Infertility Fatigue

I was just reading the latest blog post from uncomfortably optimistic where she referred to “infertility fatigue”. I hadn’t heard of this term before, but oh boy, have I experienced it.

The truth is, when our IVF treatment failed last year, I knew I didn’t have it in me to try again. I was DONE. For 5 years I had lived, breathed and nearly died of a broken heart over our inability to have a family. I had a mental breakdown where I became incapable of getting through the day without sobbing uncontrollably or considering drastic ways to end my pain. The infertility struggle was so consuming I lost who I was as a wife, daughter, friend and woman. It makes my eyes well with tears when I think about how desperate those years were. Not to mention the financial strain that I didn’t have the slightest bit of patience to deal with anymore.

Inevitably,this put a strain on our marriage.  If it were up to Adam, he would have tried again right away. But he knew how beat down I was and saw that this was destroying me. He didn’t want to lose “us” and agreed we wouldn’t pursue another treatment. I don’t think his heart was as content with this as mine was. But we picked up and moved on. It’s one of those things where you both don’t get what you want. Which sucks since we both started out wanting the same thing.

A part of me figured that I’d eventually come around to wanting to try again. I think we both thought that. But when I finally let go of my dream of being a mom, I felt so free. I wasn’t chained down to “trying”. I could focus on me again, and it felt incredible. With the support of my husband, I decided to leave a job that I hated and pursued a job in real estate. The details of that adventure are best saved for another post, but it felt so unbelievably intoxicating to take control of my life again. The truth is, I haven’t wanted to head back down that TTC road. I don’t know how I went from the depths of absolute isolation, anger and despair over not being able to conceive, to not wanting to try at all. Is it a defence mechanism? I don’t know. I feel like a fraud sometimes for not wanting it now, knowing all that we went though then.

I still get twinges of sadness sometimes. Sadness when I find baby items saved from that brief moment when we thought our dream was coming true; hearing that I wasn’t invited to “mommy” get togethers with friends, simply because I don’t have any littles of my own to bring; or when someone announces yet another pregnancy.

Overall though, I’m focused on being happy with all that I do have in life. And I’ve mostly accepted that my life wasn’t meant to have children of my own in it. I’m excited to explore this new chapter (book) in life, my new career and pretty soon here, a new home in a new city by the ocean.

This new outlook hasn’t come without it’s costs though. Our marriage has really been challenged by my metamorphosis into the woman I’ve become, post-infertility. I was so frail and relied so heavily on my partner to keep my head above water as we navigated the rough seas of TTC. But I’m swimming on my own now, and maybe even gaining on him. I thought getting through infertility  was going to be the hardest thing our marriage faced. But it’s actually the forming of a new “normal” from the ashes of lost hopes and dreams that has proved most challenging. How do you go forward together when the foundation which your life trajectory was built upon has crumbled beneath your feet? I don’t know the answer to that. And it’s really, really hard. But I know we’ll get through it. I’m a fighter and he is too.

 

A journey through the abyss

It’s been about 10 months since I’ve last been on here.  I look back at my posts and I am speechless.  I’m very sad for the person who felt those things.

Some people are able to take this journey in stride.  It sucks (huge understatement), but they are able to cope with the pain.  I was not one of those people.  A few days after writing that post in April, 2014, my grief, and I, hit rock bottom.  My grief became a second person living inside of me.  It utterly consumed me.  I became incapable of functioning.  I was a shell of a person.  I went on stress leave from work.  I thought about some pretty dark stuff.  I started to talk to a professional.  Someone who could help bring me back.  Bring me back to a version of my old self.  I’m not sure I’m as good as I was before all this happened, and I’m not sure I’m worse.  I’m so very different.

I used to think that my life was so much worse than my friends.  They were all getting pregnant, having babies, starting families of their own.  While my husband and I stayed behind, not really fitting into the societal norm anymore.  At least that’s how it felt.  It was so hard to find happiness within me for other people when I was so unhappy myself.  But I know that even though most of my friends haven’t struggled with infertility, they have their own problems to contend with, ones that I will never truly understand.  Nobody has a perfect life.  We all struggle in some way or another.

Infertility is a nasty bitch.  But so many things in life are.  It has taken me a very, very long time to fully appreciate this.  We are all trying to get through this confusing, crazy, up and down, side to side, spin your world upside down, journey through the abyss.

And I’m glad I get to be a part of that.

I am loved

In the midst of my very real breakdown this week, hubby sends me this. It made me cry. LOL I’m a fucking mess.

