A letter to the clinic...

Back in March I wrote a letter to our IVF clinic about my endometriosis and how I felt about the fact that they didn’t investigate whether I had it or not, and that if they had, and it had been treated, we may well have our child with us right now.

I didn’t post it!

The letter was teaming with anger and name calling…not exactly the most productive way to get the clinic to understand us and our situation. I meant to write that version of the letter exactly as I did as I needed to vent completely before I could write a letter that could actually be sent to the clinic.

I have written that letter now and emailed it to them last week. It’s below for you to read if you wish - just double click on the picture to open it so that you can actually read it!

Oh – and to date – I have heard nothing from the clinic…not even an acknowledgement that they have received the letter and that it will be given to the person to whom it was addressed.

I wait with anticipation as to what they will say…if they reply that is!

Counselling and stoicism…

Earlier this year I was considering going for counselling after my operation in January. This was due to the surgeon finding endometriosis, which very likely could have contributed to my infertility but was something the IVF clinic we went to never looked into, let alone mentioned. I was feeling very angry and let down and the grief about not having children reared up violently.

I haven’t gone to counselling.

This time I found, after a bit of time, I didn’t feel that I needed it. I found that I have moved through the grief and pain (although it did rise again after my last operation in June) and have come to a point where the anger is not overwhelming and I no longer feel guilty that I let our children down.

It was only since losing Ari that I realised that the need for counselling had gone. This wasn’t because I thought that I needed counselling after losing Ari, but rather that I realised that I know things about myself that I didn’t even know I knew – how’s that for a mouthful!

I used to be a positivity nut – and when things weren’t going my way or I thought they were unfair I would try to control everything to make the situation good again, or I would look for a very good reason as to why things weren’t going my way. I didn’t recognise back then that what I wanted was for things to go my way – I just thought that because I was thinking positively about certain aspects of life that they would happen the way I envisaged.

Even after we couldn’t have children I had this idea of how life was going to be for Kirby and me and that was the way it was going to be. If we couldn’t have children then surely this new vision of life would become a reality? It would be completely unfair if it didn’t!

It didn’t. Well, not completely – things have happened that we hoped for, and things have happened that we wish hadn’t.

My mother-in-law said to me the other day that there is something different about me this year – that I seem more settled in myself. And that is how I feel.

Life has its ups and its downs – I have very little control over it really. I do what I can do and then the rest happens due to events, people – a combination of things really.

I have learnt to accept that – most of the time! The night before Ari died, when he was in the emergency vet overnight and we knew he was very sick, I said to Kirby that it was quite possible that Ari might not come home. Kirby was surprised, I think, as normally I wouldn’t even want to entertain that idea. But, it was a real possibility, even though I hoped that what was wrong with him would be something like a blockage in his digestive system that an operation could fix.

I don’t believe that my “negativity” contributed to the outcome. How could it? Ari already had lung cancer and was going to die. I didn’t create it overnight and change what was wrong with him from something that could have been fixed to cancer. If I had the kind of power to change situations there is so much I would change in the world and I would be a god! And, Ari would still be here because I would definitely have made it so.

So, I’m not sitting here with my thoughts and emotions constantly wondering why it all happened and how unfair it all is and that life is over. Of course, I am grieving – which involves feeling sad, angry, guilty, asking why, etc. but it is a healthy grieving, not an unhealthy grieving. I hope that makes sense.

Stoicism is something I have been reading about lately – once again thanks to Oliver Burkeman! Being stoic – as it is defined today – was not what it originally was. Stoicism is a philosophy and one I am keen to learn more about. One of my favourite quotes from Marcus Aurelius (2^nd century AD) is:

“The cucumber is bitter? Put it down. There are brambles in the path? Step to one side. That is enough without also asking: “How did these things come into the world at all?””

I’ve still got a long way to go in understanding Stoicism, but it seems to be a philosophy that quite possibly will appeal to me the more I delve into it. Or maybe it won’t be. I don’t know and that’s quite okay.

So, with the endometriosis and with Ari and with not having children – I can grieve in a healthy way, and wonder why as part of that grieving, but that is it. I don’t have to keep on asking why and constantly dwell on it and be angry all the time.

The interesting thing about Stoicism is that the recognition of a situation doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything about it – if someone is bullying you, you wouldn’t sit there and say “well this is how it is” and leave it at that. You would say “this is how it is – now I recognise this and I will do something about it.” Perhaps it is in that recognition of the situation that the clarity of whether there is anything that needs to be done occurs, and if so, what that might be? What do you think?

