Chasing Baby Mayr

Tag: Pain

• Cycle 16 Day 27: Injectable Medications Arrived With Another Big Fat Negative

  Posted at 7:08 pm by amayr1984, on March 15, 2019

  I don’t know how I have survived any of this past almost year and a half of constant and monthly disappointment.

  I don’t know how much it has changed me and probably not for the better. I feel perpetually depressed around the same place in my cycle every month and I cannot escape the pain. There are no tricks

  My husband got angry with me this morning because I told him I couldn’t eat for 30 minutes after taking my Levothyroxine. He claims I snapped at him and then when I asked him if he was okay he told me smartly he’d tell me in 30 minutes. That hurt and felt so unnecessary. I asked him why he was acting like that and tried to blame it on me and said I am always turning stuff around on him. That morning before I came downstairs I had already witnessed my temperature drop on my Ava so I was already feeling low. So I cried on the way to work because my husband is a mean person is what I was feeling. If he feels like someone is being mean to him, he hits back. He doesn’t try to find out what’s going on with the person or understand where they are coming from…he just hits back. And I didn’t need to be hit today. I actually never do. And I started believing again that the reason I can’t get pregnant is that we are not meant to be anyone’s parents because we do not have enough trust and compatibility to get along. I don’t know if these are poisonous thoughts of a person struggling with infertility of the thoughts of a wife who is fed up of fighting about nothing period. Anyway I cried all the way to work…

  When I arrived I managed to pull myself together enough for working with the kids. Recess was indoors that day and I was able to read some 0f the nice projects kids made for their families hanging on the wall. One project was pots of gold that were hanging up on the wall and the kids wrote who were worth more than gold to them. Many said their teachers or their parents and it made me tear up reading about how much these kids loved these people.

  At lunch my back was aching because I will probably get my period today or tomorrow. I was back and forth to different tables and sitting down in between because of the ache. It didn’t stop all day and one of the other supervisors who was working came over and demanded to know why I was sitting down. Now I never knew sitting down was an issue as each time I sat down it was at a table with some of the kids anyway and just for a couple of minutes. She told me they were not paying me to sit down and I needed to be walking around the tables. I told her my back hurt and she told me if I have a disability I need to let someone know. It was so cold and thoughtless and after my highly unnecessary row with my husband I felt like I was being picked on today. I kept my mouth shut afterwards and decided I was not talking to that lady every again. I was wondering if I got another job offer if I would take it because I do love working with the kids though it doesn’t pay much. But after that incident of nastiness I think that I would. There wasn’t any warmth towards me or what I was expressing was going on towards me.

  Warmth and understanding would go so far. When I got home I took my test because I had thought it over and I knew with the medication having arrived I was best to get my mind fixed on if I was gonna be a pin cushion or not.

  And pin cushion it is.

  I was going to add in the negative test but there are enough of those through the blogs. From then on I cried and cried and cried until I could just see enough to write this post. I am in a dark place. I am always in a dark place in this time and I feel so very alone. I do not feel like I have anyone I can lean on in support really and I’m sick of telling everybody about it and getting useless words of comfort. Even on the Facebook groups. I’m sick of it.

  I just want to be pregnant and I don’t want to have to keep going through all of this stuff over and over and over again. And I have seen so many people who are posting birth and pregnancy announcements and me I am posting nothing but more money and doctors bills and more hurt. HURT HURT HURT.

  BEING INFERTILE FUCKING HURTS. I just wish my writing were good enough to let you know how it feels to have your heart ripped out once a month over and over again and have no one treat you kindly while you’re struggling with the absolute worst struggle. To have your husband turn on you because you rejected his offer of cereal and to have a person who isn’t even your boss basically tell you you’re being lazy on the job because you sat down at a table with some kids because your back hurt.

  If I could make you guys understand how painful and useless I feel with everything that has happened to me in the past few months I would maybe see a bright side to any of this.

  But I can’t. I have to run this race again. I have to. And right now I don’t even know if I really want anymore. I don’t know if the universe is ever going to allow me to have a baby. I’m 34. And my husband and I aren’t getting along anyway. Do I even deserve a baby? Is that it? Is that why I can’t fall pregnant?

  I feel I will never know the answer. So I will just cry.

  | 0 Comments Tagged Big Fat Negative, Clomid Cycle, Clomid fail, Infertility, Marital Strife, Never Pregnant, Ovidrel, Pain, Suffering, Two Week Wait, TWW, Work problems

• Cycle 16 Day 2: Infertility Is Sadness and Emptiness Holding You Hostage With No Ransom

  Posted at 4:01 am by amayr1984, on February 19, 2019

  I’m trapped in so much pain today.

  As the number of cycles we have been trying racks up with the challenges of life that are building up over my head (unexpected job loss being the main one) I find myself so tired and hopeless some days. It feels stupid to keep hoping for something that has over and over shown you that it is not going to happen. People would call it being negative but being positive has netted me what exactly? Nothing. The same nothing that being negative right now has gotten me.

  I am not pregnant. I am not any closer to being a mother than I was last month and I don’t know if this month will get me pregnant either. I know I will trying. I know I will never stop trying but I also know that the world is continuing to move on without me and I am feeling more and more left behind and alone and not just because I haven’t gotten pregnant.

