Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a job that doesn’t take a lot of effort on your part, yet is a good resume-builder and pays an acceptable salary? Wouldn’t it be even more wonderful if everyone at your company thought you were just the best employee they had ever seen, and the organization would be lost without you?
That’s my job. Though it sounds great, it’s actually getting rather tiresome. I work 40 hours a week doing a job that could probably be accomplished in 20 hours, yet the powers that be at my company are somehow under the illusion that I work very, very hard (this is probably because of a few very public accomplishments I have had recently). You could say that I should look for more ways to expand my job, but much of what I do depends on other people feeding me information, and there’s only so much calling, e-mailing and general harassing I can do.
Perhaps I could look for a new job. Except, I plan to be self-employed as a freelance writer once (if?) I have a child. So, there’s no point in giving up halfway decent benefits and a cushy job simply because I need to challenge myself more. I just have to suck it up and learn to live with a job that bores me most of the time.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
A one-track mind
I used to be an interesting person.
I work in public relations, so I know a lot about what’s going on in the local communities and the city. I watch a lot of TV, so I’m well-versed in pop culture. I love theater, music, scrapbooking and philosophizing.
Yet these days I have nothing to talk about except infertility.
Friends ask what’s new in my life. I could share our adventures during our recent vacation to Florida, or talk about our continued work with our youth group at church. But instead, all I can think of is our struggles to have a child. And depending upon which friend or family member it is, they either a) don’t know we’ve been trying; b) already know, are probably sick of hearing about it and don’t really have much to say except they’re sorry; or c) already know and continue to feed my frantic obsessiveness by allowing me to go over the details yet one more time.
When did I become so self-indulgent?
When I psychoanalyze myself (yet another one of my hobbies), I realize that this is a pattern with me. I tend to dwell on the one thing in my life I wish I could change. When I was living in another city while planning a wedding with M, I fretted because I was ready quit my job and relocate to where he was living RIGHT THEN, rather than waiting until our marriage and the end of my lease. I was sick of my job and ready to move on to a new career. Then, when I finally moved to southeastern Wisconsin, I was frustrated because the job search was taking longer than I had planned. I thought to myself, All I want is a full-time job! And now, for about a year, I’ve been focused on having a child. At my church, there are very few “childless” married couples. I feel like “familyhood” is a club that I desperately want to be a part of, but which hasn’t yet accepted me as a member. So here I wait, in limbo.
Let me add here that I realize I haven’t been through nearly as much hell as many of you. I haven’t gone through multiple failed IVFs, or multiple miscarriages, or even had many cycles during which I could have legitimately gotten pregnant (actually, I’ve had one). But it’s fear that drives me. Fear that nothing short of injectables will allow me to reliably ovulate. Fear that we will break the bank trying IVF (I have very little infertility health insurance), and still won’t end up with a baby (or two). Fear that three or four years down the road, I will still be writing this blog about our attempts to start a family.
And that fear has taken over my thoughts so completely that I don’t have anything else to talk about.
I am no longer an interesting person.
I work in public relations, so I know a lot about what’s going on in the local communities and the city. I watch a lot of TV, so I’m well-versed in pop culture. I love theater, music, scrapbooking and philosophizing.
Yet these days I have nothing to talk about except infertility.
Friends ask what’s new in my life. I could share our adventures during our recent vacation to Florida, or talk about our continued work with our youth group at church. But instead, all I can think of is our struggles to have a child. And depending upon which friend or family member it is, they either a) don’t know we’ve been trying; b) already know, are probably sick of hearing about it and don’t really have much to say except they’re sorry; or c) already know and continue to feed my frantic obsessiveness by allowing me to go over the details yet one more time.
When did I become so self-indulgent?
When I psychoanalyze myself (yet another one of my hobbies), I realize that this is a pattern with me. I tend to dwell on the one thing in my life I wish I could change. When I was living in another city while planning a wedding with M, I fretted because I was ready quit my job and relocate to where he was living RIGHT THEN, rather than waiting until our marriage and the end of my lease. I was sick of my job and ready to move on to a new career. Then, when I finally moved to southeastern Wisconsin, I was frustrated because the job search was taking longer than I had planned. I thought to myself, All I want is a full-time job! And now, for about a year, I’ve been focused on having a child. At my church, there are very few “childless” married couples. I feel like “familyhood” is a club that I desperately want to be a part of, but which hasn’t yet accepted me as a member. So here I wait, in limbo.
