Journey to the Jam Drop

Ok so as you may have guess from some of my photos. Yes I am pregnant, YAY. Now 24 weeks and from what I read, if a baby is born premature from now onwards, with a great deal of help, it can still survive. I’m sure that all first time mothers hope for nothing less than a full term, healthy baby. Mother’s whom it’s not, their first time; I’m certain, would hope that bub comes 2-3 weeks early.

So I thought I would take the opportunity to write about my journey so far to motherhood. If you had read my previous blog about my surgery last year, you might already know that the road had not always been smooth. But the operation was only one part of the storey.

The year 2013 was going to be a big year for me. Justin and I were planning our wedding in April and as most of you know, these sorts of things don’t just happen. There’s the invitations, guest list, table decorations, the dress, the bridesmaids dresses, the venue, the photographer, blah, blah, blah. On top of this we were planning for a family. Well in the beginning, it was more myself than Justin. I think he thought that trying to conceive before the wedding wasn’t the best idea I had ever had. But I had this grand notion of announcing our pregnancy at the wedding.

So in January of 2013, we started to “try” for a baby. I had already been off the contraceptive pill for a couple of years, with the intent to start a family so in my mind I was ‘good to go’.

The ‘conception phase’ I will call it, of this month was eagerly engaged, again, more so by myself than Justin, but he wasn’t complaining. After which… you wait, and it feels like an eternity until the end of the month. I cannot convey to you the depths of the despair I felt when I discovered that I was indeed not pregnant. It seems ridiculous in hindsight to be so completely naïve to think that we would actually conceive on the first attempt. I was, however, truly devastated. I mean I’m healthy, not over or under weight, I eat fairly well, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink daily, so what was wrong! And in the beginning you tell yourself some lie about how the bleeding is just from implantation and to wait another day, only to have your hope crushed once again.

I began to research, like any good nurse. I started eating nothing but the right foods to encourage a healthy reproductive system. I started to meditate; I went to see a psychic (who told me that I wouldn’t conceive for at least a year and a half, as if I was going to believe that nonsense anyway). So the second month began and by now my hope and faith was once again restored. I was eating perfectly and now I was taking my temperature to discover the exact right time for conception. I have since discovered that this is misleading because your temp doesn’t spike until after the opportune moment. But, but once again, failure. Gut wrenching is how I would describe it and sometimes I would spend the whole of that first day in tears and I would refuse to take pain relief for the pains that always seemed twice a bad as they had ever been. My poor husband; this did not make for a very productive working team and he was completely mystified as to what he could do. In hindsight, there really was nothing that could be done and he was very supportive if only a little frustrated that the pace of our work seemed to slow considerably on those days.

I won’t regale you with every month, but in that first year, there wasn’t a cycle that I did not cry, for most of that first of the day of the month. My body would love to play games as well, sometimes I would be anywhere between 1-4 days late and there is nothing that could get the hopes up, of someone who is normally regimented in their cycle than that. A pregnancy test, taken early, always negative but never losing hope until absolutely certain, was always a sure fire way to bring on menstruation and I’ve lost count of the number that I did. I sometimes feel the urge to do it now, just to see that double line!

During the two and a half years that we spent trying, four of my friends and family started trying, conceived and gave birth. It is difficult to explain the emotions that you go through when this happens. Anger, disappointment, self-loathing and all the while you are morally obligated to be happy for them, when there is this little voice inside your head going, “why them, why not me, what have I done, did I step on a bug take it’s life needlessly”. Every kangaroo, horse, dog and any other animal that I’ve culled or had to put down would come into my mind and I would think that this was karma and what I deserved for my failure to value life.

I began to think of myself as a barren cow. The worse part being that, I think maybe I was projecting this image into the world, which probably wasn’t helping my cause. Everyone who tells you, to ‘be patient’, ‘stop thinking about it’ and ‘it’ll happen’, I just wanted to strangle. It is impossible not to think about. I would think about it every day and not just once, it consumed me. I tried naturopaths, acupuncture, some psychic lady who was supposed to help me with my past lives or something like that. I was taking that many herbal remedies that I could rattle. The naturopath made me think I was going to walk out of her office and keel over and die. I even had this little thing that you could spit on and look at it, as though through a microscope, so see if there were “ferns” in your saliva, which meant the optimum time for conception. We went on a ‘conception holiday’, and let me let you, after the first few months, nothing can seem as tedious or difficult as intercourse just because you ‘have to’.

Apart from the stress I was under trying to conceive, work here had become very demanding and with family issues on the property, I started to feel that maybe my body was under too much stress to conceive. I made the decision that in order for me to conceive it was best to remove myself from the situation. This was not easily done as I couldn’t leave and between my father and my husband looking to me for answers, I’m sure that both of them thought I had lost the plot. Especially when I went from being a confident person, when it came to working on the property, to this person who would often answer most questions with “I don’t know”, “ask Justin”, “what ever you think”.  I wouldn’t say that it was easy for me to do, but I feel really good about it now for a number of different reasons. Mostly because now I’m in a position where I can just enjoy my pregnancy with every confidence that our business is running as effectively as possible.

The following year (2014) was not a great deal better and I would like to say that I was handling myself better each month, when I discovered that I wasn’t pregnant, but I’m sure my husband would tell you otherwise. We also had several funerals that year which included my grandmother, my dad’s cousin who I had been very close to, and an army mate of dad’s who I was very fond of who died in the most horrific of farm accidents. My poor father certainly had the roughest year of all, as on top of all this he discovered that he had prostate cancer. So needless to say 2014 was not the best year for us.

