Acceptance?

I haven't updated in a while.

I know this has worried a fair number of people: the suddenly dropping quiet.

I'm okay though.

And I'll explain the picture above in the process, but let's get right to killing any hopeful assumptions first -- I am not pregnant.


In the time since I've last blogged anything with substance here, I've officially gone off Clomid because it didn't work. I haven't ovulated since fucking July, and apparently my body has no interest in cooperating with the meds, either. I noted in my original post about taking Clomid that 20% of people who take it still don't ovulate. Hello, nice to meet you.

My OB's office wanted to refer me to the "big guns" reproductive and infertility specialist in Seattle. I told them no. One reason is that that shit's expensive. And still is no guarantee. I haven't looked into it to confirm, but I don't believe our current insurance has any coverage at all for infertility stuff. There's not a damn thing wrong with me that they can diagnose or point to, I just don't work? The second reason, and really the only reason I need is that I need a damn break from this.

I've had my fill on failure, disappointment, heartbreak, and always managing to land in the shitty end of the odds of any given thing. I was a terrible little ball of misery for a bit there. The last round of Clomid, I just knew it didn't work. I stopped taking my temps around CD21 when they were still too low for me to have ovulated. I went like a good little girl to get my blood drawn that day anyway, even though I knew what the results would be. (In retrospect, and from the nasty bruise I had on my hand for the next two weeks, and two other sticks in my arm from unsuccessful draws, I shouldn't have bothered.) By that time, I was well on my way to accepting my fate, and ready to move on, at least for now.

I'm okay with it. And I'm not saying I'm giving up trying forever. I'm not going to go on any form or birth control or anything, so there's always that "not preventing is as good as trying" thing, but when you're not ovulating, it doesn't really matter what you do. When my body decides it wants to participate again, then maybe it'll be game on.

Deciding to take a break has been a weight off. I've had people try to suggest taking a break, or just relax, or all the other useless platitudes, but when you're not ready to take a break, you're not ready, and that will just make you unhappy too. I am finding freedom in not taking my temperature every morning; the little beep beep beep that proceeds the low temp that tells me I still haven't ovulated. I am finding freedom in not having to think about it. I am enjoying eating all the things that the hyper-vigilant avoid. I drank coffee. I feel liberated.



As for the little onesie up there, I had scoured Etsy and ordered it way back a ways before we knew Clomid was a total bust. Through an address mixup (my fault) it took a while to get here, and didn't even show up until I knew Clomid hadn't worked. I looked hard to find it. Because of the "rainbow baby" symbolism in miscarriage and babyloss circles of the "rainbow after the storm" when you manage to have a living child after a loss, it was an affirmation to myself that it would happen some day, that there would be a little baby to take home in that. A baby that would actually come home. ('Cause my brain is broken; I can't see baby clothes without some little voice piping up from the back about how a pull-over-the-head style'd never work with all the tubes and wires and leads.)

The irony of me finally getting onesie after I had decided to stop trying is not lost on me.

But I am really am oddly okay with the decision to take a break for a while. Maybe it works because I've separated myself from that world. If you're not trying, you can't fail? But I still find that I have these veins of bitterness within me. It seems like everywhere I look someone is pregnant, someone is having a baby, yet another person from my past is shooting out another kid, like this is all the easiest thing in the world for everyone but me, and so it's not a world I want to be part of, and one I meet with some bitter antagonism.

I know the bitterness will fade in time, but right now I don't want anything to do with the whole world of reproducing. I've unfollowed lots of stuff in my media consumption, twitter, podcasts, Google Reader, wholesale hid people on Facebook who can't shut up about their kids, or post daily cell phone pictures of their kid making the same exact face every. single. day.

I had lamented a while back that of all the voices you hear about infertility, making it "better" is always all about getting a kid anyway, through some means. No one is the voice of saying you're okay no matter what. That you can be happy no matter what. And while I am definitely not happy now, I know that a lot of that is circumstances that are because of, but also separate from a failed attempt to have children. No one made me quit my job and up and move 1200 miles away from anything I knew to go start a family. This was not some 1950s arrangement of a submissive housewife. I fully chose do to so entirely on my own, and Josh would have never asked me to do it had I not wanted to. I chose this because it was what I wanted. And it not happening how I wanted is no one's fault, even though it sucks ass, and having made that choice makes the infertility even worse, because I don't have those other parts of my life to still be part of.

I guess maybe some times you have to be the voice you want to hear in the world. The world does not need any one else to rub their pregnant belly and tell infertile people that it gets better, but it could do with more people who can say "Yes, that really fucking sucks, but it's not the end." That you can pick back up from rock bottom and be okay. Because I am god damned well going to be okay.


I'm still looking for something else to do with my life, at least for a while. I need something. I am looking into ways to afford going back to school, trying to decide what I would go back for, ways to pay for it, work I can do. A suckass economy and knowing NO ONE here makes these things harder. But I'll get there.

In a perfect, dream world, where I could actually afford to do so, and wasn't a 30 year old trying to start from scratch now, I'd go into medical research. The closest I could ever come to punching CHD right in its fucking stupid face is to go fix it so it can't kill anyone else's beautiful little babies.