I have not shaken the anxiety that is creeping around my head. It’s making me grouchy. Not much else to report, really.

Oh, other than the fact that my body is only sorta maybe considering doing some fertile CM, which means ovulation is not happening by CD18, which means I’m going to have to sit around bitching until I ovulate and then until AF, all the while knowing that this is delaying my IVF cycle. I knew this was going to happen, my body is all fucked up.

I was really looking forward to the fourth of july this year. Being a Canadian in the US makes it kind of weird; Canada Day was never a huge thing back home. We’d acknowledge it, but that’s about it. But here, not only is it a big deal in general, but some friends of ours have a huge party every year. Plus the bank closes for the day, which means I got a full 2-days off for my weekend!

We had plans. However, things don’t always go as planned…

Here’s what I envisioned for our lovely fourth of july party: Set up a tent; Eat great food; Swim in a pool looking fabulous; Play games and have a great time; Have fantastic sex with my husband in our tent; Wake up and go for a great breakfast.

What actually happened:

Before leaving, discover that the air mattress Den has is a twin size, not a full. I have a fit.

After getting there I drank mostly lemonade with vodka, hoping that I would get as drunk without getting as sick as with my white russians – but they don’t taste half as good.

Didn’t go swimming at all, since it was too cold.

Mid-way through the night, go to set up the tent. Den says, “Honey, your friend didn’t loan us a tent. It’s a CHAIR!” I walk over to see a chair and think, WTF! I look in the back of the truck and there’s the tent still in the bag. (Later I discovered that he had grabbed BIL’s chair-in-a-bag.) So we got the tent up. But the too-small air mattress? Den couldn’t get it inflated for the life of him. He says it’s fine and puts some blankets down, I sit in the tent and cry. This is not going well.

After my time-out I re-join the party, one of the girls got me water and rubbed my back as I sniffled.

More drinking.

I end up crawling in the tent at some point later in the evening and passing out. Den joins me at some unspecified time later – neither I nor he remember him joining me in the tent.

I wake up at 5am with my hips aching so bad from sleeping on the ground. I ended up waking Den up, packing up all our shit, taking down the tent, and driving home before 6am.

On the good side, the effect of all that vodka+lemonade was only a bad headache that, with the help of some advil, I easily slept off. I woke up feeling great. (Den did not get off so easily.) Unfortunately that means it really is my beloved white russians that make me so effing sick. :(

On the bad side, it appears that the whole drinking-makes-me-have-so-much-fun days are far behind me. I feel like I just have so much sadness in me that drinking just taps into it. I think every time in the past year and a half that I have gotten drunk I end up bawling.

I know a huge part of it is me trying to re-capture the fun we had when we were dating, before we got married. We had some awesome parties, so much fun. There was no grief, no frustrations, no jealousy towards others… we were in love, and that was all we wanted right then. We were happy. I know that every year I try to re-create it those nights, but it never works out. Things are different, beyond what I can ever hope to control.

I just want to be happy again like we were back then.

I am tired because I haven’t been sleeping very well. I haven’t been sleeping well because one morning last week my alarm didn’t go off and I and was late for work, so now when it starts getting light out I wake up every 15 minutes and check the time. This is exhausting. I really should let it go, because work just laughed, I didn’t get in trouble, but now my subconcious is paranoid. It needs to go to friggin sleep.

Today I had a tweaked nerve in my back that kept sending pains shooting up when I twisted the wrong way.

And finally my allergies are in full force, makes me feel like I have a sock stuffed up into my nasal cavity. I was confused about it until I realized I’d been leaning heavy on the milk and ice cream lately. So I’m going off dairy completely to see if that gets this back under control. Zyrtek might be helping to take an edge off in the meantime. Maybe. When I remember to take it.

All in all I feel like a major whiner at work, which I really try not to do. I don’t want to be that person.

But other than all that, I actually feel pretty good. It’s a nice relief to not be on any hormones, to let my body just chill out. I feel like it’s wound tight, waiting, like it can’t quite accept that I’m not throwing something at it this month. (While I am am on cycle day 12, I am nowhere near ovulating yet. And, yes, I had to actually open up a calendar and count.)

It’s nice to be able to do things, plan things. One of the most frustrating things with cycles is the way it makes you feel like your entire future is balanced on a teeter-totter. Will you be coming to that party next month? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’ll be holed up in my room crying, maybe I’ll be out celebrating. Maybe I’ll be able to drink, maybe I’ll be sitting in the corner, enviously eyeing everyone (because while I’d gladly give up drinking were I actually pregnant, of course it’s “just in case” and I know I’ll test negative in a few days time).