Somewhere in there I managed to go and see a doctor about my infertility.  He decided for the typical procedure of a laparoscope to see if my fallopian tubes were patent. The storey which follows is long and exhausting and I have written about it previously. The short version includes my close call with death, loosing 7L of blood, two laparotomies and a stent in my aorta. Another emotional journey in itself and I still feel for my family and how they must have suffered the feelings of helplessness. It took me 4 months to recover and once again I was grateful from having distanced myself from the business and this was a good catalyst to enforce that decision.

I guess the one positive that came from this was that I was forced to take it easy, and not so much force was necessary as I just could not physically do the things I wanted to. In the beginning just having a shower was an effort. The other thing was that ‘trying’ wasn’t off the cards, but I wasn’t as expectant as I had been previously. I could accept that my body would need time to heal and that falling pregnant probably wasn’t going to happen for a while.

By the time I recovered it was the start of a new year, 2015 and it has been proving to be a wonderful year for us. I feel as though a lot of the family issues we had been having previously, were starting to resolve and there was now light where before seemed like only darkness. We decided to see a fertility specialist about trying to conceive. This all takes time with referrals and waiting for opportune timing. We attempted once to do an ‘artificial insemination’ (the only way that I can think of it, because we have cows and it’s exactly the same process). This was unsuccessful, next stop IVF.

So, after another couple of months, in order to have the surgeon available and anaesthetist and my cycle in line and the stars and the moon in line, we had everything set for the program. I had to even go on the contraceptive pill for a month, so that my cycle would line up with all the other girls doing the program, so we could all have our surgeries and everything together. Then there is a process where you have to needle yourself every day for two weeks and twice a day for one week, at very specific times. Then you have to give yourself one particular needle at the time allocated for your egg harvesting surgery. The people at the IVF clinic told me of this poor girl, who fell asleep and didn’t get to needle herself in time and the whole program failed, so she had to start again. So this put the fear of god into me.

I was a bit apprehensive about the surgery because this would be my first since all the drama with my aorta. The funny thing was, my anaesthetist was the same lady who was there for the first laparotomy (when everything went pear shaped) and she remembered me. It was nice to have someone who could understand exactly why I was apprehensive and she was very understanding. Anyhow, they harvested 14 eggs, which I’m told is very good. Out of that, 5 days later we had 3 little embryos. This is a very good result although I would not have known the difference. They put one of these into my uterus and froze the other two. They even give you a picture of it. All I could think was, “can’t you keep it? You’ve done a good job so far!” So then you have to wait, for the longest period in your life!! I cheated, I did a test myself before the blood test. “Wholey shit, it worked!”

Day 5

Now this is where I would like to say that I was ecstatic, over the moon and completely in love, but nope, nothing really. I was kind of relieved, scared, I don’t know I still can’t really put an emotion to it, just blank. It’s all so surreal and the ‘elation’ is short lived because then the real waiting starts, for that 12 week mark, when the risk of miscarriage is greatly reduced. All my scans were good, everything as it should be. No morning sickness only a bit of nausea, which people love to tell you how lucky you are, I also wanted to strangle them because after all, don’t I deserve to have a good pregnancy. This may seem a little odd, but I was also very reluctant to tell people, even now it feels weird. If someone asks me, I’m more than happy to say, yes, but something about announcing it feels odd to me. After everything that I had been through, I just wanted to keep it to myself and a special few, happier to wait until I saw the person rather than announce it to the world. 

7 weeks

So from there up and to this point, everything is progressing as it should, I’m getting a belly, none of my clothes fit and they tell me that there is a little human inside me. I know there is because I can feel it kick. I say ‘it’ because we haven’t found out, but I think I know (got a 50% chance right). Justin seems to be able to get the most action out of the baby, he has been away for 3 days and I’ve had hardly any movement and as soon as he comes home its does this outburst that I’m sure Bruce Lee would be proud of. I’m still not saying that it’s sunken in it yet and while I guess I’m still a little apprehensive, it’s growing on me (or in me). Every kick reminds me that it’s there and Justin lights up when he sees how big I’m getting. I have my ups and downs with pregnancy, I’m definitely not used to the weight that I’m gaining and my clothes not fitting. Once again I was naïve to think that I would be able to keep wearing my same short, shorts for the whole of the pregnancy. Wrong! And I’ve had to go and buy new bras on 3 occasions, again Justin is not complaining.

12 weeks 2 days.

This brings me to the things that I’ve learnt.

I learnt that falling naturally is only actually a 15% chance each time. This improves to 20% with artificial insemination and 40-50% with IVF depending on your health and age.

I hate when I’m naïve, so I guess that’s why I punish myself so much for it because I try so hard not to be.

 My body will do as it pleases with regard to this pregnancy and other than eating fairly well and trying to exercise, there isn’t a lot I can do!

Pregnancy comes with this incredible feeling of calm, at least for me. I didn’t realise it until I had read about it, but if there is one emotion that I feel, it’s calm. All the things that I thought I would do when I’m pregnant are starting to get less and less. They are significantly less now compared to what they were when we first started trying before all my surgery and the IVF.

Some people will try to give you advice and so far there have only been a couple of people that I haven’t appreciated their input.

Most people say that you should never expect a child to bring you closer to your partner, but if anything, I feel like our bond is now cemented with this child.

I’m sure that I’ve learnt far more than this, but I can’t think of anything right now.

I’m pleased that I’ve had the opportunity to start my blog before I had children so that I have a record of how my life will grow and change. When I first started this blog, I thought I had nothing to write about because I didn’t have children, but I spoke to a close friend the other day and she said her life was the same all the time because she did have children. I guess it’s funny how your perception changes.