I was sitting in a hotel room, nervously wringing my hands.  Lisa was trying to get me to eat something and the Teletubbies were on PBS, which was a good thing because that’s all I had the mental capacity to deal with.

We were about to get in the car on the glorious, warm spring day and drive to the beautiful manner home  to get ready for the one of the two greatest times in my life.  The moment that TT actually married me.

Two years of international dating, one breakup, and a lot of craziness leading up to this amazing life together.

It was the best day of my life, the best thing that ever happened to me, and every day I thank the entire universe that we keep on going, because without TT my life would be empty.

I’m crazy and I’m emotional.  I get wound up over little things and I’m so not easy to live with.  TT stands by me every day, strong and warm and loving and really, really handsome.  Having him in my corner is the luckiest thing ever.

Happy Anniversary, Troublemaker.  You are my heart and my soul and I love you more than life.

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Today, Peeps, I was casually discussing the state of the reproductive world a la me, trying to relate to someone who is berating themselves for the bad luck of being infertile at 35.  The subject was donor eggs.  She felt like because she wasn’t willing to dive directly into donor eggs and embrace them and shell out thousands and thousands of dollars, that maybe she wasn’t meant to be a mother.

I was pointing out that I have similar worries, about costs, and that I didn’t think that weighing those options makes a person any less worthy to be a parent.

Then a third person chimed in, and that person went on about donors and how they had used a sperm donor and how there’s a whole population of kids of donor eggs and sperm out there and how they hate it and how I must freeze my eggs NOW NOW NOW because what if we decide it’s not for us then I will have NO EGGS…

I tried to shut this person down twice and finally I just told her the honest truth, that we are not in a place emotionally or financially to go through a round of egg extraction and freezing in case of some mystical future problem. 

But I was shaken.  I was shaken.  Should I freeze my eggs?  Of course not.  We don’t have the money.  Donor eggs and adoption are both options that we’re open two and neither one may be something we choose to do, or perhaps we will do both.

The woman was right; there is a vocal group of folks out there who are very betrayed and angry that they were conceived using donor eggs or sperm.  They believe they have been shafted for the stupid whims of their parents.  From what they describe, I can understand why they feel that way. 

However:

1. Procreation is always selfish.  You never know if you’re bringing a child into a life of uncertainty, loss and pain.  Procration is always a selfish desire, no matter how it’s done.
2. The internets, as much as I love it, is a microcosm of a vast world.  People do not create listservs to repeat to one another, “Still good with my embryonic beginning!  You?”  Blogs are the Newsweek of life.  Sound bytes of interesting things, but always to be taken with a grain of salt as it relates to the general population.
3. The people who are blogging now were conceived in the 80’s, before it became much more common.  They were more isolated, lied to more often, and more cut off from the histories that are rightfully theirs.  I’d like to think that in this day and age there would be more like them in the world, and that any child of mine would have a relationship of some sort with their egg donor.  Their, lets face it, biological mother.

All these responses are logical and reasonable.  They also assume in the first place that we are interested in donor eggs, which we don’t know yet, or that we won’t conceive on our own, which we don’t know yet.

At the same time, the vitriol on these websites for these grown people lamenting their own process of birth.  The deep betrayal they genuinely feel… the anger that just pours out.  I can’t imagine my child feeling that way about their very conception someday.  The idea breaks my heart.  Would I willingly hurt my baby in order to get what I want?

All procreation is selfish, but not all is quite so deliberate.

And so, by merely glancing at the bank account, the door to my own eggs closes with a quiet *snick* and I feel like right behind it is the door to donor eggs.

*snick*

And that was when I realized that the mourning had not even begun.

The hate for my body poured out.  It has betrayed me at every turn.  It has been the excuse for people to molest me.  It has radiated pain until I wanted to die.  It has made basic things a trial.  It has a passion to run to bulk and fat.  It scars up in ugly lumps and my skin breaks out with acne.  My body has not been my friend.  In this day and age of me trying to love myself, this is not helpful.

So I am looking for a ritual, some sort of marking of the occasion for letting go of this.  I am seeking some visual or tactile happening that says to me that I cannot control or predict the future.  That school is a good and a right thing for our family and for my mental health.  That we will deal with the mountains when we must climb them, but for now it is okay to stand in the valley and ignore the snow.

I am not failing to plan, I am living now. 

Living, for the moment, in heartbreak.

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“Our Sun is going to end up as a white dwarf”

“Honey, he can hear you.”

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I’m sure that everyone in the whole internets knows how to do things with Photoshop I’ve only ever dreamed of.  Still, I downloaded a free 30 day trial today and have been having fun with the program for the first time ever. 

