My Lady of the Lantern

AF is here! Today morning, around 0840, I had a small smile externally and a big relief internally when I saw the spotting. It is three days early, and I believe that early is always better than late. I am also happy because the scheduled day of its commencement was also the bang-on day of Wedding 1 . I will still be 'down' when I attend the wedding, but with a lot less bleeding and infrequent ugh-I-must-go-check moments. I stopped for a second when I was about to swallow my ASA today ( not taken in periods coz it increases the bleeding ), and the logic I had was that, if maximum of the flow happens before I leave for City I, it would be even better. But guess what? Neither has my flow increased, nor am I having major discomfort yet. It is obvious that I now will have my next ASA only when AF goes away. Thank You God. Even though I crib against you a lot, there are times I really appreciate you, and this is one such occasion. ^WiseGuy^

It kicked in that on September 13, 2009 I had completed five years of my dragon quest for becoming a mother. What kind of an anniversary is that? The Five Year Itch? If Marilyn Monroe would have starred in this saga would she have screamed blonde jokes? Hmmm....maybe I should come out with brunette jokes? Sometime in 2004....I swallowed my last birth control pill, thinking no more preventing .... Five years for a bloody baby of my own? Five years of freckin' waiting for Baby #1? Can you read into the text and see that I am still talking of the baby in ordinal terms, and not absolute terms....I am not saying one...that I am referring to it as the 'first'.... Hmmm...as disjointed as I am getting...I had wished hoped for planned for Baby 1 to happen by the time I was 30 and the Baby 2 to happen by the time I was 32-33. That would have ensured that I had finished adding to my family by the time I was 35. I will be 32 in December....I started at the right time....I was 26 wh...

I wait. Aafra Faafra should have been here yesterday, but she is not even beating the front door yet! When it arrives, I would make faces, but would also know that it would be over eventually. Waiting for it, knowing she would arrive is an irritant. It stays on the top of the mind...classes, presentations, meetings, conversations, advice, suggestions, sleeping, eating, driving, bending, getting up...the loyal thought is everywhere . And dear God...please never ever make me barf in my 2ww. It is plain unfair. ^WiseGuy^

Dear God, This is not an I love you letter. I am not even begging for deliverance. I believe you exist. If not for your secret plans, men might have made this planet a really boring place to be in. I could Coldplay you with Don’t Panic or I could even dedicate U2’s Beautiful Day to you. But you can’t be U2ed. You are indeed U1 only. You know, I have this blue gown that I really adore. It’s the one which has tiny peach flowers, and a very close fit. I pass the full length mirror often and I think my side profile is very unflattering. I have a neat bump. I could easily pass for four months. But it’s no baby, it’s just gas. I just wanted to know how much gas do you think makes for a with-child kind of a bump. I am not whining. I just want to stay clear from the charge of you-should-have-told-me-this-before. You can never now say that I did not say it. ^WiseGuy^

DH: And he told me that she will be needing extra support from now on... Me: Why? DH: Because she has developed a thyroid problem... Me: So? DH: She is pregnant. Me: Oh. Everybody is doing it God...it's the season to be knocked up.... ^WiseGuy^

Yes, I returned back, late last night. I have meant to blog...but something or the other just kept on popping and so it is now that I am sunk to blogging, even though my mind is fighting the rest of my senses for coffee. Yes the trip was nice blah blah...blah, and I shopped a bit and got a thumb ring and a necklace for an exciting souvenir...blah blah! We did not travel alone. Another infertile couple was also roped in our quest for the Holy Smoke. So we ended at wherever and did the whatever, and guess what? We did not talk/share history upto the time that we we were about to take the train back to the place from which we started. Guess what, she too was a case of Unexplained Infertility, still trying to strike lucky atleast once. " ...There is such a big file. Doctors can't tell what is wrong... They ask me as to how come no pregnancies have ever occurred... We went to ABC in M and we went to XYZ in G...Oh, treatment? No, I have given up on it...I am sure it has got somethin...

So, I wrote about this in another post , but was really whining about something else, so this issue became a victim of oversight. My hubby's boss is asking us to accompany him to a temple in his hometown. He is basically going there as a thanksgiving for the birth of his son (his second child). Apparently, as reported by him, the temple is a hit with both fertiles as well as infertiles. Fertiles go there to thank for the healthy offspring, and infertiles go there to get God to listen to their prayers. I have problems with that theory. I am not agnostic. I pray. I celebrate God in my own way, even if I am not hot on rituals. Believe me, I am an unusual entity in the kind of settings in which I am existing. My mother has elaborate rituals attached to her prayer routine. But she was not always like that. Over the years, she has discovered her own way. I too want to do the same thing. I don't want God to be heaped on me. If I come out with more rituals, it would be because my heart...