  Sure all my friends and my husband’s friends’ kids are all growing up while we hump along month after month and I bleed at the end and then we start over and sure the daily grind of my job has continued to move on even though I am no longer there reminding me I never mattered there either after 7.5 years of service because in the end things will still go on without you. Life, work, family…everything keeps moving forward.

  And how lonely for those of us who are not getting what we want out of the forward progression. How lonely for me. 16 months in trying. Why if I had gotten pregnant the first month I’d have a 6 month old by now. That’s how long we have been at this unsuccessfully. I’d probably be a happier person too.

  I hope I’d be a happier person. Because are there lows lower than this? I am sure there are. I’m sure pregnancy loss has to hurt way worse than this right now but right now nothing feels lower than this. Nothing feels lower than the ache and the want to be pregnant and the reality that I am not.

  The inability of my husband to find the right things to say and the unfair expectation that he should know what to say to me all mixes in to the quiet disappointment that is our stalled and non existent little family outside of him and me. We never wanted it to be just us two and I can’t be happy with it being just us two. I can be ok but I can never be happy with it being like this. And I don’t feel selfish or ugly in saying that because it is honest. I want 3 children. I’m 34 and I have absolutely none. And I don’t feel closer to my first one.

  I called my RE today and Clomid. Clomid again. I hate Clomid. But Letrozole let us down 3 good times with all the follicles we could hope for we got no baby in return. So maybe it’s time to try Clomid again.

  But is it ok to believe in Clomid? Is the right thing to do is believe that this could work? It would feel like it is. It would seem like it is. But then if it doesn’t work then what? Just more sadness, emptiness and loneliness. All feelings I am endlessly tired of. Trigger shot. Follicle Stimulating Hormone. All of it is in my future.

  And then maybe IUI later on. If we can afford it. Because now that I lost my job what we can afford has changed. The odds were already against us but now another obstacle. Now more hardship for us instead of any bit more of happiness.

  I don’t know what is blocking us from having a child but I despise it for doing this to me. I despise it. I hate being infertile. I hate my period. I hate cycle day 1. And cycle day 2.

  Tomorrow I will start Clomid and then I will hate the entire time I feel the side effects of Clomid. And then I will enjoy the Fertile Week because we will hope again. And then I will hate the Two Week Wait. I will hate the pregnancy test due on CD 12. And I will hate CD1 again possibly. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

  16 cycles. There is no baby dust or comfort for me. I have been stripped, ripped and chewed up by this journey and I cannot be comforted. There is not point in bothering. I am hurt and there is a gaping wound in my life that cries out for a child and that is the only thing that will heal me. A positive pregnancy test and a safe and happy and healthy pregnancy. You can keep anything else. I don’t need it.

  | 0 Comments Tagged 16 Cycles, Black Infertility, Black Women Trying To Conceive, Clomid, Cycle Day 2, Fertility Drugs, Hurt, Letrozole, Pain, Sadness, Trying To Conceive

• Cycle 15 Day 28: The Big Fat Negatives Never Get Any Easier

  Posted at 5:12 pm by amayr1984, on February 14, 2019

  

  

  There is my chart and there is my screaming Big Fat Negative. Perhaps my 10th one or so while trying to conceive as some cycles I did not even test because I got so sick of seeing them. My Reproductive Endocrinologist makes me test now though so I can’t hide from the hurt of the one line staring back at me from that window.

  The stark whiteness haunts you when you want that other pink line so badly you dream about it night after night before your test day. You want to be positive but this is where being positive hurts. Because you feel like well maybe you wouldn’t be so sad if you didn’t tell yourself “this could be my month!” even if it was quietly in the back of your mind that you told yourself.

  Maybe you would feel less ridiculous if you hadn’t dared to dream about giving your husband a great surprise on Valentine’s Day of a positive pregnancy test since you guys are so broke now thanks to your unexpected job loss that you can’t get each other real gifts. So broke when you were bringing in comfortable incomes and even that job loss feels like an injustice in itself.

  What a cruel word we live in where women who want babies wake up on Valentine’s Day to an empty uterus, one line peering back from that white window and the heartache of inadequacy and the fear of how you are going to survive these next months and continue trying to get pregnant.

  The one thing that has continued to seem so utterly impossible. The race is almost over again and I don’t see my baby, our baby, at the finish line just as I haven’t months and months before. And I do wonder why that is that I can dream of this baby and these two pink lines but they are never truly there no matter what my husband and I do.

  We are both sad today. Sad about so much. The way our lives are changing financially and now the loss yet again of what we both wanted. So sad.

  I wish I could say just hang in there and your dreams will come true today. I can’t say that because even though I will hang in there I can’t help feeling that is a lie. I can’t help feeling like I’ve been hanging in here and all I got was a faint line in April 2018 to show for it for all of my hanging. I have way more hurt.

  So the race will reset here in the next couple of days and we will try yet again. We will get injectables. I will take new medications and have new side effects and I will hope again no matter the fact that I am hurting so today.

  A Happy Valentine’s Day

  | 0 Comments Tagged Big Fat Negative, Black motherhood, Black Women Trying To Conceive, First Response Early Response, Infertility, Pain, Pregnancy Test, Trying To Conceive, Unfair

• 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

• 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

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