Baby Steps

It’s currently a long time between posts as I really just don’t feel like writing.  I don’t know what it is, whether I’m just too busy or too stressed; or because there’s not really much going on in our fertility process at the moment, just more waiting; or maybe my emotions are just so jumbled right now I don’t really know what to write about.  Whatever is it is, I’ve got a writing block.  I have half a dozen blog posts that I’ve started and written a paragraph or two before stopping, filing them away, and never finishing or posting them.  I’ve made a promise to myself that I will sit down one day soon and finish those posts but for now this is what’s making it to the site.

As mentioned my emotions are all over the show.  One minute I’m fine, the next I’m overwhelmed and in tears (“stop the ride I want to get off!”), the next I’m fine again.  There’s just so much to work through moving into this DEIVF process, it’s going to take some time. Of course I still feel the usual infertility emotions – that life is passing me by, that I’m missing out, that every man and his (or her) dog is pregnant or with children except for us, that each new pregnancy or birth announcement will bring both happiness for others and a reminder of our ‘loss’.  Now on top of this is the sorrow that we’ll never have a child that is both genetically mine and my husbands, and the guilt that this is all my fault.  I know that, should we be lucky enough to have a child using donor eggs, I will feel like the child is my own and the fact that they’re not genetically mine won’t matter, but for now it is an emotion that needs working through and a loss that needs dealing with.  I need to grieve the child that will never be and lay them to rest.  I also need to work through the guilt.  It seems so silly as I know my husband didn’t marry me for my ability to provide offspring, I just can’t help but feel sometimes that he married the wrong woman, that if he’d only married someone else he would have a child now and wouldn’t be feeling all this pain now.  And I hate making him hurt.  I feel like I’ve let him down.

So basically, despite my determination to learn to dance in the rain this year, I’ve been feeling shit….sometimes.  A lot of the time.  I need to give myself some space to allow me to process these emotions and get back to my happy place, the only problem is there just doesn’t seem to be any time.  Work’s insanely busy, home is insanely busy, the weekends seem to flash by in the blink of an eye – trying to catch up with all the people we’ve neglected to see during the week.  At the moment I don’t feel like I can fit everything in let alone allocate time to sorting out my complicated mind.  Something’s got to give.

As I lay in acupuncture today, unable to move with those tiny little needles sticking out of my body, I thought of all the things I’d like to do to prepare myself for the ride ahead.  I need to de-stress and uncomplicate my life, easier said than done right?!  I want to start relaxing, properly.  I want to start yoga again, eat more healthily, exercise more, start back on folic acid; give my body the best possible chance of a successful pregnancy.  It is hard to do this not knowing when our cycle will be (it’s difficult to keep ALL of this stuff up long term) or even if we’ll be able to go ahead with our potential donor as all the tests are yet to be completed, but I’ll do my best.  Baby steps.

This week I’ve started by purchasing a 3-day juice cleanse to kick-start my healthy eating.  I’ve never done a cleanse or detox of any sort before and I have to say I am a little nervous about it.  Excited, but nervous, especially since the first two days of the cleanse will be during work hours.  Nevertheless, I’m willing to give it a try.  The people I know who have done it rate it so it can’t be all bad.  It basically consists of consuming nothing but six juices a day for three days.  There are 4 different types of juices, each one scheduled for a particular time of the day, and supposedly at the end of it all my body will have had a good clean out (ew!), I’ll have more energy, generally feel better and will be less hung up on ‘naughty’ food.  Here’s hoping!

As well as the juice cleanse I’ve also looked into the Circle & Bloom meditation sessions.  I’d downloaded one of their free ones a while back but never really got into it – mostly because the few times I tried to listen to it I could either hear the television blaring in the background or hubs kept interrupting to ask me questions.  Not this time though.  We’ve had a chat about it and we’re going to have 30 minutes or so of quiet time each evening where I can listen to the recordings, and try to relax.  I’ve never really been one for meditating or anything either but with more and more people talking to me about the mind-body connection I figure it’s about time I gave it a proper shot.  If it all goes well for the next few weeks I’ll look to invest in the ‘Egg + Embryo Donation for the Hopeful Parent’ program.

So what else….this week I’m going back to the gym after a couple of weeks off (again, too busy) and I figure if I can make it there a couple of times a week that will help with the exercise a little.  I’m going to start back on the folic acid tomorrow, just in case the donor process goes without a hitch and we can start treatment in three months. I’ve got the juice cleanse and the relaxation program – that’s probably enough for one week.  Next week I’ll look into a counselling appointment with the awesome psychologist we saw for DEIVF counselling so I can talk through my guilt and grief about my defective body.  And I’ll start hunting around for a yoga class that I can work into this crazy ride we call our lives.  Don’t stop the ride just yet, this baby-stepper isn’t quite ready to get off.