Reminiscing

I needed to hunt down something archived in the depths of my livejournal, and had to review entried in 2008 through 2009, which is the window before/durring/after I was pregnant with my son.  It really brought me back to that time, and how new and amazing the experience of pregnancy was for me.  My son was so polite, even in the womb, and so much like he is now.  I felt so much love reading those entries. 

Though there is all this love surrounding these memories and the words I wrote about the experiences I had in that time of my life, it caused me to reflect on where I am in these moments of my life, and to really feel weight around the experiences I am having right now:  The longing I still feel, pulling at me from inside feels like the longer we wait and put off, the less the idea of another child becomes a biological imperative, but a pragmatic decision.  Some people may know this feeling; the older your child gets, the more you lose that sense of motherly need for an infant. 

This was me in early November of 2008.  I wasn't slated to birth until January 2009.  Beautiful, full, happy, and huge!    Admitedly I spent too much time lazing around and indulging and not enough time watching what I ate, and walking around.  But I was happy.  So very happy.

I wish for this.  I pray for this. I feel waves of desire that fill every inch of me to be able to feel this time in a lifetime one more time.  We might never be able to do it a 3rd time (the 2nd is so arduous and time consuming, I can't even imagine what a 3rd baby would be like - pregnant at 40, perhaps).

I still hope.

Letting Go

There are many things I need to catch up here about our ongoing journey, but instead I'd like to write a little something contextual.  It's something we need in everyday life, and to be near us on our journeys, and it's been a topic which, as fertility-challeneged/differently abled will know, can cause more hurdles to overcome than just that of the fertility. 

You hear this phrase “letting go” a lot in meditation circles. It’s easy to say, and pretty easy to explain as well: don’t cling to the past, don’t get absorbed in plans for the future, don’t let fear, worry or anger get a hold of you in the present.

But try telling someone who is fearful or angry – in this present moment – to “let go” and you may get your ears boxed. And it won’t do anything to help them to let go either.

Actually letting go doesn’t come about by doing anything. Letting go isn’t something you do – it’s more like something that happens, almost by itself.

The conditions have to be right, of course. You must be able to let go – often you must have the courage and openness to accept whatever life has to offer – to not resist what might be unpleasant. And meditative exercises help too, of course: focusing your attention on the here and now creates the discipline of mind to not be carried away by anticipations of the future or memories of the past.
But being fully at ease with whatever is present in your experience is hard. It requires an attitude of welcoming to whatever this moment has to offer – an act of faith in the unknown of the future. But such an attitude cannot be brought about by doing anything. It’s more in the act of non-doing and just witnessing.

This is what meditation is about, really. Stopping. Not doing and just being and being aware. Dwelling in awareness is how this total relaxation can happen. And when you are totally relaxed – at ease with everything – there is no clinging and no grasping. ”Letting go” has happened.

Something different

There are a few new tags that I'm adding in light of the sudden fervor that I've observed in my own writing concerning our path to conception.  I would like to take today to have a meditative but momentary pause in something that brings me peace.

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”

― Osho

 

 

To resonate

I heard this in a documentary yesterday, and the parallels were just so touching for what we're going through right now.

"It's just this longing to hold your baby.  I sometimes just feel selfish that I can't accept that
we've got one and some people can't even have that.  We're very, very lucky that we have our child,
but it doesn't stop from having this longing."

The last two days have been spent being able to indulge in a few documentaries about various forms of infertility, and a millionaire in the 1970's who endeavored to create a sperm bank with the genetic material of men possessing superior intelligence levels.  The sperm of what the creator called "clever men".

Sign.me.up., I say!  Unfortunately it seems as though this depository no longer exists.  Also, being that the story takes place more than 40 years ago, it's presumed that the materials are additionally no longer available in this same capacity.

Still.....  Several Nobel Laureates had contributed.   I can't lie; the idea of having a near-genius child would be a dream I could only hope and deign to have. 

 

 

A new direction

The subject of fertility is often one people get bored of hearing, or reading, so it's not something I am going to wear across my shoulders lightly.  I didn't conjure the idea of writing down our experiences without realizing that people might find it dull, and monotonous.  Realistically, this is my method of putting one piece of information in line, right after the other.  No expectations, and hopefully less horseshit.

Here's to hoping. 

I knew right from the start that the husband (at the time, he was just "the boyfriend") that we were going to need some proceedure in order to conceive.  Having been in an LTR of his own until November 2010 with a person he DIDN'T want to risk having a child with, he'd had a vasectomy in October 2010. 

So Fast forward until April 2011.  I'm in the middle of a break-up and move-out when I put myself "out there" on a whim.  Queue future-husband (insert trumpeting fanfare), and fast forward again after months of emails, phone calls and countless text messages.  November 2010 is when we had the conversation concerning his physical imparement, and my desire for more seedlings.  Thus, where our journey was borne. 

