Distractions

This week while dealing with the unknown of my future ability of children I've been attempting to keep myself busy, to do more with life.  I'm trying to remind myself that I'm more than a women with endometriosis.  I'm more than a women unable to get or stay pregnant.  I'm a women who has talents.  I needed that reminder, so I've been busy this week.  I've been trying new projects and practicing old talents.  I have been doing a lot with my photography.  If you want to see what I've been up to with that, take a look here.

I did finally try making fudge for the first time ever.  I've never been a fan of cooking or baking, but I would rather cook than bake.  Fudge really doesn't fall under either one, so I don't know why I avoided trying it.  I got a peanut butter fudge recipe from my friend and tried it out first as it was, and then made a chocolate and peanut butter version.  They turned out so delicious and I'm rather proud of myself.  It was nice to know that this messed up body could manage to do something good.

I've been trying to decide a new look for our bathroom.  We had a mix of blue, but no real theme anymore in out bathroom after moving in.  I thought I wanted to keep my dark blue and just add silver to that, but it was becoming hard to find, unless I wanted to spend a lot of money, which I didn't.  In the end I decided on something that was no where near what I thought I would like, but it's perfect because it blends perfectly with the bedroom set.  So someday when we buy a house and have a master bed and bath room it will go perfectly.  This new color though meant I needed to change some of the knickknacks in the bathroom, and I wanted to this without spending a lot of money.  A few years ago my husband got me hooked on the Bawls energy drinks. I ended up falling in love with the bottles as well.  They were the prefect color of my kitchen decor, so I spruced them up a bit and added them to our house, nobody the wiser to what they really were.  When we moved into this little place they fit better in the bathroom, and when well with the dark blue shower curtain I had, and I was planning to change the color scheme to fit.  I have no decided against that so I did some work on some new bottles and got a new plan for them.  I'm rather proud of what I did.  

This is our bedroom set

This was the non matching shades of blue bathroom

This is the new one (ignore the towels, I have matching pretty ones now)

This was what I started with

This was my first creation

This is the new one for the bathroom!  I'm proud of how it turned out.  

 I was not able to fully ignore our situation these last few weeks, but it was nice to try to plan other things.  It is all catching up now.  My experimental stims don't seem to be working that well and we have to figure out what we want to do.  We don't have a lot of information to help us figure out what to do.  When my husband is back from his business trip we will be having to talk and make decisions we have been avoiding.  Right now I'm fighting with either a cyst about to rupture on my left ovary, or more endo growth.  If it's endo growth its going to be hard to figure out what to do.  Right now it creates bad pain so stand straight, or to sit in most positions.  It's so frustrating.  Before this pain hit me though, I was so ungraceful when getting energy drinks at BevMo last Friday.  I had a bag full of glass bottled drinks when I stepped off a curb and rolled my foot and fell landing on my elbow as my brace (without spilling or breaking my drinks!)  It felt fine at first, so the walk back to the car was fine, but half way home my foot was in so much pain and swollen.  Thankfully I had an appointment in a few hours anyway for my allergy shot.  I was concerned about being able to drive there, so when I got home I put my foot up, took ibuprofen, and iced it.  It felt a bit better, but just walking to the car and driving to the doctor ruined it all.  They ordered an x-ray and I had to wait for results.  By the end of the weekend I was hardly able to walk.  Monday my results came in, not broken, but I had bruised the bone.  I was told to rest it and come back at the end of the week if still swollen and in pain.  I am, so tomorrow I'll go in and probably have at least a soft cast of some sort.

The photo does not do it justice

This weekend we are headed up to my in-law's cabin to help them make their fire break that is required every year.  I'm not really looking forward to the work in my current condition, but I'm looking forward to getting away.  It's going to be the whole family.  My husbands parents, brother, sister, and her fiance.  It should be fun despite the work!

Happy Weekend

I feel as if I've kind of ran away from the world for a few days, or weeks really.  I think I vaguely mentioned how I was currently still doing stims to help keep my ovaries awake while we decide what to do.  I feel like I'm losing my mind, and turns out, I kind of am, or at least my hormones are going wild.

