Decision Time

The Biggest Decision of My Life...

I wish it was what colour to dye my hair or what shade cream to paint our living room walls but it's not.  The decision I had to make - my life changing, plan wrecking, heart shattering decision - was to stop trying to have a baby. 

Why?  I have been trying to have babies since 2003.  I have managed to be pregnant 5 times but I only have 1 child.  I haven't used contaceptives for close to 9 years and the few months I did after my bubs was born are laughable to me now.  I have "unexplained secondary infertility".  What does that mean?  Well in a nutshell it means that the 4001 blood tests and the exploratory surgery, etc cannot give me answers.  The doctors are stumped basically.  I am sick of being told "we don't know why it isn't happening"!!  Well if you don't know how the hell am I supposed to know?  I have tried Clomid, IUI, temping, peeing on opk's.  I have even tried not trying and going on a holiday to take my mind off it (!!).. Still not pregnant!  My marriage has been pushed to the absolute brink, the words "I can't do this anymore" said to me by my husband more than once.  I think he may have even muttered the D word once too but was sorry afterwards.  I have had enough.  I am physically, emotionally and financially spent.  I am so over this ttc taking over my life.  It rules my every waking hour.  I have basically put my life on hold in the hope that I would get pregnant this month and this month and this month......... 

So I have made a decision.  I have decided to stop.  I am giving up the dream, ripping up The Plan (fat lot of good that was) and moving on with my life.  And I am sad.  I am very very sad but I know it is something I have to do.  Life cannot go on like this.  My hubby will be 47 next week and we both think that he may be past having a baby at home. 

June 2012....my last month
I decided I would go out fighting.  One more round of IUI.
CD1 - June 8th : What an emotional day.  I had myself convinced that I was pregnant, I always do every bloody month.  I think I cried most of the day.  Not because my period had arrived but because I knew the end was drawing near and the clock was ticking loudly.  I cried for my little boy.  He wants a little brother or sister.  I let him down.  I just cried!

I laid down the law to my hubby - this is it!  The last month.  If I can give up my life long dream you can give up your beer, and going to bed early to avoid sex.  We are in this together boy!!  I mapped it all out on the calendar, numbered all the days and highlighted our most likely "fertile time".  I made him tell his boss that when he got the call he would have to go.  No buts about it!  I put The Plan into motion.  You'd think I would have learnt my lesson about plans.  Fuck the plans!! 

My cycles are usually about 34 days with ovulation occurring at CD19 or 20.  I had plenty of time to ease into this month.. Rang the fertility nurse and booked in for my scans, etc according to my schedule.  Well that all changed when I had a huge temp dip at CD13! WTF?? It couldn't be surely.  A 'normal' cycle?? No way.  I'm not ready!!  What about my fucking plan????   I rang my nurse and went for my follicle scan early.  Lying there with my fanny exposed to all (gotta love internal ultrasounds!) I said to the nurse, "you are going to tell me there are some nice big follies there now."  Instead she told me she couldn't find my ovaries!!!  Are you fucking kidding me?  She called in another nurse and they poked and prodded and rejigged the stick thingy in my vag but nope, my ovaries didn't want to play.  It's laughable really.  Why on earth would I think that this might go smoothly for me?  Pfft!! I am one flawed lady. LOL.  Stay calm Ely, no big deal, we can handle this..  Off to get blood tests instead.  Check LH and progesterone levels.  Don't cry, don't cry.......
(as I sit here and type this listening to my ipod the songs "Just Get Better" by Santana and "The Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machine come on one after the other!!)

CD14 - Positive OPK.  I seriously cannot believe this.  Why this month?  Is it a good sign or a bad sign?  IS IT REAL???  I really have this feeling that this is a trick.  I am reassured by the nurse that my LH level are over 50 which means that I am definitely surging and releasing an egg.  I have doubts.  I didn't see the follicles.  What if it's not really happening?  What if I'm surging but no egg?  What if the clouds fall out of the sky?!!  Relax Ely!! Believe.  But I can't, I just can't....

CD15 - this is it!!!  IUI day.  Hubby is nervous as hell and I believe just a bit scared.  Scared that his sample will come back bad.  He's in there for only 25 minutes - Good job babe!  We giggle as we leave the lab.  I ask him how much was in the jar.  He says not much.  We both worry together now.  What better way to take our minds off it but to go shopping while we wait.  Tick, tick, tick.. What time is it? 12.00.  What time is it now? 12.15!  And now? Finally time to head back to the lab.  We walk down the long corridor and into the room right next door to the lab.  A screen for me to get undressed from the waist down behind.  A bed with stirrups attached to the end of it in the middle of the room. And a stool at the end of it.  The door to the lab is open and we can see the scientists playing with our spermies!  The scientist comes in, Ben, he was our scientist last time and he remembered us.  That was nice.  Going through the motions now - making sure the sperm is ours by checking the label - how do we know for sure that we don't get someone else's?  We don't really!!  Ben tells me about the sample and it is GREAT!!  Hubby fluffs his feathers and sticks his chest out.  He is proud.  I am relieved.  We are putting back 20 million little ones with 76% motility.  I am reassured that this is GREAT!!  I lie there holding my husbands hand.  The closest we can get to intimate whilst trying to concieve our baby.  My nurse tells me that everything looks great.  It all "looks" great.  I say a prayer (I am not a religious person).. I silently in my head ask my Dad, Nonna & Nonno to help me if they can (I hope they aren't watching me with my legs spread and hoisted up in stirrups!) LOL.  And in a flash it's all over.  I lie there for about 15 minutes, legs in the air.  Praying, praying, praying... It's my time.  Please don't let my dream go down the drain.  Please let this be it.......

