The Fertility Clinic

So, I've got a whole month of cycle charting now.  I have a nice clear temp rise after ovulation.  It was pretty hard getting near ovulation, then ovulating, and not doing a damn thing about it.  It was a weird feeling, for sure.  My temp dropped as expected.  So, things all seem good!!  Really good!!  It even worked when I was Shift Working, I would just take it after I had slept for 3 hours.  Taking Charge of Your Fertility says that BBTs can either be very sensitive to waking up, or not sensitive at all.  I seem to be more on the not-super-sensitive, which is good, because turns out I wake up A LOT in the 3-4am range, which I had never noticed until now (because my first thought on waking is "must take temp.  Wait, what time is it?  Oh, it's too early.  Back to sleep for you!").

The fertility clinic called me to book an appointment, so it's for the middle of October.  It seems far off, but I know my personal life calendar until then, so it's going to come up fast.

I'm kinda wrestling with the known donor vs anonymous donor again.  In BC, J and I are fully protected should we use a known donor.  I don't have anyone on my radar that I would want to ask...  I had to actually explain the point of using a known donor to someone the other day, which is what prompted this thought about KD vs AD.  I'm not worried about the legal protection here, nor am I worried about the impacts on our future kiddos... it comes down to money and logistics.  The last time I had the donor discussion with our KD, it was easy.  We had kinda batted it around for a few years.  He knows himself well.  He knew his limits, and we were happy to include him in our family.

So now I have a pile of bloodwork to have drawn tomorrow, which is awesome and I'm excited to be poked for results.  I'm not generally enthused about being poked, but it's fine and I like having the values.

So things are moving along.  This time feels easier.  It also feels less overwhelming and all consuming (probably also because I'm trying not to let it take over my life!).

I actually have something to say

I am brushing off the cobwebs of this corner.

J graduated (with distinction and two awards) at the end of May, I am so overwhelmingly proud of her.  Finally, I thought, finally we can start to move forward.

Turns out it takes a bit of time for wheels to start churning forward again.

I am awaiting a phone call from the fertility clinic regarding our intake appointment.  In the meantime I wake up at 5am everyday (since that's what time I have to wake up for work) to check my basal body temperature (it spikes after you ovulate).  I check other fertility signs, and when I get close to ovulation I check with an ovulation predictor kit, which is looking for the spike in lutenizing hormone indicating impending ovulation.

I re-read "Taking Charge of Your Fertility", and proceeded to have several days of intense marvel at my body and what it does (if you haven't read this book and have any intimate interaction with a body that ovulates and bleeds on a regular basis, I suggest that you read it!!!  It's *amazing*.)

I started taking a prenatal vitamin.  That was a *big* thing.  It felt like starting to take it was the starting line.

I started wondering deeply about what else I might do to prepare my body and mind for this adventure.  I started working on some of that.

Things are moving, slowly.  I am remembering to breathe, to exist in the moment and not get too caught up in the future.

I am of course worried about money and time and space, but I remind myself that we are ENOUGH for these small people we will usher into this world.  We have enough time and love and ability to parent, that children do not need a million toys and iPads and tremendous amounts of technology.  They do not need "things".  They require presence and attention and meaningful connection.  This I can give them.  I am enough.

Long Neglected

The absence of writing does not mean anything, it means that I still have nothing to say.  Pouring my soul out to an online presence (one I had hoped to keep off Facebook, but has somehow made it's way onto my newsfeed) is not something I am keen to do...

Update since the last:

-On March 28th, our 7 year anniversary, we had our beloved Mustang put to sleep, quietly in our laps on our couch.  Our vet and one of the vet nurses (whom we adore) came to our house and did it.  They gave him a sedative injection in his scruff, and then when he was quiet and calm started an IV and gave him a fatal dose of anaesthetic.  He died without ever knowing fear or further suffering.  We laid his body in our hallway for Tasi to smell and see, so that she would understand.  We believe she did, she only cried for him for a night.  We then let her sleep in our room on our bed for the next month, until her wake-up times started to get earlier by 15 minutes every morning (my personal cut-off was 5:30 on a day off...).  She has adapted to single-cat life remarkably well, better than we could have thought.  She enjoys the extra attention, but we worry that she is lonely....

