Attitude Adjustment NEEDED

 

Last night I found out for the third month in a row that I am not pregnant. Sigh...

I went off the pill when we left for our trip in August. We took one month "off" to give my body time to adjust to being off the pill, and then the baby making began in earnest (read: lots of sex!).

Over the years I have watched friends go through the getting pregnant thing, and I always told myself that I wouldn't be one of those people who stressed out over getting pregnant. I don't want to chart my cycle, take my temperature, have sex according to a calendar, etc. After all, as everyone will tell you, it's when you're thinking about it and worrying about it that it usually won't happen. So, you might ask, how'd that work out for me? Yeah, not so well.

Having spent years waiting for the right time, watching people around me doing it, and being so excited to experience it for myself, I'm now very very ready to get pregnant! The problem is, I haven't figured out how to be in the process of making a baby and not be attached to the results. And the worst part for me is the waiting each month. Waiting, waiting, and then...disappointment.

Donovan and I had really hoped that we would make a baby while we were in France. The idea of buying our kid a "Made in France" shirt was just too much fun! So when we got home last month and found out that hadn't happened, I was bummed. Still, onwards and upwards and all that, right? So for month three we decided to not worry about day counts, positions, superstitions and all that, and just have lots of sex. I made a very conscious effort not to think about things too much and just go with the flow, and I was doing okay until the last few days. As it got closer to the end of my cycle I started wondering, checking, and finally...hoping. The hoping was what made it all the worse to find out it hadn't happened, and I had a bit of a melt-down last night.

See, as much as I want to be pregnant, there's still a part of me that doesn't believe it's going to happen. Though my body has never given me any reason to doubt it, and has always risen to the challenges I have presented it with, there's still a question in my mind. Being a strong believer in the mind-body connection, I have to wonder if my fears and disbelief are preventing me from getting pregnant. And this is where the attitude adjustment comes in. I need to get these fears and disbeliefs out of my system and get to a place of KNOWING that I WILL be pregnant.

Probably a good place to start would be to get all the crap out of my head about getting pregnant. So, here goes:

• I'm too old (I'm thirty-eight and a half), and getting older can cause fertility issues.
• I'm too fat (I'm 40+ pounds overweight), and being overweight can cause fertility issues.
• I work out too hard and stress my body out too much to create a hospitable environment for a baby to grow.
• I put my body through too much pain with physical therapy and deep massages to create a hospitable environment for a baby to grow.
• I want it too badly and haven't let go enough.
• What if my eggs don't work right?
• What if Donovan's swimmers don't work right? 
• Pregnancy happens for other people, why can't it happen for me?
• Our friends are dealing with fertility issues...what if that happens to us?

A friend suggested that I collage all of the noise in my head. Should make for an interesting collage, huh? I also think that some good visualizations will help. In any case, I am committed to getting my head on straight about this in the next few days so that I can go into month four with a knowledge and certainty that pregnancy is in my very near future. Wish me luck!!


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The Abstractness of Pregnancy

I had lunch with my friend Emily today, and we got to talking about getting pregnant. We're both planning to make a baby in the next few months, so it was fairly inevitable (especially given how I've got baby on the brain right now) that the topic would come up.

I've been experiencing an interesting phenomenon around the topic of pregnancy lately: it seems completely abstract to me...not real.

I've been fascinated by pregnancy for most of my adult life. The fact that the body does what it does to create life is beyond my comprehension. When I'm with a pregnant woman, I can't really wrap my brain around the fact that there's a living being inside of her. And experiencing being pregnant is something I've been craving for years and years. Not so much the pain, discomfort and potential (likely?) nausea, but the opportunity to feel life growing inside me and the idea of bonding with the little creature from the beginning.

And yet for me, pregnancy has always been a "someday" thing.  Back in 2006, I (delusionally?) thought that Brian and I were getting close to the point of having a baby. Then we broke up. During my three years of being single after that, I would tell myself that if I didn't meet someone, I could always go the artificial insemination route and have a baby on my own. Then I spent some time around people with kids and decided that I really didn't want to do it on my own. When I met Donovan, he didn't want to have kids, and I wasn't sure anymore. Then came clarity, and the realization that I did indeed want kids. Lo and behold, Donovan was amenable. Someday. We got engaged, we planned our wedding, and a year ago we got married. And it became a "we should wait at least a year until we get pregnant" thing.

So here we are, a year (next Tuesday) after getting married, and four weeks from today I will take my last birth control pill and we will make a baby. And it's STILL...NOT...REAL! I've spent so long having pregnancy be a "someday" thing that I'm not sure what will actually make it real for me. Clearly not the knowledge that I'm going off the pill in four weeks. Will it be the plus sign on the pregnancy test? Will it be the first ultrasound when I see (hear?) the little heart beating? Will it be the first time I feel a kick? Guess we'll have to wait and see!

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