So now I am in the Two Week Wait.  I don't want to think about it but it is like a fire burning a hole in my brain.  Not only am I waiting to test I am waiting to see if my childhood dream is gone forever.  I'm not quite sure how I am going to deal with it but I know I will have to. 

"Que sera sera
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera sera"

That is NOT on my ipod!! LOL

Do you believe in fairy tales?

Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom there lived a princess...........

When I was younger I had a plan.  I would be married at 24 and then the kids would come along 1, 2, 3....  I had even sketched out my wedding dress and named my babies : Devereaux, Dakota and Savannah... Haha!  I was going to have a wonderful marriage and a wonderful future, a far cry from my parents failed relationship and my life so far.  That was The Plan.....

Unfortunately, sometimes things don't always go to plan.  In fact, sometimes, nothing at all goes to plan!

And that's where I come in.....  I didn't even meet "the one" until I was 25, married just before my 27th birthday. (3 years behind shedule!)  He came with some serious baggage, don't we all?!  I can't remember that being a part of The Plan either.  Oh, and he came with a 9 year old daughter!

His life hadn't gone quite to plan either.  His "the one" had passed away from breast cancer at the very young age of 32 and he had been left with his 3 year old daughter to care for on his own.  I won't go into specifics here as that is his personal business and not for me to be blogging about but I wanted to mention it as in the next few blogs it may help you to understand how and why we are at the point we find ourselves in our life now.

Anyway, here we are 11 years together, 9 years married and only one live baby - well he's almost 6, but still my baby.  I should have ripped up The Plan when I was 14 years old!  Maybe then I wouldn't feel so disappointed with myself and always having this sense of letting myself and others down.

........... and they lived happily ever after ??

2012 - You Suck!

2012...... where do I start?  What a freaking whirlwind.  I feel like I am in the middle of one of those twisters and am holding on for dear life. Everyone needs me, I cannot fall apart. But I want to crawl into a hole and die some days.  Pathetic hey?

*Slap, Slap*.. Wake up lady!!  You have a family that needs you. You have a son, the most precious thing on this earth, that needs you!! You are ALIVE.  Stop living like you are the one that has died.......

These are just some of the chants that go on in my head every single day. Am I depressed? I dunno, maybe.  I've been to see someone. One day out of the blue I ended up at the doctors. Couldn't bring myself to go to work that day.  I got dressed, took my son to school and then went back home to bed.  I emailed my boss and said "Sorry, I am not coping very well this week. I need to take the week off".  He emailed me back, "Take as long as you need".  I am so grateful to be working with people who may not get me but they understand.  Anyway, I rang my doctor and tried to get an appointment but couldn't get in for a week. I didn't know what to do.  I was a mess and I knew I needed help.  My husband didn't know how to help me. We were at breaking point.  So I rang another doctor and got in straight away. As I was a new patient I had to see the nurse beforehand and go through a questionnaire; How old are you? 35. Do you drink alcohol? No, but sometimes I wish I did.  Do you or have you ever smoked? No. Family medical history, we'll start with your Dad................ absolute total uncontrollable melt down.  That poor nurse, she didn't know what to do, so she just hugged me while I sobbed. She took me to an unused office and told me I could wait there for the doctor instead of going back into the waiting room.  There are some lovely people in this world.

I think the doctor thought I wanted drugs.  She asked me if I would be visiting her again or if this was a once off visit! I told her - I just need help.  She wanted to put me on anti depressants. I said no. So we decided I would see a counsellor.  And that's what I did.  No shame here.  I needed to talk to someone before I did something stupid.  I think seeing her helped me cope with the next few kicks life dished out for me. 

My stepdaughter, who I have raised since she was 7 (she is now 17), decided that for some reason and totally out of the blue, that she did not want to live with me anymore.  Up until now I thought I was the luckiest stepmum in the world.  In 10 years, she had never once said to me that I wasn't her mother. No, she was saving it all up for the almighty blow of - "Dad, I won't live with you while you are living with her?" !!!!! WTF?? Where the hell did that come from?  We (her father and I) still do not know and can not understand it.  I often question whether it has anything to do with our ttc journey as she knew that we were trying to have another baby. Did she feel threatened? Was the focus no longer on her?  Hard to comprehend I know.  I just don't understand it.

And then in March my Nonno (grandfather) could not live another minute on this earth with out his Snow White.  In 10 months I had lost my Queen, Prince Charming and the man that had played a part in my creation. Life as I knew it was changed forever.  I am so so sad and I struggle to get through a day.  I am without a doubt no longer the person I was 12 months ago.  I am stronger..................

