The Infertile Gourmet

Homebirth, Wedding, and family picnic

Well now that was just too long.  Sorry.  It has been one emotional week.  Where shall I start?

Last week my documents got out of translation and are now in the family courts in Guatemala.  What that means....G-d only knows.  My INS approval has still not come.  My fingerprints were taken about four weeks ago and the expected wait is about 6 to 8 weeks.  Once I have that approval I can go and meet her!  Breathing....breathing....oh my.  Oh my oh my oh my  :)  The wait is about as fun as a stirrup ride at the good ol' RE's office.  At least INS is a little more reliable than my follicles and I do not even need a estradiol blood draw. 

So then pregnant neighbor goes into labor on Tuesday and I was asked to help out.  So between our friend the nurse, the midwife, a doula, and me who used to be an apprenticing midwife there were many to cover the birth.  It was long......  36 hours.  But it was so amazing....

I love homebirth for so many reasons.  Now of course I have nothing against hospital births if that is what one so desires or needs.  But, for those that are healthy and wanting of a homebirth it can be so magical.  Her labor was mild until the evening of Wednesday night. Up to then people were in and out, my husband dropped off dinner, family was calling....it was pleasant and communal and I know she liked that very much because she felt this huge support network. 

Once the sun went down things became more challenging as she became more tired.  We took turns helping her into different positions, in and out of the birthing tub, wiping her brow, holding her up, and massaged her back.  Finally the next morning the baby entered the world in the water and came up looking around ever so peacefully.  Many tears of joy were cried.  It was stunningly beautiful and powerful. 

While I was helping I never thought about my issues because helping someone labor requires that you leave yourself at the door.  Once everything was cleaned up, wrapped up, and settling down I did reflect. 

My heart breaks that this may never be my experience.  It is completely amazing for that child to enter the world in the threshold of life and death and heaven in between.  Birth seems to be the time that all that has ever been and all the feelings of ones life pivots together for an uproar that speaks about life, love,  and living. 

What frustrates me the most is that everyone keeps saying I am not missing much these few months of Alejandra's life to minimize the pain for me or for them....I do not know.  But I am.  Every second after my friends child was born has been amazing and a blessing.  Watching what the baby does and just staring at her is, oh goodness I will say this word again, amazing.  I am missing so much of her preciousness.  Time cannot be stopped and every second she is growing and passing up what she was and becoming what she is and I am not there. It cannot be helped because governments need to do their paperwork.  Our hearts are on hold for paper.

Every precious minute is a wasting.

Sunday morning my husband went out on our balcony to water the plants and saw the father standing in the blooming garden of his holding his little girl.  David said to go look in their yard.  So I did.  The father gazed with so much intensity at his daughter.  Peacefully and serenely he watched her as the moments ticked by too fast for me.  David was crying when I got back in and I of course knew why.

These moments we will not have.  Yes, world we will have others but never these.

So I was going to mention the family picnic and the wedding I went to this weekend but I am tired from writing the above.  So can I write it tomorrow?  Pretty please?

Whiny post alert...

Ok so I can I bitch for a moment?  When do I get to go see my girl?  I was told a month ago that I could go at the end of May but now I have to wait a month or two.    This waiting leaves room for thinking and I have done enough of that the past five years.  I want my girl.  I really want my girl.  Pushy me has not even pushed to find out why.  I have a call in though :)  I want my girl. 

I look at her pictures constantly.  I have a huge picture of her in a frame above my bed.  I have a huge picture of her in the front seat of my car.  Strangley I feel guilty everytime I look at that one because she is not in a car seat.  That is the last time young lady you get to ride in the front seat and without a belt.  Can I just tell you how much my heart loves her.  When the Siberian ice of worry does not consume me I actually feel vibrations of excitment and hope and so much sweet pure love.  If it is this good now oh my goodness how much better can actually holding your child be? 

I miss her.  Is that strange?  I never have met her and I miss her.

Ok return to twiddling my thumbs in Siberia.  My protective zone.

The Brown Recluse

I was just taking a break and processing crap that floats around in this brain of mine.  I have been exhausted after hunting for elusive papers hiding in government offices.  I was tired from begging for documents from corporations that care as much about me getting said document as Bush cares for gays.  Might  I take one moment here and say how my panties are in a bunch about how people feel they have some right to interfere with how a person loves.  This world is tough enough people.  Go save some poor starving kitten to make yourself feel like you are saving a soul and doing G-ds work.  Get your nosy ass fingers out of other peoples business  ....busybodies.  Damn that just irritates me.  Now, my father is gay.  Right? So, here is the thing he has been with the same man for fifteen years maybe....I think.  Nonetheless a long time.  I think they should be allowed to marry.  They love one another.  Plain.  Simple.  Love.  Now, I am not just saying this because I know someone but because it is the right thing to do.  If I were a brat and just jumping on the cause wagon I would probably not feel this way because damn...if they can marry and I get a stepmom Scott well then there goes the inheritance right?  So really I have a motive for joining Bush's team of assholes but I still do not because it is just the right thing.  Rant over and back to the regularly scheduled bitter infertile.

