Forgiveness

Infertility is such an internal struggle. I worry that I'm being too emotional and everyone is looking at me like I'm weak or insane. I beat myself up for feeling so scared all the time. I stress out about not being able to relax (ha! go figure THAT one out!). I'm being incredibly selfish right now with my time and my emotions. I feel ashamed of my problems getting pregnant, and then ashamed again of not being stronger throughout this process. These are the bad emotions that haunt me. Stress. Worry. Shame.

Then, when I confide in other people about how I'm feeling, I often get comments like: "Relax! I have a friend who stressed out and then when she finally just gave up and stopped stressing about it, BAM, she was pregnant!" or "What's going on with Sarra? Oh, I figured she was just being emotional again." or "It's not always all about you." And let me tell you, those comments? Not helpful. I already know all those things. I already beat myself up enough about those things, but until you're standing in my shoes, you don't understand how difficult it is to relax. And you know what else? I'm allowed to be emotional right now. Don't try to invalidate my feelings, because that only makes me feel shame.

The bad emotions and thoughts aren't the only ones, though. Just because I say I'm worried or scared doesn't mean that's ALL I am. I'm also incredibly hopeful. I'm so thankful for insurance and great doctors and even the miracle of science that is IVF. It blows my mind that they can take the egg and sperm and create embryos in a lab. I daydream about what it will be like to be pregnant. I shop online for things I want to put in the nursery. I browse maternity clothing stores online for what I might want to buy and what might look cute on me. I linger in the baby section at Target, dreaming about my baby. Trust me, there are a lot of great emotions too. It's just that sometimes the worry is more helpful to talk about. Blogs are like therapy, you know? It helps to just get it out there and know you aren't alone.

Plus, there's a fear that if I talk about all the hope and all my dreams, then I don't get pregnant, I will look like a fool. Crazy, huh? But honest. 

So, I'll just have to ask forgiveness for now. Forgiveness from those friends who think I'm being selfish and emotional. Forgiveness from God for being so self-centered and not having a strong enough faith to believe that this will all work out okay. Forgiveness from my husband for all the tears and late night conversations (although I know he'll say there's nothing to forgive). I have to learn, also, to forgive myself. I have to forgive my own body for not doing what it's supposed to do as a woman. I have to understand that it's not my fault. I want to forgive myself for not working harder on my book right now and for choosing, instead, to take some time off so I can handle the stress, worry, fear, hope that is coursing through me. And I need to forgive the people who say those incredibly insensitive things to me. They don't mean to hurt me, I'm sure. They just don't understand.

Today, I will close my eyes and sit with my chin raised toward the sky, and let forgiveness wash over me. 

Pre-Nesting

I guess you can't technically call it nesting until you're pregnant, right? But I have this feeling of wanting to pre-nest. I never thought it would be so hard to get real work done at this point, but this is where I find myself. I am having the hardest time being creative. When I sit down to work on my book, nothing good comes out. The words don't feel or sound like me. Instead of trying to force it, I'm taking a break. I'll go back to writing my book when I feel inspired and it can be less of a chore. So what else can I do with my time? I need something to keep my mind and hands busy.

So I think I am going to clean. I'm talking about a really good, down on my hands and knees scrubbing kind of clean. Besides, the future baby's room is kind of a mess. Right now, it's a hodge-podge of a room. It's my closet (because there's no room for my clothes in our bedroom, lol), it's the room where the dog sleeps and eats and generally lives, and it's the place where all my crafting projects went to die. Seriously, all my scrapbooking, stamping, beading, whatever projects and supplies are ALL in that room. And I never use them anymore. Once I hit the ground running with my writing, I simply lost interest in all that other stuff. I still want to scrapbook, but I want to do it digitally instead. I don't really have a need for half the things in that room, to be honest. It's time to purge.

My plan is to set some sheets out in the living room downstairs and slowly carry all my crafting stuff down there and sort through it. I know a few friends who would love to have some of the stamps and beads and papers. Hey, if any of you ladies in the blogosphere love to scrapbook or stamp and want to see what I have, you're more than welcome to it! I can post a picture next week or something if anyone is interested. I also want to go through all my clothes and shoes and purge things that are too big now that I've lost some weight or stuff that I just don't wear. There's a donation center close to our house that is always in need of things that are in good shape. I really want to clean out the clutter in the baby's room and maybe steam clean the carpets and get it looking fresh and ready.