Therefore, I will still be writing to the IVF clinic to ask for an explanation about why they didn’t look into endometriosis – because I believe this will be a healthy thing for me to do and may prevent them from failing someone else in the future as they did us. After that, whether I get a satisfactory answer or not is out of my control, and I will leave it be.

Like mud...

The Australian show “Four Corners” covered IVF this week – I’ve yet to watch it as I want to sit down properly and be able to focus on it. But, the following quote was in the synopsis on the Four Corners’ website.

"Embryos are like mud. You keep putting embryos on the wall of the uterus, eventually one will stick." Fertility Doctor

Yeah – you read right. Apparently our precious little embryos were like mud.

Okay – so I know what this doctor was getting at – they put an embryo in and they hope it will stay. But the analogy shows a lack of understanding and compassion as to what we go through. My embryos were real children to me and still are – they weren’t mud.

I actually felt shocked by this comment and began to feel upset as though this doctor was personally attacking my children (our embryos). I wanted to find out which doctor said this and call them and blast them into realising that they were stupid and uncaring and just plain wrong.

But, instead I tried practicing something I learnt recently – I took a few minutes to determine if there was a judgement that I was making that was leading me to be excessively angry. There was – I made the judgement that nobody should ever make comments like this.

The reality is that there will always be comments such as this. I can’t change that.

I also made the judgement that I needed to do something directly about this comment and make that doctor feel as bad as possible. But I don’t.

These realisations took a bit of the heat out of my anger.

Then I was able to think more clearly about if and what I could do about it.

And now I’m writing this entry to say to anyone who reads it – please consider what you say about IVF, our babies, and us, because words can hurt.

That’s all I need to do for now.

Back to it...

I knew it had been a while since I’d written an entry here, but I didn’t realise that it has been quite so long!

The last month and a half have been busy with a family wedding and work and so on. I’ve also been unwell. The pain in my side has become worse and I will be going back in for surgery in mid-June to see if that can be resolved. More of my beautiful fish died – it seems there has been a spike in pH in the pond which is now fixed. I’ve been sleeping a lot and have kind of been a bit of a hermit regarding my writing and this blog.

I’ve had a few things to sort out in my mind before I felt ready to write again.

In regards to my last entry, one of my readers asked about endometriosis and what the symptoms are. There are many symptoms, and one of the best places I’ve found to read about them is on the Jean Hailes website, and the video Understanding endometriosis is really informative and I’ve shared that with my family to help them understand what endometriosis is all about (it's the third resource from the bottom of the page).

Last weekend there was an article written by (yet another) a woman who had gone through IVF and talks about how difficult infertility is, has ended up having a child, and is telling the rest of us not to give up because “you know, miracles DO happen. I have one sleeping upstairs right now.”

I still find articles such as this frustrating. Really – who is this woman to tell us that miracles happen? How often, really, do miracles happen?

Well – at least this woman is trying to be positive and encouraging. On the flip side of the coin, some of the comments on the article were just down right cruel toward people who are struggling to have children. It’s fine to have a difference of opinion, but why be nasty about it?

One woman suggests that our wanting children is the same as wanting any “commodity” and that we have some kind of sense of entitlement to children, and from her “Buddhist” perspective desiring to have our own children is an EGO-TRIP and will only end up with our suffering. Many people pointed out to her that compassion is one of the key principles of Buddhism, but she didn’t seem to get that point. I had an interesting debate with her, but eventually gave up – there’s no point trying to talk with someone who just wants to be right.

Oh – and she also claims to have infertility envy. Yeah – you read right.

To be honest – just thinking about what she, and some others, wrote brings up the angry wild beast in me. I won’t share with you the names I want to call her that are rolling around in my head – but I’m sure you can imagine what they might be. I’ll just say that she’s a great big meanie-head.

Why am I sharing this? Because there are going to be times when people are going to say cruel things to us – we who want children so much but can’t have them. It’s like we deserve the judgement and criticism for wanting children more than people who don’t particularly care about kids, have them anyway, and then treat them like dirt.

It’s getting easier with time to let these remarks and comments go without latching onto them, but given what I’ve recently been going through the comments by this woman really stung. I felt fragile and anxious and stuck.

