From TTC to BFP to boymom

    

    As I sit at my desk in my fancy office at work, professional license surrounded by multiple degrees framed on my wall, laptop at my fingertips, topless with each of my breasts tucked snugly into a funnel, that familiar swump, swump, swump ringing in my ears I wonder with a pretty even mix of gratitude and embarrassment... “How the hell did I get here?”

     The truth is, it wasn't an easy road to get here. I had expected for it to be easy. I planned for it to be easy. But it was far from easy. Throughout my reproductive years, I did what I was supposed to do. I was a virgin until college. I responsibly put myself on birth control at age 19. I waited until I had my degree, and then my post graduate degree. I bought my house. I got married. Check, check, check. I went in order. I planned for things. I saved. I specifically waited until after a planned vacation to start trying to conceive because of course, I was going to become pregnant immediately and I wanted to be able to have a drink on the beach. I planned. And then, at long last we tried. And tried. And tried...

     I'm a planner. I'm an achiever. I'm a controller. I have a case load of 75 people for whom I help to navigate their daily lives as a clinical social worker, yet over the course of two and a half years I couldn't navigate one tiny egg and an even smaller sperm to do the main thing they are built to do. Insert funny yet ironic “you have one job” meme here... This time in my life took me from a logical, well adjusted, professional woman to a raving lunatic.

     I ended up dressing my cats. They dressed for Halloween, for Christmas, you know, special occasions. I was the one at every baby shower with a huge smile plastered on my face, because if I didn't I would be in tears. I charted. Relentlessly. I read thermometer reviews on amazon like they were the latest best seller and at one point I ended up with 9 different thermometers. I cried in public bathrooms and in the shower nightly.

     In a fit of hopelessness about a year into my journey, I spent the entire savings that I had been putting away to give myself a paycheck during maternity leave on a cruise. If we couldn't be parents then we would just travel.

     Days spent navigating through the long list of well meaning friends and their unintentionally mean advice. Nights looking for information online. What is the missing key? Looking for information, looking for answers, looking for hope.

     I half halfheartedly scheduled tests. What would it matter? Most women don't get a definitive answer as to what is causing their infertility. We couldn't afford IVF and I was afraid to adopt... What could the future hold? I felt defective. I felt hopeless. I wondered if my husband would leave me. He wanted a family too. Would he want a woman who couldn't give him one? And even if he did still want me without the hope of children would he want the crazy person that I had become?

      And then finally, after two and a half years, I saw it. The illusive “yes” on a home pregnancy test. My bigfoot. And it was real.

      During my time trying to conceive I poured over blogs and chat rooms reading the stories of other women who shared my struggle. It was comforting to know that while I felt completely alone, I wasn't. I read of the various techniques, products and natural remedies that these other women were trying. Some I tried, some I prayed that I would never have to try only to find myself frantically searching for the conversation again a year later to make sure I was doing it right. The one thing you don't find however, are many success stories. I assume they are out there, but in general the conversations just drop off into history.

     Near the end of my journey I searched for women who conceived naturally after two and a half years and found very little. The stories that were there included medical interventions that I could not afford. While I'm sure I'm not a medical anomaly, I do know that mine is a story that can offer hope to women who need to see that it does happen. That women from our team do get pulled off of the bench to play in the game.

     I went into my pregnancy knowing very little about the process. I could tell you everything about how a baby is conceived but next to nothing about what happens once it is in there and absolutely nothing about how to get it out and what to do with it after. But I am now the proud mama of my little buddy, Archer. He is 6 months old as I write this and the reason that I get up in the morning. 

 

     This blog is intended as a comfort and ray of hope to the women still out there trying to start their own little family, and a source of entertainment to those of you who like me, are just muddling through trying to figure this whole motherhood thing out. Some posts will be TTC related, others will focus on pregnancy and the rest will be about the often crazy gig of being a mommy. Sometimes it will be funny, other days less so. But my hope is that for the time that you are reading you will feel a little less alone. Welcome to my blog!