Still Passing Open Windows ....

Detox

Sunday night: read detox book for the 15th time and decide that a 2 day detox is totally doable.

Monday:

9a.m. drink hot water, lemon juice and honey. Quite pleasant.

10a.m. orange and banana smoothie (oranges are not recommended, but let's not be too precious; they are fruit after all. The rot begins to set in, although I don't realise it.)

10.30a.m. Mind to self: "Let's have a Reeses Pieces Peanut Butter Cup." Self: "No! Detox!" Mind: "Ok. You're right."

10.45a.m. 2 teaspoons of linseeds with a glass of water

10.55a.m. Mind: "Let's have a Reeses." Self: "No!" Mind: "Come on ..."

11a.m. Read book

11.05a.m. Book is boring. Mind: "Let's have a Reeses." 

11.06a.m. One peanut butter cup is eaten.

11.10a.m. Four peanut butter cups are lined up on the arm of the armchair and eaten.

11.15a.m. The peanut butter cups are very sweet. One cup of coffee is drunk.

11.30a.m. Four more Reeses are eaten.

11.45a.m. Two slices of toast and butter and marmite are eaten.

11.46a.m. The detox is now officially dead.

Pheasant pie

We spoke to our RE about this last cycle. It went more or less as expected. What was he going to tell us after all? He doesn't understand either, he is also disappointed and frustrated and he has a theory about why it didn't work and several suggestions for us to consider if we carry on.
It always surprises me but there is a big difference between thinking something and having a doctor actually say it. I am staggering around today, off balance and lost, almost on the verge of tears at times and simply cold at others. I turn to my usual sources of support: am@zon and creative blogs. I read them as if they contain the essential truth, concentrating totally on the words and trying to absorb them.
I jump from a cookbook to the cookbook photographer's site to his column in The Independent on Sunday and I seriously contemplate making Pheasant, Cider and
Chestnut Pie in Mark Hix' column. Me, who never cooks game, who would be horrified to see a pheasant lying on my kitchen counter waiting to be "trimmed of all its meat and cut into 3cm chunks", but I read the details carefully as if I am going to do it. If I can make pheasant pie, I can do other things I have never done, can't I?

Identities

 I'm doing an e-course with Susannah Conway on how you see yourself and your world by looking at different aspects of it - you, how the world sees you, the people around you etc. I've done a few e-courses on different themes and they've been fun, but I haven't done one for ages. I haven't felt like it, I haven't felt like having the commitment of an assignment to complete, however arty or insignificant it might have been. 

This one quietly appealed to me. Susannah Conway lost her partner and began to move in new direction professionally and personally and found a source of comfort and acceptance in what she was doing. People who have suffered interest me these days; I want to know how they deal with it, how they overcome it without denying it, what sort of lives they lead, how it has changed them and how they cope with that.

It feels like I am so defined by my infertility and loss. A friend talks about a party he organised for H and me and I sit there silently, wanting him to stop, because it was the first weekend I was pregnant with my son and I don't want to remember the hope and happiness of that time and how it is all gone now. We go out to dinner and a friend is pregnant and I almost stare rudely at her stomach, remembering scans and visits and wondering why the hell I couldn't make it to full term. I see photos and I place them according to what pregnancy followed or preceeded the photo. 

I have to create a new identity. I have to learn how to see myself without immediately seeing the situation in terms of infertility and lost children. I need to learn how to accept my life and somehow mold it into a life I can be proud of, in which I am doing things I have dreamt of. It's easy to say, easy to plan, harder to put into action but this course is part of the plan. At least it will occupy my mind and keep me off the Oh-I-have-suffered-so-much tracks I slip onto so effortlessly. 

Faith

The only thing that keeps me going is faith. It's not something I talk about much because I don't feel very comfortable talking about it but I do believe that God is there and wants the best for me. I don't understand a lot of what happens, I get angry with Him and don't speak to Him for days and feel betrayed and abandoned but when I pray I feel something stopping me from hitting rock bottom, something keeping my legs from collapsing and holding me up. The only thing that keeps me going with this baby thing is a belief in something that I read by Julia Cameron, of The Artist's Way fame; that our dreams are possibly God's dreams for us too.

 

It's a private belief and so I don't write about it or talk about it much. It's also wacky and possibly delusional and maybe I will have to re-think or edit it this year. I also think everyone has their own version of spirituality and I don't believe that my way is the only way or the best way. I think faith is something extremely personal. What works for me and has meaning for me possibly won't work for someone else. I know that my mother sends me readings she finds very meaningful and I often find them either irritating or kitchy. For me faith in God has been important, it has helped and I don't think I would be doing as well as I am without a greater force I call God.

