Despair

Going through the familiar stages of grief over this pregnancy that wasn’t, I reached despair. We had been so lucky – all our past transfers had led to pregnancy. (Spoiled, I know.) The big obstacle had seemed to be bringing the embryos to Europe. Now it’s becoming clear that no step is guaranteed.

We have 4 embryos left, or more specifically, 2 pairs. Even if each thaws nicely, if we give each a 25% chance of leading to pregnancy, there’s still a 25% chance I will try with all four and not get pregnant. Sigh. Somehow that’s considerably worse than I thought. Of course I was counting on 6 and on previous success rates…

For now, I need a break, and am happy that SB and I are leaving for family visits tomorrow. H follows on the 23rd. There will be family drama, and a very pregnant SIL with two little girls already. But hopefully also nice and relaxing moments.

Take care, dear readers, in this often challenging season.

Rainbow

On Thursday, I bought this ornament on a whim. I was so hopeful (and I also really like colors, and so does SB). H declared it terrible, but has left it hanging on our tiny tree (we’ll spend Christmas visiting family, as always. I’d love to stay home. Someday. But until then, no big trees.)

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the term “rainbow baby”. But actually it doesn’t make sense to me – rainbows are so transient. Beautiful, yes, but after a few moments they’re gone. That’s a bit how I look at this pregnancy (if it even was one). I felt less sick despite continuing the drugs, my uterus less heavy. Granted, there’s no way to rule out that I’ve imagined all but the side effects. But I really felt pregnant for about a week. And while I’m of course sad about losing this embryo, overall it was a much better experience than my previous international transfer attempts. So I’m hoping that we can get lucky in 2019.

one line

And not even a faint second line.

But I’ve been feeling nauseous and hopeful.

I don’t quite want to believe this just yet.

I have no idea to what extent the one drug I’ve been taking (some progesterone variant) could make me feel nauseous. Or to what extent I could imagine random waves of nausea.

I was just so hopeful this would have worked, and now I don’t quite know what to think, or do.

Heat

Took SB to the local science museum on the weekend. It’s awesome, we have a yearly pass and go quite often.

They have an infrared camera. Supposedly the regions where you have some extra padding show up in blue. Instead, my midsection was green-yellow. Through layers of clothes.

This might just be coincidence. But I hope it’s not.

transferred

Thanks all for your support :)

It was a rather anticlimactic experience – got to the office, waited a few min, called into room, phone call from doctor to embryologist about how embryo #2 is doing (wait and see) – but #1 was fine, so she came over with it, quick ultrasound, small talk*, inserted, and then I was free to go. No smoking, no liquor, otherwise “live as usual”. I’m not sure how much time has distorted my memory from previous transfers, but right now it all seemed very low-key.

So I went to eat cake (because why not) and visit my cousin and her 3 kids, and then to the airport and back home. I did pass a pacifier on the way home, just like I did so many years ago, and I’ve decided to take it as a good sign (even if this is the most child-friendly city I’ve ever lived in, and there are quite a few lost pacifiers around).

And now we wait, and I try not to over-interpret every “symptom”. With about as much success as one would expect ;)

* I think they do small talk to distract us, but I’m always so afraid of distracting them from their important work that it stresses me out rather than relaxes me…

competition for the ‘worst blogger award continues’

An update in bullets, because if anything will happen it’s that.

• I’m still married. And while I wouldn’t say things are great, exactly, they certainly are better than last year. (Ok, that bar wasn’t too high.)
• The big change was… not therapy, not tedious discussions on who-does-what… but sunlight. We had a long & dark winter (even for Scandinavian standards, I think) which clearly didn’t help. And then it became April, and the sun came out again, and *poof* everything was better. Now it’s getting gray & dark again and I’m worried. But at least more prepared.
• Somewhat surprisingly, I finally managed to ship our embryos to Europe. Not to this country, because apparently there’s a law saying they can be at most 5 years old. Which of course nobody bothered to tell me until we had gotten just over that threshold. But my – usually over-regulated – home country seems fine.
• So I went there to actually meet the doctor now hosting my precious potential babies. Expecting timelines as at my previous clinic, which is, weeks of prep. To my great surprise, he said, “well, then you can come back on Monday, and we can transfer one”. Um, what?! I had to take a moment and think (and try, unsuccessfully, to get my husband on the phone). Ultimately we decided to roll with it. So, dear little embryo who’s currently hopefully thawing and growing to morula, and blast tomorrow, here I come. Heart wide open.

onion

I feel like I’m peeling back layers. Trying to understand what lies at the core.