It just feels good to let go… knowing I will return, but just to allow myself to step out of it for a little while. I have no choice, no decisions… just time to put aside.

I didn’t expect to feel this way.

::

We went to the movies tonight, to Star Trek. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, though I’m only mentioning the very beginning of the movie. But at the beginning of the movie when James was born, it was in the middle of an attack. His father stayed behind to fight, to hold off the attackers while the others – including his wife and newborn son – were able to escape.

It made my breath stop. The birth and death tied together, the saying goodbye and never getting to see his son, a son never knowing his father… it all hit me like a ton of bricks. I could feel the tension envelop Den and I… he didn’t say a word, but I could feel it, could hear his breath get short. That grief sitting on our chests.

For the other people in the theater it was probably just a sad part to the movie. But to us it was memories and grief bubbling to the surface at a time when we least expected it.

I had my first acupuncture appointment yesterday. It left me feeling good, yet a little confused.

I think the part I’m hung up on is how out-there it all sounds. Diagnosing me based on my pulse? I’m willing to take anything into consideration, but reading up on the theory behind it hasn’t helped me feel any more reassured.

Of course the price doesn’t help. Insurance doesn’t cover it so it’s all out of pocket, and at $60 per visit this is going to add up very quickly, especially going once per week like she suggested.

But regardless, I’ve heard enough stories to think that it might possibly help somehow, and I’ve decided that this cycle I’m going all-in. Anything and everything that I can do to, just in case. I’m going on bedrest, I won’t be touching any alchohol whatsoever, I’ll be meditating and visualizing and getting acupuncture and anything I possibly can. Just in case it possibly helps. Win or lose, I want to know I did everything I could do.

This acupuncturist practices at a little natural healing place that I didn’t know about. It’s the kind of place that sells crystal necklaces and pewter faerie charms. They require that you take off your shoes when you enter the building. It’s an old home – small and airy, with light colored walls and hardwood floors. I was shown into a treatment room that had a massage table in it. For the first while I sat in a chair and went over my medical history with the acupuncturist.

It was my first time going over my history with a medical professional since my miscarriage. As I was listing my IVF cycles and results I almost wanted to laugh, because it really just sounds so ridiculous. I was getting flustered. I wonder how long it is going to take for me to get used to it, to absorb it all as my own history.

After the consult she asked if I wanted to get started, and I decided, well I’m already here. So she had me lay on the table, face up, knees propped up by a pillow. It was comfortable. She used only my legs from the knees down, arms from the elbow down, and head. I was jumpy, not really looking forward to the needle placement. A few of them did make me jump, but some I didn’t feel at all. I think I flinched mostly out of anticipation. Unfortunately (according to me) she also placed a couple needles in each of my ears. Those I didn’t like. Mentally it creeps me out completely, and my right ear felt like a major pinch that wouldn’t go away. I had her adjust it, but I could still feel it.

She set up a heat lamp above me to keep me warm and comfortable, told me that my job was just to relax, and slipped out the door. There was a music with gentle meditation music on, the room was dimly lit, a candle flickered on the shelf in the corner. I closed my eyes and tried to relax my body, since it was still a little tense from the needle placement nerves. It’s funny how sometimes you don’t realize you’re carrying tension until it leaves. When I took a few breaths my feet shifted as my leg muscles released the stance they were holding.

I let my mind drift. At first I was thinking about acupuncture and then cycling, but I let it wander… I don’t remember where it went to. I must have zoned out, because I startled and opened my eyes – it took a few seconds for me to get my bearings. I took stock of my surroundings again, I could hear soft voices from the lobby, but no one was coming my way. I decided I was quite happy wherever I was, so I closed my eyes and zoned out again. Next time I came to the acupuncturist slipped back in the room and checked my pulse for a while on both sides. In the corner of the room she wrote in my folder, then left me alone again. I drifted for a while longer. I didn’t zone out again, I could feel my ear tweaking and my foot felt like it was brushing against something. When she returned again she removed all the needles, checking in with my chart a few times as she went. And then I was done.

I was really shocked to see the time when I left – I had been there for an hour and a half. It certainly didn’t feel like it. I really wonder if I fell asleep.

I’m still not ready to tell everyone acupuncture is wonderful – it could have just been the setting that let me relax. It did feel nice to have time in the middle of my day to meditate and de-stress, but like I said I do still have some hangups on the whole concept.

My next appointment is next week. I guess I’ll just see how this progresses.

I scroll through a huge list of fonts, trying to find the one I’m looking for. It’s definitely a script font, it has a swoop before the D.

