Guest Constance #19

[This is a post by a "guest Constance": someone who doesn't want her own pink apartment but just wants to do a one-time post. If you'd like to do a guest-Constance post, email it to me: constancethefirst at gmail dot com.]



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I've got a rant I can't post on my own blog (for obvious reasons). If you want to post at your pink apartment that would be cool. Any internet sympathy appreciated :(

Today hubby and I had our second appointment with the fertility doctor. After a year of trying to get pregnant with #2 it was pretty obvious that hubby's chronic illness was affecting fertility. I left appointment #1 with some optimism that we could get pregnant the old fashioned way (although that would be unlikely) but we would have excellent success with a (relatively) minor procedure, IUI. The doc also outlined options such as donor sperm and IVF and hubby dismissed both out of hand.

After 6 months of carefully timed attempts we visited again today and:

• I had to get weighed and am up 10 pounds.
• There was a med student sitting in on the visit (dang teaching hospitals) so we got to discuss erectile dysfunction in front of a (very nice but out of place) girl who appeared to be about 20
• The sperm situation is bad, bad, bad. Doc said IVF was pretty much it (or donor sperm).
• I started to cry (again, random med student in room)
• Hubby (and doctor) suggested that "perhaps I should just be happy with what I've got with our one healthy child". It was NOT the time for that message

Still teary thinking that we may not be able to give our child a sibling and not wanting to fight with the hubby about IVF or donor sperm. He has been AMAZING dealing with all the sucky tests and embarrassing conversations. I'm not mad at him. Just his disease.

I know, I know. There are women who've never been able to have even one child but, honestly, now I know what I'm missing and I can't decide if that's better or worse :( Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, Constance.

Discouraging Medication Updates

Odds-and-ends reports on the medications:

The temazepam (prescribed to try to get rid of the bad dreams I've been having from the Prozac) was 15 mg capsules, take 1-2. I tried 15 mg the first night, and 30 mg for each of the next two nights. No effect on dreams; made me disoriented in the night; and I was groggy in the morning. Fail. So I called my doctor's "med line" and left a message asking to try something else. I called on Friday the 9th, and the med line takes 2-3 business days, so I was hoping to have something new to try by mid-week the next week.

I tried taking an Ambien on the fourth night, to see what that would be like---but although it knocked me out very pleasantly (I hate the "trying to fall asleep" part, and Ambien eliminates it), I still dreamed that I'd been given a position of political power in India, and that this position came with a house, and so I toured the house and I saw every linoleum/carpet pattern and every knick-knack, and then a couple of the little kids got into the cat litter box and I had to clean them up while all my advisors/committee peeps waited for me in the parlor, and I saw myself in the mirror and my hair was dark brown (this was before I'd colored it). So Ambien fails too.

Meanwhile, I've been sleepy a lot during the day, maybe because of the dreams, but maybe because of the Prozac timing: the psychiatrist suggested taking it in the morning with breakfast. So I started taking it at bedtime instead of at breakfast, to see if that changes anything.

On Friday the 16th, I realized it had been a week and no action from the doctor, so I called again. This time a nurse called me back and said that temazepam takes 1-2 weeks to work. This seemed unlikely to me for an -azepam drug, which I think of as being as-needed and also as losing effectiveness as the person gets more accustomed to them, but she is the one who works as a psychiatric nurse and I am the one taking psychiatric meds, so I think she has better creds than I do.

That night I took a temazepam, 15 mg dose. In the middle of the night, one of the kids cried, and I launched out of bed as usual---and the world spun and the hope chest smacked me in the hip as the floor came up to smack me in the face. Mike got up to deal with the crying child while I sat there wondering who'd shoved the world, and then I moved my head and everything spun again. In the morning I was still so dizzy I couldn't walk without holding onto things and keeping my head steady and low. It wore off mostly by the time I was eating breakfast, and I had just slight dizziness periodically for the next few hours.

My theories:
1. Not a good idea to swallow the Prozac WITH the temazepam, both at the same time.
2. Temazepam may not be a good choice for me.

Furthermore, I still had awful dreams. I dreamed that people were tripping and falling, and that if they fell on a certain strip of sidewalk they would smash and die. There was a body on the sidewalk, all smashed. I was walking very carefully.

