Mary Makes Babies

Dead Ends and Impossible Choices

I'm a big fan of the pros and cons list. I love the idea of writing the facts all down on paper and then being able to clearly, decisively select which course of action to follow.

In my imagination, the pros and cons list cuts the emotion out of hardcore decision making like a jedi slicing through an army of drones.

Only, in real life it isn't quite so effective. At least it isn't anymore. Because now every major decision isn't made just for me. It's made for a little boy who I pretty much worship as 3 foot tall deity.

I find myself up against the wall, being forced to choose from a menu of equally imperfect solutions to the insurmountable problems facing us all right now and I just... can't.

I can't do it.

I'm frozen. I'm stuck.

I feel like my feet are glued to the floor while I watch the weeks and months tick by, bringing us all closer to a point where something is going to break.

For the past year I've focused on collecting options. I've been cultivating choices hoping to paint a clear picture of our future following each possible step. It seemed like a great strategy at first, but every possible solution comes packed with so many complications. To have one thing we must sacrifice another.

What's even worse is that almost every choice on the list depends on far too much luck for my taste. There's no safe bet, only a spectrum of risks from which to choose from.

Our latest and most pressing dilemma involves our fertility doctor. I decided to go and have a consultation to see what he'd have to say about helping us conceive again. I met with the same doctor who helped us have CC and we talked through everything that has happened over the past year and what our options would be moving forward.

He recommended following the same protocol we followed to have CC: using Femara to grow viable eggs, and then ovedril to stimulate ovulation. This time we'd follow ovulation with progesterone supplementation and then follow a positive pregnancy test with shots of Lovenox for the duration of the pregnancy. I'd also start adding methylfolate to my existing daily regimen of low dose aspirin, prenatal vitamins, and DHA.

Sounds good, right? But there is a catch. Beside the fact that we really can't afford to pay for treatments right now, my doctor wants me to stop breastfeeding CC so that I can get my levels re-tested before he assigns a dosage for the medications. He's also concerned about posing a risk to CC if he nurses while I'm being treated.

I have so many feelings about this. First off, I know that CC will not want to wean. He is still fully obsessed with nursing and there is a huge emotional attachment assigned to the act. While I know that we would all survive weaning, I feel awful about putting him through that kind of heartache. I really wanted him to wean on his own. Or, if he didn't wean by three I hoped that he would be emotionally prepared for me to wean him myself by then.

So I started Googling and talking to other doctors and caregivers. It looks like all the drugs have fairly short half-lives, which means I could try just going with the dosage I used last time and take breaks from nursing CC instead of completely weaning him. Of course, that would be no picnic, and if we have to go on week-long breaks he might just wean anyway. Can we handle that?

And don't forget that we still haven't solved our financial riddles. Will we end up moving? Where? How? When? Can my body handle making a baby while we go through all the stress accompanying those decisions?

I just don't know. All I know is that I'm not getting any younger, my problems are getting any further away, and the longer I sit on my decisions the less options I will be left with.

It's time to make some tough choices, and take some big chances. How I'll decide which ones to take, I still have no clue. If only I could channel my inner 20-year old, the girl who wasn't afraid to fail or to hurt, the girl who reveled in leaving old lives behind in search for new ones.

Maybe that's the trouble. I don't want to leave this life behind. I like my life. I just want it to be a little easier, maybe a little luckier, and above all else, I want it to involve more babies. If only it were that simple!

Birthday Shmirthday

I turned 35 earlier this week. I'm not usually a big fan of my birthday. Who knows why? What should be a special day to celebrate my life and pamper myself with a little extra care and attention so often turns into a one-woman pity party. I suppose deep down I'm still too mad at myself for the past two miscarriages to extend myself any grace or kindness - even on my birthday.

I made a concerted effort not to spend the day that way. After dropping C at school I treated myself to a smoothie that was prepared by someone other than myself and way too expensive. I had my laptop with me and it was my intention to spend the morning working from either Whole Foods or the smoothie place, but I just couldn't seem to get comfortable. I ended up heading home instead, and after venting my true birthday angst to my best friend over the phone I curled into a ball on my couch and binge-watched MTV soap operas.

It wasn't fun, or relaxing, or in the least bit enjoyable, but I just couldn't seem to muster the energy for anything else. I should have been writing my book. I wanted to clean the house. I thought about visiting my sister and her new baby.

Instead I lay there staring at my iPad watching fictitious teenagers make predictably questionable decisions.

