Has anyone ever said something to you along the lines of: “If you knew how much responsibility was involved in parenting you wouldn’t ache so much for a baby?” or worse, “Here, take my children then see if you still want a baby so much.”
People who say this to you most likely care for your well-being. It’s kind of like your bestie asking you just before you walk down the aisle – “are you absolutely sure you want to do this??”.
My Bridesmaids asking me: “Now are you sure you want marry this man?!?”
But what these people do not realise is that their message also comes across that we are ignorant.
If anything, I am more certain of my future responsibilities because I have had much more time to think about them. I am lucky in the sense that I have the time to prepare. Some women may only have 9 months to prepare for their future responsibilities.
I understand that I will never fully appreciate the responsibilities involved in parenting until I become a parent myself. But please, let me dream about it for now.
Have you heard Alessia Cara’s song ‘Here’? If you haven’t heard it yet, you probably haven’t switched on the radio in a while. You can check out her video below.
As Alessia’s song has been on the radio a lot recently, for some reason, every time I hear it I sing along with some different ‘Dani’s own’ lyrics. So I thought I’d treat you to my parody version….it reminds me of how I feel when I accidentally stray into online forums, in this case…. Trying to Conceive (TTC) forums.
———————–
I’m sorry if I seem uninterested
Or I’m not listenin’ or I’m indifferent
Truly, I ain’t got no business here
But since google took me here
I just came to check it but really
I would rather be on my blog all by myself not in this forum
With people who don’t even care about my well-being
I’m not a doctor, don’t ask, I don’t need your baby sprinkles
So you can go back, please enjoy your EW CM*
I’ll be here, somewhere in the corner under clouds of stupidity
With this girl who’s hollering with her B-F-P
Over this TTC advice I don’t listen to and I don’t wanna put my legs up over my head
So tell my IF sisters that I’ll be over here
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here oh oh oh
I ask myself what am I doing here?
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here
And I can’t wait till I can break up outta here
Excuse me if I seem a little unimpressed with this
An anti-social pessimist but usually I don’t mess with this
And I know you mean only the best and
Your intentions aren’t to bother me
But honestly I’d rather be
Somewhere with my blogger friends we can kick it and just write
About infertility with the struggle (like we usually do)
And we’ll discuss our big dreams
How we plan to take over the planet
So pardon my manners, I hope you’ll understand
That I’ll be here
Not there in the TTC forum with the girl
Who’s always asking questions like “Can I get Pregnant from a blow job?”
So tell them I’ll be here
Right next to the girl who’s complaining cause
She can’t figure out when her next fertile period will be
Oh God why am I here?
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here oh oh oh
I ask myself what am I doing here?
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here
And I can’t wait till we can break up outta here
Hours later reading all your bitchiness
Some girl’s talking bout baby dust
Well I ain’t got none
How did it ever come to this
I shoulda never come to this
So holla at me I’ll be on my wordpress when you’re done
I’m standoffish, don’t want what you’re advice
And I’m done talking
Awfully sad it had to be that way
So tell my bloggers don’t worry I’ll be back here
And I’m sitting on my laptop with my infertility in tow
I have been mostly open with my colleagues about the infertility treatment that we are facing. I told a small number about the three IUIs, but in preparation for IVF I decided I needed to tell a few more of my colleagues in my team. In fact, my team gave me a gift card for a nice restaurant as a I was about to take four days of sick leave for the Egg retrieval and embryo transfer for our first round of IVF. But it’s not something that everyone is comfortable initiating a conversation about it all with me. They don’t know where the line is, so I try to be open about it as much as possible and help them to feel comfortable asking me whatever questions they may have.
This ‘open’ approach has mostly worked in my favour; but that doesn’t mean it has been easy. It is coming up to almost a year of treatment and my boss has known about my appointments and treatment for the majority of that time. He has been accommodating, caring and supportive to my needs. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how supportive your peers and bosses are, there is the issue of the work that still needs to be done.
I feel unreliable, I feel flaky, I feel selfish and I hate not being flexible. I feel like the weak link in the team. I hate that it is almost impossible to plan long term projects and work travel – a key part of my job. I feel helpless, sometimes I feel useless. I try to compensate by being overly proactive in areas that don’t require long term planning; I try to over achieve on short term goals and tasks. But ultimately this impacts my career. I feel like I have taken a career break.
