Hope | Chasing Baby Mayr

Tag: Hope
- Cycle 15 Day 27: Dropping Temperatures Inside My Body and Outside My Window
  
  Posted at 2:13 am by amayr1984, on February 14, 2019
  
  What a day.
  
  As I have stated in previous posts I am facing job loss coming up and I am trying to head it off at the pass finically so I have already been in the job market.
  
  Today was my USPS postal service test at the testing center. The weather was absolutely dreadful but I know the post office delivers in weather rain or sleet or shine and the exam said you cannot cancel it within 24 hours of taking it so I knew I had to make it up there or I would lose my opportunity at this job. So I got up and checked my temperature this morning.
  
  It dropped a little (.15 so not below the cover line but still disappointing per my past patterns. My temperature usually never drops all the way back down until my menstrual cycle shows anyway so I can only read so much!) but I was determined to make a positive day out of this.
  
  The night before I dreamed I would find out I was pregnant this cycle. That all my bad luck with losing my job and everything else I experienced so far this week was going to culminate in the happiest thing possible that could happen to me. I felt waves of warmth and happiness wash over me while I was sleeping and when I woke up I thought my temperature would be better than it was but nothing confirms pregnancy but a test and that is for tomorrow morning.
  
  I set out for the testing center and it was a terrible drive there but I made it after some minor confusion. The roads were horrible and so was the parking lot. I arrived at 10:30am and the test was to begin at 11:15. I went up and tried to open the door and it wouldn’t open and I rang the doorbell per the instructions in the email and no one answered. There was a sign saying the university the testing was taking place at was closed but I still waited well into the testing time and called the company (no answer. Left a message) and emailed them. There was a gentleman there with me and we pretty much gave up after it went past our testing time and went back home.
  
  I was sort of annoyed though because it cost me effort and gas to get up there and it was not the best driving conditions. I slid and spun out twice no matter how slowly I was driving and I became more anxious to get home the longer I was on the road. I was becoming dizzy and tired even though I had just eaten but I don’t symptom spot so that didn’t matter except that I didn’t feel great in the conditions I was driving in. I managed to get within a mile of home before I slid slow motion across a patch of ice into a snow bank.
  
  I of course immediately tried to back up but I couldn’t. I switched on my warning lights and I put on my heated jacket and turned it up because my gas gauge suddenly said empty though I had a quarter of a tank before this slide off. I slid in at an angle so I figured it was possible that the fuel light was on by mistake because the tank was tilted or perhaps there was a leak. Either way I was not in a happy place at all being trapped on the side of the road. I knew with the weather conditions the wait times would simply be horrible and I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
  
  I called good ole AAA and they promised me I would be out in an hour and a half which seemed terrible but I guess it could be worse. I sat there listening to ESPN on Sirius and reading happy pregnancy announcements on Glow to try to pass the time. I also talked to a union rep and texted my husband and told him not to miss work worrying about me. We obviously need the money.
  
  After a hour and a half passed I called the towing company AAA told me was coming to get me to see what the hold up was and they told me they told AAA they couldn’t help me because of my distance from them. I was astonished and starting to feel scared because it was cold and I didn’t now how long my jacket would hold up. A police officer and several good samaritans had stopped to check on me but I had told them all not to worry that I was just waiting to be towed by AAA. I called them back and they told me it was going to take them 2.5 Hours to find someone to come get me.
  
  At this point I began to lament my rotten luck thus far this year. I have just not seemed to be able to find the right energy or something just isn’t in my favor as my life is now and I just don’t get it. I feel like a decent and kind person with flaws but not anyone too terrible and yet my husband and I have had minor marriage struggles and now I am having a job loss happening, confusion about a job opportunity (USPS test not happening) and on top of that here I am on the side of the road in the cold! I was tired, nauseous and dizzy trying to figure out if I should just abandon my car and walk the mile or so home in a blizzard!
  
  Then a man with a bungee cord stopped. He told me he could try to get me out and I was scared to let him because I didn’t know if he really knew what he was doing but what choice did I have? I needed to get out and I needed to get home so I let him. He hooked the cord up to my car and told me to throw it in reverse and pump the gas when I felt the jerk. And then he took off and got in his truck.
  
  While I was sitting there waiting I just hoped against hope it would work. That something in my life would turn out ok in just these next few minutes. Perhaps I am hormonal and being dramatic, as I am sure people have far harder struggles than I do, but this is really where my head was. I just wanted to go back to the charmed life I had with a steady secure income and the unshakeable belief my husband and I would be fine and we would get pregnant. It seemed like those sure days were beyond me and buried under my tires as he pulled.
  