 

This should now guarantee that I will spend the weekend in the depths of despair on the kitchen floor, rising only to scream at H and spend hours sobbing in the bathroom as I contemplate a) divorce, b) moving to the Russian steppes where no-one knows me and c) a completely new life somewhere, anywhere but here. Whenever I write about how well I am doing or how well I am getting on with H it seems to invite the very opposite into my life. I wonder if this happens to other bloggers ...

Passionate pegs

I spoke to someone about work yesterday. It's tricky. What I have is secure and allows me to do what I want during my free time, however I am just a peg in a hole. If I wasn't here, another peg would be inserted into the hole and no-one would notice the change. Also, being a peg is limited. As is the case everywhere, there are changes on the horizon and there will probably be opportunities to be a different peg. I could be a peg here my whole life if I wanted to and live comfortably, if I can find my equilibrium in this peg life.
Two years ago, a girl I know talked to me about her boyfriend. He earned a good living and took her away for the weekend and out to nice restaurants and they got on well, talking for hours and laughing hysterically over the same things. He seemed to support her in everything and was reliable and fun to be with but, the big BUT, the
passion was missing. For her, the physical side was a damp squid, a firework that never exploded. He was the first grown up boyfriend she had had, after dating many, many boy men, and she was doing everything she could to make it work."What should I do?" she said, "Do I break up with him and wait for Mr. Passionately-in-Love, who might not even exist, or do I settle for Mr. Almost Perfect?"
I can't remember what I told her. My experience had been different. One of my first serious boyfriends, or the first serious one, had been Mr. Reliable, Mr. Boring-but-safe and I protected him fiercely from other people's unkind words. Then he dumped me and I decided that if my heart was going to be broken anyway, I might as well go for broke next time. So from then on, I looked for the guy who would first and foremost make me swoon with a kiss rather than the man who would wine and dine me.
When it comes to men, it's easy for me to choose one who fills me
with passion and walk away from those who don't. When it comes to jobs, I find it more difficult. I choose the boring-but-safe option usually. There are definite advantages, especially now when there is so much uncertainty, however every now and again I wonder if a job that interests me passionately does exist and what it would be like. Then I think it would probably be too stressful anyway and I count my blessings as a peg.
And you, what do you choose: passion or safety in jobs and men?

Thoughts

A friend told me, reluctantly I have to add, that she had a completely unexpected pregnancy. She was contemplating what to do when she went to see her doctor to see how far along she was.

"It just goes to show how much is in the mind," she said, "On Tuesday I saw the doctor and he told me it was not a viable pregnancy and on Wednesday night, I started bleeding. The mind has an incredible influence over the body, it can almost control it."

I sometimes get this feeling, with some friends, that they almost feel I am being unreasonably stubborn in not falling pregnant, as if there is some part of me that just does not want to fall pregnant and so I don't. I get the feeling that they are flummoxed by me. They fell pregnant easily and despite everything, I haven't and they just cannot believe it after all this time. Therefore I must be blocking it
somehow and if the doctors can't come up with a reason, then it must be in my head.

I don't think so, or I hope like bloody hell it isn't all in my head. I have done my time searching and talking about it and I still don't know what I think it is. Maybe something is not aligned as it should be, whether that is a constellation of stars or a hormonal deficiency. I don't know, and I am so tired of the "it's all in your head" school of thought. It always gets me though and I start worrying all the strands of thought, "Could it be where we live? Or is it that I don't feel I've achieved much? Or maybe it's my relationship with my mother? Or my sister? Or do I feel I'll be replaced by a child? Or is it just another version of an inferiority complex? Or is it because I worry too much??"

I want to say that I don't care when people imply it's all in my head, but I notice that I tend to avoid people after they've said that, and I want to hug my OBGYN
and diabetes RE who both insist that a pregnancy is not an impossibility. It might not happen but who knows, strange things do happen and it definitely helps me a lot more than more guilt. I guess it's another version of "just relax". Amazing how popular, and what a poisoned dart, it is.

Updating

I had a dream that H was dead. He was lying in the hospital morgue, cold and dead and I couldn't quite believe it. I stood looking at him and I touched his cold hand and thought, "He'll never hold my hand again, I'll never feel his warmth ever again." It was chilling. I felt sick as I contemplated waking up the next morning and knowing he was dead and not there in my life. "How will I raise the twins without him?" I thought, "They will never know him," and I wanted to howl with grief.

Then I woke up and even now, days later, I still reach out and touch his warm hand and feel a blessed relief that he's alive, that he's here, next to me.

Two days after the dream we got a call from our RE. His voice was very serious and I knew it was bad news, despite all our expectations to the contrary. Nothing worked; not the transfer or the freezing of any
embryos. We are missing something, something is wrong. What?

So, no twins but I do have H. The dream gives me some perspective. I do have H, and because of the dream I realise how precious that is. This failure has shocked us both, it was so unexpected. I'm not sure where to turn now, what to try or even if we should try, if it's worth it. Maybe we are just a family of two, and although it breaks my heart, it could be worse.