Friday, April 20, 2007

Fertile Infertiles

Is the world of infertiles shrinking? I just clicked on a majority of my links here and discovered that a majority of the links are to blogs of suddenly fertile infertiles.

I need to do a little housekeeping, i suppose.

In the meantime, we learned that dh has a growth in his thyroid that needs to get taken out. They won't know for sure if its cancer until they pull it out, sometime in the next month. The biopsy was inconclusive.

Further, the wonderfully perfect job that dh got as editor of top tiered University Journal of a major Science publication just got pulled from under him because the Journal of a major Science publication decided to part company with the top tiered University and its editors. So, in addition to maybe having cancer, he's also out of a job. Let's just kick a man while he's down, why dont we.

I say that sardonically, of course. Seriously, i dont actually feel sardonic or bitter. In fact, i thank God for all things.

I feel that we've been blessed to have discovered this growth. It's asymptomatic. The only reason we did discover it was because dh needed a chest x-ray before he did the surgeries before the ivf. Those x-rays showed a growth in the thyroid. Otherwise, he would never have known that he had a 4 cm growth.

It's funny because one of the reasons i didnt want to do ivf was precisely because if anything happened to dh during the surgery, i wasnt sure i could live with myself. Now, i never imagined that it could, quite possibly, have saved his life.

So, yes, i thank God for all things.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Two Weeks On

So, i'm on the upswing of feelings lately. I guess a body gets bored of the bleak and dreary. Or, as i said, it's my cycle, two weeks up and two weeks down.

In the meantime, i signed up for piano lessons. I want to get into some creative outlets that don't involve so much let down, like writing. I got a rejection letter the other day from one of the major agencies in hollywood that said something to the effect of "Here's your query letter back. We didnt read it and dont have any intention of reading it and should we produce a movie with similar themes, please know that that wasnt because we read it or got the idea from you." Fatheads.

It just makes you want to quit that craft altogether.

Anyway, i'm not here to get down about the craft. I'm here really to talk about my recent adventures with other people's babies. My friend had her baby and i visited them in the hospital. And, i didnt have a single solitary jealous second. I did not go off into the "aww, isnt she cute and wont your life be perfect now" fantasy. Instead, i connected with the reality of her situation. She just gave birth to her second child. She's probably exhausted beyond belief. But, that's irrelevant because there's this baby she just got that's completely dependent upon her for the next twenty years. Good bye sleep. Good bye rest. Good bye old life. Hello stress.

And it's her second child. So she has to go home and negotiate things with the first one, who is an irrational mini-adult at 3 years old, speaking like a ten year old but feeling like a toddler who still very much wants mommy's attention and always resented that her mother worked and that she was sent off to babysitting and now preschool. Yeah, and now there's a second child to be equally "neglected." Psht, what's the point? That's not fun.

And then yesterday, i went out to eat with my sister and brother and a combined total of 4 kids under 6, two of which were 4 months old. And most of the time i felt, someone, please stop the crying babies! And, would someone stop those kids from running around and playing the restaurant piano? They could accidentally trip a waiter or something. I did not, for a single second, think, man, i wish one of these were mine. No. Not at all. I feel apathetic. There's nothing appealing about squealing babies who demand your constant attention.

So, that's where i am. Getting settled in this childless life. For now, it's what i want. I'm finally beginning to see that it's the life God gave me, and it's the life i want, gratefully.

I may still want children in some recesses of my heart. But at least, i'm getting back to feeling that there are other things i can want as well. And life is good whether you have chocolate cake or fresh strawberry pie--it's not all about the chocolate!