I also dreamed that I was looking for a bathroom, but all the bathrooms were unusable. I thought to myself, "Oh, hey! That means I'm dreaming, and that I need to pee! I'll wake myself up!" And I tried a bunch of stuff and nothing worked, and I felt panicked and trapped in the dream.

I also dreamed that we moved into a new house, and that a few days later plants started poking through all over the walls and ceilings. I dreamed that I went to stay in a motel when the plants started lunging for me, and our motel was attacked by a gang with guns who took all our valuable things including my medication, and that I was fretting because the psychiatrist was NEVER going to believe this and she'd think I was a total drug-seeker.

I didn't take the temazepam last night, and I didn't take the Prozac either. I'm going to switch my Prozac back to morning, and then after a few days I'll give the temazepam another shot. If it still makes me FALL DOWN, I'm calling it a FAIL.

I'm about to stop taking the Prozac entirely (I mean, under the supervision of the doctor---I know not to just quit it) if the dreams keep up. It's like seeing a double-feature scary movie every night, and I HATE scary movies.

Partner

Dear Mom,

The other day, when your daughter-in-law was talking to us about the labor and delivery information she received, she kept saying "labor partner," because that's what it kept saying in the pamphlet. And you snorted and rolled your eyes at the pamphlet and said, "How politically correct!"

I bit my tongue. I bit it because a few months ago, you and I had a fight. You'd said that a girl marrying another girl was the same as a girl marrying a goat or a doorknob, and although usually I know that you and I have very different viewpoints and that fighting about them isn't going to change either of our minds, I didn't think a person should let that kind of comment slide even if it was made by the person's mother, and so I asked you to please say you were just exaggerating for effect and weren't truly unable to see a difference between a relationship with another human being versus a relationship with an inanimate object.

And you would not back down, and then we had one of the only fights of our entire lives, with you eventually pleading tearfully that you didn't mean you thought GAY PEOPLE wanted to marry doorknobs, and me giving up. And it took such a long time for things to be easy between us again, and in fact I still sometimes feel uncomfortable, and so I'm not planning to correct you ever again on anything to do with homosexuality, because I've discovered it doesn't end up doing anything good or positive, and all it does is lead to one of the most unpleasant situations we've ever gone through, and I don't want to do that again.

But by not correcting you, I've set up a bad loop in my head where I imagine you saying it in that sarcastic, scoffing voice, and then I rehearse a fantasy reply, and I work on my fantasy reply for half an hour and get all worked up about it and focused on it, so that when one of the children asks me to help him with his homework I snap at him because he is INTERRUPTING my IMAGINARY FIGHT with YOU. And so I will correct you here, where you never are and will never see it, but where I can type it out and feel better about it.

The pamphlets say "partner" because many women choose a mother or sister or cousin or friend as a labor partner. Maybe the father of the baby is in service overseas, or maybe he's dead, or maybe his job interferes with his ability to be there, or maybe he faints at the sight of blood, or maybe he's an invalid, or maybe he's a jerk who left her when he found out she was pregnant, or maybe he's married to someone else and so can't attend the birth, or maybe he doesn't even know he's the father, or maybe he could be any one of a number of different men she had one nighters with. The pamphlets say "partner" because a woman might not be married to the father of her baby. They say "partner" because the woman's husband might not be the biological father of the baby. They say "partner" because sometimes the woman in labor is a surrogate, and the labor partner is the woman who will be the mother of the baby.

They say "partner" because it's the only word that works for all the possible situations, and there are a LOT of possible situations. Including, yes, the situation where the woman is gay, and her labor partner is her wife or her girlfriend. Or where the woman is gay, and her labor partner is her mother or her friend, because her wife/girlfriend is in service overseas, or dead, or a fainter, or an invalid, or a jerk, or married to someone else, or WHATEVER.

So it isn't "partner" because it's "politically correct" in the sarcastic air quotes sense. It's because it's correct in the literal sense, and because it would be really awkward to have to write a list of all the possible options in every sentence: "You should also pack a snack for your husband or boyfriend or father of your baby or friend or mother or sister or cousin or other relative or wife or girlfriend or mother of your baby or lesbian life partner. Also, if your husband or boyfriend or father of your baby or friend or mother or sister or cousin or other relative or girlfriend or wife or lesbian life partner wants to join you in the birthing tub, he or she should bring a swimsuit." "Partner" is so much easier, and is also correct.

