Good thing my last post was about how calm and peaceful I am now so that I can be REMINDED to be CALM and PEACEFUL when the nurse calls me to tell me my latest HCG test came back as 5.4.
Normal is 5.3.
Sigh.
Archive for January, 2007
Yesterday I had my usual appointment with my therapist. I hadn’t seen her in a month, because our schedules just didn’t mesh. So I caught her up on all of my goings on in the past few weeks - the HCG stuff, work stuff, home stuff.
Mainly we talked about how I’m a little nervous about starting the “trying to get pregnant” again. Not because I’m afraid of another loss, even though that is a concern, but because I was such a fucking basket case for a year and a half while we were trying to do it the first time. The past three months since my miscarriage (yep, twelve weeks yesterday) have been, how do I put this, kind of nice because I’ve gotten a break from the stress, the Clomid, the sex under duress, the “will this be the month?”. Now, in the next four to six weeks, I would guess, we’ll be starting up again with more concentrated efforts, this time with a fertility specialist, injectible hormones and IUI’s.
I’ve gotten to a point with myself that I’m so much more at peace with all of this. The sense of urgency (must get pregnant NOW NOW NOW!!!) isn’t nearly as strong as it was. I’m going into this with hopes, but no expectations. I also have a fairly strong feeling that everything is going to work out. I do believe that I will have a baby. I just don’t know when or how. And that’s OK. I just don’t want to stress of “trying” to make me revert back to the mess that I was. I’m happy with who I have become, and I don’t want to lose her.
My therapist totally understood what I meant, and told me that there is a chance that my old ways could come creeping back, but that I have the tools to keep it under control. She encouraged me to write down my feelings, so that if the old mania starts creeping back, I can read my words and see what it felt like to be so at peace. She said the most important voice I can listen to is my own. And I know that she’s right.
And, with that, I told her that I don’t think I need to see her regularly anymore. I’ve gotten strong enough and healthy enough that I think I can handle whatever comes up on my own. She agreed. She told me that she’s watched me grow and change in many ways. When I first came to see her, I was trying to control everything - my body, my feelings, my husband. And when I couldn’t control everything, I beat myself up, told myself I was weak, stupid, wrong.
She helped me learn to let go of the control, which was SO HARD. It still is, I struggle with it every day. But I’ve seen what happens when I do, the peace that I gain from it, the sense of well being that comes from opening myself up and allowing myself to learn from each experience rather than trying to control it. One of the most important things she helped me learn was to truly let myself feel my feelings. Before, I would try and push sadness or depression away, deny that I was feeling that way, because I thought they made me weak. I learned to let myself be sad. Not to wallow in it, mind you, but to honor it. It makes it that much easier to let go.
It’s bittersweet, not going to see her anymore. On one hand, I’ve come to enjoy that outlet, a safe place to talk about whatever I want, to someone who doesn’t judge me, who can help guide me to see myself more clearly. I’ll miss her, and I couldn’t have done it without her. On the other hand, I am so proud of myself that I have worked so hard to get healthy, and now I feel that it’s time for me to make it on my own. I have the tools, I have the strength, and I am kind to myself now, and that’s something I didn’t have before.
And that’s the most important thing in the world.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I know it’s been almost a week since I posted, but I got nothin’. We had a nice weekend, saw some friends… I bought some eyeliner… gave the dog a bath… that’s pretty much it.
Not much else going on with the fertility front either. As of last Friday, my HCG was still 6.1. Yep, eleven weeks after my miscarriage, it’s still 6.1. According to Jane, the nurse at my doctor’s office, 5.3 is considered normal, so I’m very very close, but at the rate the hormone is dropping, I’ll see 5.3 sometime next week.
Surprisingly, when she called me with the blood test results (telling me, “I didn’t even want to CALL you, you poor thing”), I wasn’t distressed about it. I had gone in for the blood draw with absolutely no expectations, so I wasn’t shocked or dismayed when she called to give me the number. It was a different story with the blood test ten days before, sure that THAT test was going to be the absolute last, and it was like 9.3 or something. I had a total tantrum on the phone with Hawk, complete with tears and lots of “It’s not FAIR”s.