We got great pictures this weekend of Wallace having a ton of fun and I’ve only just started playing with them.  YAY for photos!

Click on them to see them full-sized.

The original bike riders:

Phun!:

Football:

Football all spruced:

Forkhead at Brunch:

Forkhead at Brunch photoshopped:

Forkhead at Brunch - SUPERBLUE!

Sunny Smile full color:

Sunny smile - pshop gentle color

On a bike -far away

On a bike - cropped

On a bike - cropped and funky

I know that these are hamhanded and that you can go to almost any website and get better examples of these effects, but today is the first time I’m getting to play with them and it’s been a lot of fun!

I don’t even make the mistake of thinking that most of the photoshopping improves the picture, so in that way I’m going through the makeup phase that thirteen-year-old girls go through where the point of wearing makeup is not to improve looks, but to make it obvious you’re wearing makeup.  These changes do not necessarily improve the photos, but boy can you tell that they have been photoshopped.

It’s been oodles of fun.

What do you like to do with photoshop?

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Well, Peeps, TT and I sat down and had a discussion about What it All Means.  The result was just the best I think I could have possibly hoped for.

We don’t know what the reproductive future will bring.  It may be just fine and it may not be.  We know that there is a possible problem, so if we have trouble we won’t be blindsided. 

At the same time, all things are possible in this great, wide world.  IVF? A possibility.  Donor eggs?  A possibility.  International adoption?  A possibility.  Domestic adoption?  A possibility.

I’m feeling suddenly very zen about it all.  With nothing closed there is a 100% chance of more kids, and for me, that’s all that matters.  This is not a matter of choosing school and our future over children.  We choose both. 

It’s glorious.

MOAR THIS PLEASE!

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Hi, everyone.

I know that you’ve been hit up by me for the MS stuff, and I’d like to formally thank all of you for donating to my bike ride.  I’ve also hit you up for Young At Heart.  Ya’ll are truly hit up by me, but you keep coming through.  You are truly stellar people.

So I apologize for this and how I seem to be that obnoxious chick with the rattly can standing outside your house smiling in your kitchen window and rat-tatting asking for help a-gain, but you need to know about this.

Jeni, who inspired everyone to write about what they would do if they only had a year to live, is having a particularly rough time at the moment.  She’s on some last-ditch chemo and has been spending most of her days asleep and in hospice.  If things do not go well, she will be leaving behind a grown son and a little boy.

The idea of dying and leaving behind a little boy is enough to completely break me up, so I’m ashamed to say that I try not to think about it.  I don’t know how she bears it, except that she doesn’t really have a choice.

Bella, of Beyond the Map, has organized an ebay store in order to raise money for Jeni and more importantly her son, Jack.  As a single mother, Jeni is relying on her family and on Jack’s father to see that he is doing well with her not around.  It’s hard.  A bit of money might make it easier.

Many folks donated many things; the auction is fabulous and I can see several items I’m interested in bidding on.  I’m planning on giving to Jeni because I can vaguely imagine being in that situation and the vague feelings that go with the vague imagining is enough to absolutely crush me.  I cannot fathom the realities.

How can I not help?

Click here to go directly to the ebay store to see what’s there and to bid.

Click here to go to Jeni’s blog, The Comfy Place, and read about where she is right now.  It’s frightening and scary and very, very real.  She should be heard.

Thanks, and I’m sorry for the smudges on your window.

KP

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Marianne just put up a few more photos she took from the workshop.  They are beautiful.

Here is the one that has my kid in it:

Note to self: Need Better Camera

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Or: Troubling Numbers

The hits just keep on coming these days, Peeps.  At this point I’m reaching the keeping-my-head-above-water stage. If you’re not familiar with the day three test and what it means, feel free to read my rambling thoughts:

Here

Here

and Here

All caught up now?  Great.  My numbers are back.

FSH - okay, at 6.4 (anything under 12 is okay)
LH - okay, at 9.2 (6 - 30 is normal, so it’s on the low side of normal, but still extra… normal⁽¹⁾)
TSH - okay, at 1.33 (values should be 0.27 - 4.20, so that’s good)

But my Inhibin B came back at 31 pg/mL

Anything under 45 pg/mL “indicates poor ovarian reserve”.

Essentially, the first three tests are the surface tests for ovarian reserve problems and they came back normal.  If we’d have done those test and only them, we would conclude that there is nothing wrong and my hotflashes were caused by the Cymbalta (which may stll be the case).