Ironically, it was thinking about this woman’s version of Buddhism that got me back to feeling settled again.

For some reason I wanted her to be compassionate to me, but she wasn’t being compassionate. I made it my mission to get her to understand my perspective, but she wouldn’t. There came a point where I could either go crazy trying to change the way things were or I could let it all go. So, I let the anger go and watched it float on by – and I still am letting it go and float on by whenever the anger about what she said arises in my mind.

I like to think of Buddhism in terms of a river. Your self is sitting on the bank of a beautiful clear river and all different leaves float by from all different types of trees. You try to control them by creating a dam, but that just stops the flow of the river and all the leaves come together and form an indistinct sludge. You try to capture the leaves using a scoop, but that just stirs up the river and the clear water becomes so murky that you can no longer see the bottom. You try to push all the leaves away from you with your hand, but they just stick to you instead. Eventually you learn that all you need to do is watch the leaves float by.

All of the leaves represent different emotions – anger, sadness, happiness, love, guilt, joy, satisfaction. None of them are seen as “better” or more “worthy” than others and none are meant to be latched onto or pushed away. They are what they are – you see them, you feel them, you appreciate them for what they are, you may even act on them, and then you let them go.

This is what I try to do with my emotions – but it’s not always easy because I’m human!

The anger comes around, I see it, I feel it, I act on it if I am able and it would be healthy to do so, and then I let it go.

I’m going to leave it there, except to suggest that, if you are interested in a book that I have learnt a lot from, have a look at “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking” by Oliver Burkeman.

I just realised that I mentioned this book in April last year – so you can be assured it’s a favourite of mine!

The letter...

I went to see my doctor not long after my last blog entry. And my apologies for the time between entries! I’ve a couple of big projects to do and I haven’t been feeling too brilliant – although much better now.

Back to the doctor. She was amazing. I told her how I was feeling and that I wanted to go and see a counsellor. She agreed it would be a really good idea and we worked out who would be best for me to go and see. My doctor also offered to spend time, right there and then, talking about the endometriosis and how I was feeling about it all.

I won’t go into all of it, but she basically validated what I was feeling – which was very important as I now realise. To have someone who doesn’t have a personal link to me (as family and friends do) say that my thoughts and feelings are rational was so comforting – I’m not crazy! At least not on this issue…

My doctor suggested that I write a letter to the IVF clinic that we went to and let it all go. Write exactly what I feel and say exactly what I want to say – let it rip and use all the angry words I want to use without any holding back. And then, if I wanted to later, I could write it in a more appropriate way and actually send it to the IVF clinic manager.

I wrote the letter about a week after seeing my doctor. It was really therapeutic. I started off with my incredibly angry words, and then through the letter ended up claiming myself and my healing back.

I have decided to share the letter with you as it shows the thought process that I went through while writing it – from unbelievable anger at the clinic to claiming my own self again. I have blacked some of the letter out due to the words not being necessarily appropriate!

I will still be writing to the IVF clinic formally and seeing a counsellor, but writing this letter now has been an important and valuable first step in working through these messy emotions.

It's how I feel...

It’s been just over a week since my day surgery. It went well – except that I ended up staying in hospital overnight as the surgeon had to do a bit more to me than originally anticipated.

It turns out I have endometriosis, so the surgeon cleared that up, my blood pressure dropped, I was in more pain than I certainly anticipated, and I was admitted. Fortunately I only stayed one night and was able to come home. I am so thankful for Ashford Hospital here in South Australia – the best medical care I could have hoped for.

For the first few days I was limited as to what I could do – in other words it was bed or the couch. And the worst was not being able to have my cats on my lap and not being able to pat my dogs or play with them. I’m feeling much better now and slowly being able to do more and more.

At least I’m feeling better physically.

Mentally?

Spiritually?

I’m struggling big time. It changes from day to day – Wednesday was a not so good day, yesterday was a good day, today is a bad day.

It’s not the fact that I’ve had an operation that has forever taken the choice of trying for a baby again away from me (which is something I have accepted). The reason I am struggling is that I have endometriosis and despite going through IVF and seeing a gynaecologist back around that time with symptoms associated with endometriosis (like infertility – duh!) nobody even bothered to investigate it as a possibility.

If they had – if they only had – it might have been addressed and we might have our child here with us right now. I am really struggling to come to terms with this.