  The pulling did jerk me quite a bit but I held on for dear life as hit the gas even though I fear I might be running out of it. I bumped into the horn a couple of times even the jerks were so strong but my car did budge little by little. I think with 10 accelerations on his part I snapped free and came up out of the snow bank.
  
  And there I was back on the road. I was so grateful to that man. You know I think I saw something of my father in him when he came to help me. My father would have done the same; stopped and helped someone who was in a snow bank and this guy had his work clothes on too and a glint in his eye. Perhaps my father had looked out for me through this man when I thought everyone had turned against me in the spirit world based on my luck. I felt renewed being pulled free and I thanked him profusely which he said he didn’t need or want anything (I offered to pay him for his service. Being out of work I know how dear being paid for service is).
  
  I drove slowly and cautiously even more so home and I was so glad to get here and so tired and dizzy I decided to lay down and took a nice nap. Sometimes I just nap to escape. Part of me regrets that nap because I will not be able to sleep as well tonight to prepare for the interview but I have to consider what I needed then and that was truly it. Just quiet and peaceful escape.
  
  Sometimes this journey of life can be so discouraging. You can feel like you are giving it your best and still wind up with nothing or disappointment and misfortune. I was lucky my car and I were unscathed and that someone stopped to help me. I try to look on the bright side of that even though today did not go as planned.
  
  Tomorrow when I test I will try to be positive about that outcome as well regardless. I move between what I think the outcome will be. After 15 months it is scary to hope but it is also all I can do. The truth being I always hope for a positive pregnancy test and I hope for one with all my might tomorrow, jobless or not. My husband and I worked hard this past cycle to get pregnant and really gave it the best effort yet. We will keep this effort up if we are not pregnant, of course. For as much as we can afford to do so but I have to accept that we could give our best and come up short just like I did today.
  
  I want to prepare myself for the disappointment. It is strange 15 months of disappointment is not enough preparation but it simply isn’t. Nothing prepares you to be disappointed so deeply time and time again. But I think I have become better at coping with it and better at assuming that at some point we are going to get this right and the stars will align. My stars seem to be in disarray right now but if they want to align in just this one place I will be beyond happy for that.
  
  I ask the creator and my ancestors to intervene on my behalf or I hope they already have and I will either be with child or with the strength to handle yet another disappointment this week.
  
  | 0 Comments Tagged 15 Cycles, AAA, Black Woman, Black Women Trying To Conceive, Cycle Day 27, Hope, Hurt, Pain, Trials, Trying To Conceive, Two Week Wait
- Cycle 15 Day 26: The Last Week Wait Fears Are Here Again
  
  Posted at 2:33 am by amayr1984, on February 13, 2019
  
  I came home from working out and I set two of the closest to expiration date pregnancy tests in the top drawer and closed it up.
  
  I have studied my basal body temperature chart religiously for the past few hours and already I have felt some twinges in my stomach that have made me feel that Aunt Flo is on her way. There were brown specs when I wiped which I don’t know what that means but I assure you when you have tried as long as I have everything in these last few days seems like a bad omen.
  
  Glow says my next period is scheduled to begin in 3 days and Ava says in 5. I think it is actually somewhere in between based on my chart (the spotting I used for the days I got the brown specs):
  
  As you can see I got my dip a day after Glow claims I should have ovulated so I think that dip is the actual spot so about a day off I would say. This means I miscalculated and I can test on Valentine’s Day which would be so wonderful to get a big fat positive then. I always want to be wrong as I start to have those fears that this is again not my month.
  
  And I have so many other fears to consider at this point as well with my impending job loss on Friday. I had great insurance and benefits so I am losing my greatest weapon in this TTC journey in that alone. My husband will move me to his insurance but I will have to come up with the money to pay for the medications myself somehow and they only get more expensive from here and my income is going to evaporate until I secure another job. I have an interview on Thursday as well as some pre interview stuff tomorrow so I am moving in the direction to make sure I won’t have a gap in wages but time is not on my side as a 34 year old trying to conceive and neither is money or my luck as it has been. I continue to have hope even in these strenuous times. I continue to work out and to meditate and to take my medications. I better go pick up all the refills I can before Friday (note to self).
  
