Mixed Bag Of Rant

99% of the time I am at peace with my infertility.

I am okay that my one little boy, my miracle, will be my only child.

Then, that sneaky little 1% slithers in and my heart breaks into a thousand pieces. Many moms (especially 1st time moms) already have their canned answer for the question, “When will you have another?” I always thought I would have 2 kids. I never imagined raising an only child and always wanted a perfect little happy family. If I was lucky, a boy and a girl.

Those who have struggled with infertility get it. The frustration. The desperation. The hurt. The feeling that something critical is missing in your life. Make no mistake, I take nothing for granted when it comes to my son. I remember being pregnant like it was yesterday. I think I sometimes still feel the ghost kicks in my tummy. But, finally being able to get pregnant once, I got a little cocky. I figured it would be easy the 2nd time around. I did this once, I can do it again, right?

I had no idea how wrong I would be.

Even before my surgery this year to remove what I thought was just going to be a little endo scarring and an ovarian cyst, my husband and I made the decision that we would be done. This would be our choice and not the choice of a doctor or my body. We didn’t want to have to endure two years of not seeing 2 lines on those damn tests. We didn’t want to go through another miscarriage. We didn’t want to spend the money on extreme fertility treatments. We were done.

I had no idea how final those words would be.

Waking up from surgery, my doctor came up to me with the sympathy face and in my haze, even I understood when she said they had to take the ovary that our decision was now set in stone. Being down an ovary, the damage caused by the endometriosis and the risk of its return if I am untreated determined my sentence.

Those who do not know what happened to my poor battered insides still ask the question, “When are you going to give Jack a sibling?” Or make comments such as, “Wow, that boy needs a brother or sister to play with.” Then there are those who know what happened and still have the audacity to ask, “Well you still have one good ovary, right?” Um. It’s not just an ovary issue, it’s an endo issue. So, as “at peace” as I like to think I am with our fate, the questions still sting. They are constant reminders of how I can’t have any more children and there are no other alternatives (at least ones that normal people like us can afford).

I try to recall and hang onto every moment with Jackson, all the way back to my pregnancy. I’ll never get to experience any of it again and I never want to let go of how magical it all is. Being a mom is amazing and I feel so lucky to get the chance to be one at all.

So before you open your mouth to ask a mom any of the above-mentioned questions, try to remember that not every woman is a child making machine like Michelle Duggar and think about how deeply personal that question actually is.

In all of my weight loss efforts over the last couple of years, the one thing that derails me every single time is illness.

Let’s face it, the 2 year old brings home germs and it seems I get sick from every single one of them. I can usually expect up to a week away from exercise and my eating habits take a turn for the worse.

Once again, I’m being derailed. This time, it could be a bit longer though. Earlier this week, after experiencing some excruciating pain, my doctor discovered that I had a ruptured ovarian cyst. To say it hurt is an understatement. Part of my treatment plan is of course to limit any “bouncy” exercise. So, no running for up to 3 weeks. Kind of a bummer seeing as I was in the heart of training for a 5K. Talk about derailed.

To top off the fun of this, my doctor put me on birth control for the next 5 months. Continuously. As in stopping my cycle altogether in the hopes of preventing another cyst from coming back. I HATE birth control. Always have. It has been so long since I started birth control that I forgot how much the first month being on it totally sucks. The headache, nausea, cramping… oh weird, those are exactly the same symptoms of BEING PREGNANT. What a cruel trick to play on someone who was just told that “having more babies will not be in my best interest at this point.” As I said in my last post, it is one thing to make the decision on my own to only have one child, it is quite another to have the decision taken away from me altogether.

I’m not thrilled about feeling so sick. Just when I have started to see the results of all my fitness efforts. I am hoping I can get control over the side effects. A little Unisom/B6 combo for my nausea. A little motrin for my headache (likely to not make a dent in it, but oh well). I am praying that “the pill” doesn’t cause weight gain. I am praying that these side effects go away so I can live my life.

I guess the one good thing out of all of this is closure. We can now just proceed with our life as a little family. We’ll be able to afford great things. I can focus on getting healthy.

See? It’s not all so bad. Right?

Since 2006, I have blogged about my struggles with infertility, miscarriage and the miracle that is my baby boy Jackson.

Once we got pregnant with Jackson, there was never really any doubt about our desire to have a second baby. We got cocky in thinking that it would be easy to make it happen again. As Jack gets older, we have flip flopped on whether or not to keep trying. It has been at least a year and a half since we started (kind of half-assed) on baby #2 but as my age and my dwindling fertility looms, we have pretty much resigned to the fact that Jack may be our one and only.

