Luteinizing Louboutins

Ever take a pregnancy test and have it come out negative but you take the other two tests in the box anyway, just in case that one test is defective?  Yep.  I've done that every cycle.

I could have bought a really nice pair of shoes with the money I've spent on three-packs of early detection pregnancy tests.  Ok, maybe not a pair of Louboutins, but at least a pair of sale-rack, past-season, peep-toe Manolos:

I'm here to say that I am going in a totally different direction with this whole thing now: I'm going au naturale.  Tonight I have my very first acupuncture appointment, dedicated to addressing fertility.  And I'm jumping into the deep end of the pool: not only am I paying to have little needles poking my meridians, I'm also signing up for Maitri Breathwork.  I'll even take herbs and do weird dances during the full moon if it will help.

Told ya I'm going whole-hog. 

My only worry is that I'll be told to stop ingesting caffeine and wine, in which case things will not be very pretty around our house.

Oh, but I almost forgot: I feel totally awesome not being on Clomid.  I'm getting less bloated by the hour. My clothes fit better, I'm not annoyed all the time, and the husband claims I look skinnier than I have in months.  (Maybe I had to prompt him for this last detail; maybe I had to ask three, four times, "I'm skinnier, right?  RIGHT?"  Or maybe he just said it.  Can't remember now.  Point is, it was said.)

"Acupuncture Diaries" doesn't really have the same ring to it that my current blog title does, so forgive me for keeping it and moving on with my experiments nonetheless.

Ham Belly and Cheese Thighs

Yesterday I Googled the terms "Clomid + weight gain."

I read the accompanying sheet that came with my prescription but I swear that I don't remember the part about becoming a fatter version of yourself.  They should also add a part where they tell you that every month, you have various tell-tale signs of pregnancy, such as frequent urination, sore breasts, and a bloated middle, except that your pregnancy tests still come out negative!

I just thought of an awesome new ad campaign for our favorite drug: "Clomid.  All the symptoms and none of the pregnancy!"

My weight gain hasn't been evident to the naked eye -- unless I'm the naked one.  I'm thin, so its the sort of bloated, fatter feeling and the slight increase of a muffin-top over my jeans that only I can notice.  Well, me and my husband, that is, who now likes to squeeze my middle while announcing "Ham!" in a very loud voice.

Another side effect of Clomid for me?  Depression.  I looked this up too.  Mood swings, anxiety and depression were listed on various Web sites.  Mine was what you might consider "severe."  True, it lasted only about three days, but those days, they were dark, my friend, very dark.  If you had seen me walking down the street, there would have been a storm cloud raining directly over my head.

Which has led me to decide that I'm not taking Clomid any more.  Ironically, I have been taking the lowest possible dose, 50 mg, so I wonder if my Dr. will try to talk me into a cycle at a higher dose.  But I also worry how much worse the symptoms would be.  I will have to be locked inside a padded cell for those 36 hours.

I'm a bit bummed about my decision, because taking Clomid made me feel a sense of control, like I was actively doing something to increase my chances, instead of waiting and waiting for nature to take its course.  Nature's time frame doesn't work for compulsive, control-freak, Type-A personalities like yours truly.

Well, I've said my peace and now it's 8 a.m.  Time for ice cream.

Pregnant Women Are Smug But Nobody Says It

My sole (I think) male reader sent this gem to me today:

 Pregnant Women Are Smug (click here to see video)

I'm on the floor. Things are funnier when they are true.

I'm also on round three of Clomid. Tomorrow is the magical first day of DTD. Yeah yeah yeah whatever. I'm over this.

Really, I'm not bitter, it's hard to express this adequately on the screen. Just OVAH IT. I have s--t to do with my life, and waiting around to find out if my eggs are hatching and fertile is getting on my nerves and I'm not directing enough energy to the stuff I want to achieve.

There's a lesson here.

The Girl Can't Help It

You know that phrase, "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you?" Well, I say, Start taking fertility meds and the whole world seems to get pregnant. Except you.

I went to dinner with four girl friends last week. We were meant to be celebrating a rare night away from our significant others, to indulge in "girl talk," and to guzzle Chardonnay. Nary a moment after the first sip, the talk about pregnancy began. All of the other women at the table had at least one child. In short time, I felt alone among my small group, adrift without a paddle. Or an operational uterus.

The conversation morphed from pregnancy to birth, to vaccinations, to antibiotics, to playdates, and to pureeing vegetables. I was almost able to chime in at one point: I like a pureed parsnip as much as the next toddler.

There was a ten-minute interlude solely dedicated to tips and tricks for breastfeeding children with teeth.

It felt endless. Where was that waitress? I needed more wine. NOW. I monitored the conversation: there was not one single topic discussed that didn't expound on the experience of motherhood. I felt alienated, but I also felt sort of appalled. These ladies all knew my history. Normally talkative, I had virtually nothing to say. It would have behooved them to acknowledge that their conversation was totally and completely excluding a member of their small party. I was baffled by their lack of awareness.

This is not the first time I've experienced this sort of exclusion. And I know my friends: they would never be intentionally cruel. No one would.

I've narrowed it down to this: there are certain experiences in life, such as marriage and motherhood, are so all-consuming, so enthralling, and so fraught with confusion and emotion, that a life previous to this landmark event is simply no longer imaginable. In short: they just can't help themselves.

Being childless among the fertile masses has taught me to never dwell on the details of pregnancy, episiotomies, stretch marks, teething, breastfeeding, or a trial of solid foods in front of my childless friends. I'll never do that.

