3/9/2017 2 Comments 50th postI realized yesterday that my next post would be my 50th post. I meant to write an update just in case our egg retrieval didn't go well. I didn't want my 50th post to be sad and gloomy. But, I got Jenny Lawson's new book You Are Here in the mail (pre-ordered it!) Jenny Lawson whether she knows it or not has really helped me get through this process. I love all of her books, but this new weird "Owner's Manual for Dangerous Minds" is just what the doctor ordered for my egg retrieval. So I opened this book and devoured it in one sitting. It's such an amazing work of art. It's part coloring book, part weird Jenny Lawson anecdotes, part inspiration quotes. Not necessarily in even thirds.
So, I decided that I would be positive about our egg retrieval and not write a random blog. I felt maybe that would jinx our egg retrieval. I have been more superstitious than I have ever been in my life. Really. Not joking. Earlier this week I parked my car in a spot that I THOUGHT I had parked in before so I backed my car out and moved my car to a totally different row. But, our egg retrieval did not go well despite my optimistic demeanor. I don't want to get into the details just yet. I'm trying to keep my angry, jealous, bitter feelings at bay until we get confirmation that there is nothing to work with yet. I think my new strategy is to give up. After all, I have had dozens of people saying things like "Just when you give up it will work out." Well this is me giving up testing this theory. I have 0 expectations that this will work this time. Perhaps that will change the universe's direction and get me pregnant. Just kidding. I don't actually believe that. I think I've really just given up. So for this blog post, which is what I wanted to do last night, I want to type up a few unsolicited pieces of advice for anyone in treatment or soon to be infertile patients. My tips are in absolutely no particular order. The first thing is do not fret over what kind of underwear you are wearing to the doctor's office. I used to carefully choose what underwear I could wear without judgment. You will drop your pants including underwear the moment you walk in the door. Literally no one will see your underwear. IF you need to channel your nervous energy into figuring out what articles of clothing to wear, worry about your socks. Doctors will make comments about your socks. Even with my feet in the stirrups and my legs spread eagle, I have never felt more vulnerable than the time I went in for an ultrasound with a hole in the toe of my sock. There was my big toe just waving to everyone. No one commented, but I couldn't make my toe stop trying to converse with the whole room. It's also weird going in with no socks. Since I got my tattoos I haven't been able to wear socks. Even though they cover the scary metal stirrups with those weird, fuzzy, aloe-filled socks...it's weird. While we are on the subject of clothing, you must invest in some new clothes. I'm not talking cute clothes to boost your confidence. Pick up some new give up clothes. You will need a good pair of sweatpants. Especially if you are going to be having a laparoscopy. Get a good comfortable pair with a loose waistband. Channel your inner Dolly Parton. If you can fit into a small, but a medium feels better...get a large. Your body is going to go through some serious changes. At some point you will bloat like never before. You will look like you are going to deliver a baby, when in fact, you're just pumped full of all the pregnancy hormones. Also, leggings. I NEVER would have worn leggings before this. But let's face it. I lost my dignity a long damn time ago. I wear leggings like they make no other clothing anymore. I also invested in a few jersey knit and sweater dresses. Basically what it comes down to is your body is going to be stretching and shrinking. You need clothes to accommodate that. I also LOVE wearing tunics on ultrasound days because the back is long enough to cover my butt cheeks while getting ultrasounds. They give you a blanket to cover yourself, but if you have on a regular shirt your butt will be out in the open. With a tunic, totally covered on that side. My next piece of advice is the hardest; I think. If there are people in your life that don't get it. They are not going to get it. I tried so hard to make people understand how hard this is. The only that changed was me. The responses from these people never changed. But, I became bitter and angry and sad and petty. If you notice that no matter how many times you try to gently--or not so gently-- express that they are hurting your feelings and they continue with the same dismissive or hurtful behaviors it's time to take a break. I'm not saying cut everyone out of your life the first time they say, "Just adopt." But, if you've worked on letting someone know they're hurting your feelings and not being very nice multiple times. Let them go. Don't let your relationship with someone blow up in your face. I don't care if this person is your sister or your mother or your best friend. Take a break. If it's really bad just move on. If the person doesn't understand you need a break, it's not worth it. If they really love you, they'll come around eventually. This is your crisis and you need to take care of you. Don't get petty. Don't be passive aggressive. Just take a break. You will make yourself crazy if you don't. If you are brave enough to come out to the entire world (yes, brave. I usually actively avoid this, but one of my friends recently came out as Trans and I know realize how brave it is to talk about really tabboo things). So if you are BRAVE (embrace that word