To blog or not to blog?

It's been a fairly uneventful week in our household. I've been on the road for work. We dodged the 'perfect storm' that was predicted for mid week - the remnants of three weather forces (two of them tropical storms) coming together on the same day. Worked for me since that was the day I was scheduled to be driving the coast line home.

What I didn't dodge was this nasty cold that settled in just before I had to present at a conference on Wednesday.

Consequently, my temps have been up and down all week and the last thing I've felt like doing is having a roll with the lovely HB - as much as I adore him. So we're probably out of the running of this month. And next month as well. This project that I'm leading at work will have me on the road and out of town for about 40 days over the next three months.

I've been trying to keep my links up on this blog ... making sure that I'm moving those who have received great news of late, like Cecily to the appropriate list, and those who have arrived to their rightful spot in the links. It occurs to me that in the 15 months that I've been blogging, I've seen a lot of people move to different spots. Some have continued to blog about the new place they are at in their lives - parenting, adoption or preparing to adopt, and even for some - now blogging about coming to terms with not having children.

I wonder what I will blog about once the decision regarding biological children in my life is finally made for and/or by me? Will I even continue to blog? I guess we'll find out pretty soon.

Odd odds

So what are the odds of this happening?

This morning HB and I were headed to 11:00 a.m. Mass at the small parish here in our community. This is not the parish I usually go to because I've played the guitar at another parish since 1992, and even though it's in the city, I usually go back there. But this little parish in our community is quite nice - and there is a real, true sense of community there. It's one of those little churches that has people at the door, smiling and saying hello to you. We know a number of people that go here.

We walked in this morning to find the entry unusually crowded. There were at least eight adults we didn't recognize, and two of the women were holding small babies.

And as I said hello, the light comes on. We had walked into the "surprise! It's a baptism this morning!" mass.

Now don't get me wrong. I love my faith, and I love baptisms. But since we've been walking this walk, I do tend to get emotional at them. Now at my other parish, it's no biggie because I'm with friends, and have the guitar strapped on and can hide my tears behind it, should they come.

But this morning, there we were....two pews behind one of the families. We didn't recognize any of them. The dad hoisted his little boy up onto his shoulder, and that beautiful baby boy promptly locked eyes with me.

I decided then and there that I was not going to cry. I was going to be happy for this family, and I was going to pray for this awesome little boy as he received the sacrament of baptism.

And then the priest said "what name have you chosen for your child" to the parents.

Their last name was the same as ours. We do not have a very common last name, and it's not a name from around here - but there it was. This beautiful baby boy, being baptized in front of us, carried our name, and locked eyes with both my husband and I.

What are the odds of that happening?

Lessons learned

I'm thinking about this post by Mare, and the subsequent discussion in her comments regarding whether there are lessons to be learned as a result of infertility.

I was one of the commenters who said, quite honestly, that I've struggled to see what the lesson is in this infertility with which my husband and I live.

I first realized that I was having trouble conceiving in 1994, shortly after I got married for a minute by mistake. When that sham, which didn't even make it to a third anniversary, dissolved, I remember people saying "thank goodness you didn't have children". All I could think of was "now I'll never have children". Now I look back and agree. Thank goodness I didn't have children with that man.

Was there a lesson there? I don't think so. I'm ashamed to say that I'm grateful the treatments I was engaging in at that time didn't work.

Fast forward four years. I meet my best friend and soul mate. He already has two children, the youngest of which was born the year my sham ended. Without even consciously trying, we conceive our son in the first year we are together.

After we lost Brodie, I really did search for the lesson. And found none. I wasn't angry with God, nor did I think I was being punished, but I could find no lesson.

That was 2002. It's been three long years since I realized that in fact I could conceive. We've experienced several early positives that resulted in equally early miscarriages since that first big one. It makes me ashamed to say I don't know exactly how many - I think it's three, but once I started testing early, seeing positives and then getting my "period", I realized that I have had many late and heavy periods that were just like those I now knew to be early miscarriages.

