roommate of one of the other girls.  We had a lot of fun together and got along with each other really well. 
4. The move from my parents’ house (not a very safe place) into a home with friends I knew really well (very safe) had some unexpected emotional consequences though.  All of the feelings that I had been stuffing and avoiding for my whole life decided it would be a good time to come out.  I had almost no ability to deal with all of the overwhelming emotions and by the end of 1998 I was at the beginnings of my severe depression.  Not fun at the time, but something that needed to happen I guess.

4 Things I Did 5 Years Ago (2003)

1. Started dating my husband.  We were both working at a group home, although in different houses.  I worked one night with him when he first started there and was amazed by how easy he was to talk to.  Usually I would hardly talk at all with the people I worked with, and he and I talked ALL night.  After that first night one of the other ladies who worked there kept telling me that my (future) husband told her I was exactly the kind of woman he would want to marry.  One morning he called the house I was working in to ask a quick question and we got to talking.  He accidentally blurted out, “Would you want to go to a movie with me sometime?”  And that was how “we” began.
2. Finished a quilt for the first time.  I am really good at starting things, not so good at finishing them.  But, for the first time, I actually finished a quilt.  I gave it to my (future) husband as a Christmas present.  It’s on our bed right now.
3. Dissected a sheep brain.  Yep.  A real sheep brain.  It was the lab for my Cognitive Neuroscience class (I told you I’m a nerd).  I was very proud of myself for making it through that class- I’m a little squeamish.  I actually still have the lab book as “proof” of my accomplishment.  I think I also made it through organic chemistry in 2003, another major accomplishment (and yes, I still have the textbook from that class too).
4. Discovered Lithium.  I’m not sure how many antidepressants I had tried at that point, and how many combinations I had been on (probably 15-20), but medication did not help me very much or very consistently.  My mood would drop from mildly depressed to severely depressed every couple of months.  I started taking Lithium (along with whatever else I was taking at that time) and amazingly enough it helped.  I was still mildly depressed, but I didn’t have the major drops in mood all of the time. 

4 Things I Did Yesterday

1. Took my last dose of clomid.  EVER. 
2. Accomplished almost nothing at work because I was so spacey.
3. Had to get a ride to and from work, for the third day in a row (have I mentioned how fabulous my supervisor is?  She drove me all week!)
4. Had my RE and his nurse concerned about my “unusual” side effects from the clomid.  (Sorry, I’ve been a walking zombie all week, I really haven’t done anything interesting)

4 Shows I Love to Watch

1. CSI.  Preferably Las Vegas.  But the others will do in a pinch.
2. Crossing Jordon.  It’s not on any more, but it used to be my favorite.
3. Hannah Montana.  I know, go ahead and laugh.  But sometimes I really need that stupid, innocent humor, and a show where all of life’s problems get solved in half an hour.  It’s one of my coping skills.
4. Smallville.  I’m not quite as into it as I used to be, but it’s one of my husband’s favorite shows and we always watch it together.

4 Things That Make Me Happy

1. Cuddling in bed with my husband.  It’s my favorite place to be.
2. My baby kitty.  She always makes me smile and laugh.  And she makes me feel loved.
3. My job.  I love feeling like maybe I’m making a difference in someone’s life.
4. Hot showers.  I LOVE taking hot showers.  I just love the sensation of having hot water on my skin.     

So now I have to tag 4 more people.  Let’s see, I have to figure out who hasn’t been tagged yet . . . Dee, Freyja, Lissa, and Hummingbird.  (Hopefully none of you have been tagged yet!)