Other people's bellies, other people's babies.

I was toying with the idea of quitting the blog.  I have the feeling that nobody is reading it other than my husband, who has to spellcheck it.  On the other hand, even if nobody is reading it, I still feel like writing.  Therefore I will continue rambling by myself in the forest.  I might just convert it to a private diary if I am the only one around here.

Anyway, this is another post that was intended for other women struggling with infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth or infant loss.  How do we deal with other people's bellies and babies.  This post was inspired by the privilege and simultaneous hardship of holding a baby on my lap and rocking her to sleep tonight.  This happens to me on a daily basis (minus the rocking to sleep) since it is part of my job.  I work in large part with pregnant women and babies.  How do I do it?  sometimes I don't know myself, but I will try to put it into words.

I think what has helped me the most was exposure.  When I first went back to work 1-2 weeks after losing Adrian, I expected to have a hard time.  I took a moment to acknowledge my feelings when it was hard.  I cried a little in my office.  I phoned my husband for support sometimes.  I congratulated myself for getting through it one step at a time.  I allowed myself to feel proud of doing an incredibly difficult thing.  I told myself that if I cannot handle it, I will give up my job if need be, and become a shepherdess (ok, not quite).

And of course it was hard.  The first couple of pregnant bellies at 18-22 weeks gestation were like a punch it the gut.  Touching them, I could imagine the babies inside, alive and well, and thought of how mine wasn't.  I felt inferior in a primal way to every pregnant woman that had made it further than I had.  For the longest time, when people's ultrasound reports would come in, my eyes would dart straight to the cervical length and I felt awe and amazement at the huge accomplishment of maintaining a 4 cm cervix at 20 weeks.  I mean c'mon, it is something, isn't it, especially when my cervical length is 2 cm at the best of times (i.e. when nonpregnant).  These women were amazing goddesses.  I was a hobbit.

Then, slowly, I got bored of putting myself down and started thinking.  First of all, who is this person in my head criticizing me all the time? Why is she here to begin with?  And why am I letting her?  Is it because she sounds familiar?  Do I have the power to ignore her painful monologue?  Can I sometimes prove her wrong?

This voice in my head which was so old and familiar that I had never even begun to question had now a distinct identity.  I thought of her as the-critical-me (also known as my father - just kidding, dad).  I started saying hello whenever the voice would appear.  (Note to any psychiatrist friends that might be reading my blog, I am not talking about an ACTUAL voice, you know...).  In time, I have learned to work alongside this voice, to accept its monologue and even to smile at it.  Yes, it can be done!

And then, something wonderful happened:  I started enjoying babies and bellies again.  A baby's smile and sweet smell is something I did not want to deny myself.  Pregnant women's excitement and optimistic happiness, even not ever to be mine again (I plan to be a complete basket case with worry and anxiety during my next pregnancy, if it ever happens) can be enjoyed in moderate portions.  And the feeling of helping babies get on this side of the world safely gives my life purpose and meaning.

Yes, sometime it is hard.  It still is.  However, it gets infinitely easier if we learn to say hi and bye to that critical voice.  Then, all that is left is pain, and pain is manageable.  Feeling like a hobbit, on the other hand, is not a way to live.

Grief in my closet

So, what would go better with my new Fluevog shoes than a bit of grief hidden in the closet, right?

Yesterday I had an old friend read the blog and tell me that definitely it was not a likable experience to plough through the pile of darkness that I gathered in this corner.  At the same time, I was reading Kalialani's blog at The Butterfly Room, and I got a similar feeling from her post:  people are uncomfortable with grief.  That is, unless they have gone through a similar experience, because in that case, I guess they will be searching the Internet looking for some other poor soul like themselves, trying not to feel so alone.  That is mostly why I am writing this blog, to create a sense of community for others like me.  I am also writing it to generate a sense that, despite life handing someone one lemon after the other, it is possible to still stand and go on.

Anyway, onto the dissertation about taking the grief out of the closet.

In Romania, when someone dies, there is a very loud, very public display of grief.  In fact, there are hired women (or used to be, don't know anymore) called "bocitoare" (literally the "crying women") who even chant grief songs, and make as much noise as possible expressing emotion on behalf of the bereaved.  When I was young, I was downright scared of these women!  Yes, grief is uncomfortable, no doubt about that.  In fact, many times I have had to hide it from people because the sense of discomfort it creates in the listener is so palpable that it takes away the fun out of a sunny day.  But...there is a catch!

The grief is going to be there, no matter what else we talk about:  shoes, food, relationships.  A large portion of the pie known as my brain will be processing grief.  And my pie wants to connect with your pie.  If my pie is busy hiding grief, no matter how much we talk about shoes, your pie will have the feeling that my pie is gone somewhere else, and you will sense the lack of connection.  Hence, a different form of discomfort will ensue, and perhaps you might think that you are boring me.  When, in fact, we are just talking in parallel.