Is there a lesson in all of that? Again, I can't find it.

What I do know is this. I am married to a most amazing man. Despite everything we have travelled through together - and there's been a shitload - my heart flutters when I see him enter a room. He wakes me up with butterfly kisses and giggles. He sends me emails in the middle of the day, sometimes with nothing else in them but the acronym "SHMILY". We read this story about the origin of the word SHMILY somewhere early on in our relationship, and just stole it outright, making it ours. I've had it engraved on his watch, and he's written it on many a note I've found tucked into my luggage when I travel. He is genuinely interested in who I am as a person, and tells me he is proud of me. He supports me and is my biggest cheerleader.

I can't imagine sharing this journey of infertility with anyone but him. He's not afraid to cry about it, but at the same time he's also the first to say he can imagine the rest of his life spent with the two of us not having a child. He rejoices at our positive test results when we have received them, and he holds me on the months that I weep. He shares his two awesome little boys with me, and shows me that we are already a family.

Is there a lesson in that? Yeah. Finally I know that good things can and do happen in my life. My marriage is living proof of that lesson.

Free Trade and the Wal-Mart

I had a moment today. I was at the Wal-Mart (yes, we're just hick enough here that we call it The Wal-Mart) where we know that babies and pregnant women lurk in every aisle due to the low, low prices. And truly ... babies and pregnant women were lurking in every aisle. Now I was having a good day. Good hair day. New pink sweater from Old Navy on, and my new shoes. Matching lipstick. Even got the lip liner on without looking clownish. I was kicking it today. So I was not about to let any baby bombard get to me. I was resolved to smile and have a good karma day.

I swear the Infertility Gawds are having a field day with me of late. They said "waaaaaatch...let's kick it up a notch today".

And so they sent twins.

Not just one set. Nooooo.

TWO sets of newborn twins at the Wal-Mart.

I managed to get by the first set ... no harm, no foul. Even managed to smile at momma. She was beautiful. Sure as hell didn't look like someone who had just birthed twins, let me tell you. In that moment, she looked like a catalogue model, with the little leather jacket and heels on, pushing her double carriage. I don't think I weighed as little as she appeared to at birth. Whatever. I don't know her story and am sure not going to be the one to judge her. Besides, it was pure jealousy speaking inside me at that moment anyhow.

I go about my business, picking up the many and varied bargains that one inevitably purchases at the Wal-Mart, and there they were - the second set of twins. Waiting for me at the cash register. The cashier that is serving me is cooing and gooing at them. I actually did this primal scream thing inside thinking "just check my freaking halloween lights and glow in the dark skull through so I can get the eff out of here" but my perfectly painted lips maintained their perfectly bowed smile the whole time I waited for her to finish and turn back to me. I endured all the comments about the twins while she was ringing through my bag of fake bones. I paid, left the store, and proceeded to my vehicle, which happened to be parked right next to another perfect mother with her perfect child in carriage, who was being approached by a friend in that parking lot who was screeching "loooooook at yoouuuuu! Looooook at that baaaaabeeeee".

You know what? I'm tired.

I'm tired of not being able to be sincerely happy for others. I'm tired of being bothered by this. I'm tired of feeling shitty because I feel jealous and have nasty thoughts in my head about people. I am not, by nature, a nasty person. And yet I'm thinking these nasty thoughts in the lineup at the Wal-Mart. I have sunk to a new low.

Last week my mother called from northern Ontario, where she is visiting her sister. She called because my sister told her I had stayed home from work, and she wanted to know if I was alright. I told her I was just having a really heavy period. To which my mother replies:

"Don't worry honey. You'll be finished with all that real soon."

Talk about feeling deflated. Knowing that I'm this jealous, barren, bitchy old hag that buys bags of glow in the dark skulls at the Wal-Mart (which, by the way, do NOT glow in the dark) who will never ever have a child of her own.