Since Jack was born, I have had some issues with my body. Besides my weight (which of course CAN be changed and I am working on it no matter how many obstacles are thrown in my path), I had a uterine infection right after he was born (tons of fun to have with a newborn to care for), and a year later in 2009 my doctor discovered fibroids and a uterine polyp which had me in a boatload of pain and led to a hysteroscopy and D & C to have them removed. While I hoped that the polyps and fibroids would keep their distance, much to my dismay, they are back and wreaking havoc on my poor body. With the recurrence of this issue, I know my chances of successfully conceiving a baby are becoming minimal and I cannot even imagine having to endure another miscarriage.

While I was weighing the pros and cons of having a second child, I felt empowered that it was MY choice. I’m not liking the fact that the choice is being taken away from me. There is a part of me that wants to fight my age, my polyps, my fibroids and give infertility a swift kick in the rear; however, the other part of me is just tired of the fight after all these years. Is it time to permanently fix my issues and just move on?

I’ll never know for sure how we were able to conceive Jackson (well… I KNOW, but… well, you know what I mean). Divine intervention? Fluke? When I look at him, I know that he is and will forever be my miracle child. We will always make sure he knows that having only him will always be more than enough for us. We will see to it that he is surrounded by family and friends who will become his brothers and sisters. We will make sure that he has the best life ever.

We always thought we wanted 2 kids. The perfect little family.

The longer it takes to conceive #2 the more and more we are talking ourselves out of it.

Our friend’s beautiful baby boy.

We got the chance to visit our friends over the weekend and meet their adopted newborn baby. He is so adorable with big huge eyes and sweet heart-shaped nostrils. I got that familiar rush of baby fever. I loved listening to all of their stories and hearing all about their process. Most importantly, I loved the look on their faces: that sheer utter new parent bliss. In my head I was thinking… wow. I wonder what it would be like to have a newborn without the postpartum stuff. She can sit. Anywhere. She can bend over to pick baby up out of the crib without that shooting pain from the epidural spot. She’s not crying every two minutes over absolutely nothing. Sounds amazing. Can I do it that way next time? She even confessed that things were going great and that the transition was relatively easy- and it was likely because she’s not having to physically recover from childbirth. They are going to be such wonderful parents and I am so over the moon for them!

I was around 8 months preggo here.

I have this love/hate feeling over the whole pregnancy/childbirth experience. I loved when I was midway through my pregnancy and I had the perfect bump. Just big enough to say “Yes, I’m pregnant, stop staring at me,” and small enough not to feel as though I could topple over at any moment. I loved the feeling of the human person growing inside of me and feeling so incredibly protective over him. I loved that only my husband and I knew his name and talked to him as though he had already arrived. I LOVED feeling his kicks. I didn’t love the morning sickness (evening for me actually) which plagued me for 25, YES 25 @$##@$ weeks. I didn’t love that my weight creeped up 30lbs despite the fact that I was puking my brains out every night. I didn’t love the weird taste in my mouth that made everything taste funny. I didn’t love heartburn and reflux. I didn’t love the fact that my blood pressure was creeping up dangerously high and I was at risk for pre-eclampsia by week 30 and had to go in for checkups every week and in the last 3 weeks, I was going to the doctor twice a week (thank god for a great boss who took pity on me who was more concerned about my health and the health of the baby than what hours I was punching on the clock). I didn’t care for the fact that I could barely walk.

Funny thing is. I didn’t mind childbirth. Once I got the epidural, I was in wonderland. Meeting my son for the first time was the most amazing experience of my life. I didn’t care for the 6 weeks of postpartum recovery. As a matter of fact… that was worse than everything else. I do feel a little bad for even remotely complaining about any of this stuff seeing as I had to deal with several years of infertility as did many close friends of mine. Regardless, having a baby isn’t a cake walk and trying to convince yourself otherwise doesn’t make it all better.

Would I do it all again? Yup. In a heartbeat.

My Big Boy.

So why the indecision? The older and more independent Jack gets, the less we want to have a small baby in the house again. Part of me feels like it would be easier the 2nd time around- since I already had the experience, it wouldn’t be as challenging (ha!). The other part of me feels like we keep saying “When Jack gets older we will…” He’s getting older and we are now able to do a lot of the things we have longed to do with our child. I feel like he should have a sibling, yet I think he would do just fine as an only child. Childcare is expensive, we worry how we would pay for two kids in daycare. We worry how we would pay for two college educations. Yet… there is that little voice in the back of my mind that says to keep trying.

I’m not getting any younger. I turn 35 in a few months which is supposedly like the dreaded “deadline” age for childbearing (which is funny because I take 10 times better care of myself than I did 10 years ago…). For now, we are compromising. 2012 is our deadline. If we are not pregnant by then, we will be done and more than content with moving forward with just our beautiful boy.


How did you make the decision to have or not to have more children?