Most of the rest of the house is clean already, but everything could always use a good dusting and scrub down. It might feel really good to start our IVF journey with a super clean house. A clean space just feels good, you know? And I tend to collect clutter in little piles. Books, for example, are the worst! I have so many stacks of books! I just need to organize and purge. Soon, we'll be making room for baby clothes and a stroller and a bouncy seat and toys, right?

Tomorrow I'll start my little pre-nesting session. I'm going to load up my iPod with some great playlists that I can sing to and set up my iHome somewhere downstairs where I can blast it, haha. It will be like my own free version of therapy and stress relief.

Oh and just as a news update - I got a near-positive OPK today and some definite fertile CM, so I think the acupuncture might be leading to a slightly earlier O for me this month. I called my nurse and she moved my u/s and progesterone draw to this Friday. This is just for the doctor to see if I'm truly ovulating on my own or not. If they get a good high progesterone of 2 or more and I have a dominant follicle that looks promising, they will just let me O on my own and wait for AF to start. If not, they'll prescribe birth control to force a really good AF that will reset my lining really well for the IVF cycle. Either way, I should still be on track for stims to start by October 8th or so. I really don't want to be on bcp, but if I do need them, I'm secretly hoping he'll just prescribe 7-10 days, which would have me starting stims even earlier! I'm ready!

Patience

Right now is a time for great patience and understanding. I have to find a way to be patient with the process. I ended up leaving my beach trip early last week because I simply couldn't focus. What I expected to be a wonderful week to unwind and write so many words that I would get ahead with my book, turned out instead to be an emotional breakdown. I realized too late that this is a really bad time to be away from my husband. I also realized that I need to give myself some slack. Expecting myself to be able to write an entire novel while dealing with this process is just not realistic. And beating myself up over not writing fast enough isn't helping.

I need to forgive myself and be patient with myself. Writing is not going to come as fast and easy as normal. And you know what? That's okay. The world will not end just because I didn't finish a book. Yes, it means less money and it means slowing my career down a little bit, but it's temporary. This won't last forever. Soon, I will be pregnant and all this anxiety and fear will be gone. Okay, okay, so I know that's not entirely true. Pregnancy comes with its own set of worries and fears, but for now, I just have to GET pregnant, lol.

I also need to be patient with the people in my life. There are so many people who don't really understand what this feels like. They don't know the financial and emotional investment involved. Most of the women in my life got pregnant for free, without a care in the world. They simply don't get it. So for me to hope or expect that those women would have sympathy and understanding for me right now is slightly unrealistic. Instead of being upset or feeling ashamed or defeated, I need to just be patient and maybe stay close to home for a while. Maybe stop spending much time with the people who don't understand and instead spend my time with my husband and friends that ARE sympathetic.

I have just over 2 weeks before stims begin. For some reason, I thought I would be able to work and concentrate and live my normal life all the way up to the moment shots began. I didn't expect to be this emotional and nervous with 2 weeks still to go. My therapist calls it 'anticipatory stress', which is just exactly what it sounds like. Anticipating something to such an extreme that it's causing me stress. I wasn't expecting it, but it's here. All I can do is deal with it as it comes and try to be patient with myself. I am going to do my best.

Thank you to everyone for all the sweet comments and helpful suggestions. You mean so much to me!

Amplified

3 weeks away from starting stims. THREE WEEKS? OMG. I really thought by now that I would have found some bit of peace to hang on to. I planned on having my positive attitude perfected and being one hundred percent ready for this journey.

HA!

It's just not that easy.

I've been at the beach all week on a writing retreat with friends. I have a book to finish in three weeks, so I planned on this being the best writing experience where I could get tons of pages done and feel great and get way ahead. Wrong! I've barely written 20 pages all week. I've been struggling with every little thing lately. My book sales slump one day? I freak out and think the worst. A little misunderstanding with insurance? I freak out and cry tears of despair. Get a three-star review? You would think it was from the NYT or something with how much it affected me.

It's as if IVF has suddenly AMPLIFIED every other small stressor in my life. Instead of becoming peaceful and strong as we await injections, I'm becoming a mad woman. I don't like it one bit. Honestly, I know I'm a strong person. I've been through so much in my life and always manage to come through it and find the silver lining. So why is this so difficult for me?

I spent all day yesterday on the beach. I swam in the ocean, picked up shells, felt rejuvenated and really focused on remembering my own strength. I had this running ticker of positive thoughts in my head all day. I can do this. I am strong. Everything is going to work out exactly as it should. I'm going to be pregnant soon. I'm a talented writer. I've sold over 40,000 books in less than a year.