And then to add insult to injury, I went on line tonight to order some soap from Bath_and_Bodyworks. I was busily filling my 'shopping bag' with these, getting almost orgasmic at the thought of the box arriving at my home in a few short weeks. I went to checkout, only to find that they do NOT ship "internationally". Apparently Canada is considered international. Why the hell did I support a free trade agreement again??? And why can't some Canadian shop come up with the same kind of awesome soap in that beautiful little bottle???

There. I think it's all out of my system. I'm boycotting the Wal-Mart and obviously I'm going to spend time stinking until the Bath and Bodyworks people understand that Canada does not count as international!!!

It was the best of times....

It started to rain Saturday morning, and it hasn't stopped yet. We had a delightful Thanksgiving dinner with Frodo, Mini-Me and HB's mother whom we affectionately call MotherMom, on Saturday night. Frodo surprised us by asking if we could cook the turkey on Saturday so they could come share Thanksgiving with us. The poor wee buggars then had to eat turkey Sunday night at their grandparents' home, and again today at their mother's place.

Although it warmed my heart to hear Frodo tell his dad today that the dressing at our place was the best he'd had all weekend.

He doesn't need to know that the dressing came in the turkey now, does he?

Other things going through my mind today:

Martha was expected to participate in a pumpkin regatta in this little town not too far from me yesterday. At one point it was cancelled due to the fact that she couldn't get across the Canadian border, being you know, a convicted criminal and all, but our government found a way to speed up her paperwork. The poor folks of Windsor have been in a tizzy about the diva's visit. Well, this morning I woke up to the news that she had not made it after all. We were Martha-less on Thanksgiving weekend. I'm devastated.

My "might-be but probably not" chart woes from yesterday are over. My temp took a dive this morning and just for good measure, I pissed away another $15 at the drugstore on tests yesterday. Odd how you can literally piss away $15 with a pregnancy test, isn't it?

This is the first Thanksgiving in years that I haven't spent with my extended family. My parents are headed into their late 70's, and decided this was the year they wanted to travel and visit my mom's only remaining sister for Thanksgiving. It makes me kind of sad to know that our lives are changing.

I've had an amazing weekend with my husband. We went to see this movie yesterday afternoon. Us and the six other people in my city that had no other plans for Thanksgiving Sunday! The movie was filled with non-sensical violence, but the popcorn was good. On the way home, we stopped to visit friends before hitting the video store and stocking up on four no-brainer movies. We've spent yesterday and today watching movies and eating leftover turkey. Both are finished now.

The neighbours two doors down are bringing home their baby girl today. There are pink balloons blowing in the rain and wind all over their house. I marvelled at how sincerely HB was in his congratulations to the new dad yesterday, and sometimes wonder if I could just get to a point where I could be sincerely and honestly happy for others, I might be rewarded with a babe of my own. I'm not there yet.

And finally, I am in the process of completing a project that I've been working on since April. It's my portfolio, and damn, I'm proud of it! I'll be submitting it in application for a masters in public administration program. In my humble opinion, they're out of their minds if they don't accept me once they see this portfolio! If they don't, I plan to adopt my friend Greg Tamblyn's attitude and put NCW after my name.

It's all good.

Bob the Builder says "Yes, we can!"

It's the start of the long Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. I live in a small coastal community, right on the ocean. The air is heavy with rain and fog this morning, and promises to be so for the rest of this weekend. HB and I have no commitments, obligations, activities this weekend. We are ecstatic at the thought of having a weekend to just be.

I'm not pregnant again this month. I'm in an oddly ok place with that this morning. It's like I'm disentangling myself from this journey of attempted conception one step at a time. Last month I made the decision about not taking the clomid. This month I'm thinking about hanging up the old basal temp stick. The thought doesn't bother me at all. I feel like I've been moving to a place of que sera sera for a few months now.