There was – still is – the uneven division of labor around the house. He is doing more, but still far less than 50%, so we are both frustrated. It seems sort of ironic.

I had, naively, assumed that he’d either step up to the challenge and really start doing a lot more (at least for a while, sudden dramatic changes are probably prone to lapsing), or state flat-out that this wasn’t gonna happen. And that either way there would be a straightforward way to move on. Obviously that’s not the case.

There is the layer of my feelings. They have clearly suffered, over years of feeling ignored and (for lack of a better term) exploited. But he also is a nice guy that I still like. He can make me laugh, which is worth a lot. We have our differences on parenting, sure, but I’m generally happy to co-parent with him. But the lack of respect for my priorities, my time (JF had an excellent post on this recently), make it really hard to be in a relationship with him. Recent example: He had an important deadline at work, so I had to skip my yoga class to pick up SB. I have an important deadline a few days later – “well, you could just skip your language class!”.

Then today he brought up again how he would like me to work on bringing our embryos here (why me? he’s so busy). I tried to explain that, before I’d be willing to try for another, we’d need a more positive outlook on our relationship, and that he would need to be ready to pick up a lot more slack in childcare – especially given my history, it is entirely possible that I would not be able to drop off and pick up SB for several months during pregnancy, nor do substantial grocery shopping or cooking. Experiences from friends (oh the many friends currently expecting their seconds; I’m happy for them but it also breaks my heart a little) have quite consistently shown that pregnancy+toddler is considerably more taxing than ‘just pregnancy’. His response? “Well that surely wouldn’t be the case for the whole pregnancy”. Dude. If you want to convince me that you’d be a supportive partner, almost any other statement would have been better.

I’ve been doing a lot of meditation. Well, your definition of ‘a lot’ may be different, but in any case considerably more than before. Kindness comes up a lot, and I am searching my soul, my feelings, how ‘kindness’ and ‘divorce’ can be compatible. And again, you might disagree, but I do think it can be seen as kindness to myself, leaving a situation that does not work anymore, after having tried and failed to remedy it. Kindness towards our daughter, who is currently living with a weird tension between her parents. Possibly even kindness towards my husband, who of course has his own dreams for life – perhaps it is better to go separate ways so that he can find his happiness, and I can try to find my own. (Despite all this, it is far from easy. But if you’re thinking along these lines, also read re-imagined’s latest and very honest and insightful post.)

Lastly, on a somewhat different topic, it seems Other Guy might have a girlfriend. I don’t know for sure, and it would be a long-distance thing, but looking back this might have been going on for a while, and I just didn’t notice, or did not want to notice. The realization hurt, perhaps most because I had allowed myself to be so hopeful, although there never was anything between us beyond casual flirting. So that adds its own layer of complicated feelings. But in a way, I think, it is good – I think I had allowed myself to escape into this fantasy, and avoided working on the actual problems in my marriage. Denial of sorts. So this turn of events has forced me to focus on the situation I’m in, rather than the one I wish I were in.

 

the bad blogging continues

• Thanks for all your support and comments. Some really summarized the situation and problems very well. We definitely do have an issue with the definition of ‘partner’.
• My feelings are complicated as ever. I had somehow – naively, probably – assumed that we’d talk about these problems I see, I’d ask him to change X, Y and Z (mainly, do much more around the house than so far), he’d either do it or not, and I’d have a clear way to move on. Instead it’s a weird two-steps-forward-N-steps-back situation, and N is anywhere between 1 and 3. I feel stuck, and I hate feeling stuck.
• This is only increased by several of our friends, all with kids younger than SB,  expecting their seconds. I’m not saying I necessarily want to be pregnant right now (the situation is complicated enough as it is) but it just underlines how I am not moving forward.
• The therapy session was helpful to some extent. The therapist gave me some ideas to explain to H what the situation is, such as that it’s a business we co-own, and that we both need to be equal contributors to making sure things run smoothly. We do have a history of me asking him to do more, things perhaps improving for a while, but then slipping back. She did point out that it’s not great if I always have to remind him to do ‘his tasks’ – I’m not his mother. Back to the whole ‘partner’ thing. But overall there’s only so much this can help if I’m the only one who is going. It is nice to get some reflection and ideas on how I see the situation, but what we’d need is a dialogue to understand what the other person needs and feels, and that can’t happen this way. (BTW, H was very curious about this visit and wanted me to tell him all about it – but still doesn’t want to go.)
• The level of frustration I have built up and buried underneath need-to-function is  higher than I thought. Much higher.
• I’m unwilling to make any plans further out than 1-2 months. Which is not practical, and only adds to the feeling of being stuck.
• At the same time, as evident from the lack of blogging, I’m clearly not particularly willing to deal with this entire topic. It’s called denial, I know… it’s just so painful to have these discussions, and the lack of real progress doesn’t help.

