Tidbits

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 53% of unplanned pregnancies occur while using contraception.

I got an ultrasound yesterday, after losing the baby due to stress/hormones/Matt(? - it was 2 days after he left, and after the ultrasound showed a healthy baby) and it showed there is still "debris" in my uterus. After the nurse went outside, I could hear her and the nurse practitioner giggling when discussing that this is the second time in 6 months that I'd been pregnant.

The nurse practitioner came back into the room and asked "Do you just not use birth control?" Well, ma'am, I didn't know antibiotics made the pill ineffective, and I hadn't gone back on the pill when I got pregnant in February, and condoms just don't work like they make you think they will in 8th grade health class. And apparently hormones do crazy things. Like let you get pregnant even when you're on the pill (ex: my riding instructor). Or take away a healthy pregnancy when the father is not a man, but a child, and leaves you, and tells you he hopes that you miscarry.

So now, 17 days after the miscarriage, I'm taking the medication that makes your uterus cramp to "expel" the remaining "debris". I have another ultrasound schedule for Friday.

This is AWESOME.

(And all Matt is worrying about these days is golf.)

Update

This is more an update about the relationship than an update about the pregnancy, because my head's still all over the place on that one.

Here's the time line of my bipolar relationship:

3/30-4/4 -- great trip to Philadelphia with Matt. He says he wants us to have a girl so we can name her Harper. He's clearly very excited about everything
4/5 -- Matt asks for a paternity test. Seriously.
4/6 -- we talk about everything, about why him asking for a paternity test upset me. things go back to normal
4/10 -- we set a date for the wedding, start planning things
4/13 -- I come home from prenatal yoga, and Matt says he's not ready to get married
4/15 -- Matt comes back and apologizes
4/17 -- Matt asks me to have an abortion
4/18 -- Matt sends me a very long apology, saying he's lived a selfish life for the past few years only serving his immediate needs, it's been a shallow existence, he sees that life with me is so much more important, that our child and me are a blessing and he'll do anything he can to make our relationship work. That night we go to therapy, where Matt basically repeats this all to our therapist.
4/20 -- bad ultrasound
4/21 -- Matt says he needs the weekend alone without me because he is so angry, he wants his selfish life back because he was happier there. He says the night before, when I was suffering from the bad ultrasound news, he just kept thinking, "I can't wait to break up with her." He actually says to me that if I am having a miscarriage, he'd only stick around long enough to get me through it, then he'd leave. He says if I had an abortion, he'd do the same thing. Get me through it, then leave. He can't understand why this is so horrible to me. Why I can't stand the thought of someone faking support. Especially when he knows when I lost the last baby, Mark said he'd be there for me, and ran out after two days of me crying.

So that's it. I'm done.

Honestly, I feel bad for him. Because here's what I've seen for the past few months: Matt has this socially-acceptable image that he thinks he's supposed to live by, and WANTS to live by. He's supposed to marry the girl he knocks up, he's supposed to be supportive while she's throwing up from morning sickness, he's supposed to go to the doctor's appointments and get excited about the heartbeat. He's supposed to love me, the way he's said he has for three months. But he can't. He ends up faking that persona, and then he gets exhausted and the real Matt comes out. Which is fine. All I've asked him from day one is to be honest. From the FIRST DATE I told him how important that was to me, that I don't want to fall for one person only to find out he's someone different.

Matt's parents said they wished we were more confident in our relationship before conceiving a child, and the thing is, I was. I was confident in my relationship with the man Matt pretended to be. The man who has been wooing me with talk of marriage and moving bases with him and supporting me while I write and having children etc etc etc since February. And it's great that Matt thinks he wants that. But it's awful to be on the receiving end because Matt knows we work well on paper, but when push comes to shove, and the real him comes out, we don't match. What he wants in his head and what he wants in his heart are totally different. And until he can admit who he is to himself, admit what he's ready for and accept what he's not ready for, he won't be happy. He'll spend another five years alone.

Scared

Hcg level today - 46872.3

Matt and I went in for our first ultrasound today. 7 weeks, 1 day.

And you know what the doctor saw? Nothing. Not a gestational sac, not a yolk sac. Nothing. There should have been a heartbeat already.

I keep wanting to hope the doctor's U/S machine is old, the doctor isn't very good at his job, he didn't make me have a full bladder, etc etc etc. I just know this can't be right. I feel so sick all the time, I can feel this baby, so where is it?

I don't know what's next. . .

"Strays" Tim Kasher

I’ve been thinking I should write some kind of love song for you…
To prove to you I do
It shouldn’t be to hard to write
I’ll just think of that time I first saw you in Omaha
You were stranded on Jackson with a bus fare to who know’s where
I took you in, right, then and there
And life took on a new form
No more stayin out all night
No more killin ourselves just to make ourselves feel alright
No more sleepin with stranger’s and those awkward, goodbyes

I never had much family, never had too many friends
Then you came wandering through
Pompously I took you for granted
That’s why I gotta write this little, this little love song for you
I’ll sing about those Denver mornings you’d wake up bawling bout a long lost kid
Your maternal instincts were kicking in
As the sun dazzled bright upon the peaks
You brought home a dog you found in the alley
You said can we keep her? I said well, what kind of man would I be?
So you bought her a collar, and you called her your family

Writers are selfish, writers are egotists
I’m afraid I’m as bad as it gets
I keep forgetting to sensor the truth
That’s why I better write some, some kinda love song for you

We’re drivin cross country in a U-haul, on the hunt for our new home
High atop Eagle Rock, we found a house with a big back yard
So we picked up another mutt from the Crenshaw Pound
Sippin coffee on the porch while the dogs wrestle on the lawn
I’m sorry I’ve had my doubts…

We're a family of strays but together we’ve been found
We're a family of strays but together we’ve been found

Swimming in the Volcano

So, I don't know if anyone still even reads this since I haven't updated in approximately forever. . .but anyway. Here's the latest: I'm scared out of my mind.