Let's save for our next imaginary discussion the term "business partner," and how that too is innocent of the OMG GAYNESS ALERT!! associations.


Love, Constance

Bluff

There is a problem with the the plan of making Mike get The Snip. The problem is that Karly is absolutely right: I don't actually want him to get it. I hate the thought of there being NO CHANCE of him changing his mind.

This means my firm stance ("Nuh-uh, I'M not going to handle the birth control when YOU'RE the one who doesn't want a baby!") is a total bluff, made only in the hopes that the specter of The Snip would make him reconsider my generous offer.

I can't even hope for an accidental pregnancy, because of all the other medications I'm taking.

So......what? I'm going to keep taking The Pill AND I can't hope for an accident? Lose-lose.

She Swallowed the Bird to Catch the Spider

I saw my psychiatrist yesterday for a "checking in to see how things are going" appointment. So far, all the side effects of the Prozac have gone away, or else they've become so minor I don't care about them. Except one.

One of the thingies they use to determine if a medication's side effects are serious is if the patient wants to go off the medication because of them. So I was a little worried to have found a side effect that makes me want to stop taking the medication, because I really DON'T want to turn this into a "Guess which medication might work!" experiment, where we try one after another and I have to judge which is better/worse, A or B, B or C, D or A, or does it work to take A with E, or D with E, etc. It would be so great to have the very first medication we try be The One, even though I know that happens about as often as marrying the high school sweetheart: definitely it happens, and happens regularly---but it's not something to kick and flail about if it doesn't.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The side effect that made me want to go off the medication. It's the dreams. Most of the time they aren't nightmares, but they're always negative. The main problem is the EXTREME DETAIL, which can be tedious or threatening or exhausting. The other night I dreamed I was folding laundry, and I could see exactly what I was folding: a pair of green-khaki cargo shorts, a pair of brown cargo pants, a pair of denim shorts, etc. I could see the pockets and the shades of the denim and how worn they were. And also, I was folding the laundry even though there was a fire burning slowly somewhere in the house and I should have been leaving.

I also have dreams that are like movie plots. You know how a lot of dreams make sense while you're having them, but if you try to explain them in the morning it's like trying to make something out of cotton candy? These are not like that. They are exactly like movies, and usually suspenseful movies. In last night's dream, the problem was that time had started overlapping, so that if you were standing in a place where a brick had once fallen or a car had once driven by, you might get injured by that brick/car if it happened again at that moment. People were trying to work out warning systems, so there were markings all over the ground to indicate danger spots, but there were also a lot of blood stains serving as additional markings.

I wake up feeling distressed, whether it's laundry or blood stains. During the day I feel sleepy and want to take a nap. I dread bedtime because I don't want to see what movie is playing. These are not good things, and they're not going away with time.

I told the psychiatrist about it, and she prescribed me a sleeping pill: temazepam. She said she thought it would take away the dreams and let me get more rest, and that if I got more rest I'd feel better during the day, instead of feeling sad all the time like I am now. Well...okay. She's the expert. And also: I never turn down prescriptions for the kinds of medications that drug-seekers seek. I like owning them, even if I never take them.

I took one last night, and I was looking forward to it even though I was also apprehensive (OMG WHAT IF I GET DEPENDENT??). I have a bottle of Ambien from 2002, and occasionally I take one, and I love the way I just KNOCK OUT instead of lying awake hoping and pleading for sleep.

I did go out, but not as quickly as with Ambien. And I woke up twice feeling disoriented and strange, and Mike says I asked him intensely when our daughter had gone to sleep, and I remember I had trouble thinking of her name. And this morning when I woke up, I felt almost cross-eyed with tiredness: I'm on my second cup of coffee (normally I am hyper after one cup) and I'm just starting to feel baseline normal.

Furthermore, I still had the dreams. I dreamed the time-overlapping dream above, and also dreamed that I lived in a society where one group of people was experimenting with the other group, and that I was in the group being experimented on. I was waiting in line for one of the tests: an interviewer would ask why you wanted to join the other group, and depending on your answer you would be (1) added to the other group, or (2) allowed to return unharmed to the experimented-on group, or (3) shot. The guy in front of me was shot.