Where have you been lady???

OH WOW!!!!! Fast forward two and a bit years!!  Can't believe it has been that long since I have blogged! Can't believe that the lady in the previous posts is gone again and I am back in a rut!  Regrets, regrets, regrets......... ahhhhhh! 

A quick (very quick) look at my life over the past two and a bit years.......

I ended up losing close to 20kgs and felt fantastic about myself and about life.. but I still failed to achieve that dream of having another baby :(  I came close again in September 2011, but unfortunately lost another little angel xx

So I lost weight and I still couldn't do it - I have questioned every little thing I have done (and not done).. Is it this?  Is it that?  Am I just a bad person that doesn't deserve to have what I so desire?

In May 2011 I lost my precious Nonna (grandmother) and I hit a wall.  (little did I know that the worst was yet to come)  I struggled to come to terms with losing Nonna. She was everything I wanted to be in a woman.  She was my Queen.  She had a loving marriage, had just celebrated 60 years together!! I mean, 60 freaking years and still in love.  I have thought about walking out of my not even 10 year marriage more than once!  I'm sure they had their struggles but they never let us (her grandkids, all 30+ of us) see it.  To us, they were perfect.  Prince Charming and his Snow White.  And she was a wonderful mother and grandmother - I WANT TO BE LIKE HER....

I guess my life started to take a turn for the worse at this point. I started eating badly again and the exercise stopped completely. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what started to happen but I just didn't care. 

Fast forward to December 2011.... On my facebook status on the morning of the 31st of December I wrote something to the effect of "Good Riddance to one of the worst years of my life. Bring on 2012."............
At 6.30pm my phone rang. It was my mum. She was stumbling for words. "Ely, your dad has died"...... I guess 2011 couldn't let me go without that last kick in the guts. My world was about to spiral out of control....................

Happy Birthday to me..

So it's my birthday tomorrow and it is also weigh in day.. Not long left in the comp, although I am pretty sure I am in for the long haul this time. I am feeling a bit nervous about weigh in (as per usual) but this time I don't think I will lose and I am a bit disappointed in myself. I kind of set myself a mini goal to be a certain weight by my birthday (a realistic one) and I still couldn't achieve it..!! And I actually think I self saboutaged (sp?) myself the last few days. Does anyone else do that?? Knowing I had this number in my head and also it is a number I couldn't conquer last time...kind of made me do silly little/big things - such as eat chips!! Very bizarre.. and bloody annoying... I have serious issues I feel.. LOL

Anyway, back to the birthday - my little boy wants to cook me a cake so I scoured the internet today for a low cal chocolate cake but couldnt find and easy one. And I can't find my cookbook with the recipe in it... It occurred to me today, that it is little things like this that can blow everything completely out of the water!! I must be strong.... I must be strong.... Oh god, how am I gonna stay on this life long journey??

D-Day - Week 6 of the Comp..

I get so nervous on weigh in day..? At home this morning I weighed myself as soon as I got up, after my shower, after I had put clothes on and then again before I walked out the door!! Am thinking I may need to get help about this issue cause I am driving myself nuts... Hobbled my way into the gym (sore toe) and took off every bit of clothing that could come off without being obscene - drum roll................ lost 900grams!! Yay.. I am very happy with that. Can't understand why the gym staff don't see that as such a great thing?? (Although the guy this morning was great) My aim is .5 to 1kg a week.. If i get a bit more - bonus! I figure if I go all out and try and kill myself, this isn't going to last long. I have so surprised myself by sticking to the gym for close to 7 weeks now. Another achievement for me. **clap clap**

T1 & T2 - Where have you gone my babies????

Okay, while I am loving this losing weight business, why oh why did it have to be my best assets (in my opinion) which were the first to go?? My tits are shrinking and I don't like it!! HAHAHA My bras are too big (now that's a first) and I can fit my whole boob in one hand..! LOL ... I am still in a D - well I think I am - haven't ventured out to buy new bras just yet, but I loved my DD's and so did hubby! He came into the bathroom the other day while I was getting dressed and said - "Gee you're struggling to fill that bra aren't you?" Well, at least he noticed. :)

As for my muffin top - well that's another story! Please, please go away.. I even upped my crunches to almost 50 each go (nearly makes me spew for some reason.?) but it is still there.. Grrrrr... Annoying.. My butt is slowly gaining a nicer shape but it has a long way to go yet.

So - it's WEIGH IN tomorrow - Week 6 already.. Always feel nervous on weigh in morning.
The challenge so far has been okay.. I might be a bit picky but I can certainly suggest some things that they should think about changing if they do it again next year. Firstly, just because I don't lose 4+ kilos a week does not mean I am not trying hard and doing the right things. What it does mean is that I have a job and kids and a life and cannot spend 3 or more hours a day at the gym!! Secondly, I don't even know how I am going in comparison to the other contestants... they are so bloody busy down there that the little things go by the way.

My big BAD news is that I have injured my big toe and am finding it very hard to even walk let alone exercise. I am a bit upset about it all actually and really want to go to the gym. Don't know how I am going to handle this little hurdle but I am sure I will get through it..