The Other Side of the Fence

Not long after my miscarriage my husband and I were running errands. We pulled up to a stoplight and watched an obese woman and her chubby child frantically scuffle across the crosswalk. The woman’s five-ish-year-old son seemed to resent being tethered to such a disaster . In the commotion, her parka shifted open and revealed something that made me and Eric simultaneously groan: her pregnancy. This disorganized, overweight lady yanked at her scowling son and growled at him to hurry up and she was pregnant. Eric said wryly, “I wonder if she derived her protein from legumes in order to conceive.” We both laughed hysterically at that moment and frankly, off and on since. It was the perfect comic relief to such a perplexing conundrum: how do some of us get pregnant and others don’t?  

Of course my commentary of this woman is judgemental. My knee-jerk reaction to most pregnant women these days includes an eye roll and lip curl. If I were more highly evolved I could recite the “correct” reasons for why I am not pregnant:  because God’s and my timing don’t often coincide. Because there is something I am meant to learn as I navigate this wilderness. Because it’s strengthening my marriage (it is!). But I am a lowly amoeba who is not highly evolved who still gains immense pleasure in making snap-judgements. Let’s face it, maybe the Crosswalk Crosser sat down with her doting husband one evening and discussed her maternal longing to expand their family. Maybe she really is eating protein-rich beans instead protein from hormone-pumped animals.  Maybe she was dragging her son across the street because they were late for the bus that would transport them to their volunteer shift at the local nursing home. But probably not. (See?? There I go judging again.)

My spheres of support overlap like a Venn Diagram. There are those of us who are trying to start families and those whose families are established. Somewhere in the middle, in the shaded area, reside those of us who have miscarried. We don’t belong to either category, wholly. I  draw support from both spheres, trusting my girlfriends who are moms when they tell me “it WILL happen,” and crying on the shoulders of girls like me who are desperate and yearning. It becomes excruciatingly difficult to adjust when a friend leaves one sphere to enter the other. They walk through the gate to the other side of the fence where children are skipping rope and other moms are sipping tea. They peak at us through the slats of the fence, rueful to leave us behind but elated to be standing on fertile ground.  

We all embarked upon the same journey, and there can be no fault placed upon those who arrived a bit earlier than the rest of us. For some reason their paths were free from detours and dead ends, unlike our own. Inevitably you reach that fork in the road, that stopping point where you bid your friends adieu and watch them walk under the balloon arch down the gilded path stretched before them. And suddenly your path seems darker than ever before. Your footing is loose and the buzzards circle high above. Of course you really never say goodbye. You meet for coffee and discuss baby names and attend baby showers and pin things to your Baby Board on Pinterest because you believe that your paths will meet up again one day. One day you will sit around a table and exchange stories. One day you will be offered a cup of tea. 

We plow forward arm-in-arm like a chorus line. We bolster each other’s hope when our own is gone. We pass smelling salts under each other’s noses so we can be jarred out of paralysis. And we keep going. 

Mutton Bustin'

I recently took my two nieces to the Stock Show in Denver to watch some Mutton Bustin’. It’s hilarious. These helmet-clad kiddos wrap their scrawny little arms and legs around the sheep and grasp onto fists full of the woolliest wool you’ve ever seen. Bareback they rocket out of the shoots wobbling atop the spastic sheep as they await their inevitable launch onto the dirt floor of the arena. They lay splayed until nervous Moms and rodeo clowns race to the rescue. As the dirt is brushed off and the kids are tugged to their feet, the crowd laughs and cheers. My 5-year old niece sat transfixed. She would have signed up right then and there if she could have. 

I sat watching the sheep. Before the event commences, two sheep are escorted to the far end of the arena. The competing sheep (and rider) then barrels through the gate making a beeline straight for the target of its sheep friends. Sometimes the competing sheep is so over zealous to reach its sheep friends that it plows right into them. This process repeats until there are over a dozen sheep standing idly in a flock waiting for, well, shepherding.  With the help of a little herder dog, the sheep are corralled back across the arena and safely into their pens. 