I felt stuck in this place of desperation, desperation for a child, longing for the children I had that didn't get to be born and frustration for all those failed cycles that got us nowhere.  I'm so tired of my life being ruled by cycles.  My period shows, and I'm stuck in bed barely able to move, eat, or live with the pain, then I start taking stims.  I quickly turn into a hot flashing crazy lady.  Then starts drinking gallons of water at a time (okay maybe a slight exaggeration) taking pre-natal all in the hopes that it might help.  My hormones go crazy and I stop having control of my emotional state.  I start having pains in my ovaries.  I have to violated often by other men often to watch the growth of my follies and my lining thickness.  I have to be careful to avoid OHSS, which I never want to deal with again.  Then I wait for 2 long torturous weeks.  Thanks to all the meds I get to feel pregnant.  I have to physically treat myself as though I am.  Those two weeks I have no live.  I can't lift too much, I can't do lot of movements I normally would do.  Then when that lovely bloody monthly curse shows up, I get to deal with the sadness of having failed again, and also the pain of my cramps and the beginning of another cycle.  What kind of life is that?  In that whole time I only have a small window of opportunity of when I can have a life without serious painful side effects.

I had forgotten what it was like to have a normal life.  I had forgotten how much I needed it.  Since my ectopic I've been on limited duty.  We had to deal with paying all the bills from the blood work, from the hospital and from the shots that I had to take.  Finally we were in a financially decent (not great, just decent) place  again, so my hubs decided it was time to take me out for a date.  It was a great a night.  We went to a movie and then went to dinner.  We ended up sitting until 1 Am at the restaurant just talking and enjoying ourselves.  We had good long conversations that didn't focus on medications, pain, or budgeting out next cycle.  It reminded of when we were dating.  We had some great talk about heaven that for a moment gave me some peace and calming as we thought of our children up there. It's one of the first time I've thought of our children and not been overcome with sadness and anger.

Saturday was a good day for us, we both got up about the same time and had a lazy day watching movies.  We met some friends for dinner as we do each week.  I designed a baptism invite for a friend while there, which was a bit sad, but I treated it like a job and was able to keep my sadness at bay.  Later that night we meet some friends who just got in town.  It was another young couple with no children.  We had so much fun and it was nice to hang out with friends with no children.  That may sound bad, but it was nice.  We stayed up until 3 AM at Denny's chatting, laughing, and joking.   I got home that night morning thinking about how fun this weekend had been.

Sunday was our annual family reunion on my husband's side of the family.  This was even fun.  Thanks to facebook and time I'm starting to remember everybody on his side of the family.  It was nice to have real conversations with his cousins and other family.  Last year this was a hard event for me because there were some new babies, and would have been the first reunion for our first baby.  This one had a bit of sadness before I arrived since our second loss would have been just short of two months.  I actually felt really happy for most of the day, but towards the end as I was watching the children run around I started to feel that pain of sadness.  It continued into the evening and I was sad that this happiness had only lasted a short time.

I thought this was sadness at our losses, but as Monday arrived I realized it was more than that.  I was grieving for our lost life.  I was missing fun weekends were we were not stressing about injecting at a specific time, or making sure I was able to keep my medicines cold.  I want that again, but I want that joy with a child added.  I worry that will never happen, so these moments of carefree joy will be few and far between.  For now I'll be happy for a great weekend and attempt to not over stress about my future.  

Guilt

Time keeps ticking forward.  I'm not sure how I'm suppose to move forward.  I've been doing better at feeling this loss finally.  I do believe that anger is still the most prominent emotion, but I'm feeling sadness. Sadness is good I know.  I needed to feel it.  I needed to feel badly for the baby that was lost.  I needed to feel the fear of what was really going on inside my body during this ectopic.  I needed to get over the guilt I feel for choosing to end the life of my baby.  I guess I've failed to admit it but that was probably the biggest hurtle to get over.  I knew I felt bad about having to take the drug to abort this baby, but I kept telling myself we had no choice.  My life was in danger and so was this babies.  There was no other option except to wait it out.  Wait out the death of my baby and my own death.  I kept repeating this to myself and so did many of my friends.  I felt that I had no guilt feelings left.  I thought that all I had was anger, but it was guilt and still is guilt that is my largest hurdle on this journey to recovery.

How am I suppose to move on from the fact that I killed this baby?  I know, as I've been told millions of times, that I had no choice.  My life was in danger and this baby was already dying.  My only other option would have been to wait it out.  To wait out death for us both.  How could I have done that to my husband?  I would have left my husband childless and widowed at just 27.  I would have gladly take the place of that baby, but that isn't an option.  Which is crazy to think about.  Science can create an embryo, but it can't keep a perfectly healthy baby alive that has grown in the wrong location.  Instead of guilt I should be happy that this didn't end worse.