unlike me) and you come out to the world, you will find new friends. I would say the people I've become closest to are people I have literally never met or people I would've classified as acquaintances a year ago. You will find good people. You will find other infertiles or mothers with low milk production. You will find other people who get you and hopefully you have a few good friends already. Maybe this advice should come before the last piece. But I'm not in an editing type of mood. Join a support group. There's dozens on facebook. You just have to search for them and request to join. My favorite is the Infertility TTC Support Group. One of my friends told me about this group when I first announced my infertility. This has been the single most helpful thing. People cannot see what you post--unless of course you have mutual friends in the group. It does have over 14,000 members so don't be surprised when you see people you know. I'm also in an IVF support group, and IUI/IVF support group, and a low AMH support group. Join as many as you need to join. You will find other people with the same thoughts as you. You're overly optimistic and don't want negativity? There's people there for you. You want to set the world on fire and watch it burn with everyone still on? There's a group of people for you. Somewhere in the middle? Yup. You're covered too. Whatever validation you are looking for, I promise it's there. With the support of these ladies you can let go of those people described above. At least for as long as you need to. If you need a therapist get one. If you don't need one, don't let people bully you into it. Therapy is only useful when you're ready to participate. If you aren't ready, you aren't ready. But when you are ready, go. I've been doing acupuncture pretty much sine the beginning of our medical treatments. Not only does acupuncture allegedly help with infertility, but it is really relaxing. It can hurt, but it only lasts a second. I haven't slept so well in my entire life. I do feel more relaxed when I go regularly. Whatever healthy way you have to relax is the best. I will never say "just relax you'll get pregnant." Because that is total BS. But being wired and feeling miserable all the time really gets old fast. Find a way to relax and pass the time. Things you used to find relaxing or fun may no longer be relaxing or fun. Find something new to fill the space. Whether that's coloring or watching 15 episodes of Criminal Minds in one day (what? Who has done that? Not me? Okay maybe that one day...or maybe two three..whatever don't judge..) There is A LOT of time to pass. Maybe that's more than one piece of advice at once... STOP doing crazy shit. Stop googling. Stop ordering products that promise to make you more fertile. I've tried so many things. Robitussin, Mucinex, Fertile CM, Premama, Preseed. Okay maybe hang on to the Preseed. There is some evidence to support that's useful. I just found some glue on my chest from the electrodes and got really distracted by that. I can't even remember the other products I was going to mention. Like I said...not in an editing mood so this will be a real stream of consciousness today. Anyway...I've seen people buying royal jelly, maca root...god knows what else. We will try anything. Don't waste your money. That stuff is not worth it. Save your money for some high quality ovulation predictor kits and fertility treatments. The cost is never ending. Did I mention stop Googling? Yes that is the worst. I literally had to negotiate with myself. I had to cut myself off. But let me tell you. You can't go cold turkey on Google. I had to set days and times of days I allowed myself to Google. Slowly but surely, I stopped Googling and my life has been much better. Don't get me wrong. I occasionally have a relapse, but I do much better about it now and when I do Google I don't get so upset by what I find. Educate yourself. This seems counter-intuitive to my last piece of advice. Learn everything you can about your body. Just don't google weird websites that are 10 years old. I highly recommend Taking Charge of Your Fertility. It looks like a textbook because it's at least 500 pages long. But it's well written, funny, and user friendly. If you aren't infertile but want to learn more about your body or your friend's body or your wife's body BUY THIS BOOK. It's worth it. Read only trusted articles. Read other people's blogs. Check out those support groups and learn. If I could do anything over with our fertility journey I would have absolutely put my foot down and said "Shut up and take my money. Get out of my way. Do the damn ICSI" last time. I wish more than anything in the world I had been more insistent on doing the ICSI. Even if we didn't get pregnant at least I wouldn't have this giant "WHAT IF" following me around, hanging over my head every minute of every day for the rest of my life. Other things I wish I had done sooner. I wish I had started the ketogenic diet YEARS ago. Ask your doctor if this diet is for you. I feel so much better. I sleep better. I have more energy. I've lost some weight. Even if you are skinny and don't think you need this diet, you do. You need some fatty meats and cheeses in your life. What you do not need are sugar and carbohydrates. Your ovaries and other organs will thank you. This may also seem counter to my advice of "stop doing stupid shit," but I also wish I had given up my dryer sheets, perfumes, and non-natural cleaning products a long time ago. I still haven't given up plastic entirely. Sometimes I create my own definition of doing stupid shit. So disregard my advice of giving it up (minus the googling...seriously