All over again

I just can't seem to shake my bitterness, the heavy emptiness in my arms. Another half dozen people announced their pregnancies on FB, someone I used to follow keeps bragging (in a round-about way "I'm so amazed at how my baby talks to me, anyone else's baby talk to them while they were pregnant", that kind of shit) about her pregnancy...

At least at work I don't feel totally alone in this, a lot of the parents I work with struggled with infertility (we had a set of twins who were their parents 8th IVF attempt). THEY UNDERSTAND the emptiness, the bitterness. I'm finding it harder to connect with my friends' kids, because I don't want to put forth all that emotional energy, I just get burned too many times (a family I was very close to moved to Australia, a good friend had a baby and we hung out a lot while she was on mat leave, but as soon as she went back to work her life got too busy to really do much). I want to be the only one, I want to be the one a baby cries for when I put her down, I want to be one of the only people who can comfort my baby, I want to be the one my injured child come crying to, I want to be the one they snuggle up to, I want to be the receiver of snotty kisses and drooled cheerios.

I think it's extra hard because of work right now, where we have a couple babies who are essentially dying, but their parents are unable (physically and emotionally) to come into the nursery to be with them. It sickens me (because I think "how can you leave your baby to die like this, alone and suffering?"), and my brilliant and wonderful and compassionate wife always reminds me that that is their journey, and not to compare mine to it. Also not to pass judgment on their ability or inability to do what I feel is right.

I know it's hard on J too. I have to put on my game face every month when she bleeds, and thankfully 90% of the time I'm OK with the situation we're in right now. I resigned myself at 16 when I came out that becoming a mother would be more complicated for me, but ultimately I didn't care how it happened (biological vs adoption).

I'm just weepy and angsty, and I know I'm not alone with these feelings. It's also hard when our parents desperately want us to produce grandchildren.

It's just that this empty ache hurts so much.

C'est L'Halloween!

I'm finding blogging difficult, mostly because I feel like it's all been said before. I have nothing new to add to the conversation. I really enjoy my queer mommy blogs that I read (but only a couple are pregnant, and none are TTC). TTC is tough, but it's forced some fun changes!

J's dad had a big heart attack on Saturday. We were worried that she was going to ovulate when she was away for the weekend, but the stress of this should push it back again. I've had to really take over and run the house, which is tough, since I'm working so much, but it's getting there. The house is a mess, but who cares??

It's getting towards cold and flu season, and vaccines are once again the hot topic. To vaccinate, to not vaccinate. I think we will end up opting for a combination of both, giving MMR and DAPT (which provide protection against measels, mumps, rubella, diptheria, tetanus, polio, and the one that I can't remember is whooping cough), and skipping out/delaying some of the other ones. How easily we have forgotten the high infant mortality rate we used to have in the developed world, my generation never lived through the devastating effects of polio, or hospitals full of babies dying of the whooping cough. There was a mumps outbreak in Vancouver last year, terrifying for all of our sick babies, especially when ONE OF THE PARENTS BECAME INFECTED.

Something else no one talks about is RSV, a virus that causes cold AND flu like symptoms, but for small babies with their small airways can mean that they become very very very sick or even die (the virus causes a layer of mucous to build up inside the airways, and in babies who are already compromised because of short/damaged/extrememly fragile airways, this is a death sentence). Our respiratory compromised babies will all receive it, and I send many prayers for the babies whom we have cared for, that they will make it through the winter. We have one baby in the unit whose parents have refused all vaccinations. He was born at 26 weeks and was *so* incredibly sick, we thought he was going to die on at least a dozen occasions, yet he didn't. He has survived so much, it would be so awful if he died of RSV.

Anyways. J is now seeing a chiropractor. Her pelvis is all out of whack, which compromises the nerve function and blood flow to her pelvis. A couple of quick adjustments and we were out. She'll go back a couple of times a week for the next little while.

