A FIST BUMP TO MY FELLOW FERTILE-CHALLENGED FEMALES

A selfie to start us off, because you get to do stuff like that on posts like these.

I have chemical pregnancies.

It's what I do, and I'm pretty good at them, thank you. When I have one, I have one. I do it up all the way. Flags and trumpets! After 7 years of this Luteal Phase Defect (7 years that I've known of--who knows how long I've actually had it?), I've gotten pretty used to having chemical pregnancies. Because that's what happens when you get pregnant and you have a Luteal Phase Defect. You get pregnant, but only sort of. A little bit pregnant. And then you miscarry, because a chemical pregnancy is, by definition, a miscarriage; one so early on in the pregnancy that it's not really a miscarriage, just like it's not really a pregnancy. It's a vague loss. Infertile gray area. Frustrating, is the actual word for it. Pretty flubbin frustrating. 

For the last week and a half I've been going through my sixth chemical pregnancy. My fourth in the past 18 months alone. 

Hey those are some really impressive numbers!

"Yeahhh, I get pregnant, like, all of the time." ;)

At this stage in the game, I'm okay. I don't need sympathy. Though it feels nice to get sympathy. I mean, really, everybody needs sympathy whether or not they need sympathy, though what I suspect I really need is just a time machine, I think, to speed things up. Because even if my hopes don't hoist themselves high enough to take much of a fall, a chemical pregnancy is still an incredibly painful situation, and still incredibly emotional. Which is to say, incredibly hormonal. Which is to say, totally crazy, pass me the straight jacket. And it always seems to take forever to get through it. It always feels like being a prisoner in your own skin. It always involves a lot of crying.

And not because I'm crushed, necessarily, though I am crushed, somewhere under all these jaded layers of been-there-done-that, I am always crushed. That's infertility, I think, that feeling of being just a little bit crushed, always. Infertility is heavy. And I don't think it ever leaves a person, either. I'll be crushed until the day I conceive again and it sticks, and then I'll just continue to be crushed until the day I stop wanting babies, because once you are crushed by something you're just . . . still crushed. Don't you think? It just gets added to the pile, you know, layered on the top, then buried under some good and then buried under some bad, and that crushed feeling of failing to work right and not being able to do a damn thing about it . . . babies don't get rid of that. They just outshine it. They do a really good job of it, though, that's for sure.

***

I'm lucky to have a great team of doctors that don't hype the process too much, if that makes sense. You know, there are a million natural and not-so-natural things one can try in these situations, short of getting it over with and just taking the drugs already, and I've tried most of them. That process can make a person legit-style insane. None of those tricks have worked for me, and I'm tired. So we all shrug our shoulders at each other and decide to just save time and do it the way of the paper gown. You know, get down to brass tacks. I'm healthy. My short hormones are no fault of my own. There's no better or different diet that will make any impact. No amount of persuasion from my brain is going to make my hormones want to stick around an extra few days, but Clomid, on the other hand. Oh, Clomid! God bless Clomid! Amen!

By now the process of trying to get pregnant is basically the process of trying to find a three-month block of time wherein nobody has to travel so we can make all our appointments and take all our drugs and have plenty of opportunities for, you know. It isn't romance. It's scheduling. Actually it's kind of cool. Aren't our bodies a little bit bizarre?

And yet, every now and then Brandon is hopeful we can work it out on our own. And every now and then I'm hopeful that I'm wrong when I say that we can't. And so, this. And I'd like to thank my eggs for always trying, though. We make a good team, our chromosomes, it's just that my pituitary gland is kind of a jerk.

***

It didn't used to be that every cycle we tried ended in a chemical pregnancy; most of the time the cycles we tried would end with business as usual, which is rude unto itself. But lately, every cycle we've tried has ended in a chemical pregnancy. Which is decidedly ruder? I think? But also kind of wonderful somehow? Someone is up there trying, too, I suspect. Trying to get down here. Can I write that without seeming completely off my rocker? But just before Huck I had two chemical pregnancies, one after the other, and I remember this same distinct feeling, of not being quite as on my own as I used to be, anymore. 

***

At this point I know the process of a chemical pregnancy like I know the back of my hand. First come the early pregnancy symptoms. Those are fun. I am freakishly in tune with my body, so I don't know whether it's common for these symptoms to accompany a chemical pregnancy or if it's just me paying inordinate amounts of attention to myself, and it hasn't ever been the same symptoms twice, which has kept things interesting. Once it was that certain special queasiness. Another time it was an extreme aversion to sugar + carbonation. One time, my boobs leaked. TMI? (Is this entire post TMI?) (This entire blog?! ;) This time it was the clicking jaw. Did you know my jaw clicked the full ten months that Huck was cooking? It did. It also clicked all of last week. 