I had a horseback riding accident three weeks ago, and while getting checked on for that, I found out I was pregnant. Now I'm 6.5 weeks along, and I'm sick as a dog. (Doing the math, it's Matt's, not Kira&Scott's, as we didn't inseminate in March). What did I eat today? Half a row of Saltines, a banana, some ginger ale. Got a massage this afternoon, and promptly threw up in the parking lot afterwards. This is AWFUL. I can't really do yoga, or eat, or do anything, because I'm so nauseous. Heck, it's 4:30 am and guess why I'm not sleeping?

Well, there's the nausea. There's also Matt. Who has dropped a giant bomb on me. After we found out we were pregnant, there was much talk of getting married. It was super important to Matt that we marry before the baby comes. And I love him to death, so I was on board. Was it early? Yes. Did I think we could make it? Absolutely.

So two days ago, I come home from prenatal yoga, feeling horrible, and Matt says he doesn't want to get married. He's not ready, he wants more time. But as this all unfolds, it turns out Matt is seriously unhappy in our relationship. He has complaints left and right. I feel like I've just been thrown into a volcano. We were in totally different relationships. All he's ever said was, "I'm so lucky to come home to you" and "I had such a great weekend" and "I'm really happy" etc etc, because Matt doesn't like to say things (or hear things) that aren't completely positive. So if I did or said anything that bothered him, he wouldn't tell me.

And it's an awesome thing to be a positive person, who never has anything bad to say. But, in my opinion it's more important to be honest. And I don't think honesty necessarily means you are negative. It destines a relationship to be ruined if you don't tell the person you love and live with that they're upsetting you. It doesn't take a psychologist to know that those feelings then get bottled up, and eventually explode. Not only that, it doesn't give the other person a chance to fix what they're doing, which means they keep doing it, which compounds your own frustrations.

When I went to counseling with R, our therapist talked to us about how it's important to develop rules of communication. Like telling your partner that saying "xyz" hurts you, and you'd rather they said "abc". Then, once that rule is laid out, if your partner chooses to say "xyz" instead of "abc" you know they are blatantly disregarding your feelings, and being a bad partner. But if they don't know, how can they choose to say "abc" instead?

Last night, I was thinking back through our relationship, so confused. And I thought about how Matt has hounded me (successfully) to stop cursing, how he told me he doesn't like when I say I hate things because "I sound ugly," how he asked me to "tone down my passion" in front of his parents so they could see "the sweet girl he knows is inside." And I'm starting to think, maybe Matt just doesn't like who I am. I'm pretty sure he truly loves the idea he has created of me in his head, but I don't think it lines up with who I am. He wants me to act the way he does, pretending nothing is wrong ever, not saying it when something he says or does bothers me (like when he doesn't brush his teeth before going to work in the morning, or he chomps gum), but where would that get me?

From our first date, I told Matt I was honest. You see what you get, and you know where you stand at all times. I don't expect you to read my mind, I expect good communication. I don't play games. And he said, at that point, that he liked it. That he was the same way. He said, "if anything I do bothers you, let me know instead of bottling it up." Turns out, not so much.

And yes, I can be "East Coast." I can be rough around the edges, and say things in a tone I don't know I'm saying them in. And sometimes, I can be a bitch. But when I know that I have been, I feel awful about it. Because I would never hurt anyone intentionally, ever. And if I knew I was hurting someone, I would do my best to stop it immediately.

So where does this leave me? *sigh* I guess this is how people become single parents. . .

Panzer-Woman, Panzer-Man

(extra credit to anyone who knows where this entry title came from)

This morning, while reading my beloved Psychology Today, I came across an article on how difficult mothers end up raising children who have to develop sometimes-detrimental manners of coping with having their initial nurturer treat them abrasively.

A long excerpt:
"The difficult mother imposes her dilemma harshly -- with unpredictable and ferocious anger, punitive inflexibility, rigid expectations, and expressions of neediness that take priority over a child's needs. Envy may compound the mix. Sure, many mothers show anger, inflexibility, neediness and elements of envy from time to time. But it's the routine use of such behaviors that distinguishes difficult mothers and sets up a coercive relationship.
A child does not have the option to say to a mother, I don't care whether you think I'm bad, or, I am not frightened by the prospect of your leaving me. A primitive panic at rejection lasts long after the infant's physical helplessness comes to an end.
Children are therefore likely to work hard to adopt special strategies to protect themselves from a mother's rejection. The particular strategies a difficult mother poses on a child are ruled by fear, anxiety, and confusion. And each mother's particular brand of difficult shapes the strategies that a child develops. . .
[These children's] aim in personal interactions is to please and placate, rather than to genuinely engage. They may be primed to respond with compliance to outbursts or even hints of anger in others; they may assume that others are behaving appropriately in expressing anger towards them. In some cases, they may even be attracted to people whose anger is easily aroused -- because they associate that behavior with attachment and authority."

After this paragraph, I stopped reading. My mind started buzzing. I had never before wondered about my mother's role in my abusive relationships. And as I write this now, I think it's incredibly cliched -- yes yes, blame the mother. But is there something here? Is there something to this?

