Bitterness

I had other plans for what I wanted to blog about this month.  I wanted to go into the details about TCM and my new diet.  I have an appointment with an acupuncturist next week and thought this would all lead to a really upbeat month full of hope, a sense of being proactive, and a feeling of general optimism as I head toward the last quarter of 2013 and prepare for IVF as soon as we can pull everything together in 2014.

But instead I need to get something off my chest that's been nagging away at me.  For several months now, probably beginning back in June when B & I were travelling with friends (who have children, but this was an adults only trip), I've been getting more and more resentful, angry, and bitter about having to "buy" our potential children.

I've been getting so annoyed by the fact that we have to sacrifice and change our lifestyle so drastically, just to pay for the possibility of getting pregnant.  And don't tell me its just a drop in the bucket of what you'll be paying once you have kids.  That's not true because while you just have the normal expenses that come along with kids, I'll still be paying for my IF treatments for years after my first child is born, if I'm even so lucky as to get a live birth out of the whole endeavor.  Seriously, my first child would be in grade school before I've finished paying off their conception.

Which begs the question, how exactly, per se, am I supposed to be able to pay for daycare, and $500-$1000 a month in IF debt, and even begin to think about doing it all over again to try for a second child?  Seems impossible.  It's sounding more and more likely that B & I would be facing a future raising an only child if we don't knock it out of the park with twins on the first go-round.

I'm just so angry that I even have to think about these things!  The only thing holding B & I back from the family we are trying to achieve is money!  And it's holding us back so definitively that I'm leaning more and more toward exploring a child-free life choice.  I just don't know after all these years of bitter pain and sacrifice, if I could even enjoy a pregnancy that I had to pay so much for the way I once could have.  I don't know if B & I would be happy with the life we'd be bringing a baby into under those circumstances now.  I don't know if we'd be happy now, with the way it seems that things would play out.

A baby won't fix all of our problems, just our biggest problem, which is infertility, of course.  But this one big one extends its roots and creeps into all other aspects of our life.  It affects our finances, our home, our relationship, our sex-life our lifestyle, and all conversations about our future.  Maybe choosing to live child-free would eliminate the biggest problem, so that we could work on repairing all the smaller ones and live a simple, happy life together, like the one we had before we started TTC.

I don't know.

Would I regret this choice later?

Once we've solved some of our other smaller problems (mostly financial I'd say), would we then be left feeling that something was still missing?  Would our arms and hearts ache from the emptiness that a child was supposed to fill?

Maybe I don't have to write the whole thing off in order to feel better about things right now.  Maybe just putting IVF off for another year or two while we get other things more squared away would be a better compromise.  Maybe we should pull back and revisit all this in a year or two, while I'm still young enough to have good odds of success.  Before that dreaded 35th birthday...

Then again, maybe I'm just stressed right now, and have been living off the "vacation-high" all summer where the world's grass seems greener on the other side.  Maybe next month, or next week, or next year I'll feel differently and be ready for IVF as soon as possible again.  A cousin once told me that IF is a roller-coaster of emotions.  Geesh, she wasn't kidding!

A Change Has Taken Place

Sorry I have been MIA lately.  Nothing new has really happened on the infertility front lately so I didn't have much to report.  


Three weeks ago my cousin's baby was born (Madeline Lee....I'm obsessed with baby names!), and later that week my best friend had her second daughter, Kylee Shae.  It's been a rocky couple of week for Kylee's family as she was (I believe) 6 weeks premature and at only 1.5 weeks they brought her back to the hospital because she had contracted RSV, which can be fatal in premies.  It's been a scary couple weeks for my friend, and I feel so much sympathy for her.


One might think that things would be hard for me lately, what with the babies being born and now all the hospital updates.  Rather, I just feel concern for my friend and her daughter.  I spent last weekend with another very close, very pregnant friend, and I had the best time talking with her about baby names and shower gifts.  Another one of my best friend's husband just posted a picture on facebook of her 18 weeks "belly pop" picture, and all I thought was, "She's so cute!!!"  Another friend who has a 8 month old emailed me to warn me she'd posting some pictures of her son on FB.  I was so grateful for the heads up, but when they were posted, I truly enjoyed looking at them and seeing how fast he's growing up.


