3 posts tagged “infertility”

I saw this perspective meme-- at Heidi's blog and thought I'd give it a go. I had to write out the years to keep it all straight in my head.

2008 One week ago --
I was getting ready for Thanksgiving
Looking forward to my husband having a week off from work

2007 One year ago --
I was three months pregnant with Emma.

2006 Two years ago --
I was five months pregnant with Micah.
I had just found out that I was having a boy.
We had recently decided to move into our current house.

2005
2004

2003 Five years ago --
I was six months pregnant with Joel.

2002
2001
2000
1999

1998 Ten years ago --
I was engaged to my husband.

It pretty much hits all the highlights and glosses right over the years of infertility. Until I did this, I didn't realize I was already five years removed from the thick of it. I don't understand it all, to look at this I look like the most fertile person ever, baby after baby after baby.   And maybe I am now, I don't know, but those years of infertility and a miscarriage are seared on my consciousness. It changed how I conceptualized my family and the world around me. I'd like to think, and I guess I do believe that I am a better person having gone through it, but even believing that, I can't say that I would ever choose for myself or anyone else to have to go through years of infertility. 

I have a personal blog that has been grossly neglected since I started up my vox blog. I recently got the bug to resurrect it (especially with the cross posting plugins for MT4). In the process I ended up rereading a lot of the old entries.

Wow, I was in a really bad place for some of those entries. Reading them just now makes me want cry. I want to go and give my old self a hug. I know this doesn't really make sense, but I want to tell her "I'm sorry." I'm sorry she went through that. I'm sorry I didn't know better to help her through those times. I'm sorry I didn't have the presence of mind to research ways to better help myself. I'm just sorry.

A lot of what I was reading was stuff that if a friend of mine came to me and told me she was going through, I would try to give her a little perspective and a lot of self forgiveness. I was pretty hard on myself at times. Thinking about it now, so much of it seems so unnecessary. Most of what I was going through were infertility, pregnancy, postpartum and new motherhood (new SAHM-hood) related. Lots and lots of other women have gone through what I went through. I shouldn't of had to feel so lonely. Why do we pretend like nobody goes through these things? 

Former Self: you are not alone, it does get better, I think you're doing a fine job and you are a good mom...now give me a hug.

I recently had to write this down to send in an email to an old friend of mine I was catching up with after a number of years apart. After writing it and thinking about it, I thought it would be a nice thing to document on my blog.

I went off birth control about a year after we were married, but didn't get pregnant until about two years later and then I miscarried early in that pregnancy. After about a year-and-a-half of no birth control and not getting pregnant we decided we should do something. I was getting pretty depressed. We talked about it and decided that neither of us really wanted to pursue the infertility treatments and would like to adopt instead. So we got the ball rolling with the adoption process, which basically starts off with a series of classes. We hadn't gotten far into it when I found out I was pregnant. I was so excited and happily told everyone I could. Then only a few weeks after I found out, I miscarried. How can I explain how difficult that was? It's losing a child. I know people say (and I heard people say to me) things like "At least you didn't know it longer. That would have been much worse." or "It's just a bunch of cells", but I tell you it was as painful an experience as if I lost one of my children I have today. And it stays with you. People think that once you have a healthy baby that all the pain of a miscarriage just sort of goes away, but that's not really true. I mean, like any painful experience you learn to deal with it and continue to manage your life, and slowly good days start to outnumber bad days, but it doesn't just go away when you have a "replacement"(?!) child. Anyway, after the miscarriage I had to stop everything baby related in our life. I just couldn't take it. Then about nine months after the miscarriage I got pregnant with Joel.

Joel's pregnancy was pretty uneventful (thankfully). I ended up going into labor one day shy of being induced (I was a week overdue). My total labor lasted just over 30 hours (I was only in the hospital for 12 hours of it, though). My epidural only worked on one side and I pushed for about one to two hours (I don't have a clear memory of that part, just that it was extremely painful in spite of me electing to have pain management). My postpartum period was miserable. It felt like I bled forever, I had postpartum depression and I just could not get the hang of breastfeeding. Long story short is I eventually healed, got help for my postpartum depression and switched to formula. The first three months were so rough, though. They are just a blur in my memory. I do remember shortly after coming home from the hospital that all I could think was "I don't know if I can do this again." Of course I ended up changing my mind, but that's how overwhelmed I felt at the time. I was so nervous about getting pregnant again that I went on birth control in spite of my history with infertility.

I went off birth control about six months after I had Joel hoping that perhaps sometime around his first birthday I would get pregnant. Well, Joel's first birthday came and went and I wasn't pregnant. So I just thought that maybe he would be our only child and I had to be ok with that. Of course I got pregnant again. This time with Micah.

MIcah's pregnancy was also pretty uneventful. I had normal pregnancy side effects (tired, sickness, heartburn, etc), but nothing to jeopardize me or the baby. I went into labor with him pretty close to his due date. I was so glad. I did not want to be overdue again. His labor, delivery and postpartum period were like night and day compared to Joel's. Micah's total labor was 12 hours. Only 5 of which were in the hospital. I labored at home for as long as I could and pretty much when I finally got to the hospital I was like "Ok, I'm ready for my epidural," but it took them an hour to process me, etc. to get me to the point where I receive an epidural. That was annoying to say the least, but that was by far the worst thing. When I finally got my epidural (that actually worked) I went to sleep for a few hours. I woke up when my water finally broke. The midwife came in and, I kid you not, I pushed three times and the baby was out. Yeah, a completely different experience! My postpartum period was really well also. I healed quickly, didn't have PPD and I was able to establish breastfeeding with this one. With the great experience I had with Micah I thought it would be just a waste of money to go back on birth control. It had always taken us nine months or longer to get pregnant and I was breastfeeding with Micah, so that should give me an additional buffer, right? I did end up having complications later when my milk started to dry up prematurely. I just switched to formula at that time. I wasn't interested in fighting that battle again. And shortly after that I end up getting pregnant with this latest one (much sooner than I would have ever guessed I would be).

The idea of family planning has been such a joke to us. We've wanted all of our children for certain, but "planned" them, not exactly. All of our "plans" seem to get thrown out the window as soon as they are made.