I know that there is a possibility that I still wouldn’t have become pregnant, but the fact that further investigation was not done at the time is just beyond my comprehension. Why didn’t they check? I had the fatigue, I had the pain in my abdomen and lower back, I had the painful period cramp, I had had miscarriages, and I damn well couldn’t have a baby. What went wrong? You know I even recall them saying that I didn’t have it as they couldn’t see it on any scans – well guess what – the only way to truly know if someone has it is to do a laparoscopy (like I had last Thursday).

I am so furious. I have tried not to be angry and to “let it go” knowing nothing will change, but that isn’t working so much and I feel like I am being eaten up inside.  Instead I am going to let the anger and grief and whatever other emotions occur have their space, and deal with them instead of trying to bottle them up. I will cry, rage, talk, meditate, just “be” out in nature, play with my dogs, hug my nephew, throw tantrums, consider how blessed I am, tell Kirby I love him, and swear my head off.

But I’m not going to pretend I’m fine.

That would be a lie – because I’m not.

One thing that I know will help me now is to say this to you who are having trouble having a baby – if you even remotely suspect that you have endometriosis, stand up for yourself and demand that it be investigated. And don’t let them put you off by saying your scans don’t show any signs of it – insist on a laparoscopy.

And please, please, please – if you do go through the tests and find you do have endometriosis, and it is treated, and you end up with that miracle in your arms – please let me know. It would help to mend my heart to know that something good might come from sharing my experience with you. And photos too please! Lots of photos!

My love, as always, to all my readers, and thank you for your endless support.

Stuck in a rut...

When I started this blog I made the conscious decision that I would be honest in sharing the different things I experienced – including emotions and thoughts that might be considered negative.

Well – a few weeks ago I had a meltdown. I was going to write about it just after it happened, but instead I have waited until my thoughts have become clearer and the emotions I felt are not so intense.

The instigator to this meltdown was hearing one too many times from mums that their lives were never-ending chores, and day after day they had to do the same stuff. Clean the bathroom, go to work, and feed the kids...being busy, busy, busy…

It’s true that the lives of parents can be insanely busy, and that days seem to go past in a blur of doing the same things again and again. But, just because I don’t have children does not mean that my life does not do the same. The never-ending dishes, the floors that need sweeping, the bills that have to be paid.

Some might say that I have it easier as I have more time than parents do, although this is, in some cases debatable, given I have numerous health issues that have made me exceptionally tired a lot of the time (although recent good news is that there might be an answer to my tiredness!!).

The contest between who has the most to do is not really the point of this blog entry. The meltdown came to the fore when I had an adult tantrum and cried and asked Kirby how parents could really say that their lives were the same day after day when every day they get to see their children develop and grow a little bit more, and they get to watch as their kids learn new skills and become their own people. “At least they get something out of it! They have no idea!” I remember saying as tears rolled down my cheeks.

If anything – I said to Kirby in far more angry words than I am writing here – we are the ones that have the same drudgery day after day because we do all the housework and the bill paying and this and this and this, for what?

Is that the truth though? After some reflection I realised it is not – or at least it doesn’t have to be. Kirby and I can choose to have the same day over and over again and get stuck in a rut of our own making – or we can choose to seek new activities and adventures.

We can also choose to watch with delight, wonder, and interest as, not only the children in our lives, but all the people we care about and ourselves develop and grow and have adventures and become more authentic (all of which never stops as long as we live).

Just in the past few months:

• One of my nieces has achieved top grades in maths (we definitely do not share that talent – one plus three equals eleven, right?)
• Another of my nieces has been put up a level in swimming (she is part dolphin just like her Dad!)
• Our nephew, now five years of age, created a card game for us to play (I love his imagination!)
• Our friends have been on a holiday throughout Europe (I can’t wait to see their photos!)
• Kirby has done up another BMX bike (before and after photos below)
• And Kirby and I have both started mountain biking (I fell off and bruised my leg the first time I tried it!)

Before...

After...

Even just writing those four examples has put a smile on my face and a sense of excitement in my heart.

Life doesn’t have to be a rut if we make it an adventure!

On being invisible...

Once again I haven’t written a blog entry for a while – due to bits and pieces in life and due to wallowing in self-pity for the past few weeks (I admit it! I did!).

Part of that wallowing and that “It’s not fair!” attitude that I’ve had has been related to what I believed was an increase in advertising aimed at, and other media (such as on-line groups to share  recipes and household tips, and opportunities to review products such as cars) reserved for, women who are mums.