Juggling work with infertility treatment requires meticulous planning – and yet what are you told when it comes to IVF treatment? Always expect the unexpected. So planning for the unexpected becomes an overly stressful burden to your sanity.
For me, the first time we went through IVF it was a quiet time of year for us – August. Many of my colleagues were on their summer holidays, so all was good. This time around we are expecting to start stimulation in the New Year. Things start to get a whole lot busier at work at this time of year. I have already had to say no to travelling to Europe in January because it is likely my egg retrieval will be in that week. Not attending this meeting in Europe may impact my involvement in the project overall. Or simply just add another layer of stress even if I do pick it up afterwards from playing catch-up.
Then, there is the added problem of being physically at work; suffering from pain and tiredness as a result of the hormones and your body coping with the side effects of the drugs. I tried to hide the pain. I must have gone to the toilets about 25 times a day to hide. Sometimes I just spent 5 minutes sitting there taking a timeout. And it wasn’t just the physical pain, the emotional strain plays a part in all this too. Simply put, the infertility treatment has also affected my mental focus on doing a good job. For example, I was not satisfied with my output around the time of the IVF (I had a deliverable due just before the start of the IVF cycle – this was a terrible terrible idea!), although I know I am very self-critical and set high bars for myself – no one has actually complained about my work thus far. I just hope that is because what I delivered was satisfactory, and not because people were afraid to upset me!!!
I just hate this.
And I am lucky that I do not have to lie to my colleagues. I cannot imagine having that added pressure of guilt and keeping up with lies in addition to the stress of the treatment itself. Some people need to keep their treatment a secret either for job protection or it is within their nature to keep family life private.
So what have I learned? Second time around, I will schedule in a combination of annual leave and sick leave into my diary for the start of stimulation. Fortunately it’s a new year of leave, so I will be able to do this this time around. Who knows what would happen if we have to do IVF all over again after this round. But this time, I’m going to try to focus on the treatment rather than juggling it with work.
Maybe I’ll take up some knitting or do some oil painting to keep me occupied. I’m going to need to find something to keep my mind busy!!!
:-s
As for the long term impact on my career, well, I will just have to not worry too much about it just now. Maybe if we get to summer next year and still no pregnancy, how I feel about my career is going to really influence my decisions about what we do next.
You can’t put a price or a value on having both your fallopian tubes intact. In fact I imagine that anyone who has lost one or two of their fallopian tubes wouldn’t be able to put a price on how much they are willing to pay to have them whole and functioning again. Without a doubt. And so when the doctor told me that there is a risk that I had an ectopic pregnancy and a fallopian tube could rupture at any point, you simply don’t think about the $$$ money.;
After I found out that my pregnancy was non-viable, the whole process of determining whether or not I had an ectopic pregnancy was absolutely soul destroying and mentally exhausting. I tried to research what the likelihood was of having an ectopic pregnancy was with IVF. I tracked my hCG levels to try and determine what my odds were. I even joined several online groups to talk to other women who had experienced what I was going through. (I have probably mentioned this before, I dislike online forums because you get exposed to some real stupid, dumb, insensitive and simply irritating people. And you just can’t get rid of them.) All of this led me to some tiny hope that I was going to be one of those women who was going to beat the odds and carry a pregnancy despite the slow doubling hCG levels.
The doctors cared a lot about my wellbeing and were concerned of an ectopic. I mostlyfollowed their recommendations: We both dropped everything to come in to the clinic for blood tests, consults and ultrasounds. What they didn’t tell us was how much it is all going to cost. Like I said, when there is a risk of losing a body part or even worse, your life, the money doesn’t matter. And now I can finally say how much it all cost.
I am not complaining about the cost because we are lucky, we have amazing insurance and we can afford to pay the bills. What I would like to know is what about those people whose insurance wouldn’t cover the costs? It’s just another slap in the face if you have saved up or taken on debt to pay for IVF. Of course, most insurance companies cover the cost for maternity healthcare, but the treatment of an ectopic or any other type of pregnancy loss doesn’t come for free. Remember I told you about the woman who couldn’t afford to have an ‘abortion’ to end her life threatening pregnancy at her hospital because of a CRAPPY law? (You can read about it here).
When you save up and take on debt for IVF, no one tells you to save a little bit extra in case things go slightly wrong. I have discovered, however, that most hospitals and healthcare providers will negotiate the costs if you can’t afford this type of care. There are also some charities out there that can help. I also believe that friends and family will be there too to help out. We have helped out some friends in the past when they got caught out with unexpected medical bills. It’s not only a difficult emotionally, it can quite quickly become difficult financially.