So, I have been tired processing the failed IVF and all the lovely emotional accoutrements that accompany my affliction.  These emotions are like a hamster's cheek that is stuffed with G-d only knows what.  I must say that I know that heart-wrenching sadness and great joy can hold hands and sing Cumbaye because these two have taken up residence bi-polary in my brain.  I am butterfly catching a warm breeze South in my stomach happy and on the other hand my heart is bound up in a tight cold Siberian winter grasp.  Alejandra is coming!  Oh my!  Holy shit.  How did I get a daughter?  But I cannot see her or feel her.  So is she real?  Then the winter takes over the summer and tornadoes are occurring somewhere in the thorax region of my body.  An F-5 was reported smack dab in the middle of my Xiphoid process.  Once winter hits the reflection on the disappointment I feel with my lack of life carrying capabilities puts a deep freeze on my heart threatening to burst the pipes of the happiness I feel.  I am just so used to failure at this point.  I know my place as the bitter infertile and that is the North Pole with Santa Claus and his elves because damn that is just as possible as me getting knocked up or a kid getting to me.

Then I look at her pictures and spring starts flirting with my heart and the bitter ice thaws and I feel like frolicking.  Then the process repeats itself. 

Then there is the other thing.....I am sad that I do not get to feel life grow inside of me.  I want that. So very much with every aching hormonal thought.  More than pregnancy I want to be a parent and that is where my Alejandra comes in.....if she gets to me.  I say if because she is not in my arms and on the plane ride home to our new lives.  Instead, she and I, are in limbo.  So aside from Alejandra that I promise to never let impact my love for her, is the other thing. 

Pregnancy has always been a passion of mine...so much that I dedicated three years of my life studying to be a home-birth midwife and I feel like it all has gone to waste because I do not dare enter that circle of pain and watch others birth their miracles.  So because of my infertility I have two pains....one getting to birth my child and the other having to give up my career. 

After five long fucking years of this crap I still have embers of hopes now and again that pregnancy will occur.  For instance let me tell you about my week.

So I realize I have not had a period in two months or more...right.  I have had mittleshmerz, commonly known as ovulation pains or in my case ovaries Paris and Nicole ramming their giant pink Simple Life bus into almond shaped organs, about twice during that time.  Oh look everyone stupid infertile pretending to be normal.  Then weird cramps have been happening.  Run, RUN, infertile run to your nearest drug store for a pee stick.  I did not pee on a stick.  Then the food thing happened.  Most of the time I am a two meal a day gal.  I get busy and do not have time or forget to eat.  Except when I am on the progesterone which leaves me with a bad case of feed the beast syndrome.  Often and a lot!  But the last two weeks I have felt like my body has progesterone in it.  God I have eaten so much.  I have been soooooo hungry. 

Here is the really sick thing.  I get on the phone and am yapping to David and I say to him ever so fake naively...."I do not know what is wrong with me because I am just soooooo hungry".  It is sort of a game I think.  You whine about obvious possible pregnancy symptoms to friends or family or who ever the hell you can get to listen like the crazy cat lady with the big hats up the street will do just fine. The trick is to act like it never crossed your mind that said symptom is pregnancy related and then look shocked after your have rattled off every symptom on webMD like you have never googled despite that fact that you have a master's degree in googlology.  Reply to person diagnosing strange disease of something called pregnancy with a "you think so?'  Make a gross impression of perplexation on your face.  Walk around fooling yourself that maybe you are and repeating this fun game with the next Doctor.  Once your stupid ass hipes yourself on this most obvious possibility buy one more freaking test and cry your stupid little eyes out. Come on stupid girl you knew better than to test and hope.  One line city, baby.

This is why I have not tested despite the cramps, the lack of period, hunger, bladder infection, acute smeller, etc.  I cannot afford to play the stupid hope game anymore.  My pee-stick purchase should go to better things like cute outfits for Alejandra or rehab for Paris and Nicole  on the next IVF cycle.

I have thought about testing....come on you all know me better than that.  I have been trying to come up with a reason to test.  But the excitement that was once there has been replaced by the knowing that the other side of the test will be a sad and mournful place.  I just do not want to go there anymore.  I just cannot.

Yesterday I did a final walk thru with a young couple, trying to get pregnant, in their new house.  Outside on the porch we were chatting and they told me to move because a scary ass black spider was crawling up the wall.  I was thrilled....because spiders are signs of fertility and to see one on a house the day before closing is a good sign in my book.  Spiders are great fertility omens.

This morning I was standing in my bathroom talking to my plumber when I felt something crawl up my neck.  I brushed it onto the ground and their was a brown recluse crawling away.  I picked the thing up in some toilet paper and threw him off the balcony.  Instead of being fearful of a bite I strangely became excited.  Ewwww though I hate....I mean HATE....spiders ew ew ew ew.  I still feel all creepy crawly and itchy. 

But I also feel excited....stupid girl.