-J has successfully completed her first year of her program (of 2).  She is hoping to do some work this summer (as am I!), so we will see how this all pans out over the next week or so.  It's so nice to have her around more and not constantly distracted by homework and projects, I have her all to myself when I'm home!  We have a big project list for the summer, since when we're going full-tilt through the year there is no time to do the big house projects.

That's all for now...

Still Here

Nothing to say.  J is in full time school, it is INTENSE, but she is really enjoying it (and I am enjoying seeing her happy like this!).  I do everything else.  It is also intense, since full time work, with running the house, making sure we are fed and watered, bills are paid, etc etc etc, is at times overwhelming, when all I want to do is sit down and read Harry Potter.  I know this imbalance is temporary, and it's not like J is resting on her laurels either.  She is in school M-F, from 8:30-3:30 (ish, depends on the day), and then comes home and does another 3-4 hours of homework.  However, she's so organized and on top of things that her weekends remain relatively free, with only 3-4 hours of homework through the weekend.  I am intensely proud of her.

My stupid baby hormones have not stopped screaming at me, it does not help with two of my amazing, beautiful besties popping out babies (one is out already, and he is simply stunning and super sweet, the other is still gestating but not for much longer).  We have plans after J is done school to do all this other stuff, but I don't think I will be able to wait one.more.damn.second.  Negotiations planned for next December.

Life is still plucking away.  Our big tom cat, Mustang, was diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis last week.  He is 17, has endured far too many medical tests lately, and we have decided to make him palliative, to treat for symptoms and make him comfortable.  I have not shared with hardly anyone, because people say terrible things like "why let him suffer, just put him down, he's just a cat".  People said terrible things like that to me when I was primarying at work too, and this is just as jarring.  He is MY cat, it is OUR choice.  He is comfortable, well medicated, with adequate pain control.  He still eats (although not a lot), he cuddles, he grooms himself.  He is not suffering.  We may have weeks to another year with him.  We watch him closely for signs that his body is shutting down, that his life is filled with nothing but pain and suffering, and then we will take him in and let him pass peacefully and quietly.  We are not interested in sustaining his life, he is old, and he is a CAT, he does not understand, and the quality of his life is more important than quantity. My recent experiences with palliative care prepared me well for these difficult conversations we've had, I advocated for Mustang the way I advocate for my babies; is this test in his best interest?  Will it change the course of treatment?  What is the value in this?  How do we best manage his symptoms?  What will happen if he dies at home?  What will happen if we decide that he is suffering too greatly?

So, we are embroiled in sadness in our house.  J has had Mustang since he was just a kitten.  We are also worried what will happen to our other cat, who does not tolerate his absence EVEN FROM THE NEXT CHAIR OVER.  Part of me hopes he dies at home so that she will see and perhaps understand, but realistically I know this will not be the case, not with pancreatitis.

Life continues though, I am planning our patio garden and slowly working through deep cleaning the house, which is always in preparation for a tiny human.

Keep on Keeping on

**This is an old post, but I really liked what I had to say in it, so I'm posting it*

It's mother's day today.  While I am annoyed (and slightly disappointed) that we will spend this mother's day (and several more) just celebrating our own mothers instead of each other (due to the ever-present not-being-pregnant thing), I'm grateful that at this moment in time, I still have my mom.

I've been doing some really deep work lately, it's gotten really intense.  I am *so* glad that I've connected with my counsellor and feel safe exploring the dark places of my soul.  The question that came up lately was "why are you preventing yourself from achieving what you really want?", I attempted to argue that it wasn't *ME*, how could *I* be preventing myself from moving forward.

Like always, there was a knowing look and a gentle push to get deeper into myself.

And then there was an... "incident" a week later.  A small thing really, a mistake in my calendar, hardly a big deal (I was an hour late to a party due to a typo when I entered the event start time), but I simply went over the edge with myself.  I realized that I do not like myself very much.  This was hard to hear, especially because I think that people see someone completely different (self-confident, happy, smart).

It took me nearly a week to forgive myself for it.  I started to dismantle the rage and fury I felt at myself, and how underneath it all was this place of horrific pain.  I was able to take apart the really horrible self-talk that was going on.  It took an excruciatingly long time.  I ended up having to back off because it was just too much.  It's incredible difficult to look in the mirror and realize that you hate yourself, and with every fibre of your being, and that you've spent the past 25+ years of your life trying to cover that up.

