Heart of The Hurricane – Part I

As of today I’m officially the mother of a three-year-old, and I’m all sorts of emotional! Of course I’m hiding it from MisterE because he thinks I’m eternally emotional, but this is my blog and it’s a safe space,  so I can tell you all that I’ve been ugly-crying since yesterday. 

Mostly tears of joy, but also relief, awe and gratitude. 

It feels like just yesterday I was convinced that motherhood wasn’t in the cards for me, so let me explain to you  exactly what has brought me to tears. 

As I’m sure you’ve picked up on (if you’ve been following the blog), I’m a planner and a doer. If what I’m doing doesn’t yield results, I change what I’m doing — I never change the plan.

Believe me, this is not a healthy way to live.

Please, change your plans often!

I’ve known since I was nine years old that I wanted to be a mother. To put things into perspective, I only decided at the age of 27 that I wanted to get married.

MisterE, similarly, had always expected to be a father. 

In fact, during a pre-marital conference, our instructor had asked us to imagine the worst possible thing that could happen to test our commitment to each other. I imagined a horrible accident that left one of us immobile or unable to communicate. MisterE imagined us being unable to have children. 

I thought, in that moment, “How odd. I didn’t know children were that important to him.” But I gave it no further thought because it never occurred to me that we might actually be unable to have children! 

Anyway, we got married… Partially because we were madly in love, and partially because most of our wedding deposits were non-refundable. We had been together for five years by the time we exchanged vows, so the plan from day one was to simply “not prevent” pregnancy and see what happened. 

To put it bluntly, we were having sex left, right and center. I can say that, right? Is everyone reading this over the age of 18? 

One year passed and there was nothing to report. Old aunties were starting to do annoying things like: 

• Reminding me that I wasn’t young and there was no point in waiting. 
• Winking at me after every sentence. 
• Asking if I needed any tips on proper “positioning” to get pregnant.
• Grabbing my belly at a wedding and shaking it to see if there was anything in there. You know who you are. You are not forgiven. 

In years two and three I decided to be more proactive in our approach to becoming parents. I became fully immersed in the secret online TTC (Trying To Conceive) society. I read everything I could get my hands on regarding conception and pregnancy, because knowledge is power after all. 

I began to take my temperature every single day at 6 am in order to catch the temperature dip-and-spike that indicated ovulation. I took half a billion ovulation tests to make sure I caught the earliest hint of a fertile window. I swallowed an entire forest of herbs and berries daily, in an effort to improve egg quality and hormonal balance.  

For two years I went to acupuncture every Tuesday morning, without fail. I became a legend amongst the local porcupines. 

I had MisterE ingesting bee pollen, vitamins and herbs. I changed his diet. No cell phones in his pocket. No laptops on his knees. No bicycle riding, no tight underwear, and no hot showers! 

By the end of year three I would mentally schedule sex based on data. There was no more hanky panky; sex became a military operation, because I don’t know how to change plans.

Now, don’t go feeling sorry for MisterE. He got some benefit out of it too. Back in the day I used to get really irritable when I was ovulating. Like, even the way MisterE blinked would get on my nerves, so we would invariably argue or ignore each other for a few days. But once I knew I was ovulating I couldn’t argue with him anymore! Instead, I would be extra sweet so he’d be ready to jump in bed with me at the drop of a hat. Win! 

Despite my long-running tyranny there was still nothing to report. In time, we ended up at a fertility center to see if science could get us sorted out. 

We matched up with a highly rated doctor at a leading fertility center. We went through a barrage of tests and imaging procedures, some straightforward and some incredibly painful. I’ll go into details of all that in my next post. 

After months of testing we got a diagnosis! Want to know the result of our thousands of dollars worth of assessments? Drumroll, please…..

“Unexplained Infertility!” 

You read that right. Unexplained Infertility.  

After everything I’d been through, I was being told that I was in perfect health, and there was no identifiable reason for my infertility. 

All the doctors knew for sure was that I was, in fact, “infertile.” Wow. Woooooooooooow! It took all of my self-control to stop myself from clapping sarcastically throughout the remainder of our visit. 

I sat quietly as the doctor and  MisterE discussed plans for Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, and adoption. For a brief moment, I felt defeated. I felt hopeless.

But then I remembered who I am, and I remembered that I had a plan. The plan was to become a mother, plain and simple, and that was exactly what I was going to do. 

I’ll leave things here for now. In my next post I’ll get to the fun part — the conception! *Wink Wink* For now, please enjoy these gratuitous pictures of our beloved Hurricane in her earlier years. 

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Have fun!

By the way, if you’re struggling with fertility treatments, infertility or loss, please feel free to contact me at paperdiem@gmail.com. I’m happy to discuss any lessons learned or what to expect from my own journey. I’m also happy to just be a listening ear. There is no need to go through this alone.