The Inhibin B test is basically testing a hormone that is more sensitive to ovarian reserve problems than the other three.  So the simple test is normal, but the high-octane test indicates a problem.  It indicates that perimenopause, and perhaps the Big Show, may be more immanent than what is normal for a woman my age.

The hardest part of these results is that it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know exactly what this means. If the numbers were off enough that we were worried about me going into menopause now, or if TT and I were ready to have a baby now and had trouble, then they’d do follow-up bloodwork.

There won’t be follow-up bloodwork in this case because, really, there’s not much more information we need if we’re not trying to get pregnant.

There’s no way to quantify the problem. My problem isn’t yet pronounced enough so that the basic tests will pick it up, but it’s there. It’s there, lurking. The end of my eggs. Which also implies a quality drop.

Right now, if we were trying to have a baby, it would be a mild concern and a reason why it might take longer to hit the jackpot, or why I might have an early miscarriage. Right now it would be an eensy bit worrying.  Something to think about and to take into account⁽²⁾.

Two years from now? We have no idea.  I could be in perimenopause or full menopause. I could be out of eggs. I could still have eggs, but be out of good ones. Or, I could happen to ovulate one of my good eggs just at the time we’re ready to conceive and never know that we have a problem.  It could be a non-issue.

There’s no way to summarize the problem in a way that makes action imperative one way or the other. It’s a problem, we don’t know how bad. I think know that if my doctor were here right now, she would strongly advise not waiting if we want another child.  In fact, I can hear her voice in my head at the moment because she’s said it to me a few times, “Don’t wait”.  At this point, I don’t feel we have a choice.  We cannot afford school and another child, period, and I’m all set up to start school.

It’s bothersome.  In a perfect world I’d stay at my job another year, we’d have number two and then I’d go back to school.  Of course, in a perfect world I’d be 25, I’d have the ability to defer school for another year, and money would be plentiful. 

It’s very, very strange to be 32 and feel like I’m running out of time. 

⁽¹⁾ Massive points to anyone who recognizes the quote.

⁽²⁾ As a datapoint, I had an anovulatory cycle this past month coming off the pill. While it is not unusual in the universal sense, that is the first time that it’s happened to me. Usually my first cycle off the pill is a superovulator cycle.  Something feels different.

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To quickly recap:  A few weeks ago we participated in the See the Light Photography Workshop which was put on by Marianne of Marmalade Photography.

The event was just oodles of fun, Wallace had a fabulous time, and generally it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get some really good pictures of Wallace, right now, just the way he is.

One of the people Wallace and I got to know best that day was Jennifer Lane of Jennifer Lane Photography.   She seemed to take an immediate shine to Wallace, which meant a lot to me.  The girls at the event were just gorgeous and with little girls you have tutus and props and all kinds of fun things.  They are irrisistable to capture on film.  You can see that the ratio of boys to girls in the usual family photographer slideshow is pretty skewed in the female direction.

On the other hand, as the mother of this perfect little guy I have living in my house, I think he’s awesome even without the tutu.  Happily, Jennifer seemed to see that in him as well. 

Jennifer didn’t just get his picture or snap him whenever he did something cute, Jennifer played with him.  She hung out with him.  She made faces with him and sang songs with him.  She took a situation that could have been very awkward and uncomfortable for Wallace and made it a Big Fun Time!

As a result, the photos that she got seem to capture Wallace just as he is, with the faces that he makes when we see him play every day.  The pictures she posted aren’t pictures of him trying to be cute or mugging for the camera, they are pictures of him having fun, which to me is six thousand times as cute.

Today Jennifer put three of the photos up in her blog and wrote a very, very sweet entry about getting to know Wallace and me over the course of the day.  It was at least as much fun for us to get to know Jennifer, and I suspect quite a bit more!

If you are anywhere in the Chicagoland area and thinking of getting pictures done of your family, whether it’s the whole family or just the kids, I would recommend Jennifer a thousand times.  Particularly if you are nervous about how your kid is going to respond.  She’s very generous with her time and heart and Wallace just completely opened up to her.  I could see her putting any kid at ease, no matter how camera shy.

So go to her website, check out her stuff, and keep an eye on her blog, because she’s awesome.

Here are the photos that went up today!  I LOVE THEM!  What a perfect shot of joy in the arm after a long, tough week.

Thank you so much for everything, Jennifer!  We had a blast!!

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I quit.

I quit I quit I quit I quit.

I hate the class, I hate my classmates, I’m exhausted and overwhelmed and barely hanging on and now I’ve started to cry because I’m just so damned overwhelmed.

I so fucking quit. 

Except that I can’t.

I hate everything.

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