So how much did it cost? Luckily for us, not much. The total cost was $3,107 of which our insurance covered most of it, and so cost us $140. I have updated my ‘Cost Lowdown’ page with the breakdown of where the biggest costs lie here. But this has made me think about putting aside more savings specifically for unexpected healthcare costs.
My appreciation for the UK National Health Service has simply sky rocketed.
I don’t really talk about my job much from the pure and simple fact that it is quite a dull subject to talk about. But today I wanted to share with you something that happened this week.
I was observing a student class who had a task to describe the ‘persona’ of an analyst. They had a template to fill out that included things like: name, role, tasks, products they produce, skills….their family and draw a picture of the analyst. Now considering this is meant to be a ‘typical analyst’….there was always going to be some stereotyping involved with this task.
And here is what the students came up with:
They filled in the box under ‘Family’ a big fat X…i.e. no children. They then discussed that in actual fact the analyst probably has a cat and some fish instead. Well, apart from getting the name DAVE wrong, if they put DANI in the name box they would have been pretty accurate and I would have given them full marks!
But I simply sat there in disbelief as the students discussed why they put a big fat X in that ‘family’ box.
So, today I decided to give up Trying To Conceive because I have a greater desire to fit the stereotypical childless analyst in the eyes of my peers. I haven’t discussed this with Chris yet, but I am sure he will be pleased that he can now get some fish again (he misses his fish)……
Of course I survived…no one dies from an HSG right?!?!
As I sat on my own in the procedure room waiting for the doctor I noticed just how dated everything in this room looked. I also noticed two capsules stuck with cellotape onto the wall behind the head of the bed and the other on the needle disposal box. I was intrigued because they said ‘amonia’ on them. I wondered why these capsules were stuck there. As more time passed I finally figured out what it was for – smelling salts for passed out patients! There was a piece of paper stuck on the wall that gave steps of what to do in an emergency – the kind of emergency when patient passes out and you have no clue what is wrong with them. The first step said: Keep calm! I found this quite amusing that a doctor/nurse needed to be reminded to keep calm first of all. One of the other steps described how to use the ammonia capsule to see if the patient ids responsive. There was another sheet of paper stuck on the wall next to these emergency instructions, giving instructions for what to do if a patient was having an allergic reaction. I suppose some poor people in the past have found out that they truly are allergic to shell fish or iodine as a result of this HSG procedure! So I guess you can die from an HSG afterall.
After waiting for 20 minutes ready to go, the doctor came in and introduced herself – as if I had never met her before. She didn’t recognise me at all. Even with my British accent she didn’t recognise me and proceeded to ask me questions as if I was a new patient. Considering the number of times she has seen my vagina and cervix (I can count 8 monitoring appointments and 2 inseminations) I was a bit upset by this fact.
So we got down to the business….and the procedure hurt so much that I had tears in my eyes. It was all over after only 5 minutes, but they were a painful 5 minutes. I peeked at the video of the x-ray as she was cleaning me up. I could see my upside down uterus and the dye free flowing through my tubes. And then something weird happened – my uterus flipped upright at the end of the procedure! I felt her do something weird, did she manipulate my uterus? Or was it just the xray moving to a different position? Logically the latter doesn’t make much sense…but then again neither does the manipulation! I’ll know exactly what happened when I go for my baseline ultrasound in the new year.
Good news is that I passed the test!! IVF round 2 is on in the new year!!
After the procedure I went back to the waiting room to pick up Chris because he wasn’t allowed in with me. And there sitting in the waiting room was someone I knew. It was funny because Chris was sat with his back to them and he didn’t realise he knew them. It was a bit of a bizarre moment because I guess we didn’t really know what to say to each other. I don’t know why they were there specifically, but I feel a little sad that infertility affects so many of us around us we just don’t know about. Today was just another reminder of that fact. Infertility – you truly are a sneaky bag of crap.
I thought I’d take a look because the last article I ‘Pffftt-ed’ from Resolve I ended up regretting – coping with Halloween. I ‘Pfffft-ed’ it when I saw the headline ‘Coping with Halloween’ on my facebook feed because I honestly thought it was a ridiculous idea. Why would it be difficult to deal with Halloween? And then Halloween came along and by the end of the evening I completely understood.