When people find out I've been in not one, but 2.5 abusive relationships (Mark was a nasty person, with severe emotional disorders, but to his credit (?) he said "I never hit you. I wanted to, but I didn't." He was emotionally and verbally abusive, but very proud of himself that he drew the line at physical. So let's call that a half.) people always ask, "Did your dad beat your mom?" No. Never. Actually my parents (now divorced) never fought. And when I told my dad I knew he and my mom were wrong for each other since I was a child, he asked how I knew. "It's not that there was fighting," I answered, "it's that there wasn't even talking." It was a very quiet household, with the kind of peacefulness that is charged with tension. The kind that you are always afraid to set off, so you behave very carefully, treading a delicate line, to maintain the silence, afraid that anything else would be infinitely worse.

And when I first dated H in 2006, the man who started the horrible cycle that I'm just now getting out of, I attributed the abuse to his history -- his father had beaten his mother during H's entire childhood. And what really horrified me about the situation is that H's mother would take his two sisters and go to a hotel room, but would leave H at home with his raging father. H told me about how there was a bathroom in his parents' Victorian home that had a door into the hallway, and a door into the master bedroom, and he would run into it, trying to lock both doors before his father could reach him. He told me of sneaking a phone into there, trying to call the police, but his father unplugged it. 'What kind of mother,' I thought, 'leaves behind one of her children?' Ironically, H's mother questioned my role before I ever did. When H called his mother after 6 months of frequently punching, choking, shoving, burning, and harassing me, his mother (who is still with his father) said only, "Promise not to see her again."

After H, in 2008, I ended up with R (who, as far as I know, has no history of domestic violence in his family). I started wondering what it was about me that made people do this to me -- after all, H had never hit a girlfriend before. R had been controlling and jealous, but I don't think he had ever been abusive to the extent he was with me. What was it about me that brought this out in men? I spoke to a therapist about it, and he said it wasn't that I made men do this to me, it's that after I became accustomed to being treated like this, it's what I expect, so I somehow felt comfortable when later boyfriends treated me this way. I just assumed that this all began with H, that's where I became accustomed to it, that there was no earlier foundation.

But now, looking back, was I wrong? Is my relationship with my mother what set me up for my relationships with H, then R, then Mark?

My mother is. . .somewhere on the Autistic spectrum, and she has severe depression. Or maybe it looks more severe to me because of her Autistic tendencies. Or maybe it's harder to treat because of the Autistic tendencies. What I think about most about my mother is how she complains to me that "when you were a baby, I had to hold you all the time. If I ever put you down, you cried." She doesn't say this in a charming way, like 'Oh I have a baby that loves me and is very connected with me.' She complains about it. She makes it clear to me that I took over her life 24 hours a day, and she resented every minute of it. She still resents it. Once, when I asked her why, if she quit teaching elementary school because she hated children, she then had four of her own, and she said, "I didn't want kids, your father did. And then he got to go to work every day and I got stuck raising you." I have vivid memories of being in my mom's bedroom upstairs, watching her car drive away with my siblings to a holiday party, or some other celebration, leaving me at home because I wasn't behaving. I remember stapling through my finger, and crying about it, and how my mother refused to tend to my finger until the crying stopped (she was this way about broken bones too, and even then we were sent to our room until we stopped crying). I remember coming home on Thanksgiving break from college and admitting to my parents that I had an eating disorder, and after a long conversation full of tears, my mom telling me to go to take a nap and calm down, and when I woke up, my whole family was gone -- had left for Thanksgiving dinner without me. That night my mom told her siblings that I had stayed home because I was sick, and she later told me she was too embarrassed to have them see me. I also remember my mother "spanking" us all the time. One of the most commonly-heard phrases of my youth was, "Come down here so I can spank you!" I remember threatening my mother that if she ever "spanker" my younger (by 6 years) sister, I would hit her. I remember the first time I realized that I was taller and stronger than my mother, and telling her if she dared to hit me again, I would hit her right back.

Thinking about all of this, it seems ridiculous to suggest that it could not have impacted my future relationships. People ask how I didn't see hints of how H was before the abuse started. Well, yes, he did the typical abuser priming -- act perfect until you trust him, too good to be true, and then once he knows you're too far in to leave, he slowly starts shaking your self-confidence, breaking you down little by little until you will take whatever it is he doles out. But maybe there were hints of his aggression, of his authoritative personality. And maybe I strove to pacify him, maybe I have imprinted on myself the need to placate those who are quick to anger after years of attempting to please my mother, to do anything to get her to actually show her love for me. Maybe, as independent as I like to think I am, I don't actually stand on my own at all.

The Happiness Project

Lawyers are notoriously unhappy. Look at all the books on the topic:

* Melcher's The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction
* Levit's The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law
* Schreiter's The Happy Lawyer: How to Gain More Satisfaction, Suffer Less Stress and Enjoy Higher Earnings in Your Law Practice
* Parker's The Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law

* Happy Hour is for Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World's Worst Profession
* Fort Collins's own Kevin Houchin's book, Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law and Life

And then there was Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project (which I had read about previously, particularly in Psychology Today, but had rejected as too kitschy). . .But now I am taking another look.

"After graduating from law school in the early 1990s, Rubin served as a law clerk for the US Supreme Court. This job is perhaps the sweetest plum in the American legal orchard. It practically guarantees a career of high-level positions in law firms and government.

But during her stint, Rubin's eyes wandered away from the law.

"When I had free time, I never wanted to talk about cases or read law journals, the way my fellow clerks did. Instead, I spent hours reading, taking notes and writing my observations about the worldly passions – power, money, fame and sex," Rubin says.

