Holy crap, I'm so confused!
I don't know what to feel or think, I need to do some grounding right now.

A few days before our final results appointment I was talking to a friend about what could we potentially be diagnosed with. I remember feeling full of hope saying that everything's gonna be ok. Best case scenario would be that they find an issue and we get a treatment to fix it - at least we would know what's wrong. Worst case scenario would be getting that "unexplained infertility" diagnosis. I can't believe it's a "diagnosis" in the first place. Is that medicine telling me "I give up, you're on your own"? Anyways. It would be worst case scenario for me simply because my perfectionist "needs to know". Not knowing means loss of control, loss of control means death. I need to learn how to fully let go, surrender and release my will to the higher power. I thought I knew how, but life is funny like that. I guess it was only a layer, time to dig deeper.

Our doc, after looking at our results, as if for the first time, and scribbling on a piece of paper for 20 minutes in complete silence finally started talking. He gave us about 15 mins worth of robotic sentenses and medical jargon with phrases like "we've been able to uncover", "based on evidence of....", blah blah basically saying that everything is fine with us. All analysis are "normal". As for the next step - sperm wash and artificial insemination. Huh?! But what's wrong? If everything is "fine" then where is my baby?

After doc finished his monotonous monologue my husband asked if there is a more natural way of doing it. I don't think the doc liked that very much. Not at all. He leaned back on his chair slowly, crossed his arms and went off on another monotone rant saying that there is nothing "of what you call unnatural" about sperm wash and artificial insemination, making quotation marks with his fingers as he sarcastically repeated "unnatural".

Excuse me! Pardon me, medicine. Aghem. Sorry to interrupt. But since when, on this fucking planet, taking a men's sperm, stuffing it into the centrifuge separating the dead from alive, then sucking it into the syringe, and then spraying it inside of my uterus after two weeks of being pumped full of Chlomid to make my ovaries pop out numerous eggs like popcorn NATURAL?!

So... there's anger! Hello there, little guy. I know you're there. I feel you.

What else is there? Relief! This is the paradox my therapist mind can't explain. I guess you have to live through this to understand fully. Why relief? We don't even know what's wrong! But we do know what's right! Everything the medicine can explain based on it's "evidence based" blindness is right. So this is hope, not really relief, it's more like hope that everything is ok.

We were very happy for the rest of the day. My husband was the first one to start wondering about other ways of doing this. I was glad to hear it. That's my man. He suggested maybe just taking Chlomid and trying naturally, you know that ancient way, in bed, with candles and moonlight, under white sheets, smelling like jasmine and honeydew, and some soft music. Ok, maybe not exactly like that, but that's how I imagine conceiving a child. I suggested grabbing all the results and finding a naturopath specializing in fertility. When we were falling asleep that night he whispered in my ear as he was spooning me "I think this is all just peer pressure, let's not rush with this and take it easy". I smiled and fell asleep.

No rush.

She did it. She pushed the 7.15 lbs out of herself not without blood, sweat, tears and pain that we supposedly forget.

What law of universe states that joy has to come through pain? Does it apply only if you believe in it? We attempt to numb it out with epidurals and other substances but we can't take all of it away completely no matter how hard we try. I wonder if this wicked law applies proportionately? If you suffer more pain, do you get more joy?

I don't think I've ever wished so much pain upon myself.

Maybe I wish it upon myself because I don't feel it. Where is this pain of loss? I just sit and stare, and actually feel quite numb. Is the pain so strong that I've disassociated myself from it? rationalized it away? Or is it not here at all? I should call my therapist. I think I'm stuck in limbo in between two stages of grieving. I definitely left Denial stage but I am very reluctant to fully enter the Anger stage. It comes with self-blame, victimhood and tears and I don't like the sound of it. But I can't help it! I just feel sorry for myself, angry at the universe, at all the parents who mistreat their kids, at all the "knocked-up" couples contemplating abortion, everyone really. I feel the frustration of unfairness rising in me and I see it turning inwards toward myself. What's wrong with me? Why cant I? It's not fair, God, you hear me? What did I do to deserve this? I don't like feeling angry and I don't like my own thoughts, but I don't have a choice - it's a stage. I have to get through this, I have to make it ok. This too shall pass. It's hard to hide though. And I don't think I can anymore, and why should I??