I had actually never experienced the Halloween fun since moving to the US because I had been on work travels the past two years. This year I was excited to actually be in the country because Americans go all out when it comes to Halloween. I had to yet to experience American Trick-or-Treating.
I bought a couple of pumpkins and two of the biggest bags of fun pack sized sweeties (candy) I could find. I made Chris go and dig out all the halloween decorations from the shed. I wanted to get into the spirit of things. On the eve of halloween we dressed up as ghost muskateers and went to a friends party – adults only! It was so much fun.
On halloween night itself, we went to a friends house to chill out. We sat outside in their front garden around a fire pit, making ‘smores and giving out candy to the tiny terror trick-or-treaters. It was everything I imagined trick-or-treating to be in the US. The kids had fantastic costumes – some kids even turned up in a limo! After a bit of questioning we found out that the kids in the limo were from a neighbourhood that perhaps one wouldn’t go trick-or-treating (the adults followed in a different car). It was the sweetest thing, and they were by far the politest children too. Adorable. All this cuteness around – our friends have a newborn baby too who dressed up too! It was a bit too much for me and I felt a bit sad by the end of the night.
If we do fall pregnant with the next round of IVF we might have our own newborn to dress up in a cute costume. Chris said that next time we will just have to borrow a kid for the night and actually go trick-or-treating with them if we haven’t successfully produced our own by then!!
So now I actually understand what the Resolve article was all about. Halloween is not an easy holiday to cope with when dealing with infertility. I just had no clue.
Resolve’s article today contained some useful tips for coping with upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I won’t replicate them here, you can take a look for yourself here. They are worth a read.
But I will mention the one tip that really stuck out for me:
“Begin your own family traditions: a special ceremony or ritual that says that you and your partner are already a family, and that you can rejoice in your love for each other, with or without children”
I liked it because it is so true. In particular as we are thousands of miles away from our family it is even more important to create our own family traditions. Chris and I brainstormed ideas for what could be our tradition – we talked about food and drink (making our own things), activities like volunteering at a shelter, going for walks etc. And playing games….
One of our favourite hobbies together is playing games. We even have our own games night tuesday where we switch off the TV and play some games. We also have our own cribbage league. The day after we got married we started counting the cribbage wins in a little notebook. We carry a deck of cards, mini travel fold out cribbage board and the little score notebook where ever we go. It’s a bit of a talking point in cafes and restaurants as we get our crib board out and play away! Each year there is a decisive winner (Chris is currently winning!!!)…we will continue this tradition forever! We also hold games night dinner parties too. As you can tell, we like playing games!
But what has all this got to do with coping with the holidays? Well, we decided to create our own family game. It will be called “‘Insert Our Family Name Here’ Fluxx”. Fluxx is a card game where the rules are constantly changing – it is a lot of fun.
There are many themed variations of this card game e.g. Pirate Fluxx, Monty Python Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Oz Fluxx etc…So we will create our own Fluxx like card with the theme of…us!! And this will be the game we play at Christmas. The great thing about Fluxx is that it is suitable for all ages, so it really will be a family game. I am so excited to get started on making this game – just in time for Christmas! A small thing to get us started on creating our own family tradition over the holidays 🙂
It was almost 3 years ago that I handed in my security pass and said goodbye to my office of 7 years. I actually shed a little tear on my way out. I was about to leave a job that I really loved. But a new world was calling us – we were about to move to the United State of America!
My initial contract for working overseas was 3 years, and now that we have been living here in the US for almost 3 years I have been offered an indefinite contract. So we signed another year’s lease on our house…and unless something crazy happens, e.g. World War 3, we will be here in Virginia for another year.
I’m both excited and sad. I’m excited because we get some time to do more travelling and keep working at the infertility treatment. But I am sad because I miss my friends and family.
There also the more material British things that I kind of miss too…..
I miss Greggs (the bakers). I miss their iced buns and even the sausage rolls. People of America, your corn dogs suck in comparison. Why have you yet to discover the sausage roll? Someone at the New York times has realised the error of their ways and yesterday wrote an article about them. There was a bit of interest on twitter. But I am not sure it was enough to start a sausage roll revolution.
Will the sausage roll gain as much traction as craft beer has? I hope so if I am going to stay here for any longer….
Christmas is coming and mince pies are top of my wish list this year. What’s a mince pie I hear you ask? They are beautifully crumbly pastry pies filled with juicy, spiced raisins, sultanas and dried fruits typically eaten around Christmas time. They can be served hot or cold, eaten on their own or with Brandy butter or cream. To be served with hot mulled wine. Mmmmmm, I’m just salivating at the thought of them.