bad blogging in bullets

• • Sorry for the lack of updates. A number of things have happened, but nothing major, or at least I still feel as stuck as I have in the past months.
  • I had two major deadlines in December, and H was sick (preschool colds and other ailments combined with an aversion of doctors offices) so I decided to put off serious relationship discussions until after Christmas. But mentally I pulled away. I had already, but this didn’t help.
  • I had not worn my wedding ring in months. H apparently never noticed (go figure). But his mother did. Sigh. So we had some serious discussions on Dec 22 and 23. Wonderful timing, though I guess it never is a good time. We decided to try and work this out – to be perfectly honest, I still don’t have too much hope, and I’m mainly doing this for SB, and to feel like I really tried. I did not want to ruin the first Christmas she might remember – and of course splitting up a day before would have been really hard for me, too.
  • He is at the same time convinced we can and should work this out, and dismissive towards the issues I raise, like fair share of childcare and housework. And I can’t figure out how to make him understand that this is really important to me.
  • He is making some effort though, at least on the chore front.
  • I mentioned the idea of therapy again, several times. And he dismissed every time, and said that, if I saw or had this many problems, then perhaps I should go by myself. And then he completely freaked out when I actually looked up some therapists and made an appointment with one. (Which is still to come, next week.)
  • One aspect I would really like to talk about with the therapist – and that I find hard to discuss with friends, especially those that know both of us – is that, while I really want a better distribution of chores, the change in my feelings that has happened over time might be more difficult. In that, even if we become equal partners around the house and SB, I’m not sure this will change my feelings back to how they were, years ago. It doesn’t help that I still can’t pinpoint what exactly happened, or when things started to go wrong, although I am thinking long and hard about it.
  • It is awfully painful to tell someone you used to love, and promised to love until death parts you, that… actually… I think a few friends, who have been there themselves, have tried to tell me how awfully hard this is, but it might be the sort of thing one doesn’t understand without being there. At least I didn’t. I don’t want to hurt him (though I realize that this is impossible).
  • We don’t do fun things together anymore, and I’m not getting the impression that H is willing to adjust his hobbies (of which there are many) to find something that I would also enjoy. (For background, in our early years I tried out several of the things he likes, but none were really mine, so this stopped. In the last years I’ve basically only been working and taking care of SB – my only “hobby”, if one can call it that, are language classes for our current country. I went to two yoga classes in December, first since SB was born, and it was so nice. So I’m trying to turn that into a regular thing.)
  • I’m sad with the overall situation, but do not see an easy way out. There might not be. But I’m tired of being sad. In some ways it’s better now that we are at least talking about that there is a problem, but it’s still hard and awkward and sometimes painful. And completely unclear in terms of where this is going. My two younger brothers are getting married this year, and I feel like I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum, which again just reminds me of my sadness. And probably makes me feel old (which doesn’t help either).
  • The holiday break, and life in general, also had/have nice parts, it’s not all gloom and doom as this post makes it sound. But it’s already long and chaotic enough, and this was the stuff I needed to write about… next time, perhaps.

 

MicroblogMonday: What do happy couples do on a regular evening?

I don’t mean newly in love couples, I can remember that ;) But for those of you that have been together for many years, and have small kids – what does a good evening look like? Because not only do I feel that we’re hardly having any of these, I’m struggling to recall what we’d even do…