My cat is holding a dead bird, which means I have to go and bury the poor thing. My cat doesn't kill them, she steals them from the neighbour's cat who kills them. Sometimes she buries them under the deck.

Anyways, the weather is crummy here, but that's what happens in October. Peace out for now!

October

Sooo... we HAD been using what we thought was adequate fertility charting. But boy were we wrong. I got all concerned that J wasn't ovulating, and we were wondering when we were going to have to fix this, and then we plotted everything on the Taking Control of Your Fertility charts, and VOILA.

EVERYTHING IS FINE. Mostly. She has what would be considered a delayed reaction to her progesterone, which may make pregnancy difficult. We realized she's been having a pretty steady luteal phase (long enough to actually BECOME pregnant, a nice clean 11 days), but her temperature rise is slow and kinda dippy. This is *easy* to fix.

So we hit 12 days post-luteal, with only a little bit of spotting, no cramping, and still a high temperature. We got excited.

Day 13, heavy bleeding, temperature drop, much disappointment. J's sure she was pregnant, her energy changed, she had to pee OMG ALL THE TIME, things like that. So, it's a question of did we lose it because of her progesterone, because the embryo wasn't good, or because of something else.

We ordered an actual BBT thermometer (everything I had read up to this point had said that an actual BBT thermometer wasn't needed, just one that went one decimal point, but we need the extra decimal place). I'm going to pick up some progesterone cream and see if that works too (she's also on stuff to help her body process the hormones, thanks to our naturopath!).

I've been working a ton of OT, working to pay down consumer debt so we're in a good place to raise our kids (also because J carry's student loan debt, I don't want to be overrun with debt repayment when we only have 1 income! Yikes!). The OT is going fine, I find that because I work 3 days and 1 night, I have more energy and can DO more OT, which is nice.

That's all for now!

More than this

I've quickly discovered that I'm in love with my job. I hit my 1 year mark September 15th as a NICU nurse and have only have small short moments of going "oh god, why am I doing this??" (almost exclusively during a night shift at 3 in the morning when one of my babies has puked all over themselves and their bedding and I have to pee and I'm in the room by myself because my buddy is on break and I realize there's no more clean linen in the room and my IV is beeping and etc etc etc).

I've cried ONCE, so that's pretty good!! I adore my co-workers for the most part. I had my yearly review done (my "boss", one of a dozen, but the one who works with me and knows me best, sits down and goes through EVERYTHING with me, it's actually really handy!). It was overwhelmingly positive. There was a tiny blip a couple weeks ago, but that was a totally stupid mistake (and it wasn't even a mistake, but it's a long story and involves a pee covered bed).

One thing my boss said was that she really admires and appreciate how open I am about my family, about who I am (read: sexuality). And I am open. Someone referred to my wife as my roommate the other day (????). My co-workers know we're trying to conceive, they ask questions about how we're doing it, I answer patiently and with as much information as I think they can handle repeatedly. Everyone is *so* supportive. I am the only queer female nurse (I think) on my unit, which is hard to swallow (SINCE THERE ARE 200 OF US), but that's how it is. My co-workers are awesome, since we're all a bunch of gossips. There is one other queer dude, but that's it (and he's not super out).

I feel very strongly that is it my job to be out, to answer questions, to be a resource to my co-workers. We deal with families in crisis every single day, and worrying about your sick/premature baby PLUS dealing with staff who don't understand your family is not something anyone should deal with. I can't imagine worrying that the staff's homophobia will interfere in your child's care, and it makes me sick to think that this is possible in other places. In general, Vancouverites are so laid back and accepting that nobody cares!

I'm debating whether to start another blog on NICU specific thing, I feel like I have a lot to share about how to survive the NICU, tips and important things like breastfeeding and so on and so forth. We see the sickest babies in the province, and sometimes they are there forever and ever, and there's just so much information I wish I had, that I can't seem to find on the internet... but we'll see. I'll ask some of the parents and get their feedback...