Lastly, I am also getting a bit bored of having the same conversations over and over again! Sometimes I fake an American accent just so no one notices I am British and asks all the same questions. This video shows the struggles…for real.
By the way, if you are an American and like British culture, the BBC American has a webpage called Anglophenia that might interest you: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/
Today two people commented on how ‘chipper’ I seemed to be. Was it a coincidence?
The first, my husband: At 0645AM this morning as I was bouncing around the kitchen preparing our packed lunches, Chris pointed out how chipper I was for first thing in the morning.
The second, my boss: At 0900 as my boss logged into his computer, I gave him a brief update on what had happened whilst he had been away for the past two weeks (not much). He pointed out how chipper I was.
Wow. Apparently I am chipper today! I know it had absolutely nothing to do with getting a good nights rest, because I had a crappy nights sleep due to our dear cats running around in the middle of the night like there were 500 mice loose in the house. But actually, I did feel quite cheerful and energetic today. Perhaps there really was something in the process of writing down about how I wasn’t depressed, just lost. in my blog post yesterday evening…may be thinking it through and ‘labelling’ where I was at helped me feel just that little bit chipper today? Or perhaps I have just been a bit of a grumpy old cow for a while now and that the simple act of smiling is a change for me!?!
I don’t know….but today I was just expressively happy!
Woohoo!!
(But knowing what I know about what the phenomena of ‘coincidences’ and what they truly are – they are not really coincidences, but rather events that happen to be similar because we like to look for those patterns that are important to us…for example the old saying, bad luck comes in threes…only because we look for the bad luck we find that it comes in threes. … Now if 4 people had said I was chipper…..)
My husband asked me last weekend if I thought I might be a little bit depressed. It wasn’t a surprising question because I had been moping for most of the day with very little to do around the house. He also pointed out to me that I have mentioned depression a couple of times in some of my more recent blog posts. I quickly said, ‘no, I really don’t think so’. I was able to answer it quickly because I have spent some time thinking about.
I have had “training” with all three of my deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan on recognising the symptoms of depression in other people. I also have to complete annual training with my Army reserve unit on mental health awareness (although because I live in the US at the moment I have missed this over the last few years) I googled the symptoms a couple of months ago just to be sure. I don’t really fit. But if Chris is asking me, perhaps I should reconsider? Or is this one of those self-perpetuating moments where I end up actually becoming depressed because I think I might be depressed. And so I couldn’t help but think about it whilst at work today.
I am an ambitious woman. But my ambition has never been to be the greatest at everything. Somehow in my life I have managed to be successful in achieving whatever I want to do. I like to try new things, but I am not an innovator. I like to win, but not at the expense of others. I like to be busy, but rarely to exhaustion. I like change, but I don’t like surprises. I like to develop myself, but I rarely put my head out of the cockpit. Overall, I’d say these things have helped me to achieve success in everything I do, but there is always room for me to do better…and so I keep on going to achieve great things.
I have two degrees, various extra-qualifications, a successful career in defence, I’ve given something back to my country with my reservist duties, I have been awarded an MBE, I have various commendations and awards to my name. In my personal life I have an amazing husband, an amazing relationship, a supportive family, kind and loving friends, a ridiculously big house, a car, two of the cutest kitties, a nice pot of savings in case of a rainy day. I have travelled the world, I get to meet fascinating people and go to fascinating places. I have a body that is capable of achieving pretty much anything I want it to do – whether it is climb, ski, snowboard, hike, play softball, volleyball, squash, run a race, do yoga – do insanity!!! OK enough of my bragging, that is not my intention…my intention is to say just how damn lucky I am. What more in the world could a girl possibly want inlife?
Of course there are many more material things I could always ask for….but….
Two years ago we decided we wanted to grow our family and this is the one thing I want and can’t have right now. And it is completely out of my hands.
Previously I filled the void with my ambition, I compensated by taking courses, being busy at work, travelling, making new friends, planning epic holidays, buying new cars. And now…I’ve done it all. Really? Have I done it all? Of course not. But it feels like it. And now I am suffering. I’ve never been here before. Chris has never seen it in me before.
So, until I find some redirection, please forgive me whilst I wonder aimlessly (probably talking to myself). I’m OK. I am not depressed. I am just a little lost.
The Great Pudding Club Hunt 