Response and responsibility

"It's a shame she had no real children; she would have been a wonderful mother. In a flash of insight, David sees that it's not her fault she has no children: Mr. Trotwood is to blame. That's the reason he's so outgoing and optimistic but prone to tears: he is a man without seed. Every kind thing he does for his wife is some kind of compensation, some small apology."

--Defect by Will Weaver

I, too, find it hard not to feel that way, when I'm the problem. I find myself, much to SF's chagrin, doing things like putting off my dentist appointment because we're already spending so much on my healthcare. It doesn't help the infertility situation, but it makes me feel a little better.

I wonder, though, whether such feelings and actions will eventually become a recipe for a marital difficulty. People don't tend to like people they feel sorry for, even -- especially? -- when they're married to them. No matter how bad I feel for cheating my fertile husband out of the dream of easy family-building, it seems like it's necessary to get past that guilt and sadness ... which is only really possible if the other person doesn't blame you.

So far, SF seems to be above casting blame -- a generous reaction, in my opinion. I hope someday I might get beyond holding myself culpable for the mess we find ourselves in.

"So, what have you been up to?"

SF and I spent the weekend at my 10-year college reunion. The high points included spending time with close friends we don't see nearly often enough, trying a new dish at my favorite restaurant there, accepting our favorite professor's offer of his office phone for a call to our absent friend in England, and a serendipitous ride in a golf cart.

More difficult moments included the main thing people ask at reunions -- "So, what have you been up to?"

I've talked a lot in this blog, I think, about the difficulty of knowing how much to say and to whom. Ann's current post also touches on the question. As one of my close friends pointed out this weekend, infertility is "like a job" in the amount of time and attention it can consume. So when people who don't need the play-by-play ask how things have been, especially in a somewhat competitive situation like a reunion, I feel like there's a gaping hole in what I'm telling them -- as though their only logical reaction would be "Wait -- that's *all* you do in a week?"

Truth is, they're probably not listening that closely. Maybe I should take Ann's science metaphor in a different direction: those dealing with infertility are like Mad Scientists, working on our secret chemistry projects, projects that we're keeping under wraps for now, waiting for the day when we will unveil them and rule the world! Bwahahahaha!

I don't believe we should always keep infertility secret, that it isn't something we talk about in our culture, but there are times when it's more comfortable to keep your mouth shut, if you can get past worrying what other people think about you. For those times, I'll think of myself as the Mad Scientist, plotting world domination, and I will laugh quietly into my collar.

Bwahahahaha.

Sigh.

I was in a group of women at work who started talking about their experiences conceiving their kids. They all had an extremely easy time getting pregnant, some multiple times -- several sibling pairs are just over a year apart. One woman said, "I don't know why the doctors tell you it might take a year when it doesn't." Most of the rest agreed. "Yeah, it never does."

I should have held my tongue, but I didn't. All I said was, "It doesn't work that way every time. I've been trying for three years at this point."

It quieted them, but I keep thinking I probably shouldn't have said it. It earned the old "just go on vacation ... relax and it'll happen" advice. Which, sorry to say, I don't believe is true. I regularly "relaxed" the entire first 18 months I was married and, see --

No eggs, no baby. There are a couple of vital ingredients there, and if you aren't putting one of them in the bowl, you don't get cookies.

It's hard to know how much to say when. It's not really my job or my place to correct people's ... goodness, I was about to say misconceptions :) ... about getting pregnant. Is there any value in reminding people of how lucky they are? I don't want to become a figure of pity. Maybe it'll give them just one more reason to appreciate their kids.

What do you want from your space?

That was the big question Organizer Peter Walsh from TLC's Clean Sweep posed yesterday to an audience of clutterbugs at the Detroit Home & Garden show. I went to the program expecting to hear about how to motivate yourself to clean up your space, but I didn't expect the methods to bring tears to my eyes.

Our house is a wreck right now, between a new job and a week of illness bookended by a weekend away and a weekend of worry. But ... what do I want from the space? That's part of the problem. I don't have the power to put what I want from the space into the space. That doesn't mean I'd logically say it can fill up with clutter if we can't have a baby, but that seems to be the effect.

It's not just our finances stuck in limbo as we try to create the future we want, it's also, in a way, our lives. With each step, we try to move toward the path we want, even though we haven't actually found the trail yet. If we never find this path, which others will we regret giving up or not having followed?

I called the nurse this morning, and she seemed puzzled. Bleeding in early pregnancy isn't uncommon, she said, especially spotting.

It's heavier than spotting, but not as heavy as the heavy period they told me to look for, I told her. Hmm. Puzzling. Any unusual period, she said, and they want to rule out pregnancy before moving on. When she found out it started on Saturday, she moved the blood test up from Thursday to today so I can start birth control in preparation for the next cycle if the test is negative.

"Is the hormone from the trigger shot out of my system?"

"Oh yes."

"Is it late enough to tell for sure?"

"Oh yes. The number will be low if it's positive, because it's still so early, but we'll be able to tell."

So I should have an answer one way or another this afternoon. Either way, it will be fine. A negative is obviously not what we'd hoped for going in. A positive at this point isn't a guarantee of any sort, an unavoidable fact after two miscarriages. But I've never been as good with uncertainty as I am at dealing with the answer when I have it. Positive or negative, we move on.

Other People

Growing up, I defined my life by what other people did but our family did not. We didn't watch television while doing our homework; that was something other people did. Other people used fabric softener, leased their cars, ate frozen dinners, rode the bus to school, played sports, and generally did a lot of things that looked interesting from afar but were immutably outside of my world. Most of them still are. I backslid a bit on the frozen dinners in grad school, but they will never become food to feed other people.

When, unlike my parents and my brothers, I got through high school and college and grad school without finding a spouse, I began to wonder whether getting married was something other people did. How do you meet someone if not in class or extracurriculars? I had no script in my head.

Eventually, I did meet someone, and some time later I realized I'd met someone and that we had effectively been dating for months -- or was it years? -- without ever actually discussing it. Once we both clued in (me after him ... low slearner...), it was only a matter of time until I found out for sure that getting married wasn't something other people did after all. Looking back, it seems so inevitable. But at the time, my also-now-married roommate and I used to wonder for hours how other people met their husbands.

And now, after three years of marriage and two years of infertility treatments -- five rounds of Clomid, four of Femara, two miscarriages, Metformin and now a round of Follistim injections -- I see myself wondering whether having a baby might be something other people do. I'm not sure whether faith is a prerequisite. But if it is, there might be trouble. At some level, I don't believe my body can do such an illogical, magical thing as to conceive a child and carry it to term.

In some ways, I feel I've become an expert at the attempts we've made until now -- at all of the things that failed to work. I know about Clomid and the chalky anticipation of swallowing those pills and the headaches that followed. I know about Femara and the sight of a fetal sac on the monitor, and I know what it feels like to be taken by the shoulders and told that the shape on the screen will never be a baby. These are things I've learned.

I've also learned that at each stage, I will feel like a rank beginner until we've passed it. Each unfamiliar treatment we try feels new until it's over. I am 4 shots into an approximately 8-shot cycle, and each day begins with my clumsy attempts to remember the doctor's instructions. It feels like mining, like panning for gold, like reaching into the darkness to grasp what might be a jewel, or a tarantula, or nothing at all. Or like sitting by the side of a country road, trying to have faith that someone will surely come, wondering whether we are characters to be mocked or pitied and trying as much as possible not to lose our trousers in public.

As we wait and wish and try each new technology, the process overshadows the goal: we take each step in turn, trying not to spend too much time considering the reason, lest we break ourselves with hoping.