But I look forward to the moment when I just can't help it.

Sex in an Arena

After my second miscarriage landed me in the hospital for two days, I started to reveal it to a larger circle of people, many more than I did after the first. The whole situation was sad, but the threat to my health made it scarier than sad this time around. I understood more than ever how much women fear exposing their miscarriages.

I began writing this blog because I wanted to share my fears and loneliness surrounding pregnancy and miscarriage. I felt very alone and even embarrassed when I lost my first pregnancy. It's because pregnancy is often hidden, it's something spent whispering about until the third trimester. Yes, there is a lot of joy, but there is also a sense of impending doom about a pregnancy.

I get that it's an attempt to protect your feelings and the feelings of others -- after all, why extend the suffering to everyone you know? But I also feel like there's this sense of immense failure when you lose a pregnancy. It caused me to dissect every last one of my actions leading up to the miscarriage: maybe I shouldn't have gone running, or eaten that salami sandwich. Ultimately I knew it that it was not my fault. So, why did I still feel like such a loser?

And when I told women who had also had miscarriages how I felt, the floodgates opened. They told me how they always wanted to talk to someone but just couldn't. There might be support groups out there that give women this opportunity, but I certainly didn't know about it. And, let's face it, who's going to search "Miscarriage Support" while they're also reading about strollers, and cribs? I hope that my small forum here will help alleviate the pressures, sadness, and sense of aloneness.

Speaking of pressure: a couple of weekends ago I felt like I DTD'ed in an arena. We were scheduled to go on a weekend trip with friends, all staying one house. Just before the start of the trip, I realized that I would be ovulating during that time. We would be DTD in a crowded house! For some people, their sense of exhibitionism might prevail, but not in this case -- it would be baby-making sex, not "run into the bathroom at the height of passion". The baby-making aspect made it somehow more animalistic and raw. And a little embarrassing.

Luckily, the situation fell into place and we were able to slip away to DTD without attracting too much attention. Afterward, laying there and hearing the sounds of laughter and glasses clinking one room away, I decided to rejoin the party.

Friends were gathered in front of a fireplace, drinking wine. They spotted me, and then broke into a round of applause. When I sat down, one friend immediately walked over to where I was and deftly elevated my legs. And another friend handed me my wine glass.

Please Hold While I Attempt to Erase This Image From My Brain

So, it turned out that I did not get pregnant this past cycle, despite the Clomid, DTD on the "right" days, etc. etc.

So I got a new supply of Clomid for this cycle. I looked at my calendar, and it turns out that I will ovulate during the same week that I had planned to visit my family. I called my father and told him that I had to put my trip on hold.

"Why?" He asked.

I considered being vague, but then I thought, oh, fuck it, who cares.

"Well, I'm taking this fertility medication that makes me ovulate on certain days and I have to stay home to have sex."

Silence.

"Hello? Dad? Are you still there?"

"Um...That's a lot of detail."

"I Hate Babies"

I do this every month: I'm convinced I'm pregnant. I check for signs of breast tenderness, bloating, and other "tell-tale" signs of pregnancy, like one day after DTD.

No matter that they are the very same signs as PMS -- nope, I'm convinced that the reason I have to pee is because my hormones are elevated; that the increased gas is not from the garlic bruschetta and hummus dinner the night previous, but yes, those doggone hormones. And for the record, yes, increased gas IS a by-product of pregnancy.

I know these things because, though I have no children, I've been pregnant before. Twice. After my last miscarriage, I was pretty sick of the whole exercise and considered giving up the whole endeavor. I know, I know: you probably know about a million women who have had multiple miscarriages and now have a baby; or maybe you've had fertility issues or multiple miscarriages, and suffered much more than I; or maybe I'm just made up of weaker stuff than the rest of the women out there, who experience this loss over and over again, but who can keep their eye on the prize.

But the truth lies in the fact that while sitting in the hospital and getting a blood transfusion after my most recent miscarriage, my mothers-in-law called (yes, I have more than one, it's a longer story for another time) and asked me how I was doing. And I told them: I hate babies.

I did. If you tried handing me a baby at that point in the hospital, I would have not so much as given that baby a sideways glance. I would have calmly continued drinking that weird, tinny-tasting orange juice that they only serve in hospitals, and maybe changed the channel on my mounted television to see if I could catch an episode of Law & Order.

In fact, I told anyone who would ask, or listen, or even if they didn't ask or want to listen, that I hated babies. I was angry that babies made my body to bleed so profusely on my bathroom floor that my husband had to call an ambulance at six in the morning. I was annoyed that babies made me want them so much that I was willing to endure invasive testing and procedures and pain and weight gain, and yes, a lot of gas, all to have them. Fuck babies, I thought.

They can keep their cute, fat faces and tiny, coordinated outfits, and chunky little Fred Flintstone-feet for all I cared. I wasn't going to put up with their methods any longer: behind those gurgling smiles are diapers filled with pounds of poop. I was on to their game, and I wasn't going to put up with it one moment longer. The jig was up. I was going to throw away the fertility pee-sticks and start life with no more babies on my brain.

Then, something funny happens. Time passes, and then you think about a baby, and for the first time in months, you don't hate them. Then you come across a baby a store, and it looks at you and smiles. You go about your life and you're happy, but then you think, I could, maybe, possibly, be happy with one of those after all. You visit those babies that you know, the ones that belong to your friends or relatives, and you realize, that maybe you were wrong about them all along. You find an unopened box of fertility pee-sticks in the back of the cabinet under the sink. Let the games begin, you find yourself saying.

They have methods, these babies.