Lucky

Sweethearts. Sweet. Hearts. I've been trying for ages to think of how to explain how much your comments on the baby thing are helping me. I wouldn't have expected them to---er, not because I don't think you're capable of making excellent helpful comments, but because I wouldn't have thought comments would be able to help with this. And yet they DO. They DO help. I think of what you say, and I think of it OFTEN. Not only of your commiseration and understanding, which is like the "spend $100 on our very expensive make-up and we will give you a wee quarter-ounce jar of luxurious face moisturizer" my aunt gave me once, which I have been using for several years on only the most needy occasions---but also your advice and perspective and ideas, which HELP and WORK. I know, right? On the internet? But it's true! I'm still miserable, but I have so many comforting thoughts to turn to.

Anyway. Thanks. I am so grateful, and so lucky to have you.

Still With the Baby Thing

I'm sorry: this is more about the baby thing. It's safe to skip if you're sick of the subject: there's nothing new here.

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For about a week after I discovered the Clash of Assumptions (that I was assuming I could have another baby if I wanted one, and that Mike was assuming we both knew it was totally out of the question), there was a lot of talking. But it was almost 100% ME talking and Mike patting me. There was quite a bit of weeping, and I don't think he really knows what to do with weeping, even after more than eleven years of regular opportunities to practice. I came away with the feeling that he was unbudgeable: that he felt very, very sorry that I was sad, but that it was just absolutely out of the question.

On the last night of the week "we" "discussed" it, I made the (unspoken) decision to drop it, at least for awhile, because no progress was being made. I felt like a bird flinging myself at a glass window---and it felt like the window was saying, "Oh please, little birdie, don't hurt yourself anymore!" Pitiful on both sides!

Now I'm in either one of two basic minds about the issue. Sometimes I think, "Welp.* Good to have that settled. Now I can order one of those fundraising bricks with all our names on it, without worrying that someday in the future we'll feel strange about someone being left out. And back in November I was writing in my journal that I was feeling more and more as if five was a good stopping point, so part of this is clearly a problem with Being Told No."

And other times I feel DESPERATE. Like someone is taking a child away from me. Like someone else is making a decision for me, and like maybe I'll always feel like someone in our family is missing. Ug! It feels awful!

One of Mike's strengths is that he gets over bad moods very quickly and then moves on with no residual bad feeling. But this also means that when there's something I'm still feeling bad about, he's LONG SINCE moved on, barely remembering there even WAS any Unpleasantness. So recently I haven't been sure what to do when he asks me what's wrong---because I don't want to bring it up anymore (er, at least for now), and also because I don't want him to feel like I'm......what is it? That thing where a person sulks and sighs around and waits to be asked what's wrong so that they get an excuse to say their piece again, but with no return arguing allowed because they're just Expressing How They FEEL. I don't want him to think I'm doing that.

Probably what I'll do is what Jessica suggested in the comment section of the last post and tell him how I'm having a bit of a mid-life crisis over it. I think that gives more of a feeling of "I'm not trying to argue you to my side, I'm trying to get over to your side," while letting me keep things nice and communicatey instead of feeling like I shouldn't say why I'm sad because I don't want him to feel like I'm trying to push him. And I think the mid-life crisis aspect ("Wait, the childbearing time of my life is OVER??") is indeed a substantial part of the problem.



* Spelling of "welp" totally stolen from The New Girl. I plan to use it for the rest of my life, so you can give her mental credit each time.

Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels

The way Mike eats M&Ms (he SUCKS each one into his mouth like a vacuum cleaner so they click against his teeth, then chews with his mouth open: WHOOOF-click-chomp-chomp, WHOOF-click-chomp-smack) makes me afraid/hope he'll choke on one.

He's sick. Or quite possibly "sick." When I see him lying under the covers like a hibernating bear, his mouth flopped open to demonstrate how very sick he is, asking me in a weak, possibly dying voice if he can have another blanket, it makes me feel so much anger, I have to be extra solicitous with the blanket to do penance for the feelings.

I'm so sad and so angry about the "no more children" thing, I can hardly look at him. He seems to think that just because I've stopped talking about it, it means we're past it. I'm not. I don't know how long I'll feel this way, but I feel intensely about it. I feel like it's shoved me into a mid-life crisis: who am I? who are we? what are we doing here? what is next? what is left? what's the point? what is my second choice if I can't have my first choice? I feel post-menopausal. He says, "What's wrong?" like he's forgotten all about it, or thinks it's something small like one of us wanting a blue couch and one of us wanting a green one.