Unfocused Rambling… (Not)Accepting IVF Reality and Loss.

Lately, I start an entry – get distracted – save it for later – never post it.  Maybe it just feels to get some words out and be done.  I’ve considered that maybe I should just start privately saving these snippets to look back on.  There has to be a reason the words gush out and then I just…stop…literally.

Focus is my struggle I guess.  The last 2 years, literally, were spent obsessing over IVF.  Every free moment I wasn’t working I was researching, googling, ordering more vitamins, oils, voodoo magic shit that may work.  Building a baby register of the dream nursery my child would have.  Reading articles on IVF and babies.  Pinteresting said topic.  Researching food.  Now that I’m a few steps away, I can see the obsessiveness.  I can see why our relationship began to struggle.  I can see my life consisted of nothing but “planning for a future and forgetting to live”. (Max’s words.  He’s right though.)  I was only planning for the future and not living in the moment.  I threw every extra penny towards this.  I declined vacations, events, parties.  I ONLY planned my life around my cycle, my vitamins, my shots, my appointments, my possible due dates, my possible future.

Now that we’re done… now that I’m accepting the future I envisioned is not the future I’m getting… I simply can’t focus.  I have free time at work or home and barely know what to do with myself sometimes.  My thoughts just bounce around.  I’m not hyper-focused on my infertility and boy it leaves a LOT of time inside this head.  I bounce all over the place.  Reminding myself to stop, calm down, live on day at a time.  Yet, my brain still wants to quit writing and off I go to look up some random vacation spot, a concert, new bedding, home decor, new lights, paint, how to redo cupboards…. It’s ridiculous. Yeah, my brain is looking for something to focus on, distract myself with, disassociate with.

I’ve got some medication left I really need to get out of my fridge.  I don’t need it and it’s a LOT of money in meds.  There are resale yet I feel bad charging someone struggling like me.  Yet, they obviously will have to buy it anyways.  Gonal F and Cetrotide.  Almost enough for a whole cycle of each.  Omnitrope.  And soooo many freaking vitamins I’m refusing to swallow now.  I need to list them on the resale garage sale site.  I haven’t though.  That would make it… Final.  Selling these at my deeply discounted price would mean I’m really done.  Yeah, I know I’m done – I guess I have that little voice in the back of my head that says “maybe” you can do one more cycle.  That little voice in the back of my head that says “maybe you’ll have tons of money and want to do one more cycle”.  I’m done.  We’re done.  Damn, that’s hard to accept though.

All of that money, time, research, heartache… For nothing.  That’s a damn hard pill to swallow.

I miss my daughter.  So much.  I’d planned to hit the 3rd trimester last week.  To think of what I had “planned” to be experiencing today will never happen.  It’s rough.  My future over the next few months will be ANYTHING but what I’d planned.  Am I distracting myself by bouncing in circles?  Absolutely.  Yes.  As I type this the tears begin to flow.  I haven’t cried in quite awhile.  I distract myself well I guess.  It’s Tuesday though… That’s been my number one crying day since those awful words were spoken.  Since I swallowed those awful pills on a Tuesday at 4 p.m. – Passing my tiny little baby at 9:31 p.m. on that Tuesday.  After 5 1/2 hours of physical pain and 12 hours of severe mental torture – after what I would say was 3 hours of intense contractions and the most pain I have ever felt in my life.  Everything is such a blur – I don’t remember what we got at the store when we got prescriptions, I don’t remember who I texted or what was on the TV.  Yet, I remember every detail of those 5 1/2 hours physically and emotionally after I swallowed those pills.  I remember the moment the contractions got worse, the moment I felt like I needed to push/poop so bad but nothing was coming out of anywhere.  The moment I felt a “pop” and what felt like a gush of water and a beginning to form baby “fell” out.  Laying on the bathroom floor sobbing hysterically, begging God to stop it, to make it stop, to let me keep her.  Begging the pain to end.  Then suddenly I felt something “large” come out and looked…. Shocked to see the placenta/sac pieces.  Amazed at how large they really were.  Amazed at the veiny looking things in it.  I probably poked and prodded that shit far too long.  It felt like seconds, but it probably wasn’t.  I then asked Max how much I was supposed to save…. I’d chose the collection kit to send her and the “products of conception” for testing.  My doctor felt I was crazy wanting to do this myself… “You know you’re going to see things you won’t want to see?”…  I know me, I know I’d look either way.  Knew even if I didn’t want to remember that, I would want to see what she really looked like.  Even if she was just this tiny little human without all her perfect parts.  After passing that, the intense pain stopped… “the period like cramps” began and that was it.  Doctor’s lie.  I have AWFUL period cramps some months and this wasn’t anything like it.  Inducing yourself to pass your baby at 12 weeks – this mimics actual labor far more than a period.  Actually, my 38 week, my nearly unmedicated labor at 20 years old was about the same level of pain, possibly less.  There’s no adrenaline delivering a dead, tiny baby.  Just pain. Emotional brokenness.  My doctor had no idea – He also didn’t know that the oxy he prescribed wouldn’t work as CNY had my on LDN – he said it would be fine as I hadn’t taken my pill since the day before… that’s a lie I’ve since learned.  Another doctor recently told me, before I quit the LDN, there was zero reason to give me narcotics as they wouldn’t work with the LDN in my system.  I mentioned the above, she said, no it has a longer life than that – it was still working, that’s why it hurt so bad even with medications.

*sigh* That was a lot of rambling.  Overall, it’s amazing the haze of the day – yet the vivid memory of those hours and the pain.  I remember the exact time as I had to write them on the POC Form as Max put our child and her accessories into the little container.  9:31 p.m.  I will hate that exact time for the rest of my life.  No matter the day, if I look at the clock and it’s that time – I’m not interested in whatever I was doing and just angry.

What got me on this topic today?  I went to Jax’s birthday party yesterday – he’s 5.  As we were leaving, his great grandma quietly says to me – Did you lose a baby?  I just looked at her.  Speechless.  Nobody has asked this bluntly.  Then I respond, yeah, we did, a girl.  She told me she had heard that but wasn’t sure if it was accurate and thought she’d just ask – She then told me she was sorry, she understands, it’s awful and nobody should live through that.  Most people – I’d be angry.  Asking me this as I leave a public place.  Not this time though… This lady lost her only son when he was a child and I see every day how badly it broke her.  How much she remembers and misses him 40 or so years later.  Some say she’s weird – her family says she “got like this” when her son died.  She lost it.  Of course she did.  She’s right – nobody should have to live a life that includes losing their child.

That wasn’t the direction I planned to go today.  I had other ideas.  Other thoughts.  Words.  Accomplishments.  So many things I wanted to write about.  I guess this is what I NEEDED to talk about though.  This is what my body and mind needed to word vomit out there.  To say the words.  To remember or at least get the memory out of my head and written down.  To think of my daughter.  To remind myself we’re done with IVF and I need to sell these meds and maybe be $1,000 richer for whatever vacation I go on next.

But really, today, I don’t want to sell the medications, I don’t want to accept my daughter is dead… I don’t want to acknowledge the thought that I will never birth, hold, nurse or cuddle my own perfect baby – ever again.  This chapter is ending and today, I’m not actually okay with that.

I’ll save the rest for tomorrow I guess.  For when this mental pain isn’t quite so sharp like it is today. Save it for when my mind is back into full blown distractions and onto other subjects.