I have been in tears. I have felt as though I am not worth anything because there appeared to be so many aspects of life that I cannot participate in due to not having children, and where I am invisible. It seemed that the world was pushing a toothpick into a wound that was almost healed, and it hurt.

I became particularly angry at one post on a car manufacturer’s Facebook page where “real” mums were providing reviews on a new model of car that had just been released. I posted on the page asking what was with all the reviews by mums for seemingly every product on the market.

Well I sure got it from the mums... How dare I say that mums shouldn’t do reviews – although that wasn’t what I meant – I was just wondering why the views of people who weren’t mums was being overlooked. Some of the mums pointed out that they have special criteria, as mums, that they require from cars – such as safety, space, easy to drive, fuel efficiency, etc.

Ow! There goes the toothpick jabbing my wound just a little bit more. My next response on the page  was that these criteria were equally important to me and to many other non-mum people – such as grandparents, dads, people with fur-kids, uncles, aunts, friends of people with kids, and even people who have nothing to with kids at all. After all, who wants a car that isn’t safe, doesn’t have enough space for their lifestyle, is horrible to drive, and costs a lot of money to run?

This, too, did not go down well. How dare I suggest that my needs in a car were the same as that of a mum?

The toothpick…well…

I realised something important and decided to pull out the toothpick and put a strong bandage over my wound.

It was a sudden epiphany that the opinions of those particularly mums was completely inconsequential to me. I know who I am. I know what I like and what I don’t regarding many different products. I care about my nephews and nieces and their safety – just as much as their mums do. And I have the choice to not allow the mum-focussed marketing to hurt me. It doesn’t actively hurt me – I hurt myself. I let the toothpick in – and often the toothpick is one I selected for myself.

And most mums – and especially the ones that are my friends and family – don’t think of me as unimportant. They see me as I am, without children, and seek my company and want to know what I think about all sorts of things.

I am not invisible to them. And that is what matters.

Baby girl...

In the past month my cousin has given birth to her and her husband’s first child – a baby girl.

And I have been thrown around in a sea of emotions in a way that hasn’t happened in quite some time. I was on edge even before my little second cousin was born.

I had dreams about holding my own baby daughter, and one night I awoke in a panic because I reached out and couldn’t find her crib at the side of our bed.

Another night I sat bolt upright in bed and said aloud “I want to try again.”

I felt angry that we didn’t have a child that would be an elder cousin to the new little baby that was about to be born. I wanted our child to be there to play with her and cuddle her and show her how to get away with as much mischief as possible.

I wondered what it would be like to feel life growing inside of me, to feel those kicks and movements, and to give birth and experience that pain that would bring our child into the world.

Would our cousins’ baby and ours share any features like my cousins and I do? Perhaps eye shape or hair colour or love of animals or interests in music or art or who knows – and we will never know.

In writing that last sentence I have just realised something. We will never know, but I will think about it from time to time and I like the thought of that. As our new baby cousin grows and starts showing her own personality (although I suspect she is already doing that…), and we learn what she likes and what she doesn’t, I will think about what interests our baby might have shared with her.

Of course our baby would no longer be a little child – they would be seven years old if the second round of IVF had worked (where we had an embryo put into my womb) or six years old if the third round had worked. I love the thought of our child, our nephew (almost five years old), and the new baby spending time together. I think my cousins’ little girl would have been quite well looked after and spoilt by her two older boy cousins.

I don’t really know if our baby would have been a boy, but I always thought that it would be – our little Jacob Arthur, Samuel Kirby, or Caleb Maxwell. It’s odd, therefore, that I dreamt about having a daughter before my cousins’ baby was born, but my cousins did know their baby was going to be a girl before she was born and I guess my subconscious decided that in my dreams we would have a girl as well.

I felt guilty, at first, about some of the feelings of anger and, I’ll say it, jealousy I had, but I have remembered, yet again, that it is quite normal to have them. And it is also true that, at least for me, I will, from time to time, feel let down by life and sad about not having our own child.

I want you all to know that as well, and that way when you experience those emotions that you feel are wrong or even shameful perhaps you will recognise that they are actually quite normal and then not be so hard on yourself – as I have been somewhat hard on myself lately.

I met my little baby girl cousin just over a week and a half ago, and to say I am smitten is a complete understatement. I am completely and totally head over heels in love and besotted…which I think might be quite obvious in the photo below…

Me and my new cousin...