"Finally, I realised, 'Hey, I'm writing a book.' And it dawned on me that some people write books for a living. This project didn't have to be my hobby; it could be my job."

She wrote her first book – Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide – and soon she realised that she wasn't a lawyer. She was a writer."

And I'm starting to think that maybe the best way to be a happy lawyer is to not be a lawyer at all.

Reasons Why I Hate Today

1) The plumber said he was coming at 8 am, so I woke up at 7 am, and by the time I left the house at 8:45 for my class at the gym, he still had not shown up.

2) I had a huge stack of papers I needed to be scanned onto a CD at Kinko's, at $10/disc plus $0.89/page, and I gave the girl the first document, and she put it onto one disc, then told me she had to charge me separately for each disc because she didn't realize I needed the entire stack of papers scanned. Why else would I be holding them, organizing them, on the counter? I argued her, and she only charged me for 1 CD. But still. Seriously.

3) A girl was on the phone, and stopped to have her very serious conversation right in front of the door at Kinko's, blocking my exit. So I pushed the door open past her, and she fell off balance. Who stops to talk blocking an entire public doorway?

4) My pro bono client now owes me $235 that I have paid out of my own pocket, not to mention the $15,000 in free services I have given her. And she never fucking pays. I'm losing my mind on this case. Oh, and my income. And she can't be bothered to respond to me half the time, but when she needs me at midnight on a Saturday I'd better fuckin be available to her.

5) My puppy's breeder won't give me a refund for his purchase price, even though he's going to cost me about $4000 to get healthy. She said if I put him down she'll give me a new puppy for free. FANTASTIC. She knows just what I wanted!

6) My boyfriend is transferring bases in a year and a half, and that puts a lot of pressure on us to figure things out sooner than we would otherwise, and he's being a bit too relaxed for my tastes about this all. I don't think he gets how serious this is. I can't just move across the country (or world) without a job, or some kind of income, or some kind of plan so that he's not supporting me, my two dogs, and my two horses on his current single officer's income. "We'll figure it out," doesn't seem reasonable to me when I'll need to take another bar exam and find a job in this economy. Plus, who will hire a military wife that they know will only be there for 2-3 years? Oh right, no one. And opening up my own shop somewhere else means building up a client base. But not everywhere is supportive of sole practioners' offices. Particularly big towns. Like LA. Where he wants to go.

I hate this day.

Round One: Fail

So, I am not pregnant. Got another negative test today, but I'm definitely about to have my period. It's weird though, definitely worse symptoms than usual (I won't go into details, because I want anyone who reads this to keep reading this), and earlier than usual. I almost wonder if last weekend's symptoms mixed with what I'm feeling now means that something started happening, if a valiant effort was made by my little egg, and then it resigned? I am not a doctor, and I don't even know as much about fertility as you'd think a surrogate would -- since I've never had fertility problems, I've done much more research on the pregnancy part than on the conception part. But I am hyper-aware of my body, especially since starting CrossFit, and I know something was different this month.

What's weird about coming to this realization, though, is that I'm not upset. I went through the sadness earlier this week when I started realizing the pregnancy symptoms had subsided, that things weren't quite "right." Now I'm just getting ready for next month, which will be much more "scientific."

We will use Robitussin to thin my cervical mucus (I guess so it's easier for the sperm to penetrate - like I said, I'm not a great researcher, that's Kira's job), and we will use an ovulation predictor kit. Not that it necessarily matters either, but I've been told that you should wait 3 months after a miscarriage to try to get pregnant again, but two nights ago I read in Women's Health that new research shows this to be untrue. According to new studies, women who get pregnant the month after a miscarriage are 60% more likely to carry a pregnancy to term. Or 60% of women who conceive the month after a miscarriage carrying their baby to term. I don't remember exactly, but I know it's 60%. I think it's the first, since miscarriage rates are only 15-40% (20s-40s age range, respectively).

On a treating myself well note, when I got my massage yesterday, I showed the woman exactly where my knot was. And guess what? It's still there. I'm going to be spending some quality time with a lacrosse ball today.

Hopefully, also, I'll go horseback riding and/or climbing. The weather is beautiful, my boyfriend is coming home Friday, I'm going skiing this weekend. I am alright.

March Madness (title stolen from Kira)

So I didn't take another pregnancy test today, because frankly, I'm tired of the emotions of feeling like my body says one thing, tests say another, but sometimes my body agrees with the tests then all of a sudden it pivots back.

I'm Judy (Jewdy) Moody these days - not sure why. Either PMS hormones, or pregnancy hormones, or missing my boyfriend who is out of town, or hating my job (which I do, seriously, hate), or financial stress, or maybe just because my eyes are tired while I'm waiting for my new glasses to come in. Really, it could be a combination of anything.

So I'm trying to be good to myself today, to cheer myself up. I have a massage scheduled this morning (I have a wicked knot in my left trap), and I'm going to the gym at 5:30 (because the days when I am too grumpy to work out are precisely the days when I should work out). And then I'll go to my fantastic coworking office tonight and try to do some writing.

On the upside, rationally, by the time we know for sure I'm not pregnant, only two weeks until we can start trying again! And, in those weeks, I can drink wine ;-) See? there are upsides to everything ;-)

An "article" I saw posted on facebook today, for anyone interested:
Riding while pregnant

HPTs

Chances of home pregnancy test accuracy

Thinking Outside of the Box

So last night I was having serious premenstrual cramping and then I remembered - that's how I felt the first time! Since I didn't even remember that, how could it be psychosomatic? I was positive there was a lil bun in the oven.