Eventually Scott came home and peeled me off of the couch to go get C from school. We went to the library, and then for ice cream. It was the nicest part of the day and I'm always amazed at how warm and fuzzy it feels to just be together doing something normal.

The rest of the week I've been slow to start, but I'm managing maybe just a little better. I'm off the couch anyway. I've also started searching for a new psychologist. Mine retired about a year and a half ago - right before I got pregnant that first time after having C. It's about time that I found someone new and started getting my head back together.

I'm in such a weird place right now. I'm actively trying to get pregnant because I feel like getting back in the game is the best way for me to move forward.If we're going to keep doing this than let's just do it, right? At the same time I'm dealing with feelings of depression that are pretty much to be expected for someone who just experienced a loss, and I'm experiencing a fair amount of fear and anxiety over the prospect of success.

I want another baby and I know that getting pregnant is the first, essential step. At the same time I'm scared to get pregnant because it means having to go through all of the anxiety and worry that I know will be there from day 1. It's as if my feelings of hope and apprehension are so equal that I'm simply left numb.

I'm dreading the day I have to take a pregnancy test because I know that I don't get to enjoy that moment - even if it's positive. I keep wondering at what point would I ever be able to breath again? Not at 12 weeks, the start of the second trimester. That's when I lost Twoleo. Then when? How will I be able to watch a baby on the ultrasound screen and live with the knowledge that this very real little person might still not make it? How do I do that?

On one hand I feel like I need to just suck it up, square my shoulders and force myself to stay positive. Mothers and babies have overcome worse odds than mine. We can do this. People do this.

On the other hand I feel like I just don't really want to do this anymore. I want another baby, but I don't know if I want to have one this way. Part of me wishes we could skip all this and go right to the part where we choose adoption. That road won't be an easy one for us either, but it's something I've always wanted to do, and it looks better and better the more I think about the reality of getting pregnant again.

And then there's the voice that chastises me for letting all of this take over my life when I have one beautiful little boy already. I have everything I ever wanted right here. Maybe I should just let this go and enjoy what's already been given to me.

Jumping Right In

It's been two weeks since my last loss and and I'm feeling surprisingly OK. I'm a bit shocked at how quickly I have been able to recover compared to my loss last year. Of course, this pregnancy ended much earlier on and while I don't really think there is any way to truly protect one's self from being heartbroken after a miscarriage I have to admit that being aware of the possibility of loss from the start must have made what happened easier to accept.

I was definitely a hot mess when I wrote my last post on here, but the fog is clearing, and when I look at what happened I don't fall apart the way I thought I might. Maybe I'm in denial. Or maybe I'm somehow really OK. It's hard to tell - especially for me - but I'm going with the latter.

After some tearful consideration I've decided to start trying to conceive again ASAP. According to statistics, pregnancies that follow miscarriages directly have a tendency to stick. I don't know if it will help in our case or not, but at least it feels good to have made a decision to keep trying. I'm choosing to believe that this can still happen. At the same time I'm choosing to accept that we are not guaranteed a win on this.

It's sort of like that moment in a bad sports movie when the underdog baseball team decides to play the championship game even when they know that victory is against all odds. Their star player walked out last night and the manager is about to sell the whole enchilada to pay off his gambling debts. We know we might not win, but we're going to go out there and give it all we've got.

Except in this case the odds aren't actually against us. Pregnancies that occur within six months of miscarriage have a pretty great success rate. And this isn't our last shot. We can keep trying for as long as we want to. I have no idea how many more times I would want to go through this but at the end of the day it's my choice - and that's something I really need to remember.

Cross your fingers. Hopefully good news is around the corner.

Mama Diary: Noone Ever Talks About It

So, it happened again. I was pregnant and then I wasn't.

It was early this time. The pregnancy probably never got past the first little cluster of cells. It wasn't a fetus yet, barely an embryo, but the pain of the loss is still sharp enough to open every old wound and leave me feeling hopeless and defeated.

I hadn't told anyone about the pregnancy yet. It was so early, and to tell you the truth, all I wanted to do was protect it from the world. I felt like if I shared it than it would be vulnerable to any and all vibes and influences outside of our little bubble. I try to be a practical person, but deep in my heart I do believe that our fears, feelings, and thoughts affect our reality. I believe in mojo - in the power or prayer and the danger of an evil eye.

