Drifting & Dreaming

I'm floating here in a a bit of a daze, locked away with the a/c and not much to do but watch the cats chase each other around the house.  It's going to be a long summer.

A few days ago we secured our new apartment in Boston (happiness!!!), but with that relief comes the remainder of the summer boredom and general quiet of my mother's comfy home in the suburbs of Long Island.  There is truly nothing to do, no one to see, and no place to go (at least or me).  I know I shouldn't complain, but I've never been very good at that, so here it is.

This heat is unreal, and keeping more people than myself confined to cool, air-conditioned homes and offices.  I've thought of taking advantage of this time, using it to write, sort photos, clean up my computer...but writer's block and a general malaise keep me couch ridden most of the day waiting to feel the return of my little one's flutters.  For two days I felt what I was sure was the baby moving around, but now I feel nothing.  It is a scary nothing, and more than once I've given myself over to that fear and anxiety.  I'm counting down the days till our next (20 week) ultrasound and my visit with my new midwife in Boston.  Before I was just excited to find out the sex of the baby, but now I'm just anxious to hear his/her heartbeat and have the technician tell me everything is going great and will be alright.  5 days to go, and they can't go quickly enough. 

I started physical therapy today which may sound like an odd way to treat pregnancy symptoms, but hey, it's covered by my insurance.  My arms and hands keep loosing sensation or going all tingly and my upper back sometimes hurts so badly I want cry my eyes out like a little child.  I know this is all fairly normal, but I've heard massage and heat therapy and all that can help, so I'm giving it a try.  I've taken to sleeping in a different room from my husband as a) the bed in that room is more comfy, and b) I am up so often in the night and moving around so much trying to be comfortable that I feel bad stealing his sleep away as well.

Truth be told I don't mind the pain and discomfort so much, knowing it is all related to the pregnancy, but it still hurts, and if there is a safe way to ease that pain I am certainly going to give it a try.

I've decided I have a love/hate relationship with pregnancy.  I love my baby, I love feeling the changes in my body and knowing what they mean and what is coming, and I just love that this is all even possible especially after thinking for so long that it would never happen.  I hate the fear, and the nagging wish to just reach 28 weeks already, and the point where I know that the baby can survive (with a little help) outside my body if something should happen.  I don't want to wish away any of my pregnancy, but the fear makes that impossible.

I just want my baby to be safe and healthy, and I want to believe that I can prevent anything bad from happening to him or her ever.  I know the latter is a dream, but the former is a fair request isn't it?

The Pregnant Infertile

Hi Everyone,

I'm home from my whirlwind European vacation, and super excited to announce the recent BFP news of a dear fellow Blogger and IVFer: ADSchill over at Miss Conception!

Since coming home, I've been seeing more and more on the internet about other infertile friends who are also now pregnant and finding themselves on the strange, shadowy sidelines of the infertility community, unsure of where to go from here.  Surrounded by still struggling/unresolved infertile friends, pregnant women and happy families, it seems we all find it hard to make anyone - even ourselves at times - understand the new, scary and liminal state of being we find ourselves in and why we still need support from the Blogger community.  Many just retreat, stop writing, stop reaching out, and I a can only hope, find some other space to free their thoughts and seek comfort.

It seems that without meaning to do so, we lose touch with this online infertility universe that we have come to completely depend upon; sharing deepest, innermost thoughts and fears.  No matter what we say, or what we do, our thoughts and words become offensive or upsetting to someone, and there just seems to be no place, in real life or in the digital ether, for the pregnant infertile. 

None of us wants to bring extra sadness or anger to our fellow infertile bloggers or to seem the smug fertile, flaunting belly pics and discussing stroller options, but in truth this is what our lives have become.  If we have been lucky enough to pass smoothly through the first 4 or five months of pregnancy and come out the other side with a clean bill of health, we can't help but to start feeling proud of our expanding abdomens or to be thinking about how to decorate our soon to be necessary nurseries. Everything in a day beings and ends with, "but what if the baby...," "but, how will we make it work with the baby," or "when the baby comes, we will have to do ____."  So, how do you keep writing for an infertility community, when this is all you have on you mind?

One answer may be to leave the infertility community completely but that seems callous and out of the question when you have come so far with these amazing women, listened to their stories, befriended them, and shared their sadness, fears and triumphs.  Furthermore, you would have to live with the knowledge that you have abandoned a community that needs members now more than ever to help move legislation and bring a voice in government and in media.  Resolves leaders themselves have expressed that there is a stumbling block when interfiles become parents or otherwise move on: that they do not continue to fight for or stay involved with their community and so it becomes increasingly difficult for the movement to gain momentum.

So again, where does this leave us?  Who are we now, and where do we belong?
Do we stay in the IF-Blogosphere and risk the pain it may cause other infertiles, do we form a separate sister community and risk losing touch with the our other infertile friends, or do we leave altogether and try to fit in - albeit poorly - with a fertile community that we may never really will come to know?