Today though, no cramping, not too exhausted, nothing really to speak of. A bit nauseous, but now it definitely could be me making things up so I'm not putting stock into anything.

I need a positive test result.

I was SO excited yesterday, that it almost made me nervous, so I took a step back to consider, "Am I happy for me? Or for Kira and Scott? Am I really looking at this baby as mine, or as theirs?" And I was pleased to realize that I don't want my own baby right now -- I want to do it on my timeline that has a few years between now and motherhood. I was genuinely happy to be able to give Kira and Scott what I know is the most important gift they will ever get.

In other news, I told my friend Shannon today about this surrogacy endeavor and her response was perfect: "Talk about thinking outside of the box." I nearly choked on my hazelnut latte, I was laughing so hard. Then for the rest of the afternoon, I regretted that latte as my body seemed determined to reject it.

I'm preemptively grateful that I have a boyfriend who will love me even when I burp.

Math

Omigod omigod omigod. . .I was using the fertility app by what to expect when you're expecting to calculate ovulation, and it told me I'd ovulate the 21st. EVERY WEBSITE I AM CHECKING says I ovulated the 18th based on the first day of my last period.

I THINK I AM RIGHT. And we inseminated. . .you guessed it. . .the 18th!

False Hopes?

I am positive I am pregnant. I know, with all of my scientific research that you usually cannot tell you are pregnant until about a week after conception (implantation), but here was the timeline last time. . .conception Oct 2, positive test Oct 13, felt sick for about a week already on the 13th, so symptoms since about the 5th-7th. . . I feel the exact same way now. I went to the gym and did a 500 meter row, then 4 rounds of 50 squats and 15 clean and jerks (45#). And I felt like I could barely make it through. The same way I felt in October. I have felt exhausted since Wednesday.

I told Kira I'd bet my house I'm pregnant. While it might be psychosomatic, me expecting to be pregnant, hoping to be pregnant, goddamn am I tired. Can't wait until we have a positive test to confirm that things are good, but also that I'm not crazy. Or dying.

(Ir)rational Fears

This morning's test was negative. Not a surprise at all, since it's too early even if I am pregnant.

So, here's what's been running through my head a lot since this whole shebang started. What if I get pregnant, and it's not Scott's, it's Matthew's? I mean, Matthew and I are very careful about protection, but I've already proven that protection doesn't always work. And everyone has stories about timing not being exact, and getting pregnant nowhere near ovulation. I have this horrible scene playing in my head where I am pregnant, and Kira and Scott are so excited, and are decorating the nursery, and we get an amnio, and it's Matthew's. I even took a pregnancy test Tuesday just to make sure by some miracle (or disaster) of science, I wasn't already pregnant. I feel like no matter when I get a positive, until we get amnio results, I won't feel totally secure. Which is awesome, since amnios aren't exactly the safest thing anyway, not to mention that you don't get them until about 18 weeks into the pregnancy (halfway through?!).

Of course, B&N made me 27 times more afraid, because when I went onto the site the other day, it featured the book Inconceivable -- about a couple who uses IVF, and is accidentally inseminated with another couple's embryo. How horrible! (Also, is B&N tracking my google history?) I almost feel like even if somehow I ended up pregnant with Matthew's child, I'd want to hand the baby over to Kira because I know how utterly destroyed she would be. Can you will this stuff to work out exactly the way you want? Why is pregnancy the most complicated medical situation possible? With so many possibilities that it's never safe, you can never stop worrying, and you have zero control of it ever. . .I guess those are the very things, though, that make it such a miracle.

Sick or Pregnant?

So I've started playing a game I like to call "Sick or Pregnant?" We did inseminations Friday and Saturday, and I probably ovulated Sunday or Monday, so the chances of us/them/me being pregnant are slim, but the past few days I've been super tired and starving. And craving chocolate. Like a 3-day long chocolate craving. Yesterday I took a 4 hour nap, woke up for maybe 4 hours, and went back to bed. So every time I want chocolate, or am starving beyond the usual, or need a nap, or feel too tired to horseback ride, I wonder. . .

I know it's too early for symptoms -- it usually takes a week after implantation to feel anything. But still, my mind is wandering.

I vetoed the hot tub this weekend, after reading that hot tubs pull your blood to your skin away from your organs which can prevent getting pregnant, but I worked out today. Seems kind of silly to switch to CrossFit Mom already when maybe maybe maybe implantation has taken place, but probably not.

Going to start testing tomorrow. Early, I know, but I'm crazy.

Bodies Without Borders

Two out of three of the inseminations are done. So, like the bar exam, I feel like it's now out of my hands. What has happened/is happening/will happen is already in the works. Not that I ever really had control, right? It's not like I could do anything to ensure this cycle resulting in a pregnancy. But that's really what's crazy and frustrating and so beautiful about pregnancy. We live in this culture where science trumps nature every time -- we live in a day of medications to change your brain's chemical makeup, and plastic surgery can give you a different nose than the one your grandmother passed on to you, etc etc. We have this belief that if we don't like how nature is, we can "fix" it. Even with pregnancy, we have IVF, where you can ensure you have a fertilized egg, and while I don't know that much about IVF, there's still an issue there right? They implant several embryos I think, in the hopes that 1 survives. And there's nothing anyone can do to choose how many survive, which one(s), and whether those embryos will survive an entire pregnancy, whether that baby will survive the first year (or three). As much as we want to feel all-powerful, in the end we are still the subjects of whimsy, or God, or fate, or whatever it is you want to believe has the deciding say in these matters.