I’m scrolling through a list of “Devin”s. I’m so focused on the details, eyes swiftly picking apart each option and mentally tossing it out, that I forget that fact for a minute. But my scrolling gets slower and slower until I stop, staring at my screen. The letters have jumbled together like they often do when I stare too hard, the word forming and un-forming in front of me. Devin. Devin. The word seems so warm and familiar, and yet so otherworldy.

I remember finding out it was a boy, realizing it was a Devin growing inside of me. I remember coming home and delightfully, joyfully turning that name over in my hands, feeling it on my lips. We were going to have a Devin.

We do have a Devin – but not how I pictured it then. His name is sprinkled liberally through our house. It slides easily off my tongue when I talk about our past, our great loss. If Devin were here. In memory of Devin. Since Devin. Past tense.

It can be such a random shock. We have this name, this child, and yet we are not parents… not day-to-day, not the way you would expect. We live our lives like a childless couple, going about work and homeowning and socializing.

Sometimes I forget where we’ve come from, the losses that we’ve had. I play with graphics and pictures and names, arranging pieces on my screen, seeing with an artists’ eye. Until the mother’s eye peeks over and the rest shuts down as the memories come flooding back.

We could have had a Devin in our present, a child in our lives. Instead we have a Devin on my screen and an ache in our heart.

Oh, Devin. I wish you were here with us.

This afternoon, done work for the week, I sat in bed with my laptop. The shades were up, the windows were open, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. It felt beautiful. I felt the darkness lift off my shoulders like a physical, tangible thing. Summer returned for a day, and I breathe in deep and let out a long-held sigh.

It is obvious that my moods are highly linked to the weather, though certainly not all. How much is the weather, how much is hormonal, how much is circumstantial… I do not know. But it is definitely related. These past few weeks have been darkly overcast and non-stop rain, and I know it added to the rest of the mess. My good days almost always fall on bright, sunny, warm days. It’s why I love spring so much. And why I love the snow, too. The winters here aren’t that bad, because the snow is bright and the sun shines frequently. It can get bitterly cold, but I don’t mind the snow half as much as the rain.

I wonder if living near Vancouver was part of the problem when I was a teenager. It certainly couldn’t have helped the depression as it took over.

::

My period this cycle is going for the title of “longest period ever.” For me, at least. Day 7, still spotting heavily. In one way I’m like, Hurry it up! Enough already!! But in another way I think I’m kind of glad. I feel like this is letting go of all the previous cycles, the miscarriage, everything. This is my third period since the surgery, so it’s not like this is the first one, but still. I’m glad.

I’m glad in a way that this cycle is unmedicated, too. No pills, no hormones, no messing with my body chemistry. A chance to flush everything out of my system and start again.

::

I’m trying not to think too hard about all the time that is in front of me, that the entire summer will be gone by the time we get started again. All I can do – all I’ve been able to do for a long time – is set my sight two weeks ahead. Little chunks at a time, and it passes quicker, without notice. It’s when I stop to get my bearings that I burst into tears, realizing how far we have walked empty-handed, and how far we still have to go. No, much easier to keep my head down and focus on avoiding the cracks in the cement. Just keep walking.

I finished the book tonight. I admit, she kind of lost me in Indonesia. But it still left me with a lot to think about.

I was trying to explain to my husband why I find it useful and interesting, beyond the religion parts. How Elizabeth takes a book that is essentially about her spiritual journey and makes it very… relevent, accessable, understandable. To everyone. You can almost feel her message jump off the page: This is my spiritual journey. If yours is different, that’s cool. If you don’t have one, that’s cool too. I’m just putting mine out there, in case you find it useful. I like that. It’s so unassuming. She doesn’t make me feel like since I don’t buy into all of it that I shouldn’t bother with any of it. She doesn’t make me feel that, as an athiest, her lessons won’t be useful to me unless I see things her way. Yes, I like that.

So I try to make sense of it all. First I let myself read the book, just read it. I mark down the things that jump out of me. And then I go back and ask myself, why does that speak to me? What can I learn from it? Can I take something from her story that will help me?

I see her journey with and to her Self – the deeper, wiser parts of herself. That is what I want, what I am always looking for. As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety for many years I find that most of my thoughts and internal struggles revolve around trying to step back. Not dissociate – done that, trust me it’s bad (though useful at times) – but just give myself some space from the immediacy of everything. I used to write, over and over in my journals, I just want to find a way to turn it OFF. The thoughts, the emotions… I was constantly under an onslaught and I couldn’t take a breath of fresh air. I needed some breathing room, I needed some space.

I have been thinking a lot about the act of meditation. There have been times in my past when I have tried it, desperate for that stillness, but it was as someone following the directions and not understanding it. You sit like this, you breathe like this, and you wait to relax. Not surprizingly, it wasn’t very relaxing.