Dear God, Please spare me the torture. I would prefer it to be early than 'late'. Yours truthfully, ^WiseGuy^

Monday: It’s night time. A session of lovemaking is in progress. On my side of the bed lies a copy of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. On his side of the bed, there is a copy of Robin Cook’s Outbreak. We are close to a fine conclusion, when I mentally work upon – “Hmmmm…will my child prefer Robin Cook over Plath?” . Can I see your jaw dropping here…just wait! Tuesday: We are returning home after dinner. Turn on the radio to find a beautiful track playing. I liked the song a lot when that particular movie released and over the period of time, try as hard as I could, I was not able to recall its first line. So when the song came on, not only did I not give it all my ears, but I also started wondering why did I forget to scout more the last time I thought of it. Then I start wondering about whether I should set it as my dialer tone? (Dialer tone is the music heard by anyone calling my mobile number). Then I think that since the song is about a mother searching for a son she has lost, people...

I am still in utter disbelief. I can’t understand what went wrong and where. I can’t ever understand these numbers. One particular IUI, a doc said that there was a 10 percent chance of success. I was mentally able to calculate the failure percentage, but I just could not comprehend the heartache of being in the rest 90 percent. This particular hospital I was with for IVF w/ICSI quoted a very high success rate (no, nothing phoney, that much is checked out). But again I just could not understand the grief of being on the other side of the success range. I just can’t absorb this in the first go. There were so many positive vibes and signs this time. I had my mother with me all the time. God can’t prove even her correct? I have always trusted her to have a deeper, truer, stronger bond with God. Does she feel betrayed? I do not know. I will never ask her this question as well. I could be in any amount of trouble, but if my mother stood by me, I always knew that everything will be alright....

I have not turned cold. No, I am getting these bouts where tears do escape me. Today evening, my mother sat down on the floor, laid her head on my lap and just kept her head down. I know she was seeking some warm reassurance from me. That is what I did not give to her. I would have balled out - cried like crazy and somehow I am not into public displays of my frustration with myself, with God (I really am upset with this guy) and with why I always have to have the harder path to achieving simple things that seem to fall effortlessly into other people's life. I could not give in. Who needs that reassurance more? Yesterday night, almost my whole family cried in front of me. Dad and bro had their share of tears when I was not there. But my mother followed me upstairs. I wanted to take a bath. She did not let me go till we bear-hugged. She was shaken. She was like - "Oh God, so many injections, so many tablets?". She almost feels responsible for me for having gone through this...

I normally despise the gyan that some people give me for free on fertility issues. But there are also times when I hear genuine words. This is not something which was told to me yesterday or the day before. Month after month, I was a fallen wicket. One day I was sharing my frustration with my father and there was one small thing he said. He told me that maybe God was saving me from an even more severe heartache. (We have a neighbour, whose granddaughter was born premature and is special). So, I should count my blessings and never give up on my efforts, but I should never treat my failure as the most 'painful' possibility. In the series of who-needed-you advice, there was one aunty in my building who asked me to have sex on Poornimas (full-moon nights), because it would increase my chances of having a boy child!!! Whoa! Haw! Hum! ^WiseGuy^

Case I: W got married and within three months she came to know that she had conceived. Why have a kid so early in marriage and for this simple reason she had the baby aborted. Later she conceived again and lost the baby in the fifth month. She conceived again and had a normal delivery. As of today, she is the proud mother of two daughters.[It is also rumored that she had found out that she was pregnant four months prior to her wedding and she and her fiance had disposed off the baby for the fear of bringing shame to their respective families.] Case II: W got married and was detected with a fibroid. Around the same time, she conceived and on some adverse opinion from her doctor had an MTP. A second opinion post-MTP concluded that she actually did not need the MTP(!). Second time she became pregnant, she delivered a healthy baby boy. Power of Contraception be damned, she conceived again within two years, which she promptly got terminated. Case III: W got married and because of lack...

I had a D and C on July 27th and God help me, coz I can’t forget how icky I felt. My hatred for that hospital loo, the smell of the consultation room, the needle-prick and drop-your-clothes-here just intensified that day. I was absolutely broken when I was out of the Anaesthesia. I can never describe how much I despised being poked, scraped and pricked. My doctor had planned an IUI for me this cycle. And had the plan panned on Tuesday (CD14, Aug 5). The follicle in my right ovary refused to rupture. My Serum Prolactin levels show that even though it fell in the normal range, the Prolactin level is on a higher side. Anyways, I was on a cocktail of Ubiphene, Nacfil, Fertibex, Cabgolin and Eudrin for this cycle. I was given an HCG injection on 3rd August. Even with the induction, no follicles were formed in the left ovary, which is perfectly free of any cysts. The fruit was borne in the right ovary (how ironic) which has a chocolate cyst and in spite of the HCG, the follicles in th...