An unwanted child...

There has been a story in the news this past week about a woman in Sydney, Australia, who dumped her newborn baby boy into a drain pipe. She intentionally dropped him into the drain, where there was a 2.5 metre drop, expecting that the fall would kill him. The baby survived for six days (nobody knows how!) and was rescued after passing cyclists heard his cries. He has been taken to hospital and is reportedly stable.

The “mother” is being charged with attempted murder – and yet it seems has been allowed to name the baby.

The Department of Family and Community Services has said the act was one of desperation.

I know I don’t know the facts and maybe I’m being overly unsympathetic – but there is no justification, no circumstance, and no level of desperation that makes what this woman did anything but evil. I know there are such things as postnatal depression, but what she did – which was premeditated and with full understanding that the baby would likely die – is inexcusable.

You only have to look at the location of the drain and the structure of the drain to know that this was not a spur of the moment, impulsive act. She had to go to the drain which is quite isolated off a major road. Once there it would not have been easy to put the baby into the drain given that its entry was low down and quite small.

Why, why, why can someone like this have a baby and I can’t?

Most of the time, now, I am okay with not having a baby. I have a good life and I pursue all sorts of interesting things and I spend amazing times with the children we have in our lives. Then something like this comes about and I cry for hours wondering whether there is any fairness in the world at all.

And why should she have any right, whatsoever, to name this tiny, precious, baby boy?

God?

Got any answers?

I didn’t think so.

New Story from Sydney Morning Herald

Convoluted arteries and crowded nerves…

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been as regular with my blog posts lately. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about you!

In the last couple of months I have been diagnosed with a condition called Hemifacial Spasms (HFS). My neurologist, before he saw the spasms first hand, thought they might be a form of epilepsy, but I actually had them while I was in an appointment with him and he immediately recognised them as HFS.

So, what is it? It is a rare condition where an artery in the base of my brain is pressing on nerve/s that control facial movements on the left side of my face. The pressure is making the nerves misfire and I am having spasms on one side of my face. At first they were only every few weeks and were minor (i.e. a small twitch near my mouth, kind of like an Elvis impersonation, for a few minutes at a time), but they have steadily gotten worse in the past couple of months and now I am having them most days, they are contracting the entire left side of my face (and sometimes go over to the right side a bit too), and they can last up to a couple of hours.

Initially I had Botox (yes – I was a celebrity for a while!) to try and stop the spasms, but that hasn’t worked and it left me with the side effects of not being able to open my left eye completely and of having facial droop.

The next option, one that is scary and has risks, is to have surgery. I won’t go into that right now as I have to talk to a neurosurgeon to find out more. I do know the recovery time is lengthy and can be very difficult. Activities after the surgery can be quite limited and are gradually reintroduced over a period of four to six weeks.

Anyway, the spasms make me very tired and I am having trouble getting a lot of things done at the moment. But, I promise I will do blog entries whenever I am able to.

I have been thinking lately that looking after children would be very difficult after the surgery. In some ways it is better that I don’t have children if I have the surgery, but that makes me sad. I am sad to think that not having children could be a benefit in this circumstance.

I also feel angry sometimes. I could have much worse health conditions to be sure, but I sometimes wonder why I have HFS, as well as major depression, as well as a rare skin condition, as well as epilepsy, as well as unexplained hot feet at night that stop me from sleeping, as well as infertility. It just doesn’t seem fair – but then who said life was fair…

Well – that’s enough of me sharing my despondency.

I will finish on a lovely note. I was outside by my fish pond having a cry the other day and my dog, Ari, came to comfort me. Sometimes pets make the best therapists.

One of my three boys...Ari...

Leaving baby behind...

There have been two stories that are similar to each other in the news in the past two months. I have cried at reading both and I have felt a powerful anger while reading both.

The first is about a little boy named “Gammy”. Gammy is the twin of a little girl called Pipah, but they don’t live in the same house, or even in the same country – thanks to their selfish “parents”. An Australian couple used a surrogate from Thailand to have their twins for them. Pipah was born healthy, but Gammy was born with Down Syndrome.  So his “parents” left him behind in Thailand. 

Little Gammy has been adopted by his surrogate mother and will be raised in a loving home. I have to wonder what is in store for Pipah – will her “parents” expect her to be a certain way? What happens if she gets sick? Will they give her up too? Will they think she is not good enough if she doesn’t meet their expectations and standards? The Thailand story...