How I feel emotionally, though, is not quite as clear-headed. Ever since my D&C in November, I've felt different about my body. I can't say whether it's more disconnected, or more protective. Perhaps both? I remember that doctor looking like Amy Smart, young and blond and intelligent, and being talkative and friendly. Factually, I know she was. I remember the nurse holding my hand when I cried. But in my head, in these flashbacks I have, the doctor's face gets contorted, floats towards me like it's the subject of some awful Dali painting that never made it into general distribution. She has become a monster in my memory. And even with the IV of anti-anxiety meds and pain meds, I remember feeling everything. I remember intense, sharp pains, cramping, toe-curling, nail-digging hurt.

Intellectually, I know now, and knew then, that this wasn't the doctor's fault, or her doing, but emotionally I still felt as though this procedure was the ultimate form of violation. Going into my body through that most personal, protected of paths, to take away what I loved even more than myself (how was that possible so early?) made this doctor a barbarian in my mind. The recovery from the D&C was more about recovery from my body's violation, from using my body against itself, than about physical healing.

Until things went wrong. Some pregnancy tissue had been left in my womb, and I ended up in the hospital. Five. Times. I knew something was wrong at the end of November, when I was driving back to Colorado from Thanksgiving with my family in Philadelphia. I stayed in a Best Western in Illinois (where a chicken roosted in a tree outside the front door), and in the morning I did an easyish workout in my hotel room. 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 push-ups, sit-ups, squats. (For those who don't CrossFit, that's 21 of each movement, then 18, then 15, etc). Doing the sit-ups, I felt sharp pains where I imagine my ovaries are. Even after I stopped working out, the pain continued as I walked to my car, shooting across my torso, up my body, radiating everywhere. In the car, sitting made the cramps worse, but pushing my seat back and laying down hardly alleviated the stinging.

When I went into the ER, after watching a thermometer obsessively track my temperature from 94 to 101 to 94 to 100 to 95, etc for a few hours, the doctors did a transvaginal ultrasound. I knew this what this would show me -- my uterus, empty. And knowing that terrified me. I didn't want to see what I knew my body had become. So I found myself, again, lying on a table in dark room, crying, as a doctor indifferently inserted tools inside me. I can't remember when I stopped crying this time, but I know I cried through the ultrasound, back into my hospital room, and through the consultation with another, warmer, doctor after she had reviewed my ultrasound pictures. I remember sobbing even harder when she told me I would have to have yet another D&C. I mumbled to her, "As though it wasn't bad enough the first time." When I said this, she was on her way out of the room, and she stopped, maybe seeing me as more than a patient for the first time, and put her hand on my knee. "I'm speaking from experience," she said, "you never completely get over this."

And right then, in that way that you can feel for people you don't know but who understand you, I loved her. Not for fixing my body, but for being honest with me, for what felt like the whole time in this entire ordeal. She was the first person who told me that how awful I felt was legitimate, that my month of angry, bitter moods and self-loathing and simultaneous self-pity was warranted, the first person who verified that when I snapped at people, "I can't get over this," or "No, it isn't getting any better," I wasn't just being stubborn. I was right. And I was normal.

After this ER visit, I had 4 more trips to the hospital before I physically recovered. But each time, my body felt less and less like my own. I felt like doctors had betrayed me, like my body had betrayed me, like all I wanted was to be able to heal, and my body was forcing me to feel physical pain so that I could not forget the emotional. And as my body felt more like something that belonged to doctors, to test and prod and draw blood from and discuss and "fix," I became more and more protective of the little bit of control I possibly had over it. I didn't want anyone touching me anymore, not hugs, not romantically, not supportively, not protectively. My body felt assaulted and invaded, and I wanted to close it off to everyone. I stopped going to follow-ups with my doctor, I stopped getting the prescribed blood tests. I needed my body to heal on its own, to maintain some kind of autonomy.

So what I'm getting at is this: This insemination thing has thrown me for a loop. And I know Kira reads this, but for the sake of emotional honesty, I'm going to talk about this anyway. While I so badly want to give Kira and Scott a child, especially knowing how it feels to have lost one, and knowing the pain Kira has suffered, this separation from my body for the sake of insemination is emotionally confusing. Again, I feel like my body is no longer my own. Intellectually, I know that this is for something good instead of what I have grown used to, but emotionally the feelings are similar, are overlapping and confusing, and I find myself having to remind myself of the why. When I get anxious about this, especially about the insemination part, I find myself needing to take a step back to look at the bigger picture, to reconsider what this is for. To realize that this isn't me losing, or someone looking at me as a series of blood tests and ultrasound images, but to realize that this is me creating something new and beautiful (a baby, a mother, a family). Even while this seems obvious, it is still emotionally confusing to go through.

Matthew asked if I wanted to back out of the agreement, if I wanted to take more time to think about it. He said he would support me whatever I decided. I know that that's not what I want, but I do want to get a positive test, to get past this awkward point. To finally make something good come from my body. To have doctors examining me not to diagnose, but to appreciate.

Statistics

Fertility & Sterility [April 2001, 75:4, pp. 656-660] reported a study that compared IUI and ICI in fertile single women. Interestingly they conclude that two are better than one. A single ICI had 5 percent success; double was 9 percent. A single IUI had 14 percent success; double 15 percent.

S**t Just Got Real

Matthew said he realized how serious things were yesterday when he was checking out of a bookstore with a copy of "What To Expect When Your Wife's Expanding," and the cashier congratulated him, and started telling him how amazing fatherhood is.