Taking a break

January never feels like the start of a "new year". I suppose my 13 years of public education followed by another 5 of post-sec (plus another semester to do my NICU training, that happened to start in September) has me pretty well trained to think that September is the start of a new year.

Because it's September, and because everything and their dog is starting up with activities, and we knew that our insemination cycle would fall DIRECTLY IN THE MIDDLE OF INSANITY, we opted to skip a month.

J is also finding it much more difficult than I am, I suppose because it's her body that isn't growing anything. There have been a lot of tears, but I expected that. I expected to find the start of each new cycle more difficult too, because it means that she's not pregnant and we're still waiting, but I find it's OK. I'm having fun guessing what our kids will look like, what sign they would be.

This month, if we conceive, will find J hugely pregnant or us with a very newborn at the same time as my childhood best friend/sister is getting married. I *almost* want to skip this month too, but I won't, and instead half-heartedly hope that it doesn't work, which sounds awful, but the wedding's in Calgary, and there's no way J is travelling that pregnant, and there's no way I'm leaving her side. So that would be really disappointing. We're still gonna try, because we're starting to get really good at it. We've enjoyed our month off, took time to re-examine why this is so stressful, and to try to reaffirm to each other why on earth we're doing this (seriously, it would be so much easier and cheaper to want to be child-free, but I just can't, the empty ache in my arms never goes away).

So here's back to the grind of cervix examining, spit ferning checking, daily 8am temperature taking (my wife is a night owl and will happily sleep until 10 if you let her!) and general obsessing over every symptom. HUZZAH!

Support

I'd also like to mention the amazing amount of support we've received. I never planned to tell people we were TTC, but it just comes out naturally. I'm not bothered when people ask how it's going at ALL, maybe because it's so new. Rather, I think that it's amazing.

My city is very open, we have one of the biggest pride parades in North America (500,000+ people every year show up just to watch). No one seems to care. There is still violence aimed at queer people, but it's not awful (Gender deviation still attracks a bulk of violence, which is sucky and shitty). My queer ancestors fought to give us rights to be, our generation's push is to do all the "normal" things while pushing boundaries, our children's generation will be forcing global acceptance (it's happening now, but I think they will fully push it through, and acceptance is not tolerance!!!).

So, to all my fellow queer mamas who came before me, thank you.

Next!!

So, turns out J's last cycle we think was an-ovulatory. No biggie. 2 cycles of sheer confusion. This cycle was *so* much nicer. BIG RED FLAGS, clear signals. We inseminated on the PERFECT day. Our timing was impecable, so I feel pretty good.

We're using the following fertility tracking methods:
-BBT
-speculum to examine her cervix everyday (so we examine cervical mucous, os opening and cervical position)
-the Fertile Focus (which is really neat!)
-pee sticks, which track lutenizing hormones.

It's a big crazy, but it's helped to narrow things down *really* well. We're using just dip sticks, instead of expensive mid-stream sticks, which has cut the costs down INSANELY.

We're 4 days away from testing again. J's temperature has actually stayed up, instead of fluctuating all over the damn place. Her cycle was it's normal length and nothing funny happened, which was re-assuring.

Part of me thinks suddenly going back to acupuncture after not going for over a year made her body do funny things, but the acupuncture was specifically FOR pregnancy, so our practitioner didn't move huge blobs of energy. Maybe there WAS a block and she did move it, and it just took 2 months for it to sort itself out. Who knows.

I "accidentally" bought an Ergo carrier.... ;) It was on babysteals and 50% off, and even shipped to Canada it was still $50 less than buying it in the stores. The damn thing is brand new. It's skookum!! I may have also accidentally bought adorable rainbow babylegs. I purposefully bought really nice cloth diapers though (srsly, 50% off. Normally $23 each, good for 7lbs to 35lbs, and they're super swanky! I hope they work!!).


Hoping for a positive update on Thursday/Friday.

:D