Let me add here that I realize I haven’t been through nearly as much hell as many of you. I haven’t gone through multiple failed IVFs, or multiple miscarriages, or even had many cycles during which I could have legitimately gotten pregnant (actually, I’ve had one). But it’s fear that drives me. Fear that nothing short of injectables will allow me to reliably ovulate. Fear that we will break the bank trying IVF (I have very little infertility health insurance), and still won’t end up with a baby (or two). Fear that three or four years down the road, I will still be writing this blog about our attempts to start a family.
And that fear has taken over my thoughts so completely that I don’t have anything else to talk about.
I am no longer an interesting person.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Welcome to my world
For more than half of my life now, I’ve had a strong suspicion I would be an infertile. I had good reason to believe so—at age 14, when I FINALLY got my period, she visited me for two months, then she went away. Poof. Like I had never reached womanhood at all. My worried mother took me to the OB/GYN, who promptly put me on birth control pills. Only she and my mom called them “hormone pills,” so I wouldn’t tune in to the fact that I essentially had a free pass to have as much sex as I wanted. It worked. Not that I had much of a choice—I didn’t have my first kiss until I was a freshman in college.
But I was no dummy. I knew that if one does not have a period, she does not ovulate. And if she does not ovulate, she does not conceive. As life went on, I became more and more concerned about my chances of having children. I asked new doctors, and they told me not to worry about it until I was ready to start a family. There were no tests that could determine whether I was reproductively challenged. One boyfriend even broke up with me because he wasn’t sure whether I would be able to have children, and he wanted his own biological progeny (there’s a real winner for you). After that break-up, I begged my doctors for tests and got them. They put me through the standard blood tests for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), which came up negative, and told me I had nothing to worry about on that front. Ha.
It wasn’t until March of 2006, one year after marrying M (a wonderful guy who knew about my situation and wasn’t opposed to adoption, if that was what it took), that I went off the Pill for good and tested my luck. A friend who was experiencing secondary infertility became my Yoda and taught me how to temp. Lo and behold, I ovulated my first cycle, which was 40 days long. Then, nothing. I went to see a new OB that summer, who diagnosed me with PCOS (who knew it was a diagnosis of exclusion?), put me on Provera, thinking my body would trick itself into cycling normally. Nothing. That November, she put me through the traditional infertile work-up (bloodwork, HSG, etc.) and finally put me on Clomid. The short story: 1st cycle, 50 mg, didn’t make me ovulate. 2nd cycle, 100 mg, did work but I didn’t get pregnant. 3rd cycle, 100 mg, again I didn’t ovulate.
The statistics say that 80 percent of PCOS women are able to ovulate on Clomid. I’m proud and honored to be one of the unlucky 20 percent. I sought information on the Internet (gotta love the Google MD), and found a score of infertility blogs. I thought to myself, “Self, you’re a writer! Hell, you write for a living! Why shouldn’t you join this community of women bonded together by a single obsession—the desire for a child?”
And so begins my experiment. We’ll see where it leads us.
But I was no dummy. I knew that if one does not have a period, she does not ovulate. And if she does not ovulate, she does not conceive. As life went on, I became more and more concerned about my chances of having children. I asked new doctors, and they told me not to worry about it until I was ready to start a family. There were no tests that could determine whether I was reproductively challenged. One boyfriend even broke up with me because he wasn’t sure whether I would be able to have children, and he wanted his own biological progeny (there’s a real winner for you). After that break-up, I begged my doctors for tests and got them. They put me through the standard blood tests for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), which came up negative, and told me I had nothing to worry about on that front. Ha.
It wasn’t until March of 2006, one year after marrying M (a wonderful guy who knew about my situation and wasn’t opposed to adoption, if that was what it took), that I went off the Pill for good and tested my luck. A friend who was experiencing secondary infertility became my Yoda and taught me how to temp. Lo and behold, I ovulated my first cycle, which was 40 days long. Then, nothing. I went to see a new OB that summer, who diagnosed me with PCOS (who knew it was a diagnosis of exclusion?), put me on Provera, thinking my body would trick itself into cycling normally. Nothing. That November, she put me through the traditional infertile work-up (bloodwork, HSG, etc.) and finally put me on Clomid. The short story: 1st cycle, 50 mg, didn’t make me ovulate. 2nd cycle, 100 mg, did work but I didn’t get pregnant. 3rd cycle, 100 mg, again I didn’t ovulate.
The statistics say that 80 percent of PCOS women are able to ovulate on Clomid. I’m proud and honored to be one of the unlucky 20 percent. I sought information on the Internet (gotta love the Google MD), and found a score of infertility blogs. I thought to myself, “Self, you’re a writer! Hell, you write for a living! Why shouldn’t you join this community of women bonded together by a single obsession—the desire for a child?”
And so begins my experiment. We’ll see where it leads us.
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