Sheep are long fabled to be simple-minded creatures. They are seemingly incapable of acting independently from one another. Their greatest defense is the flock itself. Safety in numbers. I have been roaming through the wilderness, sheep like. I do as I’m told, follow the instructions I’ve been given and trot along within the safety of my own flock.  

My friends who are also TTC (trying to conceive) and I have reached a point of desperation, but mostly in a laughable que sera sera kind of way. One day in January I took mental inventory of my TTC efforts: I was gobbling up prenatals, receiving hormone alignment in acupuncture, abiding by dietary additions/restrictions, charting, carrying around an orange fertility stone from a Tibetan aura reader, consuming copious amounts of pineapple cores (it contains bromelain, an enzyme known to aid in embryo implantation), and...oh, yeah...having sex. In conception-enhancing positions. All that work! All for naught. 

I have been escorted some ways and corralled in others and have stood idly on my own. I have realized how much I need a Shepherd. A Shepherd loves his sheep because they are dependent upon Him for survival. They learn His voice and trust the gentle nudge of His staff. They are counted at night and led beside still waters in the day. Maybe these sheep are onto something. Maybe they aren’t so simple-minded after all. 

Don’t get me wrong: I will still borrow my friend’s fertility monitor and further investigate ordering a case of sea urchin water. (It improves your vascular system!) But today I trust my Shepherd. Whatever will be will be. The future is not mine to see.      

Starting Monday

I remember those lazy summer days between my Sophomore and Junior years of High School. My best friend and I would lie on our stomachs on the sun-heated trampoline with our chins propped up on our hands. We talked about where we would apply to college, the degrees we would pursue and the boys we would meet. It seemed like a far-off place, like Oz. But we were so certain we would attend college that we were blasé about it: “Oh, OZ. Whatever; that’s in, like, two years.”  

I make about a thousand New Year’s Resolutions each year. Oftentimes I declare yearly mantras: Year of Renewal. Year of Productivity. I follow through with a small percentage of these efforts, but only because of my laziness or mismanaged time. I could fulfill each resolution if I tried. I was raised to work and try hard and that, if I did, there would be great reward. And so I work; I plan; I organize; I learn; I pursue. Ever upward. 

This morning as I write, it is Monday. I am coming off my usual indulgent weekend of brunches and Netflix. My Monday Morning motivation courses through my body and I am reborn. In the middle of February, I can start anew. My friends giggle at my impassioned “starting Monday” lead-ins. Starting Monday I am going to exercise more. Eat less. Drink more water. Avoid caffeine. Starting Monday, I will get back on the horse.

I am not accustomed to the utterance “It might  happen.” In this nebulous limbo of trying to conceive, I am unable to apply my “Starting Monday” philosophy of achieving precisely what I put my mind to. It makes me feel like I am failing at something. For the first time ever, there is no immediate reward to working and trying hard. There is no guarantee that I will automatically graduate into The Next Phase of Life. 

I am not good at failing. That does not mean that I am Rico Suave at everything I have attempted. I sat in the back row of my piano recitals nervously awaiting my turn, perfectly packaged in dresses and bows but trembling like those annoying sweater-wearing lap dogs that shiver 24-7. I thumbed out my Rachmaninoff on my lap and heaved inward and outward sighs of distress. I slid off my chair into a pool of fear and self-loathing. And I was in the company of 7 year olds! Whose recital pieces were Old MacDonald and Chopsticks! In a Junior High School gymnasium! Where the Moms elbowed the Dads in the ribs when their heads bobbed in boredom! And yet the possibility of failure taunted me. Tremulously I would perform, rigid in the first few measures, but fluid thereafter. Though imperfect, I pounded out those notes and finished the song. The applause was uproarious. 

It has struck me that I cannot rehearse for this fertility symphony. There is nothing I can do in my own power to play these notes just right. (“Yes there is!” you say. And I will get to that in another entry.) I am looking to the Great Conductor, my brow furrowed in wistfulness, awaiting the music to the song of my life. I walk one foot in front of the other down the yellow brick road with the only thing spurring me on being the Light that shines just over the hill. 