It's silly. It's superstitious. But beneath the layer of logic and sense that guides me through most days lives a paranoid little forest-worshipper wearing a tin foil hat. She's the one who picks up glass keychains in voodoo shops every time she visits New Orleans. She's the one who knocks on wood, tucks charms around her house, and stubbornly keeps an old box of spell supplies hidden under the bed - just in case.

Even now my crazy head is spinning with the idea that even putting it out there that I was trying to conceive again had somehow doomed this baby. My tin foil witch is telling me that I shared too much, bragged and boasted and puffed out my chest and this is fate's way of stepping in to deflate me. Who was I to think that I could decide what would happen with my body?

After it started to go, I forced myself to send an email to my parents and sisters. I felt like that was the safe thing to do. Isolation can be dangerous when it comes to grief and I am someone's mother. I can't afford to let go completely. After that I put my son to bed, wandered out to the couch and started sobbing. My husband came out from the bedroom and said that he was sorry this had to happen. He asked what I wanted and I told him the truth.

It wasn't even that I wanted this pregnancy. I did, of course, but what I really wanted - what I still can't let go of, is my baby. The baby that should already be here with me instead of suddenly passing away last year. That's what I want. And that is what I can never, ever have.

Sometimes when I see families with multiple kids I get so angry - so jealous and bitter and sad. Why do they get to have that and I don't?

And it's not just the miscarriages. It's everything - from money to resources to timing and even dumb, stupid luck that feels out of my reach. The truth is that we can't afford to have fertility treatments. We don't have the money for that and having that money is not on the horizon. God gave me a pregnancy without the treatments, but then he took it back. Why?

Stress is another thing I vehemently blame for this loss. More anger. I often feel like I've lost control of my life completely, and on top of my stupid crappy body and the possibility of evil-eye I blame all of that stress for losing this baby. It took me the better part of a year to get pregnant again on my own, and then I couldn't stay pregnant. Why?

Then he asked me if I wanted to watch a movie and take my mind off things.

No, I didn't.

Did I want to call my best friend - the only person besides my husband who I had confided in?

No, I didn't.

Did I want something to eat?

No. Not really.

My sisters texted me. My best friend texted me. Did I want to talk about it?

No. No. No.

I didn't.

The truth is, I hate talking about it. Writing about it can feel cathartic - like a cheap way to make up for the fact that I can't even afford therapy - but talking about it is different. Talking about it is awful.

I don't want to re-live my pain. I don't want to feel my guts ripped out again and again by remembering what it was like to lose a baby at 12 weeks. I don't want to compare stories or hear about another person's experience. I don't want to be reminded about how it could be worse and how the next person had an even more horrible time than I did. I don't want to listen to people tell me why they think it will be OK or how they think I should look at it.

I just don't. And it's not just right now. I consistently don't.

When I am forced to talk about it my heart races and I get dizzy and adrenaline pumps through my veins telling me to run far far away. I'd rather lock those memories in a steel box and sink them to the bottom of the ocean than ever talk about it again.

I don't want to talk about it because the truth is that I don't care how anyone else feels about what happened to me. All I care about is whether or not it will ever get any better and no one can tell me that.

So to my friends and loved ones, no, I don't want to talk to you about it.

But I will accept your prayers, and your vibes, and your lucky charms, witch's spells, mojo, voodoo, etc.

I will accept your love and your hope.

I will even accept your silence.

And I will get over myself and share in your joy when life showers you with babies and love and happiness - because it's not you, lucky fertile mothers, that I'm angry at, or your beautiful kids.

I'm mad at God or fate or whoever it is, and I'm mad at myself, and I'm mad at my situation.

I don't know what's next, but I have a feeling I'm going to have a lot to get off my chest for the next little while. With that in mind I've brought back this Mary Makes Babies blog so that I'll have a dedicated space to share all of this overly emo material. Feel free to follow by rss or email if you want to.

Mama Diary: Hello Infertility

Trigger warning: loss, infertility

Mama Diary: On Fear

When CC was an infant I would sometimes wake in the night with my heart pounding out of my chest, overcome with the pure and undiluted anxiety that I imagine all mothers must taste at some point or another. Those were the times when I thanked goodness for the invention of our co-sleeper, a device that allowed my baby to remain within touching distance throughout the long nights of his infancy. I would reach out, lay my hand on his sleeping belly, wait breathlessly, and finally exhale when I was rewarded with some small sound or movement.

During the years I waited to become a mother there were countless emotions that I had come to expect. I knew I might feel inexplicably sad at times, and profoundly happy at others. I thought I might catch myself in moments of insecurity or even jealousy as I found my place in the world of parenthood. Of course I anticipated exhaustion and love, but there was one feeling I was surprised by. I had no idea how vulnerable being a mother would make me feel.