There is no simple answer to this one.  If a person really cannot listen to another person's grief, there is usually a good reason for that.  I find it has to do with the fact that the said person has not worked through some personal loss that should have been grieved but hasn't.  Their pile of grief has been pushed deep in the recesses of their mind, because if allowed to come out, it is so big, so scary, so apparently impossible to deal with, that it threatens to crush them outright and pulverize their mind to walnut powder.  Sometimes it is not even a real event that is so scary, but an imagined one, along the lines of  "if this happened to me, I would never survive.  Best not to think about it."

The good news is:  this will likely not happen to you.

The bad news is:  some other crap, however, will.

And when it does, you will have to face grief of monumental proportions.  It's ok.  It will not crush you.  You will live.  You might even become more patient, more compassionate.  Yes, you will carry the grief load with you for the rest of your life, and it will become part of your pie crust.  And when you need to talk about it, I will listen.  Because I know that when grief has been aired out enough (enough varying from minutes to eons), there will be room in our conversation about shoes, and food, and relationships.  So allow us to cry and post pictures of our dead babies on facebook if we feel like it.  Learn to tolerate our grief.  It is not all that defines us.  Underneath it there is a person with many more layers, but you will never get to uncover them unless you become comfortable with my vulnerability=your vulnerability equation.

I am not fat, I have an ileus

I don't know why I need to post this piece of information, but just so you know...
After abdominal surgery, the gut usually goes through a temper tantrum, known as surgical ileus.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always a bit sullen.  The gut is king in our body.  It has its own moods, known as the intrinsic nervous system.  Sometimes he king's moods match the rest of the kingdom, sometimes they are complete, out of the blue, randomness.

If something shocks His Majesty, like an operation, or an illness, then you can count on a few days of cold shoulder treatment.  In other words, the usual peristaltic waves that propel contents down the slide just stop, or if they do occur, they are not coordinated properly, so all the gas and...well, bowel contents, kind of stagnate.   This is why we need to eat jello for a while after a surgery.  (Speaking of which, jello always reminds me of my surgical rotation, when I used to eat unlimited quantities of it, as it was the only thing available in the hospital fridge).  We generally prefer to let jello stagnate, rather than duck au confit or boeuf bourguignon.  Those animals are meant to move lest they rot.

So, I am happy to report that I am not fat, I am just negotiating armistice with the gut, and slowly recovering from my relative state of...ileus.  Sometime in the near future I will be back to the flat stomach  that I never had.

I don't deserve...

I was just watching Bloodletting and miraculous cures on HBO.  It is a show about doctors, written by a Canadian ER physician, Vincent Lam.  One of the characters, Ming, is having fertility troubles, because of Rh incompatibility with her husband (she gets pregnant, miscarries, is Rh negative, and gets sensitized).  She tells a story about being abused by her uncle at the age of 13, and, thinking that she has invited the abuse, she ends it with "I don't deserve to have a baby."

Whoa! is that the most novel thing I have heard today.

At some stage in the infertility game, a woman will conclude that she is not meant to be a mother because of past sins, past deeds, past mistakes.  She will convince herself that she has brought THIS on to herself (THIS being any number of things, infertility, stillbirth, miscarriage, a child with disabilities, a neonatal death).  It usually happens fairly early in the game, being, as it is, such a natural conclusion.  It happened, therefore it must be something I did (or didn't do).

Sometimes, if the idea is slow to come to us all by itself, it will be propelled by the voices of well meaning friends and family.  Watch out, it usually comes as advice, wrapped in layers of concern and caring.  For instance, when I lost Adrian, I was told by several people that I should not have exercised during my pregnancy.  I had started exercising at 12 weeks (prior to 12 weeks, the IVF clinic does not condone activity other than yoga and walking), with my physician's blessing.  I was, as far as anyone can tell, a previously fit woman with a low risk pregnancy, and I wanted to continue doing what I had been doing for the past 15 years of my life three times a week.  My exercise routine kept me sane and kept the terrible nausea at bay.  I lost my mucus plug after a day in which I had exercised.  Of course, the phrase that I have heard the most in the first couple of weeks after it happened was:  you shouldn't have exercised.  Other pregnant women don't exercise.  This happened because you exercised.  Next time, don't exercise.  (Next time I will be on bedrest, so that is a moot point).  Nevertheless, even knowing that it was not my fault, I still hung on to the guilt for so long, that I have yet to set foot in the gym again.  I prefer to exercise in the privacy of my house, lest someone observe and offer more helpful advice.  And I am not even pregnant!