Things became very real for me today when I was considering buying a very cute spring/summer outfit online, and then I thought, "Wait, this won't fit me by then. What's the point?"

I'll admit, I'm getting nervous about this. Not about having the baby. About this weekend. What if I don't get pregnant? I'll feel so let down, I'll worry about letting Kira & Scott down. I always want to give people everything I can, and I know I can do this (eventually), but I can't control whether it will happen this weekend, or next month, or the month after, etc. I'd feel so much more confident with IUI, even though that only has a 15-20% success rate. . .

I'm getting so antsy. . .This is almost as bad as the bar exam.

Conversations with Matthew

Texts from Matthew today:

"I had a 'shit just got real' moment at lunch. I went to a bookstore during lunch and was looking at baby books :) And looking at everything was just like wow you are really having a baby and what a big thing it is. And I'm gonna be there every step of the way with you, but it's definitely gonna take a big toll on your body, and so getting you through it safe and sound is my biggest concern. . .Well I've got to start getting prepared so I can know how to be good to you :-)"

I deem further commentary on Matthew's amazingness uneccessary.

Conception Minus 3 (Fingers Crossed)

We are trying three times this cycle -- Friday night, Saturday morning, and Monday night. Oh, and why are we doing ICI instead of IUI you might ask? For one, I don't have fertility problems (as evidenced by my getting pregnant accidentally while on birth control) so there is no reason ICI shouldn't take. Second, the fertility doc Kira sees doesn't "do" surrogates. Seriously. These people will set you up with egg donors, with sperm donors (from a bank), ICI, IUI and IVF. But not with a surrogate. Is this some weird religious or moral thing that I am missing? If you're going to make baby-making scientific, why not get fun with it, right? So of course, the angry lawyer that I am (I mean, I am CONFIDENT IUI would take the first time), I called the doctor's office to demand an explanation. The receptionist told me the doctor didn't have a private voicemail (I refuse to believe that), and connected me to the business manager, who basically told me that it would take too long and be too expensive to get the legal documents necessary to do surrogate insemination. I asked, well what if the IP (Intended Parents) have their own attorney doing the legal work? (i.e., me, the one getting knocked up). The business manager said that wasn't enough for them, they needed to protect themselves from liability.

I GUESS I can understand. . .I mean, theoretically, I could steal the child and Scott could sue the doctor for putting his sperm into this crazy broad, but wouldn't a simple waiver solve that problem? This is not an issue I've researched the legality of, really I've been looking more for the scientific and emotional information.

So I had Kira call the office back -- they had just heard my voice, after all -- and ask whether they would do IUI with a private sperm donor, not from a bank. (We were thinking I'd just bring in Scott's baby batter and say the baby was for me). Again, no. Same reason.

So back to square one. ICI.

From our extensive scientific research (i.e. googling other women's experiences, trying to figure out the best way to go about this whole process), Kira and I learned -- over Valentine's Day chocolate-covered strawberries -- that you should try to inseminate the day before ovulation, the day of ovulation, and the next two-three days. According to my handy-dandy fertility calendar, I will ovulate on Monday. The problem here is that we are using fresh sperm - that should optimally be used within 12 hours of production. Scott is out of town until Thursday night or Friday morning this week, and leaves again Monday morning - Thurs/Fri again. And I am leaving Saturday morning until Monday night.

BUT. Sperm can live in a happy fertile welcoming uterus for about 5 days, so if we are successful Friday or Saturday, or even Monday, our chances look pretty good.

Scott will be traveling for work. Where will I be? With my fantastic, amazing boyfriend, Matthew. Matthew and I have been together since February 2, 2011, and I know this sounds ridiculous to say already, but he is it for me. I have never been so taken by someone in my life, and before you say, "Oh it's just the honeymoon period, it'll wear off," let me tell you about Matthew: I told him on our third date, February 4th, that I was considering becoming a surrogate for Kira & Scott. I told him about my own loss the previous Fall. And what did Matthew say? Did he back off, never call me again, tell me he wasn't ready for this kind of craziness? No. Not even a little.

Matthew said he thought this was a wonderful thing for me to do for someone else, one of the most generous things I could do, and he believed I should do it because it really sounded like I felt good about it. He said, "I'll take care of you. I'll bring you peanut butter and pickles or whatever you're craving." I warned him that when I had been pregnant before, I had been a bitch. The thing is, I knew I was being a bitch, and I hated it about myself, but there was nothing I could do about it. I just tried really hard not to snap at people, to keep my angry remarks in my own head. "Well just try to take it easy on me, ok?" he asked gently.

Last Friday, when I took Kira to have another test, Matthew texted me throughout, asking how Kira was doing, what the results were, how things looked for all of us.

So yeah, now what? You're going to tell me it's one thing for him to sound so supportive now, another thing for him to follow through, right? But you know what? I don't doubt him for a minute.

Also, he's willing to go out with me in public while I'm wear the shirt shown above.

Admit it. You're jealous.

Day: Conception Minus 4 (Maybe)

I never would have guessed that this is where I'd be. . .I turned 26 less than a month ago, and in 4 days, I will begin trying to get pregnant for my friends Kira and Scott. In 4 days, we will begin doing ICI, best known as the turkey baster method, except we are going to get a little bit more intense with it. Essentially, we will use Instead softcups to lock the "baby batter" (as my best friend Jeremy calls it) in place for a few hours, thus attempting to increase our chance of conception (since ICI can be low - anywhere from 5-30% success rates -- per cycle -- have been reported). We will try on Friday, Saturday and again Monday night (the day I am most likely to ovulate).