  I do not feel as devoid of hope as before because of course now there are other trials in my life that have overshadowed this journey so it is odd to have something else to worry about and does remove the focus off the thing that was the center of my life for quite some time now. It would honestly mean everything for me to find out I was pregnant coming up as so many new beginnings are on my horizon. I will try to stay positive because so much negative is going on in my life. I suppose no matter what that test says on Thursday there has to continue to be hope for us. I have to believe I will be a mother.
  
  I only have to wonder what more it will cost me emotionally and now financially based on where I am at. But I should try my best not to count myself out of this thing before it’s even over.
  
  Let’s wait for the empty window or the angry blood before we give up but let’s hope for 2 pink lines and 9 months of pregnancy instead.
  
  | 0 Comments Tagged 10 Days Post Ovulation, Anxiety, Fear, Hope, Job Loss, Pregnancy, Trying To Conceive, Two Week Wait, TWW
- Cycle Day 5: Ultrasound Looks Great
  
  Posted at 3:59 am by amayr1984, on January 23, 2019
  
  It was that day again today. One of my least favorite days. I got probed.
  
  You know the first day they told me I had to go in for one of these Ultrasounds I thought it was going to be like the ones on TV where they do it on top of your stomach. Never did I imagine that when I got there they’d lube up and condom up that white probe and put it up my vagina. But here we are into our third month of Letrozole and now I am for the most part used to it. But I never look forward to it.
  
  Today they were looking for cysts on my ovaries because they saw such big follicles last go round but I did not get pregnant. Well, thankfully, no cysts! I was actually worried. I just don’t want anymore speed bumps on this journey. I even saw a couple of follicles developing on the right side already. Please please please let cycle 15 be our cycle and one of those follicles be the beginning of one of my babies.
  
  After the Ultrasound I met with my Clinical Nurse and she said this is our last round before I will possibly be put on stronger medication and other options will be explored. Not IVF which I am in no rush to get to mind you, but possibly IUI which I was about ready to try anyway. I am fine with not trying it until the end of next month for sure. I really would much rather keep trying with the timed intercourse since that is actually free…but of course a lot more work. But 600 bucks a pop timed intercourse is not, and an IUI is. Either way I am beyond hopeful again. Leaving she reordered my Letrozole so we will be trying again at the same dose. I took my first dose today. I actually had some leftover at home thank goodness because the pharmacy didn’t have it filled and the roads were too icy to go back out later on. I will fetch the rest of it tomorrow.
  
  Mostly my spirits have been okay. The fight I had with my husband put a damper on things but I am hoping we will get back to normal very soon. I hate fighting with my husband and he has a lot of anger demons that I just cannot understand because we had such polar opposite childhoods and I think sometimes our experiences just clash. Hopefully we will be able to find more peace and resolution on his day off and through our counseling session next Wednesday.
  
  But today is a hopeful day, A day where I can imagine that we can get this right and that science and nature may be on our side. I hope I am right. I don’t feel like getting probed again any time soon.
  
  | 0 Comments Tagged Appointments, Femara, Hope, Letrozole, Trying To Conceive, Ultrasound
- CD 27: The Big Fat Negative Wins Again And The Race Resets
  
  Posted at 9:25 pm by amayr1984, on January 14, 2019
  
  I actually didn’t cry so very much this time. The saddest part is you get used to the pain. A callous forms and you can still feel it but less and less as time goes on. Over a year and you cannot help but harden to the constant disappointment. You cannot help but have the most agonizing negative thoughts after you have faced your dragon and been burned yet again. You cannot help but resent you body, and the people who get pregnant without trying and brag about it, and the people who will inevitably get pregnant before you do in the journey moving forward. Mostly you will resent those who will try in futility to comfort you when they know all you want is a baby, your own baby and not their meaningless words of “rah rah rah! You’ll get em next time Tiger!” Say do you know how many next times I have been through? Even the words lose their impact as the pain creates the callous. They hit the same hard spot and bounce right back off.
  
  So no I didn’t cry so much this time. I woke up at 4:30 am after having gotten a fairly decent night’s sleep (which should have also been a warning sign because I sleep terribly during the Two Week Wait when my temperatures are up). I checked my Ava against my better judgment and there was another temperature drop. It was still above the cover line but low enough that I knew that it wasn’t a promising sign. I lay there wondering should I just take the test now or would I even be able to fall back asleep with that looming over my head. After a while of laying there I decided to get it out of the way.
  
  On the long, but actually ridiculously short walk to the master bathroom I lived a thousand different moments of pregnancy test anxiety and reflection. I thought about all the times I had come to this same bathroom to get my heartbroken repeatedly this entire year and a couple of months now. I thought about the one chemical I had and how it had later been undone in that same bathroom hours later. I still hoped, because you always hope.
  