Oma Says Relax

This morning I am drinking regular coffee. Caffeinated, inorganic, chemical-cream laden, hotel lobby coffee. It has become sort of a routine: spend half of my month diligently abstaining from the substances I tested weak to in acupuncture (avoiding coffee being undoubtedly the cruelest admonishment), so my pure, unadulterated body could better create a pure, unadulterated embryo. But when no such embryo is generated, I indulge in my singular cup of tepid, Best Western coffee. Some consolation.

Acupuncture has been recommended to me several times over the last year. It is this perfect thing that bridges Western and Eastern medicine, not as exotic as tribal dancing and not as sterile as popping fertility drugs. My mom is an RN; my brother is almost finished with school to become and RN and I have watched more Scrubs episodes than I care to admit. I am a former asthmatic who was Albuterol-puffed back to life. I will demand epidurals. I will kiss every ilegibly scrawled prescription for antidepressants that comes my way. Ultimately, it was the palpable fear and panic behind the eyes of my well-meaning friends who stammered, “well, there’s always acupuncture??”  that got me through the door. So let the poking and prodding (both literal and metaphysical) begin. 

After a comprehensive two-hour session of applied kinesiology and allergy elimination, I was given The News. I have stong ovaries (yay!) but there are certain substances that diminish the success of their functioning: Gluten, which means I stab all the lifeless potatoes on my breakfast plate and sulk as my husband bites into his luxuriously doughy bagel. Soy. (It contains estrogen {?} and incidentally, it is in everything. Oh, and get this. There is gluten in soy sauce. I might as well be sipping absynthe). Chocolate. (I mean, c’mon.) And my beloved Coffee. And those are just the bold-print items. Of course there are all the obvious ones like sushi, alcohol, cold cuts and unpasteurized cheeses that women who are TTC (trying to conceive) should steer clear of. 

At this stage in the game, people are interested in my vital stats: I am 34 years and 5 months old; my husband and I have been TTC for over a year; we have one miscarriage (M/C) under our belts; we are continually asking What’s Next. I have used ovulation prediction kits (OPKs) and have charted my cycles for many, many months. I can tell you my most recent Day After Ovulation (DAO) as easily as I can recall when I last brushed my teeth. I know more about Cervical Mucus (CM) than I ever cared to and am frankly peeved that I can speak the vernacular to this cryptic language. It means I am IN it. I am not--nor can I ever again be-- a flitty girl who giggles the admission “it’s so funny!  My husband and I weren’t even trying and POOF! We’re preggers!” Because my husband and I are trying. Deliberately, tirelessly trying,  Except that we are tired.  

I started one of my more recent cycles on New Years Eve. My plan was to get home from work that morning and take a pregnancy test in the support of my mutually hopeful hubby. I believed I was pregnant. But I spotted on the plane. I had to play the role of Plastic Stewardess and say goodbye to all the cute holiday families with their even cuter cherub babies in tow while taking deep breaths to stave off the crocodile tears. I sobbed and hiccupped and beat my steering wheel the entire drive home and when I walked through the door,my tear streamed face was the only indicator my husband needed to infer that there would be no need to test that month. I sent an overly dramatic but legitimately raw text message to my nearest and dearest containing the words they probably read through squinting hopeful eyes each month, the BEEP of the incoming text triggering a Pavlovian stomach quiver: We are not pregnant. 

My Mom talked to my 93 year old Oma later that day and told her that it was not shaping up to be a Happy New Year for the Paddock household. My Oma: Mother of 6, Oma to 14 and Great-Oma to 18, in her sweet, German accent reduces her age-old wisdom to one simple phrase: Tell them to have fun and relax. Weeelllll....No can do, Oma. But I am trying. I will get there. I AM getting there. And today, along with your earnest guidance, my coffee is helping me clamber along.