The second story, which came out this week, is about another Australian couple who used a surrogate in India. They had twins – a boy and a girl. They brought the girl home, but left the boy in India. They didn’t want him because they already had a boy. It seems they may have sold the baby to another family in India, but nobody really seems to know. The India story...

I wonder how many other times children have been abandoned by their Australian “parents” in other countries because they weren’t wanted.

Frankly these people make me sick to my stomach. I do not understand how any parent could leave their child behind. How could anyone decide their own child is not good enough or does not meet some ridiculous criteria?

A couple only wants a baby of a certain gender. Responsibility is withdrawn for a child because they have a medical condition. These type of people do not deserve to be nor should be called parents. They are pathetic.

And it makes me angry that such people have children when there are so many of us who cannot. We would have loved our babies no matter what because we know how precious they are. We would never have left them behind.

How could they?

Realization and my weasel…

The subconscious mind is powerful. It can bring up old feelings and pain without actually letting you know that this is what it is doing. You feel anxious, sad, unsure, and sometimes angry, but you don’t know why.

That is how I was feeling last week. All I wanted to do was run to get away from the feelings of inadequacy and pain that I was experiencing. I couldn’t picture how I could be happy.  And I didn’t know why. Life is good – I have a wonderful husband, I have the opportunity to follow my dreams of being a full-time writer, I have amazing friends and family, and I have just been to Thailand and fulfilled a dream.

Last week I felt quite pathetic. I had intended to experience life with more gratitude and simplicity, to remain inspired by what I experienced in Thailand, but last week I felt far from where I hoped I would be when I came home in May.

One of the dogs from BLES died in the last month, but I only just heard about his death this week. The news that the dog had died opened the way for the realization that my subconscious had been pushing something important up and I just wasn’t receptive to it. July is a wonderful month as it is the month in which Hugo was born. But, it is also the month of anniversaries of some losses. It is the month in which my beautiful Nan died three years ago and it is the month, six years ago, that we started IVF with the expectation that we would become parents. It’s true that no embryos were created from the first round of IVF, but with the cancellation of that cycle came the beginning of the death of hope that came more real with each cycle.

Anniversaries of deaths, in particular, bring with them memories and feelings about other losses that have happened as well. One of the most obvious is the loss of my cat, Minerva, just this past May. There is also the memory of my cousin who died in a motorcycle crash when I was eighteen and he was twenty one. 

There are other losses throughout my life, just like there are in everyone’s lives.

And, so, onto the weasel…

I have a weasel that turns mutant sometimes. Okay, not really, but I do have a part of me that when I am feeling melancholy and unsure seems to sense my weakness and rushes over to me to make sure I know just how useless and horrible I am. That is what was happening last week.

I felt fragile and with it came the thoughts of “you are stupid”, “you can’t do anything so why try?”, “anything you do will fail”, and the big one – “you can’t even have a child.” There was also one that relates to my concern that some treasured friendships seem to be falling away and I have no idea why.  Communication from their side has stopped. So, there were also the thoughts of “people don’t really like you”, and “you are not likeable – people just pretend to like you.”

I used to fight these feelings. I put all my effort into trying to overcome them, but all that happened was that the thoughts got stronger. There was no way I could defeat these kinds of torments and when I failed it just gave more ammunition for the thoughts that I am useless and no good.

I now have a strategy that I use where I imagine that there is a weasel in my mind. Normally it is well behaved and even useful, but every now and then it goes crazy and becomes a mutant that pours forth negative and unfounded judgments about me. If I try to make it go away completely it just gets more out of control. I have now given it an imaginary place where it gets a “time out” until it calms down. I imagine it as kind of a dog bed in the corner of the room.

This really does work for me. It’s like dealing with a child that is having a tantrum. I give it space, I don’t engage in its attempt to bring me down even though it keeps trying, and I ignore it until it calms down. Sometimes I even thank it after my thoughts return to being healthier.

Why would I thank this mutant weasel? Because sometimes it can be helpful. Telling me I am no good at anything is not a good thing, but helping me to recognize when I need to let go of something that I have tried and really have little talent for (and am even not enjoying) is beneficial. Saying people don’t really like me is something I don’t like, but helping me to think about whether I have done something that hurt someone can be a positive step in rescuing a friendship that is important to me.