just stop). You do what feels productive for you. It is so easy to feel so out of control of everything so fast. Nothing you do puts you in the driver seat of your own body during infertility. Whatever you do you cannot make your ovaries, uterus, or your husband's sperm (if that's your trouble) work. It's all up to your body. Especially on the medications, your emotions can feel so out of control and unbearable. Working moms talk about how difficult that is (I am in no way saying it isn't), but being an infertile woman while working is hard. Especially if you're in a helping field. I've had days where I just want to scream in people's faces that their problems are so minuscule and ask them what the hell their problem is. But I cannot do that. I have to remain calm and helpful and push my own problems back. So this piece of advice is to do what makes you feel in control -- even if that means breaking the rule of doing crazy shit. When it comes to other emotional things, my biggest note to you is to forgive yourself. You got a baby shower notice in the mail and threw it away before you even got it all the way out of the envelope and there's no way in Hell you're going? So what. This is YOUR crisis. It is not someone else's. Right now you are the center of your universe. There's actually a really good article about this, but the title is slipping my mind. Do not feel guilty. Do what you need to do. You saw a pregnancy announcement of someone who you know didn't even want kids so you threw your phone against the wall? That's OKAY. Most of us have been You unfollowed everyone of child bearing age on Facebook? Good for you! You're taking care of yourself! Don't want to go out with friends after work because you have a hot date with your couch and 6 hours of Family Feud! Hit me up and text me because I have that date regularly. Do what you need to do to get through this. Don't stop talking about your feelings or your situation because others find it uncomfortable. Find the people who aren't afraid of all of you and talk to them. They will save your sanity if not your life. Some of the more medically related things I wish I knew when I started. The biggest being IVF doesn't work for everyone. My diagnosis (diminished ovarian reserve) is actually the worst candidate for IVF. Not too many years ago they wouldn't have even allowed me or others like me to participate in IVF but the science gets better every day. But here we are on trial number 2 anyway. It only takes one egg right? So I hear. The next thing I wasn't really prepared for. Your IUI OR your IVF can be cancelled faster than it even gets started. I was absolutely not prepared for that. We had two cancelled IUIs. The first one because I only had one follicle and it was on a side where there is no Fallopian tube anymore. The second was cancelled because we had NOTHING. Not a single follicle. Not even one that was too little. ABSO-FING-LUTELY NOTHING. Our first round of IVF teetered on the precipice of being canceled for the same reason. Luckily, our one little follicle grew...but our egg did not properly fertilize. Here we are again in the same situation. One egg. There is absolutely nothing or at least very little you can do to brace yourself for an IVF failure. It's expensive. It's very emotional. It's painful. This is by far the worst thing I think I could ever go through. So this is my 50th blog post. I'm sure I have more advice ready to spew out, but these seem the most important (as of now). But this is already a terribly long post and I don't even know how many of you will make it all the way to the end. When I first started this blog I wasn't even sure if I would write a second entry. I surely did not think I'd have 50. I thought we'd do clomid and some IUIs and I'd be pregnant in a few months. But that is not how my story is working out. I started this blog in May-ish...Not quite sure the date. But we are almost rounding out a year in our fertility clinic. I currently have had almost 18,000 total page views and almost 12,000 unique page views. I literally thought maybe 5 people would read my blog. It's crazy to know so many people at least open the link. Not sure how many read it all. I'm so grateful for each and every person who reads my blog. I hope many of you find it helpful for yourself or maybe it helps you better understand a friend or family member. I appreciate those that are just genuinely interested in my journey and pray and send good thoughts for us. I know that when or if we have a baby it will have the biggest and best village to help raise him or her or whatever gender neutral pronoun our child may prefer. So I started this blog around 1:00. Usually they take me 20-30 minutes to type up but this one was substantially longer than intended. We did get a call at 2:00 that our egg was mature and has been injected with sperm. I'll write another (hopefully shorter) update on our egg retrieval adventures later today. I'll end this post with a quote from the new Jenny Lawson book, "Happiness doesn't always last. But neither does sadness. Depression lies. Don't believe it."
2 Comments
Kristine
3/9/2017 01:35:50 pm
It is interesting that the Robitussin thing is still around. Acupuncture and the diet are new at least for me. The baggy clothes -best advise ever. There were times a night shirt seemed too tight on my belly. Great advice!
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Heather Joyce
3/9/2017 02:11:31 pm
thank you! there's all kinds of things out there. the weirdest is eating McDonald's fries!
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Heather Joyce
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