  When you grasp that package of First Response Early Response and you begin unwrapping it you can’t help but to hope. You want someone, anyone, or in this case anything to tell you that what you have already told yourself will be is wrong. You deserve that. I mean haven’t you suffered enough? You pull the stick out and pop the pink plastic top off and you think for a moment that there are so many people in the world who don’t even WANT those two pink lines who are going to get them this morning. There are so many people who are in the middle about what they want who will get them. Then there are those who absolutely are dying to get them like you this morning. Who have put on hold drinking, and coffee, and trips to Zika islands and have taken pills and vitamins and their entire sex lives have become timed intercourse…the fertility soldiers. We have put in work for it. And you pee on the stick and you dream that no matter what your temperature and your body is telling you…this time you are going to get what you deserve.
  
  This time you will get those two pink lines. You recap the test.
  
  You watch it develop. You watch as the moisture slides into the window and across that oval and you wait for that second line to fill in. You wait and you think of the look on your partner’s face when you tell him or her. You think of the joy you will feel and the time you will spend decorating the nursery as the moisture reaches the end of the window. You think of the baby shower and the surprised looks from friends and family when you tell them. And you think of the Facebook announcement and how you will recount your success, finally, to all the people in all those trying to conceive groups and message boards you are on. You remind yourself you will be sensitive that other people are trying so you will never start out bragging about how simple it was or it only happened in one cycle! Not you. You will remember that you were once them and you will write the most thoughtful recap of how YOU got YOUR very own…
  
  Big Fat Negative.
  
  And excuse me because I don’t know how to flip it around. That second line never colored. The last line, it always does. So you stare at it some more and you think maybe you see something. You trick yourself that those moments are still so very possible.
  
  You don’t see anything. Because there is nothing to see. There is nothing in your uterus. There will be nothing in your nursery. There will be no Facebook announcement.
  
  You hold the test up to the light to make sure you don’t see anything.
  
  Then you throw it in the trash because you want to get far away from it. Months previous you might have dug it out to just make sure there was nothing on it. But YOU, you are a veteran of infertility now. You know looking 6 more times won’t change anything. Besides you have to wash the deep conditioner out of your head that you wore over night so you can get back to your bed and have the good cry that is always in order and terrorize yourself with anger, self doubt and resentment.
  
  I texted my husband soon after. He called me from work and he is sick. I feel bad for him because I know he cannot help me and yet he wants to help me. I know he doesn’t even think about how not being pregnant is effecting him at all. But I wish he would. I wish he would say he is so disappointed too and thought we really did everything right and he will just be miserable if we don’t get pregnant some time soon as well. He doesn’t. He feels he has to be strong for me and listen to my feelings. But my feelings about my infertility have eaten our relationship whole. I don’t even know that he really likes me anymore because I am just so miserable all the time, who could? But that’s just me taking this out on myself isn’t it?
  
  It’s not my fault I am not pregnant. Logically I know this. I lay in the bed for a couple of hours after talking to my husband and I just go over in my mind all the what ifs and scenarios that would somehow make me even more miserable. If his brother and sister in law got pregnant before us after being married for a much shorter time. If we don’t get pregnant in the next 6 months. If we never get pregnant.
  
  What if I never get to be a mother? Why I won’t be happy. I won’t. I don’t know if I will never be happy because I can’t be if I do not become a mother or if I won’t allow that for myself because I keep repurposing this struggle into a personal failure?
  
  When I do finally wake up again it is 1:33pm and I cannot believe I slept so late. I had nightmares I can’t recall but none of them are as scary as the reality I face. Another month ahead.
  
  Another race. Will I ever catch Baby Mayr? Will it ever not hurt to get a negative pregnancy test.
  
  Will I ever smile and think…”well we got this next month!”
  
  I don’t know. I just know I don’t like riding this ride or running this race much at all. I don’t like knowing the hurt over and over and over again. I want to know victory.
  
  And why for me, potential victory means so much suffering.
  
  | 0 Comments Tagged Ava, Baby, Black motherhood, Depression, Fear, Hope, Hurt, Infertility, Motherhood, Pain, Sperm, Trying To Conceive, Trying To Get Pregnant
- Cycle Day 26: Temperature and Spirit Drops
  
  Posted at 10:54 pm by amayr1984, on January 13, 2019
  
  Anyone who does Basal Body Temping knows that temperature drops, no matter how small, feel foreboding during this time in your cycle. (I use the Ava and the skin temperatures from that I input into my chart. Works on the same basic principal I just don’t have to remember the thermometer every morning)
  
  I woke up today to that drop and to a sense of dread and sadness. I do not want to seem the pessimist…or is it possible I have seemed the pessimist this entire time anyway. I can read back and double check on that one I guess.
  