Sometimes there is nothing positive that I can find in what the mutant weasel is saying. “You can’t even have a child” is one in particular. All I can say to the weasel then is “yep – that’s true…so what?”, or, even better, I ignore the weasel as it plays up in the corner.

While the weasel has its tantrum I get on with life.

With time the weasel calms down and stops the negative attacks. Then it returns to being a helpful and quite cuddly little creature.

I forgot about all of this last week. Life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns now that I have remembered, but it is certainly better…and I am free to think of the people and animals that have come and gone in my life with love and tears and laughter, and sometimes anger, without feeling that I am no good.

And I am free to think through the concerns of last week without being overwhelmed by them, and I can move forward instead of being stuck.

Me and Nan on the last day I saw her

Wear a Star Day 2014...

I am feeling quite hurt and angry just at the moment.

I first wrote about “Wear a Star” day over two years ago. I was so thrilled to find a movement which I could be a part of that would give me a way to honour our babies. The day was for people who had lost children, including, I thought, people who were unable to have children.

I bought a beautiful, antique brooch especially for “Wear a Star” day on the 12^th of April that year, 2012. I also wore the brooch the following year, and up until today I had every intention of wearing it this coming Saturday. This post was going to be about "Wear a Star" day and how important it was to me.

My star brooch

I just looked at the Facebook page for “Wear a Star” and I noticed that there was no mention of people who are unable to have children and it is also run by a Christian organization – The R Project. I don’t recall any religious organization being involved in the first “Wear a Star” day, although I might have just missed it in the details. The wording on the Facebook page and the website of “The R Project” is certainly more religious based.

I am sitting here feeling really unsure and confused. I am not overly religious and I don’t hold the same beliefs as the organization behind “Wear a Star” day and that they promote as important to “Wear a Star” day. Therefore, how can I be a part of the day now?

Also, my children only got to the point of being a “bunch of cells” (I hate writing that), but they were the closest I ever got to my children. I was never clinically pregnant, but when I saw those little beings flickering with life on the screen at the IVF clinic, just  before they were transferred into me, I fell in love. Whatever they were to be was already there – hair colour, eye colour, gender, tendencies toward certain interests and hobbies. Would they be messy like me? Would they love computers like Kirby? They were real – they existed.

But they are now no longer worthy of being remembered on “Wear a Star” day. 

That really hurts. I have to think about all of this…

Nothing good comes from giving up...

There is a fantastic website called Mama Mia, which has articles on many different issues – societal, health, fashion, relationships, etc.

One of the stories in the past week was on a celebrity who has had a baby after 20 rounds of IVF and at the age of 49. I wrote about this in a blog entry last year. She and her husband were interviewed after the birth of their child and one of the comments was “nothing good comes from giving up.”

When I read this I was deeply upset and angry at this comment. I wrote the following on Facebook to share my distress with my friends and family:

“Sorry - feeling hurt right now. I'm glad that Mary Coustas has had a healthy baby after 20 rounds of IVF, but her saying that "nothing good comes from giving up" is a bit of a kick in the guts to those like me and Kirby who have had no success in having children - even with IVF. I guess it's different if you have endless money...but we don't have a spare $70000 to spend on trying and trying again...and, yes, we still have lots of good in our lives, even though we "gave up". We have each other, we have our nephews and nieces, we have our fur-kids...we have lives that are different to what we thought we would have, but we still feel blessed. But we still hurt sometimes, and we do have the endless wound of "what if", and statements like this feel like someone is sticking a needle into that wound and jabbing it around. Okay - rant over!”

My distress has diminished greatly, and I have been amazed at how my comment has been received.

Many of my friends and family have shown their support through liking my Facebook post, commenting that it is not fair that we can’t have children, and even sending hugs over the internet if they are live far away from me. I realize just how blessed I am that I can speak my mind, from a place of pain, and receive comfort and love from my friends and family.

I also posted this comment on Mama Mia, and many of the responses to my comment, as well as many (though not all) of the comments by other people, have made me realize that I am not alone. Sometimes I feel like my thoughts are nasty – that I am terrible for thinking what I do, and that I am even more horrible for writing down my thoughts and making them public.

But, I’ve realized this week that what I write, what I have written above, speaks to many people who are struggling with the same thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes it seems like such a lonely journey in which I feel like a villain for what I think and how I feel, but I have realized I am far from alone. And I’ve realized that I am not a villain. I am just human.