The other night we had the kids over for the regular mid week overnight with us. HB had, for some reason I now believe was totally fate related, forgotten about this (we won't get into the fact that these kids have been coming over every Wednesday night for the last five years) and had scheduled himself into a meeting across town.

Frodo was totally distressed upon hearing that his dad wasn't going to be around for the evening, and decided that was it - he was taking his homework with him and going to that meeting with Dad.

Which left Mini-Me sitting across the table from me .... facing the prospect of a long evening alone with the wicked stepmother. (muahahahahaha)

We had the absolute best evening. The. Absolute. Best.

We played outside with the neighbours for the first hour or so. I helped him to build a fort, carefully constructed so that it would collapse upon him at just the right time. We came inside and made the lunches for the next day together. We studied his spelling words (I passed!), and made hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. Then it was bedtime - and he crawled right inside my heart by saying "I always read to my mom at bedtime. Can I read to you???"

He read Bob the Builder (Yes We Can!!!) and Pooh's Pumpkin to me and we did all the voices together (I do a wicked Eeyore, by the way). Then it was my turn to read to him. I read Brady Brady .... as he fought sleep, tucked under his duvet.

Last night, HB told me that their mother wanted to know what I had done with Mini-Me that night because before he went to sleep the next night, he told her that he had so much fun with Sandy....and he had decided he, in his own words, "needed to spend more time with me".

I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend.

UPDATED TO ADD: To support Emily's theory that Fertility Friend is the work of the devil, I logged my temp today, after a negative Early Response test yesterday. FF immediately updates the data and shares this information with me:

Implantation Signs: Possibly Triphasic on Day 28

along with this oh-so-helpful explanation of 'triphasic':

A triphasic chart shows three levels of temperatures: pre-ovulation, post-ovulation, and then a second rise around 7-10 days after ovulation.

Some women with charts that show this pattern turn out to be pregnant. But many do not. blah blah blah stuff....If your chart shows a second significant thermal shift that begins 7-10 days past ovulation, Fertility Friend will indicate a triphasic pattern in the Pregnancy Monitor. A triphasic chart, however, is not a definite sign that you are or are not pregnant. It is just increasing your probability if you also have well-timed intercourse. Likewise, you can be pregnant and not have a triphasic pattern. Like all signs of possible implantation or pregnancy, you can really only speculate about it once a pregnancy has already been confirmed.

I have a vision of the Fertility Friend Gawds sitting there this morning saying "she's just beginning to accept the prospect of not conceiving....now waaatch as we play with her mind!"

Dinner, courtesy of my basal themometre

I've been using that online fertility friend thing to track what's up with my body, and I must say I'm becoming a bit fixated on it. It has tricked me twice in the past by saying I ovulated on thus and such a day, only to suddenly decide I actually hadn't ovulated on thus and such a day, but had instead ovulated on this or that day. I know I ovulate really late in a cycle, and then boom! In 10 days, it's all done but the crying.

But this month it seemed to be sticking to its prediction that I had indeed ovulated on day 11, and was dangling that "testing on Saturday is ok" date in front of me. I had one hpt in the cupboard that had been there for quite a while. So Saturday morning I got up and tested.

And no shit ... I could swear I was seeing a positive sign. Faint. But it sure looked like it was there.

I put it in the cupboard. We had Frodo, Mini-Me and our nephew for the weekend, and I couldn't really guarantee that I could discuss this with HB in private.

I finally managed to get to him ... still within 30 minutes or so of the test ... and got him to come look. I know he thinks I'm out of my mind. There was no way in the world there was a second line there. No way. Even I thought I was losing my mind.

I went out and bought another test. Used it. Absolutely, without question, no hesitation, negative.

The next morning fertility friend laughed at me as I watched the dotted line move forth 10 days.

I don't know why I don't just give my credit card number to the 17th commenter on this blog, and tell them to take themselves out to dinner on me. I'd get the same value for my money on that as I do from this fertility friend investment! (hehe...notice how safe I am with that offer...I never get 17 comments!!!)