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Apr 27

Infertility sensitivity training at the nail salon

Apr 27

Allie all grown up, sitting in her own chair

Allie all grown up, sitting in her own chair

First off, I would like to let you all know that I hit a milestone today – 10,000 page views! Holy baloney! Granted, 9,00 of them were probably just me self-editing… but for the other 1,000, thank you all so much for pretending to be interested in what I have to say. It’s so humbling and gratifying.

Today my mom, little sister and I made our annual first pilgrimage to the nail salon to get our toes done. We go to the same place every month of the spring/summer, year after year, so the people there know us well. It’s your typical place, run by people of Asian descent who speak English as a second language. It’s familiar and predictable. It is also a place that tested my tolerance today.

Below is an almost verbatim exchange between me and the young man doing my manicure:

Young Man: You married now one yea? Two yea?
Me: Almost three years.
Young Man: Three yea! No baby yet?
Me: No, no baby yet.
YM: You have baby soon?
Me: Well, yes we want to.
YM: You try to have the baby?
Me: Yes, practicing is half the fun. (Joke totally goes over his head).
YM: Your sistah, she have baby yet?
Me: Yes, she has two. She’s probably having another one today. (P.S. – my sister is in labor at this moment).
YM: Three baby! And you not have one! Tell your husban, you needa have the baby.
Me: Oh yes, he knows. (pause) …You know, it’s not so easy for some people. To have babies. Some people try to have babies and can’t.
YM: Oh. Oh you try to have the baby, not working.
Me: No, no it’s not.
YM: Sometimes the doctuh, they takeah the egg – take it out, and put it in? You know? They put it in the woman.
Me: (holding back laughter) Yes, yes we did that. We tried that. It doesn’t work for everyone.
YM: Oh, yes. Yes very expensive, the doctuh?
Me: Oh yes, VERY EXPENSIVE.
…long pause…
Me: Actually it did work. We were pregnant, with twins. But it… it didn’t last. We lost them. (WHY AM I TELLING HIM THIS? WHY?)
YM: Oh, your body no keep the babies.
Me: Nope. Maybe next time!

I’m seriously glad no one was sitting next to me. And I’m also unsure why I chose that person and that moment to school someone on infertility. Maybe I was hoping he wouldn’t harass the next married/childless woman who sat in that chair? I honestly can’t tell if I got through to him, mostly because of the language barrier. He certainly didn’t apologize for asking why I didn’t have babies, and didn’t shed a tear for my tale of tragedy. He just kept filing and cuticle clipping like we were talking about the weather.

Sigh. Well, at least I tried.

Posted by amanda 13 Comments
Filed Under: miscellany Tagged: infertility, nail salon

Feb 06

It’s February

Feb 06

I keep referencing February and psychics, so I figured I would give a little background on that for anyone who doesn’t know the whole story.

Back when we were diagnosed as infertile and when I was riding the emotional roller coaster of not getting pregnant every month, certain things were tough. Baby showers were tough. Kid’s birthday parties were tough. Any event that may or may not feature children was tough. That’s practically everything, by the way. Kids are everywhere and any little thing was likely to set off a sadness bomb inside of me.

As you may imagine, Mother’s Day was a particularly hard day. On that Sunday in 2011, I awoke in a foul mood. I distinctly remember lying in bed at my apartment, delaying the start of my day and wallowing in self pity. I checked my phone, as I always do first thing in the morning, and discovered the following message from my dear friend:

I would like to offer you this small piece of hope on this special day… I went back to the psychic yesterday. The one who did a group reading for me a couple of months ago and left me with goosebumps after reciting my entire life story. This time we were alone and I asked her about you and Eric. I told her I had friends who are having trouble conceiving. She asked me for your first name only and paused for a while. She said she definitely sees you getting pregnant and the pregnancy surrounds something with a 2. She thinks the 2 is for February. She said to give you 2 pieces of advice. One, be patient because IT WILL HAPPEN, and 2 continue using those fertility sticks. The second they show you’re ovulating you need to find Eric and go to town!
I know it doesn’t take a psychic to know fertility sticks help people conceive, but the specifics of info this women gives about everything else tells me she certainly knows her stuff.
Also, she said sees a beautiful baby girl. (I loved that part because she said it so full of emotion.)
I hope you have a Happy Mothers day, because you are a mommy, even if your baby hasn’t arrived yet.

Ok, let me premise with this: I didn’t know if I believed in psychics. It certainly never occured to me that I should go to one for this issue. And given the choice, I’m not sure I would want to know. What if the psychic said I would never have kids? How could I live with that every day, true or untrue? So this scenario was perfect. I had not asked my friend to ask for me, so I wasn’t worried about getting an answer. Plus, the answer was so full of hope on a day that I desperately needed it.

Remember, this was May. I manipulated that psychic prediction every way I possibly could all year long to fit my needs at the time and justify a pregnancy. In late May and June, I said the baby would be due in February. In the summer, I said the baby could be premature. In the winter, I said February would be the month we found out the gender. So no, I did not sit by patiently waiting for February to arrive.