In the Beginning: Two Years of TTC

Nature can be kind of cruel. She gives you this perfectly lusty, baby-making machine of a body when you are just a kid, way before most people are mentally prepared to become parents. For the first chunk of my sexual life I lived in absolute fear of double pink lines. I must have spent a fortune on pregnancy tests back then.

The scare was often the harbinger of doom in a relationship. Thinking I might be pregnant, I would size up my mate for fatherhood potential, find him lacking, and split. It was when I had that same old scare with Scott that I knew he was the one. I realized that getting pregnant with him, even accidentally wouldn't be so bad. 

Years later, now that we are all grown up and married, but more importantly mellowed and stable, I no longer live in fear of the baby bump. In fact, we are living in the opposite reality, one where we can't get pregnant, even on purpose. We've tried everything. There have been charts, meters, graphs, monitors, tests, and tricks. We've tried being overzealous. We've tried being lazy. We've even tried not trying at all. 

After almost two years of disappointment, we need help, and in looking for that help we stumbled upon something unique about the state of Texas. Unlike most states in the United States, Texas does not require insurance companies to cover fertlity treatments. That means that if we decide to pursue any kind of drugs or treatments, we'll pay for them in full, out of pocket. I guess fertiliy is just another luxury of the wealthy. The irony of making this discovery amidst the drama of SB5 was not lost on me. Pro-Life my foot.

It's sort of ironic that we came to Austin with starting a family in mind. Who would have guessed that living in Texas could potentially become a roadblock on the path to being a mom? Austin has given us so much. It's reunited me with my sisters and parents, blessed us with a huge network of friends, and given me some amazing opportunities to grow my career. But there's an empty room in our house where a tiny little person ought to be, and I can't help but feel sad about that.

That sadness, combined with all the feels I'm still feeling over my trip home in December, became a bit overwhelming recently. I started seeing someone to help sort them all out, and it has helped a lot. This ordeal has also inspired me to reconnect with my faith, something I've heard has helped others dealing with grief of all kinds. For me, that faith is centered around Buddhism. I've been reading The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. I'm halfway through, and I really feel that it has helped me put things into perspective.

It's not all doom and gloom. We're still hoping things will work out, one way or another. We aren't the first couple to go through this. The reality is that fertility issues are far too common, which is both a huge bummer and oddly comforting. Families have gotten over this hurdle before, so we can too.

We'll continue with the fertility specialist to see what our options are, then start working on a plan to either pursue treatment or adopt. Scott and I will become parents, just maybe not exactly when or how we had expected. It's awfully hard to remember this at times, but we're a long way from "never".

In fact, we've been told that the testing we're going through now can sometimes encourage pregnancy, and that it's very common for couples to find themselves pregnant before treatment even begins. We're keeping a close eye on our gadgets and charts over the next few months to try to make the most of that subtle increase in odds. 

Prayers, happy thoughts, meditations, and general good vibes are most welcome. I've been thinking, maybe the universe gave us all these friends and loved ones for a reason. I believe in the power of thoughts and prayers, so if you feel like giving it a shot, thanks. Maybe it will help. It certainly couldn't hurt. 

I guess that's why I feel compelled to share this now. We need some good mojo. That, and my sister finally had her baby, and now that he's safely arrived I can talk about myself without feeling like I'm raining on her parade. Fox Andrew arrived about two weeks ago, all chubby and wrinkly and perfect.

He's beautiful, and my sister and her husband are so happy and in love. Babies are magic like that. They can stretch your heart wider and wider until you start to wonder how it can even fit in your chest. I'm so happy he's here, making our hearts swell. We've been lucky to have so many nieces and nephews to love. I try not to forget that when I think about having our own kids.

I can't put my finger on why, but it was really hard to hit "publish" on this one. I don't know what I'm afraid of. I figure the worst that could happen is:

A) I get a bunch of advice I don't really want. (There are worse gifts to receive.)

B) I'll get pregnant right away after posting this and feel like a big drama queen. (That would actually be awesome, so that's not really a "worst", but a "best" right?)

c) People will read this and think that I'm totally self-absorbed, and whiny. (Possible, but as my Mom would say, those people can just go fly a kite.)

I guess it's kind of irrational, but then fear often is. Ugh. There are too many feels. Be gentle with me, internet.