The following sping, April 2011, I had my IUD removed as it was no longer a needed form of BC, and we wanted my body to get into a place where if we wanted to start preparing to have a child together, the fields would be ready and I wouldn't have to deal with appointments and exams (more than you'd have normally, anyway).  I confess that, with the removal of my IUD, I was SURE that the universe would gracious and lovingly impart some kind of a miracle child in my body, and we could laugh for the rest of our lives that we'd be giggling over the 1/1,000 statistic about how we'd been able to beat the odds and hassles of the hurdles of non-traditional conception.    Har har.

So fast forward some more; July 2013.  Husband and I have jobs we can work for many, many years to come.  Stability, health insurance, retirement and the ability to cross one more important thing we need to cover off our list before really cruising down the baby track.  

The question has always lingered to my husband about where our baby will come from, and as our first option was always to explore a reconnection of his vasectomy.  This was something that proved MORE disconserting than you could possibly imagine.  Only 24 months after this was performed, a highly qualified local Urologist and his team deemed our case at only a 90% chance of success, depending on how motile and healthy husband's sperm were.  This leaves a grizzly 10% chance of failure for us to masticate upon.  On top of that, the surgery cost (without any "unexepected surprises") would start around $7,000.  Payment plans are not accepted, unless they're done in forward (money first, delivery of goods following payment).  No financing, and also no insurance coverage; this is an "elective proceedure".

Getting the vasectomy cost under $1,000.

So knowing that, if we had a surgery to reconnect the tubes and try for a natural child, we'd be looking at a heap of medical costs, an uncomfortably high percentage that it WOULDN'T be successfull (and unlike Wal-Mart, you can't get your money back when it doesn't work correctly!), and no way to pay in comfortable incriments. 

A visit to a busy OB in Loveland helped us to know what "extraction" could do for us!  Extraction involves a physical removal through the testicle wall via syringe and would allow sperm matter to be extracted and delivered into my uterus through a process of IUI, after a washing process.  The OB explained during this meeting that even after a few years of being pent up inside the testes, sperm lost a great deal of their swimming capabilities; in order to make an effective exchange, he wanted to deliver those lazy little tadpoles to one of my pre-retrieved eggs and, upon fertilization, send it back along the canal and into my womb. 

This, my friends, is what is refered to as IVF.  $12k-$20k per deposit.   Holy shitballs!!

All this, and every month my poor lonely uterus dumps another egg and weeps blood, and curses my name.  

This is how we came to the lovely land of "Donated Sperm"!   Ropey jets of flying tadpoles for anyone who wants to have a baby!  Yippie!   Of course, this also has it's cornucopia of pros and cons.  The read a lot like that contract that the children signed in the original make of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.  If you don't remember that movie, you need to go watch it, and then come back and re-read that paragraph; I promise you won't regret it. 

So with this, we have a litany of flipping proceedures we're going to need to be put through: blood draws to confirm progesterone production (which signals that my body is in fact shooting out tiny little eggs), 2 to 3 boxes of ovulation predictors, and a calendar to write down every single stage of ovulation and menses. 

So, we are armed, organized, terrified, broke, and still crossing our fingers that for some reason, one of those damn testical tubes finds its way to reconnect itself from the urethra to the testicle and shoot some lazy, happy, bumbling little sperm so they can manage to clutz their way into some random egg my uterus left laying around the womb.

I learn every day

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness." - Dalai Lama

Today I'd like to take with me the knowledge that I will carry what I need with me inside my body.  Inherently, I have everything I need, I have only to see it that way, and it will be! 

A whimsical excerpt that I found this morning strck chords of similar feeling that I wanted to share: "Honestly, Buddhism puzzles the hell out of most people in the West. (Actually, it puzzles the hell out of people everywhere, but we’ll stick with the West for today.)" (Charlie Martin, PJ Media)   Something surrounding the beliefs of Buddhism does this very thing to people who are indoctrinated in Western mindset.  This realm of different-mindedness causes fear in the unknown, which I find interesting, because the more I have absorbed from this structure is so very UN-scary. 

Great food for thought and contemplation for today.   My journey moves on!

Be well and thrive!  =)

My daily Buddhism

"It is very good for children to see their parents sit still and be calm. That gives them the idea that maybe they too can do the same. If Mom and Dad are always busy, running around, talking on the phone, stressed out, or collapsed in front of the TV, the kids will also be like this."

I read this today, and am reminded of HOW much our daily lives are like this.  We run around crazily to accomplish everything we need and desire before coming home and sinking into our comfort-place.  What impressions are we giving our children?  What lessons? 

What I've taken from the excerpt is the unspoken levels in which children absorb from their parents, and what actions, emotions and attitudes this will teach them to have themselves. 

Today I've been shown a reflection of myself I've never bothered to look at before, and it is astounding that I see a person who does this very thing.  Not bothering to realize HOW I am teaching my child by example.