One of the hardest things about the past several weeks of HCG monitoring has been my worry that the molasses-like drop says something negative about my overall reproductive health. That it means that my hormones are totally messed up and that I’ll have a hard time conceiving again, or won’t be able to have a healthy pregnancy. But for some reason, over the past, oh say, five weeks or so, I never actually asked the doctor if this was really the case. So when I talked to Jane on Friday, I asked her. “Does this say something horrible about my body?”
She told me that this is not the case at all. They have had patients (albeit a very few - lucky me! I’m rare!) who have had the same thing happen, and who have gone on to have healthy pregnancies. It’s just that everyone’s body is different and everyone processes the hormone differently. She told me that I will be just fine. That’s all I needed to hear. I don’t know why I waited so long to ask, because I felt much better having done so.
The way I’m thinking about it now is that my body has just needed the extra time to heal, and so has my heart. When we start trying to get pregnant again, it’s going to be stressful and emotional, and I’m going to need to be strong. Looking back at it now, there’s no way that I would have been ready to start trying again right after my miscarriage. I’m grateful for the time that, it turns out, I really needed. Now I can be ready for what comes next.
Home early from work today since I’m still feeling a little under the weather. My headache and tummy ache from Sunday have evolved into a cold, complete with sneezing and body aches. No fun. On the up-side it’s thunderstorming here this afternoon, which I love. It makes it feel that much cozier inside.
I spoke to the judge I work for this afternoon and he told me that he’s decided to close up his independent practice, meaning that he won’t require my services anymore. He’ll keep me on through March, but that’s it. I have to say I am pretty relieved. It’s been a long time since I felt good about taking his money, since he pays me well and I just don’t have that much to do for him besides answering his phone. I haven’t felt like I’ve earned my keep for quite some time.
I had been thinking about quitting for a while now, but kind of didn’t have the heart to do it, since the judge has treated both Hawk and I so well over the past couple years, and to be honest, it will be $1100 less a month for our household. But now the decision has been made for me and I’m totally OK with it. It might just be time for me to have a talk with my boss at the perfume house about a bit of a raise.
Our weekend was very nice and mellow, for the most part. Friday we went to our neighborhood pub and had some dinner, Saturday we went out our friends Tony and Kristen for dinner, and Sunday I spent in bed, horrendously ill with a migraine coupled with nausea so bad that every time I moved I threw up. Not fun. I feel much better today, thank god.
In other news, one of my favorite musicians is Brandi Carlile, and she is coming out with a new album in April. This song, The Story, is the title song off the new record and I LOVE it. It’s the first song I’ve ever listened to and started to cry because I felt like she reached into my head and wrote a song about what she pulled out. Give her a listen, won’t you?
I am totally obsessed with my new Site Traffic Meter. That’s how I found out how popular my site is with Patrick Dempsey fans, and also that someone in Poland found me by searching for “pictures of toes“.
I must admit, I do have cute toes, but am also a little creeped out, wondering why they were looking for toe pictures in the first place. Hmmm.
Anyway, it’s awesome to be able to see where all my visitors come from. They’re all over the world - not only in the U.S., but Thailand, and all across Europe and South America. The internet sure makes the world a small place.
I am currently getting a big kick out of the fact that most of my blog traffic gets here through people looking for pictures of Patrick Dempsey. I posted this last February and now I would say 80% of people who visit my page get here by Googling “hot pictures of Patrick Dempsey”.
Not that I’m complaining or anything, but I would rather get readers who enjoy my angsty ramblings about my fertility troubles and countless cat pictures.
WOW, I’m pathetic. No wonder nobody reads this thing except my dad. Hi Dad!
I need to go to Russia so I can visit the Kostroma Moose Farm.
This page asks, “Why Moose?”. Why, indeed. I think I have the answer:
.
.
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BABY MOOSES, PEOPLE!!!
Look how damn cute these little guys are:
Say it with me, now: Awwwwwwwwww…
[link via Cute Overload]