It's where the harsh judgement, weird control issues and uncomfortability with things come from.  The internalized homophobia is still absolutely rampant (although on the outside you would *never* suspect, because I know what to say and keep hoping that if I repeat them enough that I will internalize it all).  It's where my body issues come from, where a lot of my struggles communicating my boundaries, even understanding what and where my boundaries are.

I dumped this all on the floor for my counsellor and I to piece meal it all out and it was hard, it hurt, but it was so good.  She understands.  She promised that it would get easier, that loving myself will take time and energy, but worth it in the end.

We are our own worst critics, and now I have to remind myself that I am being TOO critical.  It's also given me a new lease on my snap judgments of others, I have a new understanding of what it means when judgements are a reflection of how the judger feels about themselves.  The things I was hyper critical of in other people are things I struggle with myself, how deeply I am uncomfortable in my own body and life.  My crabby comments about what people eat expose how critical I am of the kinds of foods I put in my own body.  My judgements over how people dress expose my deep uncomfortableness with my perceived inability to dress myself in what I want to wear.

I know I don't walk alone in this, I've read enough blogs and had long 3am conversations with co-workers about this kind of stuff to  know that I'm not alone, that these struggles do not exist just in me, but in many many many people.  It's nice to be reminded that we are all together in this, working on a shared human experience.

Teamwork. Or how I learned to work with my wife instead of against her.

Here in the 'burbs on the west coast we had a bit of a blow-up a couple of weeks ago.  Some financial stuff that went unchecked, some long-term burying-of-head-in-sand, which culminated in hysterical sobbing and angry stares and some very tense moments were I tried not to break things (I SUCCEEDED!).  I never pretend marriage isn't messy, certainly not MY marriage.  You are innately attracted to the people who will push YOUR issues to the forefront over and over and over again until you actually deal with whatever you're supposed to be working on.

All that counselling paid off when I didn't walk out of the apartment and immediately file for divorce when this shit went down.  It is Ugly.

I take responsibility for the part that I played (knowingly remaining ignorant of the situation) and J took responsibility for her part (refusing to deal with the situation in the first place to prevent the Ugly), and we worked together and solved it.

And the funny thing is, I've already mostly forgotten about it already, it is not what immediately comes to mind when someone asks "so how was your vacation?" (this occurred during my 3 week vacation that I had from work).  We processed it (with much teeth gnashing and tears), we addressed the problem (figured out what kind of financial mess it was and how bad it really was), and then found solutions to that mess.  We worked together.  It's solved.

It was HARD FUCKING WORK to do this, to accomplish this.  It was hard not to want to shake my wife and yell at her and say "WHAT THE HELL'S WRONG WITH YOU?!" and it would have been much easier if I had flat out refused to take responsibility for my part in this.

It was kinda neat to see how this all panned out as well, since being unable to deal with money was one of the reasons we were pushed into seeing our counsellor in the first place, which then was pushed to the back burner until we had dealt with some other underlying things first, and when we were ready and had the ability to deal with it, it reared it's ugly head.  We saw, we dealt, we conquered.  I feel like we can do ANYTHING now!!  It was a tremendous boost in confidence to see how well we work together and how well we play off each other.

J started back to school this week.  I spent the previous week cooking like a madwoman making freezer meals so we don't starve when neither of us have time or energy to make dinner.  We're solid until November, I swear.  Last week I could not get another THING into the freezer.  It was kind of awesome.

I'm trying to figure out what I want this blog to become, mostly because it was meant to document and record our experiences in trying to become parents, but maybe I'll just focus on US for the moment, documenting our emotional journey towards whole, authentic personhood (good grief that sounds incredibly silly), which will morph into parenthood.

Grief

This is my 100th blog post, and I wish it was going to be a little more cheery, but it's not going to be.

I have experienced the death of all 4 of my grandparents, my uncle, babies I've worked with, people I've know.  We've experienced infertility and being unable to get pregnant and become parents.

I thought I understood grief, I guess in theory I did, but I had never experienced the all consuming, heartbreaking, grief that comes with the loss of someone very close to you.

On Monday, my 16 year old feathered companion, Alex (a pied cockatiel) died suddenly of what is believed to be a stroke.  We got Alex when he was just a baby when I was 13 years old.