Tonight, after midnight, I turned off the light at just sat in my bed. At first I sat up straight, breathing. I tried the mantra Elizabeth uses at one point: Nahhhhmmm-rahhhhh… Shouldn’t a mantra actually mean something to you? Shouldn’t it be a thought to hold onto? Not like it matters. I can do whatever I want. I changed my words on a whim. I love you, I silently said to my Self. Simple, to the point.

But I wasn’t very comfortable or relaxed. I let my body sink forward with a deep exhale, letting the tension out of my back, my shoulders, my arms. I love you. My attention scanned from my feet to my legs to my hips and up my body, picturing in my mind this person that I am, this body that I inhabit. I felt my body release tension.

Suddenly it all felt so familiar and I realized this is what we did in preparation for labor. I already know how to meditate. We learned how to let tension go, to let our minds go, to accept our body’s state and float through it. I did it right through labor.

I find it sweetly poetic. Being pregnant was the first time in my life I learned to connect with my body on that level. It was the first time I have ever really loved myself.

I don’t understand why I am feeling so overwhelmed with negativity and gloom.

This weekend I knew why – I intentionally didn’t take my antidepressants. I realize I do that when I am having a really hard day… somehow like my way of flipping the bird to life. I’m depressed now? Oh really? But also I think it is my release into darkness. It’s like every few months I need to descend into the darkness, to touch my toes to the water and remember how heavy and oppressive it all is. Then I start feeling light-headed, extremely sensitive and paranoid, realize I’ve let myself go too long, and start taking my pills again. I wait for the normalcy to creep back into my head, and step away from the ledge for another two months.

But it’s been two days now, two days of pills. I am no longer feeling light-headed and the sensitivity is fading… but the darkness is not. I still feel like crying. So now I have to start working to pick it apart and figure out why… and what I can do about it.

I am searching for answers. Not from the universe, since those simply cannot be answered, but from myself. I’m not even sure what I am searching for, really. A direction, perhaps. I sit down with my Self and ask, What do you want? I know what it wants – and I know that right now I cannot have it. So what do I want in the meantime? What else will fulfill me, strengthen me, encourage me? What else will put the fire inside me? I am searching for answers, but they are muddied. I do not know.

I am reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I decided finally to try it, since everyone was talking about it… and I love it. She writes about her own search for meaning and purpose, her conversations with her Self, her healing of the heart. That is what I want. Not the same – I could not survive an Ashram in India – but I need some soul healing, I need to find out what it is that defines me, fulfils me… without children.

I feel like I’ve been knocked back to the year after graduation, when suddenly you are aimless, searching not just to fill your time but your life purpose, afraid to commit for fear it is the wrong path. I was there once. I decided, I chose. Only now I am denied. Not right now, life says to me. Choose again. But I don’t want to. I carefully weighed all options and chose this life, this path, because it was what I wanted most of all. How can you backtrack on that? How can you fully commit to a secondary purpose? Even worse, a temporary secondary purpose as I sit and wait.

This has been a very large, very hard lesson in patience, in living in the present. In some ways I am grateful for the wisdom. But there is a fear that floats in my head that my life will not move forward until I learn this lesson… that somehow my inability to let go is what is holding me back.

“Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future,” Elizabeth writes in her book.

I think maybe I need some yoga.

I made an appointment for a consult with an acupuncturist on Monday. I’m hoping it goes well and leaves me with a good feeling about this plan. I’m not quite sure how much it’s all going to cost, but we’ll figure it out somehow. I realize there’s no magic wand, that acupuncture isn’t going to magically solve everything… but at this point I just want to exhaust every option. If it might help somehow, I’ll do it.

::

I got my period Saturday evening and it was really not fun. It was horribly heavy from the start all through Sunday, to the point where I was wearing my overnight pads during the day, which I never do. I was also having bad cramps. I ended up going shopping for a little while on Sunday and there were several times I was shifting from foot to foot thinking, ow… ow… ow!

So overall the weekend was a big mess. Emotionally, physically… just a mess. I stayed in bed until something like 2pm on Sunday. I would wake up, feel miserable, and roll over and go back to sleep.

I feel messy. Not just disorganized, but disheveled. I don’t feel on top of anything and I feel like crying at the drop of a hat. Very self-defeatest, crawl-under-a-rock. I do not like feeling this way. I remember not too long ago that I was feeling in control, content… inside and out. I remember driving around with my moonroof open, feeling that life was good (or at least, mostly decent). And now this. It feels like a different lifetime.