But let me back up a little bit and explain how it is that I got here.

On October 14th, 2010, I found out that I was pregnant. I had felt a little bit 'off' for a few days -- feeling nauseous all the time, which was exacerbated when I worked out, and feeling constantly exhausted. Far too exhausted to be social. I spent more afternoons laying on my couch watching TV in the first two weeks of that month than I probably had throughout the rest of the year. My body felt like I was depressed, but my mood didn't match. I'm not sure what, exactly, provoked me to buy a pregnancy test. I may have been a few days late, although at this point I don't quite remember, but I do remember buying the test, and seeing the faint pink plus sign appear. The horizontal line was thick, certain, and that line alone would mean the test was negative. But towards the third minute, a very faint vertical line started to show. If I had not had all the physical symptoms, I would have just thought that I "overcooked" the test, waited too long, and the results weren't accurate. I didn't know at this point that any vertical line, no matter how faint, shows that there is SOME HCG level present, which means that you are pregnant, even if it is just very early in the pregnancy.

I called the father first with the news, crying so hysterically I'm surprised he could understand me at all. I realized that I was so nervous about becoming a mother that I told the father I had to get off the phone so I could call my mom. In my head, I felt like I was in the same position as those mothers on 16 & Pregnant, even though I was a 25 year old lawyer who owned her own house, was starting her career, had savings. Even though I was an adult on paper, I never felt less like one in my life. My mom, however, reassured me that I would be okay, that I would have my family's support, that having a baby would not get in the way of my dreams. She told me that she and her own mother had loved being pregnant and becoming mothers more than any other experience in their lives.

Long story short, over the next few weeks, I picked names (Henry for a boy, Ava Lillian or Aspen Lillian for a girl), painted my office a soothing blue perfect for a nursery, and read What To Expect When You're Expecting and the Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy. I had several ultrasounds and HCG tests, and I modified my workouts (from regular CrossFit to CrossFit Mom). I even ordered a CrossFit Mom hoodie a size larger than normal to wear while working out with my baby bump. The hoodie displayed the gym's logo of a pregnant woman holding an olympic barbell overhead. It was exactly what I wanted to look like when I was further along. Even though the baby was unplanned, and the situation was not what I had seen in my future, I was elated about the baby, and even though it was still early in the pregnancy, I raved to everyone about my excitement and my plans.

On November 12, 2010, at 7 weeks pregnant, after much testing and uncertainty on the part of my midwife and nurses, I lost the baby. I had a painful D&C on a Friday morning, and largely spent the following weekend curled into fetal position, sobbing. The next month, I felt the emotional part of depression that I had seemed to be missing in October. I was glad to have a job just to have something to think about that wasn't my loss and my misery. (The back of the book, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, has a line that always comes to mind when I think of this period -- something to the effect of, "Doesn't anyone understand that self-pity is a full-time job?")

Towards the end of November, I decided that I would have a baby on my own using a sperm donor. I sorted through profiles on donor websites, finally settling for the "perfect" donor -- a music therapy major in college with a 3.8 GPA, bilingual, guitar- and piano-playing personal trainer, 6 feet tall with curly brown hair and brown eyes (he was said to look like Mark Ruffalo). When I showed my father the donor's profile, my father asked, "Can't you just meet him and do this the old-fashioned way?"

But the longer I considered sperm donation, and raising a child alone, the more I realized the situation wasn't quite right. At least, not right now. I went to therapy to deal with having lost my baby, and came to realize that using a sperm donor would be my way of taking control of a situation over which I had no control at all. I knew I needed to find a healthy way to move forward from my loss, but I just wasn't sure how.

And this loss felt spectacularly isolated. Any time someone I knew had died, there was at least one other person with whom I shared the loss. But this time, the loss was exclusively mine. Even the baby's father did not share the loss with me -- he was completely out of the picture at this point. I did not know how to recover from a suffering that felt uniquely my own.

Until, that is, I met Kira in December. Kira had been close friends with my roommate for years, and one day we went to lunch at Panera, and over salads she told me about how hard she and her husband Scott had been trying to conceive. For some unknown reason, Kira doesn't ovulate, so she had been put on Clomid to induce ovulation each month. Over the past year, though, Kira and Scott only succeeded in getting pregnant once, although Kira miscarried shortly after she found out she was pregnant. Kira was the first person who I knew understood how I felt. She knew the sorrow of inadequate HCG levels. She knew how each period after losing a baby felt like a whole new loss of its own.

So after Kira went through two more cycles with no conception, and did some more diagnostic tests with no results, I offered to surrogate for her and Scott. I think we both felt -- or at least I did -- that we had met each other at this time in our lives for a reason.

Everyone I've told so far has been shocked at first to find out my plans, and most people ask whether I'm worried that this will be hard for me, especially after my recent loss. I know that I would wonder the same thing if I were on the outside in this situation, but somehow this feels like the most perfect possible conclusion of a traumatic experience. Before ever getting pregnant, I would never have considered surrogacy. In law school (I'm a family lawyer, ironically enough) there were signs asking for egg donors in the girls' bathrooms, and I knew I could never donate eggs. I wouldn't feel comfortable with my biological child being raised by other people, being taken care of who knows how, not knowing where or who my child is. . .But now, knowing Kira and Scott, I feel completely comfortable with the idea. They are the most loving, caring, giving couple I know, and I know they will give my child -- our child -- an amazing life. . .

So here's hoping that the insemination takes this cycle. L'chaim.