Sweet Pea

So I’m 8 days into my elimination diet.  It sucks.  Do you know that practically EVERYTHING has sugar in it?  My last trip to Costco was an educational lesson in that regard.    

I will say though that my new (temporary!) eating plan has really made me realize how much crap we unknowingly ingest each day.  And for the lazy cookers, like me, this is very bad news.  I’m trying to make friends with spinach, collard greens and kale.  I bring carrots and cucumbers to work to munch on and I plan my dinners ahead of time.  It’s exhausting!  Assuming that all this ends with the result of little ones, how on earth do people eat healthy AND raise children!!?  It’s a good thing I’m starting some new eating habits now, before a baby comes along.

And no, I’m still not pregnant.  But I haven’t felt this positive about the potential for that happening since, well, the last time I found out I was pregnant.  I don’t know what it is exactly about acupuncture, but I feel so incredibly empowered and relaxed after my session each week.  I actually believe that it will happen – something I never felt while seeing my fertility doctor.  

I dream at night of holding our baby and if feels so real.  I get chocked up writing about this because it seems so tangible.  The sense of optimism is intoxicating and I hope that all this positivity will play a factor in changing the course of our lives.

I still find it difficult sometimes to see and hear of friends experiencing parenthood, plastered all over Facebook and Instragram.  But then I think, I’d do the same thing, because it’s such a miracle and a joyous time in our lives when we start a family.  Who am I to begrudge their happiness?  I don’t want to be that bitter woman who can only be happy for others when I have everything I want.  It doesn’t work like that.  And every day, I get stronger in living this truth. 

One day soon, I’ll have a sweet pea of my own.  I hope.

Stick It

Apologies for my lack of attendance on this site lately.  As I said in my previous post, the hubby and I were on our way to Oregon and it’s taken me a bit of time to get out of vacay mode.  Excuses made?  Check.  Moving along then.

So I had my first naturopathic appointment three weeks ago with Dr. Brown.   TCM focuses on a very holistic approach to health issues.  Certain symptoms I have been having has led him to believe I have an unhealthy gut.  So it was determined that I need to go on a cleanse.  And to be honest, a healthier approach to my eating habits is long overdue.   Dr. Brown did an amazing job in enlightening me as to how foods I eat may be causing inflammation in my gut and that intestinal health is vital to overall health, so in order to have my body baby ready, I first need to address my stomach issues.

Cue to my appointment last week (and after I’d had a chance to review my new diet plan).  We went over discussions from our initial appointment and any questions that I might have had.   Never mind the part about sticking dozens of needles in my body, my main concern was the cleansing diet I had to start.

What was news to me is that this diet isn’t intended as a form of torture, but instead is meant to be an insightful journey in discovering what foods, if any, I have sensitivities to.   Apparently it’s important to focus on what foods I can have, not the other way around.  But just for fun, let’s start with what I can’t have, shall we?  Dairy, eggs, gluten, refined sugars, soy and meat.  What the fuck is left!?  Some carrots and sprouts?  Mmmmmm, delectable.  And just to be a bit more dramatic about the whole situation, this cleanse isn’t for one week, it isn’t for two weeks, it’s for 3 bloody weeks!!!  God help my husband, he’s going to have a raving (and starving) lunatic on his hands by the end of this “cleanse”.

I feel the need to refocus.  This is for an excellent cause, and even if I don’t think about it in terms of helping me get pregnant, this is a process to hopefully start me living a healthier lifestyle.  And I honestly do think that is a positive step.

Aside from the 3 week cleanse, I’ve begun weekly treatments of acupuncture.  I hadn’t really planned ahead or thought about how these sessions would go.  For my first treatment, I happened to wear shoes that made my feet smell like shit.  It’s gross.  I decide to keep them on, in the hopes of sparing Dr. Brown from barfing in the corner when he started the acupuncture.  So with my shoes firmly attached to my feet, I got all set up on the bed.  When he came into the room, I could see him looking very oddly at my feet.  I tell him why I’m keeping my shoes on and he starts to laugh.  Nice try, he says, it doesn’t work that way though.  Fucking awesome.  So off come my shoes.  I can smell the stench right away.  The heat lamp directly above my feet is certainly not helping the situation.  Dr. Brown remains very poker face about the whole thing, even as he’s putting needles in my feet.  When he finished putting all the needles in, he places an aromatherapy cloth over my eyes and says to me, this should help mask the smell!  And then, in what I’m sure was a lie, he tells me that he has a bad sense of smell and really didn’t notice anything.  Ugh, kill me now.

Yup, that’s how I roll.  Embarrassing myself at any given opportunity.