I came inside feeling great, had a nice dinner, everything was going amazing. My best day at the beach yet. When we got home from dinner, we sat down to do some writing sprints. I wrote over 2500 words in an hour, which for me is amazing. Then, I started reading over the words and doubting myself. All the negative thoughts came rushing in and I just couldn't get them to stop. This is rough draft writing. I'm never going to finish this book and get it published in three weeks. I can't do this. It's too hard.

Then, I checked my sales. This is something I do every night at midnight. I enter my books sold into a little spreadsheet I created so I can see my averages and such. I only sold 56 books yesterday. That's the worst single day I've had since January. I cried my eyes out. You would have thought the whole world ended or something. I called my husband, crying about how my career was falling into the dumps and how I didn't think I would be able to do it and how Amazon is changing their algorithms and what if I can't get my sales to come back up. Blah. Blah. Blah. Motormouth of negativity.

I went to bed feeling like crap. Woke up feeling so defeated. And of course, it's storming out there now so no sunny beach day to make me feel better. The week is over and I even though I had a goal of writing 40,000 words this week, I've only managed to write 6500. Dismal. I can't seem to get past this extremely emotional outpouring. I can't seem to focus on work at all. Every little thing feels ten times worse than it really is. And even just writing this post makes me realize how not-strong I seem right now. This isn't me! I don't want to be this person. I want to be strong and focused and successful.

But I also want to be a mommy. And while some people can achieve that easily and for free, my body just won't allow it. I'm pushing 35 and have PCOS and am just not getting pregnant on my own. It's just simply not fair. I've worked so hard to be a success and create my own business and life in so many other ways, but something like motherhood really just shouldn't be so difficult. I shouldn't have to work so hard at this. And I really wish I could report that I'm being strong and together and focused and positive. I know that's what everyone around me wants me to be and tells me I SHOULD be, but trust me, it's harder than you think. If you've never been where I am now, you probably don't understand.

So, ladies, dear friends of the internet who have been where I am and who DO understand what I'm going through - how do you do it? How do you work and focus and clean the house and concentrate and deal with all the little things that stress us out each day? How do you do it without freaking out and feeling like every little thing is so important right now? How do you stay positive while waiting for shots to begin? I need help figuring this out!

Las Vegas, a New Blog Design, and a Focus Shift

George and I are home from Las Vegas! We had the most amazing 9 days in the city. For us, this was both a celebration (his birthday) and a time for relaxation before we start our journey toward IVF. We both really needed an amazing week to let go of all the stress of the past year of failed fertility assistance. We needed some time to reconnect and just enjoy being together. It's my hope that our Vegas trip will also end up being our last vacation before we're pregnant! Here's a picture we took. Don't we just look so happy?

(Note: Yes, I do have blue hair, lol. My Dr. at NCCRM says no more hair dye once we get started, so I'll have to go back to plain brown soon, but for now, it's still blue and expressive, hehe.)

While I was away, I was also working with Faith of A Design of Faith to do a complete redesign of my blog, and I couldn't be happier with the results!! Thank you so much, Faith. You did an amazing job and I am so incredibly grateful. This was something I really wanted to do for myself so that I can have a beautiful place online to share my feelings throughout this roller coaster ride of TTC. As of today, I am going to make a pledge to blog every day. I think it will definitely be therapeutic for me to be open about my feelings. IVF is feeling so real right now even though it's been pushed back a few times. We're really at the beginning stages right now, so this is the perfect time to rededicate myself to my own blog and opening myself up to what's about to happen in our lives.

Now that our vacation is over, I feel a major focus shift deep inside. I've been wanting to have a baby for so long, but there have always been obstacles in my way. Now that my life is finally in a good place and I have finally found the most amazing man to raise a family with, we're having trouble getting pregnant. With the PCOS, I always knew this was a possibility. Still, there was a part of me deep down that hoped when the time was right, I wouldn't have trouble getting pregnant. It's heartbreaking to see that all those fears are coming true. I always thought IVF was a last-chance scenario, so to find ourselves in a place where it's the next step has been really hard to swallow.

When we first talked to our doctor about IVF this past Spring, I kept thinking we might still get pregnant in the meantime and not even need it. Month after month has gone by with no BFP. My chart is showing that I'm ovulating, so what's the problem? It's just heartbreaking and so frustrating. I feel like now I have to just let it go of all those fears and frustrations and just know that this is our path. IVF is going to be our miracle. I'll write more about our upcoming timeline tomorrow, but for now, I'm just focusing on getting healthy, working out to try to lose a little bit of weight before we begin meds and doing my best to relieve any stress. This is our time, and I'm going to embrace it and do everything I can to contribute to a successful first (and only! I hope!) round of IVF.