I’m sure a large part of it is the weather – I hate the constant rain, the gloominess and foreboding of the dark clouds, the minimal sunlight. I feed off the sunlight; I am starving. I am just so frustrated that I am losing out on summer, my favorite time of year.

::

I bought some new bras. The ones from before I got pregnant with Devin just… aren’t working right. My boobs, they are just not the same size or shape as they once were, much to my disappointment – though some of that is caused by me losing weight. Either way, I needed some new bras.

Of course that store has changed considerably since I last was there, and nothing is where I remember it. I can’t find the brand I buy. Okay, whatever, I know the general shape I need, I’ll just try a little of this, a little of that… An hour later I was rather cranky. I found some “could work”s, but nothing that made me feel great, nothing that fit perfectly. I had tried on every size combo I could think of. Some barely covered my nipples, some were too tight under the armpits, some were too loose in the bust. I really was almost at the point of storming into Victoria’s Secret to get measured and buy one of their ridiculously expensive bras… but at least the goddamn thing would fit!!

As I was putting some of the bras away I was crouched in a corner, eyes scanning. Oh, that shape looks nice! Oh, and look, they have the size I’m looking for. Wonder what brand this is? Oh, yeah, it’s the one I’ve been buying for the past 3 years, the one I came in to buy in the first place but couldn’t find. I try it on… it fits perfectly. Same cup size as before, but one band size smaller… just like I expected.

Friggin’ waste of an hour.

I already feel far better than I did a few days ago. I hate having my plans thrown aside, I hate the feeling of losing what little control I think I have.

But more than that, I think I needed to finally break down and sob for a little while, to grieve my miscarriage. I never really did. I pushed it aside and waited and hoped I wouldn’t need to fully grieve, that I could get pregnant again quickly and start over again. I know that’s probably not the healthiest thing to do, but I guess I got to the point of too much grief… being numb was just easier, more manageable. I didn’t want to have to stop and deal with it unless I had to.

Of course it didn’t help that it has rained all weekend, preventing me from working outside in my garden like I normally do.

Den and I are coming to some sort of resignation and peace about waiting yet again. We had talked about doing some injects during this “trying naturally” cycle (I have a plan in mind for much further down the road, for child #3 when we presumably won’t have IVF coverage), but there are logistical issues (money/insurance) that the nurse pointed out. So that was another frustration. I had assumed it wouldn’t work out… but I asked anyways, just in case. So Den and I sighed and basically said to each other, what’s one more month, really.

One interesting topic that came up was the possibility of overstimming… which is now my great fear with stims cycles. In a way we regret moving forward with IVF#3 (the December cycle) despite massively overstimming. I know I was desperate and couldn’t bear the thought of cancelling, but the result was no pregnancy, nothing frozen, and one less stims cycle that insurance will cover. Den said that if it happens again, that we see by ultrasound that I am way, way overstimming, we should cancel and start over. Let’s hope it never comes to that, now that we’re using menopur for stims.

::

This blog is not the only place I am outspoken and open about our IVF and loss journey. Recently we have some temporary fill-ins at work, which at first felt a little weird because it was in the middle of all this shit going on with me and my coworker, and I feel bad for them walking into that. It’s obvious that people have clued them in, but you can see they’re not sure what to say or do. At first I remained kind of cryptic, but then I just didn’t care quite so much and just started talking to my coworker about the delay, my next cycle, our plans…. just like I usually would. After a small outburst of frustration to a coworker I turned to the temporary girl and said with a small laugh, “Yes, we’re doing IVF. As you can see, I don’t have problems talking about it.”

The coolest thing is watching someone open up to me. Most people haven’t dealt with infertility or child loss, and what exposure they have is minimal – they know someone who went through something, but they don’t know details. Most people are roiling with questions underneath the surface… they feel terrible for what their friends or family have gone through, but they have no idea what it all means. So for me to laugh and say, “I’ve had some fertility issues and I don’t mind talking about it,” it opens up the door. I get questions. Not the kind of idiotic comments that we all run into, but honest questions, “How does that work?” and “What does that mean?” I love explaining, passing on some info.

I love knowing that one day infertility will be just another disease, not something to hide. I appreciate it when I mention something my infertility and someone says, “Oh yeah, my [friend/aunt/neighbor] went through that! It was really heartwrenching.” There’s some common ground. There’s a bridge of understanding already being built, and now I don’t need to explain what IVF is. It just makes it a little bit easier. The only way to fight misinformation and ignorance is to educate.

::

Right now all I want to work on is preparing materials to give to the newly bereaved. I’m thinking I need to become more involved with my pregnancy loss support group somehow… it would be a good way to focus my energies and help others.