As we were leaving the hospital, outside of my friend's hospital room a few tears came out of me and my Victim whined: "I can't even have a dog...". It was such a weird mix of happiness, hope and self-loathing. My husband, who is against getting a dog, heard my whine, decided that it was about him and threw a fit, blaming me for blaming him. All the while I am blaming myself. I think he's also in the Anger stage and also feeling sorry for himself. Except that he can't admit it. Guys aren't allowed to feel sorry for themselves. They feel angry at themselves for feeling sorry for themselves, suppress that poor-me anger and let it steam under a tight lid quietly building up force until it gets a chance to blow. Then the Victim comes out. Yucky, nasty sight. Nasty fight. Then the lid goes back on. I wish he knew that about himself, I wish I could show him, but I can't therapise him, he doesn't like it.

And then there are these tiny pops of anticipation in my tummy about getting our final diagnostic cycle results at the fertility clinic in a week. At least I'll know. Or will I? Do they ever tell you exactly what's wrong straight up? Should have went to med school.

11:20am, I'm in bed, my husband is sleeping with his head on my tummy, he's sick with a cold and we were both up all night in separate bedrooms so that he wokdkbt get me sick. We forgot that we can't sleep without each other. He crawled back here around 10:00am and even made me coffee and passed out on me. Making up for the lost night.


I need to go to clicnic at 1:00pm so I should get up and get ready but I can't, I don't want to ruin this setup. So I decided to just meditate for a little. I close my eyes and try to center myself. Immediately I get an image of a mother Mary with Jesus in her arms and, fearing I'll lose the moment, I frantically ask her "what do I need to do to have a baby like you?", she said "wrong question", ok, so it's not what I need to do, it's something else... "attitude" she said. I get it, I need to change attitude towards myself. What is my attitude toward myself? Then it comes together. I don't respect myself. I view myself and treat myself and life, and people in my life with a vigorousity and anger of a rebellious teenager. I am a teenager who is angry at universe for not being able to have a baby. You can't skip developmental stages, silly. To be a mother you have to be a woman first. And I never thought of myself as a woman. A woman. I am a woman. There is something to gentle, strong and comforting about this. I am going to treat myself like a woman. I am a woman. Let this replace the line my mom said repeated with disapproval whenever I left mess behind or was found with a stain on my dress: "you're a girl!"


I'm a woman.

I have this oil painting hanging on the wall above the desk in my home office. I look at it every day, so often that it almost lost the meaning it once had. It's like I went numb. I used to look at it and wink my third eye at it, as if saying "hold on, little Angel, let me just finish this one other project and we'll get to the business of conceiving you". The last time I felt this way was about this time last year. We had just bought a house and started a major renovation project. Now that renos are finished and dust is settled but the little Angel hasn't joined us I'm full of anger, sadness and questions - did I make him wait too long? Did he choose another mommy? Will anyone else choose me? Where are you now?

Later on that summer, I felt it was time for some divination tools and decided to make a baby vision board. I asked my friend, who had also been trying to concieve for a while, to do this together, and she suggested we paint what we wanted instead of cutting magazines. I never painted before, nevermind using oil paint, but she confidently pulled out all the required accessories, showed me how to mix, and we made ourselves comfortable at her backyard patio for a few hours creating our babies on canvas, calling on them, and dreaming about getting pregnant at the same time. How much fun would it be to be pregnant together, to be happy together, to worry together, to have same age children and go through all the steps of motherhood together. We dreamed and painted and prayed. And painted.