 It was the spring of Grade 8, I was not exactly unhappy, but as my body filled with hormones and new experiences, I was fairly overwhelmed.  We had also lost my dearly loved budgies a couple of months before in a freak accident where they flew outside in the winter on a Monday night in the pouring rain and darkness.  I knew from the second they went out that door that they were gone.

And then Alex came into my life, a tiny feathered cockatiel with enough attitude to stun a horse.  I pretended to be sick the next 2 days to hang out with him, which meant that he bonded super strongly with me.

I convinced my family to let me name him Alex, although I never told them WHY Alex.  I was deep in my X Files fandom at that point, and my mom wouldn't let me name him Mulder or Scully, so Alex comes from Alex Krychek, who was kind of evil (sort of like my bird).  His name when he first came home was Buddy, but I always hated it and never felt that it suited him.

Alex was a lovely bird, he would sit on my lap while I was doing homework and preen, or walk around and talk to anything shiny.  He used to prop CDs up against the wall and sing to them.

I taught him the first few bars of the X Files theme, and my mom taught him the first few bars of Oh Canada.  He learned to talk, I taught him "Peekaboo" because his cage was right around the corner at the bottom of the stairs and I used to pop in and exclaim "PEEKABOO!" and we made it a game.  He called me "Peekaboo".  He also learned "hi darling", "are you a lovely boy?", "do you want to come out?" and "come here".  And then he learned to mash up the words, so eventually he would say "are you a lovely peekaboo darling".

He was incredibly independent, comparatively to my parents other bird (who freaks out when left by himself).  He would sit on the stairs, or the counter, by his reflection, and hang out or preen or whatever.  Or he would sit on the couch with you and explore or just hang out.

He used to eat dinner with us on the table, he had his own dish and everything.  He loved to eat butter. And salt.  The butter was a HUGE problem, because he would lick it off the side of the dish.  He loved bread, peas, pepper cores, kale, spinach, lettuce, quinoa, rice, oatmeal, almost any kind of berry, carrots, seeds and nuts.

He ate paper.  Constantly.  It was annoying, mostly because my parents never bothered to put any of it away.  I can't help but think his paper eating eventually caught up with him...

He had the same nine lives as any cat.  He broke his foot when he fell off his cage (before his wings had grown out) when he was just a baby.  He nearly got crushed in a door.  He was stepped on and broke his "femur".  He had a panic attack and smashed into the front window 4 times before I could get him.  He had lead poisoning.  He had chronic kidney issues.  His last days were spent dealing with another round of heavy metal poisoning (my mom has *no* idea where he picked up MORE heavy metal poisoning) and chelation.  He was obviously much sicker than any of us realized.

He didn't like very many other people, I was too stupid in highschool to realize that how my friends were playing with him was actually extremely stressful for him, and I regret that, although after that, we discouraged anyone from trying to touch him or put fingers in his cage or anything and to just talk to him instead.  He liked my brother well enough, and tolerated my dad.  He liked my mom lots, although not as much as he liked me.  He learned to tolerate J, but never let her touch him.

I love that ridiculous bird, as much as his contact calls annoyed the snot out of me (and broke my eardrums), I miss them.  My parents house is *so* quiet now (Sammi, the other bird, is nowhere near as chatty as Alex was).

I am surprised at the depth of my grief, I also didn't understand how grief this profound radically changes someone.  I feel different.  I have had tremendous support from the people around me, which has been amazing.  No one has said to me "he was just a bird", because I would probably punch them, and even if he is "just a bird", he was MY bird and MY friend.  And of course I should grieve him.

My world has tilted, and although I look fine on the outside, I'm working to pick up the pieces on the inside.  I'm doing such a good job of keeping it together that I don't think even my wife realizes how sad I am (although I keep telling her).

We buried Alex on Wednesday in a box that the vet had gently and very obviously lovingly tucked him into.  She had even put flowers around him.  Before we put him in the ground, I decided I wanted to hold him, and I'm glad I did.  I sobbed as I dug the hole where he was going to be buried, and sobbed as I held him, but I got the closure I needed.  He is gone, he was so well loved by my family for so many years.  I don't exactly feel lost, but I feel sort of... weird?  Empty?  But not empty exactly....

I will miss you, Alex.  Thank you for being the best companion I could have hoped for, I hope that you fly high, my little one.