Next comes the part where it all sort of crumbles in on itself. And did you know strong enough cramps can flip a tampon upside down while you are wearing it!!!??? (This time, yes. Definitely TMI.) (My doc says tampons are a-ok during chemical miscarriages, FYI.)

Other side effects of chemical pregnancies include but are not limited to:

1. Cutting your bangs at 2AM after rearranging all of the furniture.

2. Feeling emotional because the polenta at brunch tasted so so good, and the Pixar short before Big Hero 6 was about a puppy loving pizza, and Baymax was so squishy and kind, and people are so amazing and creative, and all these wonderful things are happening all of the time!! 

3. Having very deep thoughts, such as: If all sandwiches were more like hamburgers, would I eat more sandwiches? What if we all walked around with our various sorrows and struggles written in flashing signs above our heads? Like neon thought bubbles? This one is going through a break up, this one is in a fight with her mom. This one's had a cold for what feels like forever, that one can't make rent this month, and that guy over there hasn't gotten a full night's sleep since his apartment was broken into last week . . . Would we be any kinder to each other? And why do parents say such dorky things? Like the other day I said to Huck about something, "Well, you coulda fooled me!" What even is that??

4. Getting angry. Because of anything.

5. Crying. Crying at commercials. Crying at cute puppies. Crying because the sunset is so pretty. Crying because Huck spilled his craft supplies and after you swept them up there were all these googly eyes looking up at you from the dust pile and it was just such a moment, you know? 

6. Oh my gosh, the pimples.

I really thought this time that I could take it all in stride, not need to slow down, not change any plans. Just power through. But old hat doesn't equal not hard. And so after a few days of that, I called it all off and hauled in the big guns. You know, Meg + Tom, PeanutButter M&Ms + popcorn, and cancelled meetings + taking a step back from situations wherein I might perchance forget that I'm too hormonal to judge things terribly fairly. Any day now I'll be back to normal. ANY DAY NOW. But today Huck's preschool director touched my shoulder and I got all teary-eyed that there are so many wonderful adults in my son's life . . . and so today is obviously not that day yet. 

***

It took us more than two years to get Huck. That time in my life has been on my mind a lot lately--those last few cycles before we started Clomid, especially. Our last unassisted cycle was also my second chemical pregnancy. December of 2009. Christmas Eve. I miscarried late that night. Nothing has ever been quite as terrible as that night when I realized what was happening. My sister Amanda, who was newly married and having her first Christmas with her new husband, was downstairs suffering through a really rotten case of the stomach flu. I remember I crept down the stairs that night through the dark hallway, my abdomen throbbing, and tapped softly on her door. My grandpa had been elbowing my mother all that afternoon every time Amanda's name came up, because he was convinced that "stomach flu" was code for "knocked up," and that day for the first time I realized what it might be like to be the sister of an Interfile Myrtle. You know, that's got to suck, too, just as much. And that's not fair for her, either. So I opened the door a crack and peeked inside and there she was, laying on the bed encircled by plastic bowls at-the-ready, looking just as pathetic as I felt. We were both miserable. 

"It's okay if you're pregnant, Amanda," I told her, trying to whisper so I wouldn't wake Zach. "You can tell me if you are. I won't feel sad, or sorry for myself. I won't make it about me. I promise. I'll be so happy for you." 

I remember Amanda looking at me and rolling her eyes as gently as she could, saying something to the effect of, "I love you, I am not pregnant, but I am probably super contagious right now."

***

Infertility sucks for everybody it touches. But it's also it's own kind of wonderful, I think. Especially once the baby you've fought for is won. Those babies are spectacular; those babies are worth it. And in the meantime, you get to experience a depth of emotion that is pretty rare, and really very valuable. And hard and crappy. But kind of amazing, too. You get to tear up at perfect strangers when they do something kind for you in the middle of a really tough day. You get to sob uncontrollably through Johnson's commercials and the ending of About Time and any time you think about that one scene in Up. You get to ugly-cry while lip-synching Chandelier. You get to get really, really mad when you get even slightly mad--mad enough that you literally see red, over something as dumb as string cheese wrappers--and it's okay, because you're freaking hormonal and you're allowed to flip out, and this is hard, and blowing off that steam, that feels good. This last little bit has been ultimately, really and truly, very good for me. Grief can be cleansing. It can also rip you to shreds.

Sometimes it does both.

And isn't that kind of neat?