February 2012 was a fantastically stressful month. It was, not coincidentally, the time of my first panic attack. I was driving home from work and had to pull over because I got myself so worked up that I could not breathe. To say that I had become obsessed with the prediction would be an understatement. I spoke to people about it as though it was a fact, not a prediction. The friend who sent the message was probably ready to disown me. I begged her for more details, nuances, anything she may have left out. She’s probably happy to live 300 miles away or I would have been at her house every night dissecting something that may have been literal, symbolic, or who knows, may have just been a big hoax.

February came and went. We did not get pregnant. It was almost a relief to have it over with, even if relief was quickly replaced with despair. I went through the rest of 2012 with a lack of enthusiasm compared to the year before. I don’t know if I believed it anymore.

As soon as we got our appointment with New Hope last year, I began thinking about February again. I started getting really excited. Without trying, all of the scheduling lined up for February of this year. Our first tentative embryo transfer (ET) was supposed to be Feb 1, but with my high estrogen was delayed to Feb 24-27. It’s still February. It’s still all about February.

I’m definitely less worked up and anxious than I was last year at this time. This is our first real, honest-to-goodness try, and that’s incredible. But tell someone you’re undergoing IVF and they’ll tell you about their friend’s neighbors cousin who tried 5 times or 6 times or 12 times and was unsuccessful. It rarely works on the first round; I know that. But I do have my determination, my hope, and a very promising psychic prediction on my side. Take THAT, universe!

Posted by amanda 3 Comments
Filed Under: IVF, miscellany, monthly updates Tagged: best friends, February, hope, infertility, IVF, life, Mother's Day, prediction, psychic

Dec 11

spoiler alert: we’re not pregnant

Dec 11

I’ve debated a lot over this post. Probably more time than one should devote to thinking about something as inconsequential as a blog post. Here’s why I ultimately decided to do it:

1) It’s what’s going on. The most successful blogs are real, gritty, everyday life, right? So why wouldn’t I put this out there? This is what’s happening in my life.

2) It got harder and harder to post about other stuff. It felt like ignoring the biggest thing – the most important thing – the elephant in the living room.

3) This is like my worst kept secret anyway. I’m mostly open about it with people who I know and even sometimes with people who I don’t know. So organizing my thoughts and putting them all down isn’t going to be some big revelation.

Longwinded preamble aside… Eric and I are have been trying to have a baby for two and a half years but we don’t have one yet. There, I said it. My master plan was to wait until I was pregnant and post a whole long thing about the process leading up to it, but this “side blog” was getting long and frankly unreadable. I wanted to wait until I actually achieved the goal to post anything. Why? Because I don’t want anyone to know if I fail, that’s why.

Confession time: I used to blog about this under a super secret name and not tell anyone about it. This BBT blog is more lifestyle, less specifically allocated, so I’m going to keep things light (not that the situation is light, not in the least). Basically, I want to give an overall view of what’s going on without being too graphic. However, if you do want or need specifics, I have a gold medal in over sharing. If you ask nicely, I’ll quote you medical history and test results all day long. I just don’t think most people reading this particular blog care to know.

In the fall of 2010 we went for fertility testing and figured out the problem. Knowing the problem does not mean that you can afford to treat it, however. Most insurances cover the testing portion, but when it comes to treatment there is little to no coverage. Currently 15 states require providers to cover at least some of the treatment costs, but Pennsylvania isn’t one of them. And so we bid adieu to a potential $15,000 medical bill and decided to keep on tryin’ the old fashioned way (giggity).

So far, clearly, it hasn’t worked. Again, I could write pages and pages on the subject, but I’m just going to gloss over a lot of fine details and say this much: the past 2.5 years have featured plenty of tears, venting sessions, joys, ups, downs, hopes, despair, prayers, selfish tantrums, weird dreams, one ill-advised visit to a psychic, fights, make-ups, fights again, and pretty much every other emotion on the spectrum. We’ve learned an awful lot about each other but we still don’t have a baby.

Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago. A friend suggested that I research clinical trials as an alternative way to pay for the IVF that we need according to the specialist. Lo and behold, the first result that Google returned sounded promising. New Hope Fertility Clinic in Manhattan is currently running a study comparing 2 different types of IVF (though saying the words “clinical trial” to one particular friend got the immediate response, “But does that mean you’ll grow a mustache?!”) The whole thing sounds legit.  And best of all, minus the cost of testing and some meds, it’s totally and completely free. Free! For those of you who don’t have conception challenges – this is comparable to winning the lottery. At least it feels that way to me.

We aren’t in yet. Our consult is coming up soon and we could still be rejected from the study for any number of reasons. Despite the cliché and despite how much I DETEST this phrase – everything does happen for a reason. So if we don’t make it in, something else will come along. A month ago I wouldn’t have even believed this opportunity existed, so it proves that anything can happen. That’s why when that Ellie Goulding song comes on in the car I totally bust out some crazy vocals. Anyway, I will keep y’all posted on what transpires (nice details only). But I really, really REALLY hope we get in. I really do.

Posted by amanda 4 Comments
Filed Under: IVF, milestones, the big things Tagged: anything could happen, hope, infertility, IVF, life, lottery, love, reason

hello, my name is deeda


sister, daughter, wife, and mama to 5 sweet children on earth, 4 in heaven. self-conscious writer. voracious reader. sarcasm enthusiast. dependable Taurus. lover of broken things. reluctant adult. FOMO sufferer. drinker of coffee. burner of toast.

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