My hope is fading away.  Hope was always a trait I had no matter what.  I've received many compliments on my ability to hold onto hope in the darkest of times, but that characteristic is leaving me.  I've always held onto the hope that God's will was happening.  I was taught growing up that if we ask we shall receive, but I don't believe that anymore.  I was told that if we are not getting what we asked for it must not be God's will and we need to pray for His will and He will set the desires of our heart, but that's not true.  I've prayed for His will yet this desire for children only burns brighter.  What am I holding onto, what belief am I trying to use as my hope?

I've always managed to hold onto Hope and to see the good in all things.  I was adopted at the age of 5 and before that I was in foster care.  It was an experience no kid should ever have to endure.  Verbal, mental, physical, and sexual abuse was all that I knew during that time.  I was then adopted by a wonderful family.  My mother somehow managed to break through the wall I had set to protect my heart.  She taught me of the wonderful Heavenly Father who would never leave me and who could use anything for good.  I believed this with all my heart and I knew that my last 5 years had all been worth it because it lead me to this amazing mother.  It also started the desire to adopt a child after I had my biological ones.  It also is a huge reason I have placed so much importance on having a biological child.  I wanted to finally have somebody in my family who shared my bloodline.  For years I saw how this had all turned to good.  Then at the age of 12 I lost my mother, of only 7 years, to an incurable cancerous brain tumor after two years of fighting.  This was the hardest thing I've ever had to endure, yet I could see the good that had come from it.  My mom's side of the family had always been careful about their hugs and their "I love you"s, but finally they were not holding back anymore.  I suddenly was receiving hugs from my aunts and uncles and I was hearing my grandparents tell me just how much they loved me.  I was able to feel the joy when I learned that before my grandmother died she had accepted Christ because of a promise my mother's friend made her to not give up on her. This was all good.

We moved  to a new state after my mother died, but even in time I grew to be okay with that place, though honestly it was never home.  When I was 15 though it started to turn around because of a camp I started to work at, which I was forced to work at during the summer so my dad and his new wife wouldn't have to deal with me.  This turned out to be good and I found a family in this community and after graduated worked here full time and meet my wonderful husband.  If we hadn't moved I wouldn't have this new family and I wouldn't have my amazing husband.  I was able to see the good.  My hope stared to diminish after I was raped, but somehow I moved on and I knew I could help others (which I now hate to think that the only only good of anything is just to help somebody else go through it) someday and maybe show them Christ.  Shortly after this I was kicked out of my house and moved in with an single lady from my church.  In time this became good and I gained a Godmother, a sister, a brother-in-law and a niece and two nephews.  Even now over 10 years later I still have them as a huge part of my life.  Then infertility hit.

I still have not seen the good in infertility, but that first pregnancy that ended in miscarriage still gave me hope.  Hope that I could get pregnant.  Oh if only that was the only problem.  Then the second loss came and my hope wavered, but was not lost.  We knew why so hopefully next time would be right.  Then came the next time.  It wasn't just a miscarriage it was an ectopic. How cruel is it that not only did I have to lose another baby, but I had to kill it?  Now I have no idea how this is good.  I've been told that I will be able to help others go through this, but really is that good?  Why do any of us need to go through this?  You mean to tell me I'm going through this crappy thing so that somebody else can go through it.  I'll help them heal just so they can help the next women heal?  Am I the only one who doesn't understand this?

I've lost my ability to believe that God answers prayers.  I'm struggling to find what is good in this mess.  I don't understand why this desire burns so brightly when I've asked over and over again to take it away if it's not His will.  I have people try to tell me that if I'm praying that and my desire is still there then it must be His will, but I don't' believe that.  I don't believe that praying will change anything.  God is going to do what He wants to regardless of our prayers.  He will never explain to us why He chooses the things He does.  We are just suppose to blindly accept them as okay, but I don't want to anymore.  I don't want to strong.  I don't want to accept that these losses and the struggle to get pregnant will all be worth it someday.

I'm told over and over again that once we have a kid it will all be worth it, but will it be?  Will one adopted (because clearly I'll never give birth to a live baby) child make three dead babes and my inability to conceive worth it?  Let me ask you, those who are the mothers to multiple children.  If you lost all your children and then were able to adopt one after would that be enough to make you feel that the death of your children was worth it?  No.

Now for those of you who want to suddenly tell me about holding onto God's will, go ahead, but please think of the words you say.  You think you may be helpful, but it's not.  My good friend EndoJourney just wrote a new post on the Do's and Don't's of what to say to someone after an ectopic.  If you feel you might say the wrong thing, look there first and gain some ideas.