But why does it have to be our fault?  What have we got to lose by letting go of this assumption?  Why do others jump so fast to the conclusion that we have brought disaster and loss onto ourselves?

I think it comes from the childish belief that the world is fair, that we get what we deserve.  Unfortunately, my friends, that stopped being true just about when Adam and Eve got expelled from Paradise (yep, they supposedly did deserve it, but what did we do wrong?).

What the heck, I might as well break the news now:

THE WORLD IS NOT FAIR.
YOU WILL OFTEN (ALMOST ALWAYS?) NOT GET WHAT YOU DESERVE.
YOU WILL, HOWEVER, GET WHAT YOU DON'T DESERVE.
THINGS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL WILL HAPPEN ALL THE TIME.
BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE.
GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD PEOPLE.

Yes, that is the truth.  Now that it's out, let's go for coffee.

PS.  If this post hits home, remember that you deserve to have a child just by virtue of being here, of being human.  You don't have to do anything special to become worthy of being a parent.  You already did.  You were born.

advice-have you tried...

In a well meaning attempt to help, people come up with the most funny suggestions.  In three years of infertility, I have heard a lot of them.  Some upsetting, such as "maybe you should pray more"(how do you know I don't pray a lot, mom?).  Some intriguing, such as "perhaps you should go to Siberia, there is a monastery there, everybody who went got pregnant" (thanks dad!  I wonder about those monks, what miracles they perform ;).  Some cute, such as having to wear a moonstone bracelet which needs to be rinsed in cold water and kept under a full moon at night to activate the crystals (hope they're not radioactive, that's all I say).  But the top prize goes to the very interesting suggestion that I should get DEWORMED, since worms might cause miscarriages by sucking the lifeforce out of me.  Scary indeed.  I haven't gotten around to deworming myself yet, but it is definitely on my to do list for 2029.

The thing is, dear friends, there is an endless array of theories out there.  Anybody who gets high can come up with a theory which might accidentally make its way into Chatelaine or Formula As (that's a Romanian magazine full of how to advice, mostly the odd kind).  That does not mean that we must try everything.

 I have tried a large amount of complementary treatments, as you can read in my first post, and nothing worked.  It is time to hand myself in to fate.  If a theory is exceptionally good, AND it gets published in the Fertility and Sterility, I will try it.  Until then, if you want to say you care about me and want to help me but don't know how, just say it.  It will make more sense to both of us.  Because I know that behind the helpful theories, that is exactly what you mean.  And I love it!

guilty pleasures

I am firmly decided not to make this blog a grim place.  Despite the dead baby talk and all, there is also fun stuff that happens in my life.  For example, this morning I woke up without the flesh eating disease!  How much fun is that?  It did leave some bruised marks where it spread, but it is unequivocally gone.  This means that

a.  I will live

b.  I get to keep the mesh (the mersilene band wrapped around the outside of my cervix).

YES to both!

Yesterday I had to visit my ob-gyn to show him the damage, right in the middle of his lunch break. You see, I had a burning question to ask... the night before, I had some very fancy dreams, which lead to a fabulous orgasm.  I woke up feeling absolutely certain that I had, in the middle of my love affair with  my own brain, displaced the mesh.  Somehow managing to keep a straight face, he assured me that the mesh was sutured safely in place and that as long as I'm not actually having intercourse, I can have as many orgasms as I can handle.  (Just in case other people with TAC's have the same question and are too embarrassed to ask.  Not me, apparently, when they were passing around modesty, I wasn't there). Anyway, I went home happy and gave the man a great rating at www.ratemd.com (it is a site for rating your doctor).  He deserves it for putting up with me and my questions for three years.

bit of trivia

I stole this pie graph from Tertia's blog.  Tertia is awesome.  She did not come up with the pie, but she did annotate the last pie portion with the famous F word which she says with such lovely gusto.  Tertia from So close (www.tertia.org) and Julie from www.alittlepregnant.com are the first two bloggers that I started following when I realized I am reproductively challenged.  Before I discovered them, I used to feel very defective, and very alone.  (For those who don't know, I live in a little town that has one of the highest birth rates per capita in the country.  Everybody is pregnant, has been pregnant, or will be pregnant very soon.  I wish I could find out what they are drinking...)

I found Julie in the middle of my intrauterine insemination whirlwind, and I read her entire blog in three days.  I was laughing and crying alternatively, sometimes at the same time, just like in the pie graph.  She managed to make her ectopic/miscarriage/oligohydramnios/placenta previa/preeclampsia/HELLP journey seem funny and touching at the same time.  I remember thinking, how can someone go through so much and still go back for more?  That was then...

We draw inspiration from strong people around us, even from strong people in the computer.  It is a gift I have received, and now I am passing it on.