Fast forward 10 months... I am hosting a baby shower for her this weekend. Crying and laughing. Crying at party stores while shopping for baby-shower stuff. Laughing because it's ridiculous how easy is it for me to teach others how to manifest and it works out for them. But what about me? Do divination tools only work for every other person? It's not just a shower, it's raining inside! With a chance of thunderstorms. No one knows, only you. I can keep this a secret, and my shit together.

I wonder what lesson is in this for me? What am to take out of this experience? Is my desire not genuine enough? Do I not want a child badly enough? Am I such a horrible person that I don't deserve to be blessed with this miracle of life? What do I need to do? Give me a sign!

Ok, time to wipe up the victim's snotty nose and put on the big girl pants.

​I'm listening. Seriously listening.

 This time last year I was laying bum up on a folding beach chair in the heart of Caribbean frantically trying to catch my anxious breath. Head spinning, heart palpitating, dehydrated and drunk, sad and broken. Alcohol usually helps with anxiety... but that was a big one, the one you can't wash down with a Cuba Libre.

My friends we leisurely laughing about something, creating a soothing background noise for my frantic thoughts, while on the foreground my mind kept recycling sentences exactly as they were delivered to me, nonchalantly by my family doctor in his office just a few days prior: "....estrogen off-the-chart low...", "...you're like a post-menopausal woman...", "...basically you're not ovulating at all...". 

My gosh, way to deliver the news! Just shoot the woman in the womb while you're at it and let her bleed to death slowly. This was followed by a suggestion of going on the contraceptive pill for three months! A cherry on top of an already wounded female soul. Who goes on the pill when they are trying to conceive? How did modern medicine even get this ground-breaking idea? Hold on, did I hear that properly? I did.

My anger was rising, as was BBT under the mid-afternoon Caribbean sun. I loudly finished my drink and fell asleep. Away from reality.

Last week I dragged my husband to a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. Half of the city is singing hymns to this guy on various chats and forums for his ability to diagnose conditions that western medicine isn't able to put a finger on, so I decided to give him a try.

He sees his patients behind a bookshelf in his dusty herbal shop on the second floor of a little Chinese mall that smells like food I would never eat. His English is really bad so we communicated via sign language and him pointing various words out in a worn-out Chinese-English medical translator booklet. From everything that I have been able to decipher he was right on! He looked at my nails, tongue and eyeballs, then, as he held his finger on my pulse, he listed all symptoms that he saw in me and explained as best as he could the origin of the symptoms. It was incredible.

He saw my night sweats, sensitivity to cold, moist palms, fatigue... then he wrote on the piece of paper TSH up-arrow, FSH down-arrow and said: "Lo FSH, lo ovulasha, one ovulasha ok, one no ovulasha, cyst" pointing to the vicinity of my right ovary. Ok then, that explains why my ovulation test is positive only every other month! He said: "no problem, no worry, no worry, you ok, I give you pill" then he asked me why I came to him. I said I want a baby trying to talk in his language: "3 months, no baby". He said: "I fix, no worry, 4 months, you have baby".

Then he switched over to my husband and told him in a similar matter that he is very healthy but low on Zinc, and sperm needs Zinc because "Zinc make sperm no *wave-motion with hand*, but *straight-forward motion with hand*, ok, no worry, no worry, I give you pill, 4 months, you have baby".

We paid $40 per person for the consultation and another couple of hundreds for the 4 months worth of Chinese herbal medicine and walked out of his little herbal shop full of faith. My naturopath okayed all ingredients that she recognized and now we are downing 8 tiny-bunny-poop shaped pills 3 times a day after each meal. 

​We'll see what happens. 

"Don't start a family and have children until you become somebody", "If it wasn't for you kids, I would have achieved more in life and become somebody by now" are some of the things I remember hearing when I was little from one or both of my parents. Every time someone I know happily announced their pregnancy the critical voice inside automatically pulled out my "Somebody" measuring stick and decided if they have reached the Somebody status.  If not, it meant that they were stupid for having this child, because "how could you do that if you aren't Somebody yet?" That was the rule. Oh well, I thought to myself proudly, I am working on becoming Somebody.