  I got annoyed with my husband because he went out to go get storage boxes and stopped over to help his brother with something or other. I don’t really care he stopped over to help his brother but today was the day we were going to clean out the spare room to make room for the potential nursery I will do the painting on when I get some money to buy paint (a lot of requirements to be met). It felt like once again he was gone somewhere else doing something else when there was plenty to do at our house. It was partially selfish and unfair of me but also partially very true in the emotional moment I was in. I expressed my irritation. Thankfully it didn’t turn into a fight but I can tell it is still a source of tension between us. I just needed him today but he can’t ever fully understand the angst or dread I am going through anyway waiting to test. Do our partners truly understand any of it? He’s not even on a countdown. I had to remind him tomorrow I will be testing. It’s not really happening to him so it’s not a weight on his shoulders. Only some of the aftermath is.
  
  And…I hate testing. Whatever comes up I will post it and share it. I have the strong feeling it is a big fat negative since my temperatures are going down again. I don’t feel any cramps or anything particular but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t feel very different either.
  
  Now is the time where I reflect what could have been done differently? Why are we so unlucky? Now is the time where I prepare to feel sorry for myself tomorrow. I wish I could march forward into the testing with a brave and confident face. I wish I could take that test and say to myself “I Know I Am Pregnant” even if I am not. I wish I could just believe that for a change because the sadness is harder. I did believe these things once a few months ago but the disappointment just weighs you down and it mocks you when you try to lift yourself up again.
  
  Remember down here where you always are? Remember.
  
  I wish I did not.
  
  As we cleaned out the room today I did begin to feel a small sense of destiny. I didn’t enjoy moving all that stuff into the basement mind you but I did enjoy getting rid of a lot of trash and clearing out the space. We have a lot of clutter that is very unnecessary. It is funny to see what you have accumulated when you really sit down and go over everything. Old dresses from college that I quickly put on Poshmark to try to get rid of because some of them are still in great condition. Old stuffed animals, Tons of books you haven’t even thought about…there is so much one accumulates over the span of their life and I am someone who gets rid of things two times a year and yet here was so much still. It was a bit of a relief to gather all that stuff up and move it out of the room.
  
  I found myself focusing on minor details afterwards that I hadn’t noticed like how the walls were textured and I didn’t particularly like that. Truth is all of our walls are textured and I just find it so irritating. So I was nitpicking even the thing that was supposed to be possibly bringing me so much joy which is getting to paint this nursery. Getting to believe that a baby will be in it one day.
  
  I don’t plan to buy anything for it before I get a positive pregnancy test. My husband wants me to but I feel if I do it will become my crying place while we continue to try. I don’t want that. I don’t want my depression to taint that room that will one day be the source of so much joy. But I do want to paint it. I do want to invest in it since investing in myself so much hasn’t yielded what I wanted yet.
  
  I want this baby so much. I will continue to chase you but please do not make me chase you anymore.
  
  Please do not make me spend this last day before they make me test trying to do some all encompassing chore so that the hours will drift by and I can ignore my sadness again.
  
  The truth is I want tomorrow’s test to be positive, of course. I just fear that it will not be and I will have to run this race again. The emotions are the worst part of this race. The changes of hearts and the slipping from hopeful to filled with despair. Trying to read your body even though you swear you aren’t doing just that. Your spouse joking you are pregnant even when you find yourself creating a superstition that doing so is damning so please join me in that superstition. O truly, they will never ever know what it is like for us to live this torture. They will see our moods and probably dread the two week wait for that reason alone but they will never know what it is like to be in it.
  
  To exist in anxiety, dread, hopefulness and fear all at once and to wait to take that test that you don’t want to be negative but it has been so so so many times. They will never know.
  
  Tomorrow I hope it will not be something I will know again. I hope this is my last two week wait for a long time. Please.
  
  The nursery is empty now and it just needs to be painted the way I want. The clutter is gone. We are waiting for you, Baby Mayr. Chasing you. Please let us catch you.
  
  | 0 Comments Tagged Ava, Basal Body Temperature, Charting, Depression, Glow, Hope, Infertility, Personal, Pregnancy Test, Two Week Wait