I guess what I'm getting at (and this relates back to the title of the post), is that something inside me has changed.  Only a little bit, but there has still definitely been a change in me.  I'm less bitter, less angry, less sad.  Don't get me wrong, there are still twinges.  I still feel like I get smacked in the face once in a while with baby news.  But for the most part, I'm not walking around feeling like a defective excuse for a woman.


Here's when it happened:


I started reading about choosing to live "child free."  I prefer this term over childless, because it is more empowering.  If after a few more years of TTC through various methods, we decide we need to stop, then I'd prefer to choose to stop, and not feel like I was forced too.


I started thinking about what this would mean and I kind of liked some aspects of it.

1. More money & freedom to travel, the one activity that makes both B and I the happiest.  The picture at the top of this post is us on our honeymoon in Greece in 2009.
2. Earlier retirement because we won't need as much money to support anyone but ourselves.
3. Smaller house & cars to pay for, and no worries over what school district we live in or how to pay for the college years.
4. No daycare, diapers, kids clothes or baby furnishings to pay for.
5. More sleep and free time for ourselves & our hobbies.
6. More time and attention for our dogs, maybe even enough so that we could get a third in a few years!
7. No teenagers to stress over.
8. Opportunity to become really close with any future nieces & nephews & be the "cool" aunt & uncle.

Of course there are many downsides to living child-free, but I think and talk about those all the time so I won't get into them here.  This post is about opening the door to new possibilities.

I'm not saying I don't want kids anymore.  I'm not saying that B and I aren't still going to do everything reasonable in our power to TTC.  All I'm saying is that if the stars do not align for us to have children, I'm starting to think about ways & situations in which I may be able to accept that.  

I think that's really important because in 2-3 years, if we're still not pregnant, and are not in a financial position to afford IVF, I may need to be prepared to face the fact that we may not be the kind of people in this society who are able to move earth and sun to make a baby.  We are middle class people from middle class backgrounds with a lot of student loan debt and our health insurance doesn't cover it.  We may be able to do it, but I can't count on it right now.  So I've decided not to think about it anymore.  I've just tucked it in the back of my mind and am trying to focus on the here and now.

We're doing B's surgery in 3 weeks, and we plan to give that a couple of years  to reap it's full benefits.  We may throw a few more IUI's in the mix during that time, but other than that, no thoughts of IVF or anything until we've given this a real chance.  So, I've decided to let go for at least a year, and focus on other things, and see what happens.  So far, it's been feeling great :)

I think I need to start watching Private Practice

I thought I was done blogging for the day.  I took a break to get some dinner and settled in to watch a little TV.  As I flipped through the channels (really digging this whole cable TV thing while staying at these conference hotels), I came across Private Practice. 


I remember reading on another blog that the main character, Addison,  has been undergoing fertility treatments, so I decided to check it out.  This was a really good episode for me to be introduced to the show with.  From what I could gather, this character has used donar sperm for IUI, had a failed IVF, and was unsuccessful with adoption.  Now she was interviewing surrogates.  At the end of the show she had a conversation with her partner, telling him she needed a break.


He asked her if she was quitting and she said no.  She said she is still going to have a baby, but she just needs SOMETHING else to focus on right now, ANYTHING else.  She needed to just "be" for a while.


I'm not where she is, because I'm trying to switch my focus from our cancelled IVF to our upcoming IUI and I really need to be hopeful about it, in order to get through it.  But I appreciate what the writers of this show are having this character do.  It was tastefully written and gives me comfort to know that taking a break for a while can be okay too if I find I need that some day.


After a few quick Google searches, it's looking like I should start watching Grey's Anatomy again too!  Apparently Meredith lost a pregnancy, then struggled to get pregnant again, and then adopted?  I might have to look for these shows on Netflix or Hulu or something to watch them from the beginning so I can get caught up, but it sounds like TV I can relate too!