Sadly, I didn't realize then that I was constantly using this measuring stick on myself. And that it was my not-so-friendly inner critic that held the stick out and loudly announced my growth or shrinkage along the Somebody scale. I didn't know what the scale was, what the requirements were, and what this Somebody looks or feels like. There were no success measurement criteria. Sounds insane. That's what insanity is, I get it now. Unfortunately, we all do it to ourselves to some degree. We make decisions about ourselves based on our distorted perception against some abstract measuring stick that was given to us without the owner's manual. My inner critic ran wild with this against me, deciding whether I am Somebody, granting or withholding the permission to procreation.

Half-a-year into our marriage, my husband and I were chilling on the couch casually wondering if it's time to have those kids yet. I never divulged my Somebody measuring mechanism to him, as I was not aware of it yet. But it didn't stop my critic from using it on him: "He is successfully self-employed, able to provide for a family of 3, he likes his work and is comfortable with himself and his future career". Done. My critic announced that this man seems to be Somebody and is thus approved for procreation. I, on the other hand, was in the middle of a career change, was working full-time and studying part-time, hoping to leave my dull-time (pun intended) job and move into a flexible, not-so-profitable, but my dream line of work in the field of mental health. That's when my inner critic decided that I am not approved for procreation. My ego, of course, didn't want to admit it, so it teamed up with the my inner manipulator to create a diversion. This wry team told my husband: "Why don't we do something fun, dangerous and exciting one last time! Something we would never do when when we have kids". My husband, bless his explorer-Sagittarius-soul, quickly and cheerfully agreed, and we started looking for ideas for exciting and dangerous trips to take. 

After sifting through the internet, travel agencies and friends who didn't understand our obsession, we stopped at "Climb Mount Kilimanjaro" article in a travel guide to Africa. It took us another half a year to plan, book and train for the climb. We spent evenings at the gym and weekends hiking all the "mountains" we could find in vertically challenged Eastern North America. The plan was to climb the mountain, check out the wildlife of the Tanzanian safari and make the baby on the Zanzibar beach resort, which carefully lined up with my mid-cycle. Perfect! I even foregone the yellow fever vaccine with the approval of my doctor after I told him that we're planning on getting pregnant on the trip.

We didn't get pregnant. And I was so confusingly relieved. If I really felt anything, it was a concern that I wasn't concerned. But it makes sense now. I didn't all of a sudden become Somebody once I climbed that mountain. Nor did I become Somebody when I got back down. My Inner Critic said "I told you!" as I wiped the anxious sweat off my forehead and went on with my life, quitting the dull-time (again, not a typo) job, switching to full-time studies and finally starting my private practice.

Fast forward another half a year. I'm walking into my doctor's office to complain about my computer use inspired yoga-wrist, tennis-elbow and ganglion cyst when he looks me up and down and says: "Why aren't you pregnant yet?". "Am I supposed to be?", I ask. He reminds me of foregoing the yellow fever shot because of planning a pregnancy. "Oh yeah... baby... right..". I forgot. Guilty. I finally muttered: "I don't know why I'm not pregnant". I walked out of his office holding in my yoga-wrist a referral to the lab for hormonal blood work.
  
Two days later he calls me into his office. That can't be good. I bring my husband to the appointment, who quietly sits in the corner for the duration of it. Doctor tells me that my estrogen level that of a post-menopausal woman. Off-the-chart low. All other hormones are in perfectly normal range. Basically, I am not ovulating. His recommendation is to fatten-up, because fat is somehow related to estrogen levels and to check-in in a few months to a follow up test.

That was my first reality-check and a powerful blow to my sacral chakra that produced the first set of tears. Tears of grief, over losing something that I didn't know I could lose. A choice. Can I get it back, please?

We took off for a Cuban getaway in the next few days and I drowned my sorrows in Cuba Libres. I guess I wasn't a Somebody yet.