What IF

OK, I started to write this during NIAW, but my dad needed major neurological surgery, and the past 10 days have been a blur of time in the hospital and in the car on the way to and from the hospital.  So although I'm a bit late to the game, I'd still like to join my voice in this wonderful project, even if only in my own way.

As most of you know, we just commemorated NIAW - National Infertility Awareness Week.
The brilliant Mel at Stirrup Queens has been at the forefront of leading a multi-part project, called What IF, which provides a collaboration and platform to increase awareness for this issue.  During the first part of this project, participants were asked share their "What if questions" with regard to infertility on the comment section of Mel's post.  What resulted was a breathtaking collaboration of the many facets of infertility.  If you haven't checked it out already, I urge you to go do so.  Don't be surprised if it's something you need to take in a bit at a time.  Go ahead and take a look - I promise I'll wait.


It was a big step for me to add my comment because it was the first time I participated in anything like this; it was the first time I really felt a strong desire to be a part of this issue, to share my voice in this way. Honestly, being so new to the blogging scene, this was one of the first comments I've ever left.  And it touched me that someone wanted to know what I felt and hoped and feared.

What IF Part 2

1. Pick/Tweak the category your "What IF" comment falls into:

     Alright, so we're back to the issue of where exactly do I fit in in all this?  I guess the closest category would be: How infertility impacted your “plans”/current choices/future decisions.

2. Go back to your blog and explore that “what if” in a post:
          OK, so I had 3 What IFs:

     a.) What IF we are somehow able to bring a child into our lives, but unable to find a treatment/cure for my debilitating health issues?


     b.) What IF despite the deepest desires of my heart, this makes me an inadequate/bad mother?


     c.)What IF I never know the joy of helping my husband, who has lost his family, become the incredible father I know he will be?  


So in my last post, I'm glad I introduced you to Smaug, because he is really what the heart and soul of what my What IFs are about.  When I thought about my fears regarding IF, initially my concerns ran the gamut voiced by many others, along the lines of what if we never have children, how will we cope, who will I be?  And I think C runs along those lines. But when I dug deeper inside, I realized that my strongest fears were more about what if my deepest desires come true, but the health issues haven't been resolved.  And, even worse, what if this makes me a incompetent mother?


A.) I think my plans and hopes over the past few years have run along the lines of "fix this medical issue, and then you'll be able to get pregnant, and/or have children."  It has always been my foremost need to fix the health problem, which would then enable me to get pregnant.  For many, many reasons there has always been a background concern about my ability to get/stay pregnant, but I couldn't even begin to tackle that issue unless I dealt with the health problem first. 


Smaug is the latest in the series of health concerns, but he has taken first place and held that title for the past 4 years.  Despite that, I have clung to the dream of getting pregnant with a tenacity that would amaze Olympic athletes.  Or denial, whichever shoe fits on a given day.  Our inability to defeat Smaug, or the secondary health problems, for that matter, have made that dream whither down to the barest spark.  Ever see the movie "Apollo 13"?  Remember the line where Tom Hanks says "It will take us accomplishing 4,017 (or some similar extreme number) steps to be able to make it home.  Right now, we're on like step 9."  That's how I feel.  The number of things that would have to come together for me to be able to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby are beyond staggering; it really would take a miracle.  And yet, there's that tiny sliver of that bitch Hope that whispers "And yet, the Apollo 13 crew did make it home safe. . ."


But after the unsuccessful last surgery, even Hope had to listen when Logic said, "If this is what you want, it really will take Other Means." That point was solidly driven home to the extent that in a flurry of inspiration, I even wrote our "Dear Birth Mother" letter.  Which for me, is a SERIOUS admission that me being able to "naturally" (I hate that expression with regard to this subject) have a baby really is not gonna happen.  At least a part of me acknowledges that.  


But with that partial acknowledgement came the awareness that it may be possible to have a child and still be dealing with these health issues.  oh fuck. . .


 So what if we're granted the deepest desires of my heart, but Smaug is still on a rampage???


And this brings me to the second What IF:

B.) What if Smaug and other health issues compromise my ability to be a "good" mother?  I understand that every parent gets sick, has off days, etc. But, take, for example, this last go round with Smaug. I only had 4 "good days" between Smaug's rampages.  This last one was devastating.  Sometimes Smaug awakens slowly, and builds to a roaring crescendo of agony.  But this time, he was awakened at gale force.  And I was completely flattened by it.  I came within a whisper of waking Nate and asking Him to take me to the ER. I NEVER do that.  Because I have experienced it so many times, I figure I have generally figured out the best ways to manage it. Again, because of the frequency with which I  deal with this, I know it is not something dangerous or life-threatening.  I must simply endure it.  I have the best medications available outside of a hospital setting.  And even more, I do not want to get a Reputation as a Drug Seeker.  If that happens, it really is all over for me; I will never be taken seriously or stand a chance at finding Bard's Black Arrow and defeating Smaug.  I have a wonderful doctor/doctors and have worked hard to establish a trusting relationship based on honesty.  Without that I fear the thread I dangle from would snap entirely. All that to say I NEVER go to the hospital for a Smaug uproar.


But I was oh-so-tempted.  I had taken every medication possible; tried every trick in my considerable arsenal. And still the pain roared through me, leaving me helpless and near mad with its intensity.  I wracked my brain, thinking "What else can I do? Could anyone do? I have tried it all and it has not made a dent.  Fucking Smaug!" But from the corner of my mind, the idea of the hospital dangled before me.  And like the Snake whispering to Eve in the Garden of Eden, "They have even better drugs.  They have Dilaudid.  You've been on that before.  I bet that could subdue Smaug; at the very least make him so punch-drunk he couldn't breathe his flame-thrower straight at your insides." I don't think a marooned man on a desert isle could have been more tempted by a fresh waterfall. But I didn't do any of that.  Instead, i endured, as usual.  And as usual, Smaug finally dozed off.  But while he was on a rampage, I was completely and utterly useless.  Beyond useless.  Just curled in a fetal position, trying labor breathing techniques, trying not to scream, trying unsuccessfully not to throw up. 


And this is what brings me to my deepest fear.  If this were an occasional, few times a year occurrence,  I could see me handling motherhood like any mother occasionally incapacitated by illness - it happens to the best of us.  In fact Nate and I had care of my niece, E, during a Smaug rampage, and we handled it just fine.  Nate stepped in beautifully where I couldn't.  But Smaug wakes up and shreds my insides more than 1/2 the time.  That's not fair to subject anyone to: not Nate, not me, not our child.  I have always believed that Nate and I would make great parents.  It is one of the fundamental beliefs I hold dear about myself - how I would be as a mother.  But What IF, by some miracle we managed to have a child, by hook or by crook, with Smaug unresolved, I was too ill to be the mother I know I could be, the kind of mother I desperately long to be?  And What IF a child, our child, suffered as a result?  Could I ever live with this?


C.) This one goes back to my desire to experience pregnancy and motherhood.  When Nate and I were first dating, I mean just barely dating, I had a few dreams that stood out.  First, let me clarify that I almost NEVER remember my dreams.  The fact that I even remembered the dreams was no minor feat. One was of his mother, who had passed away years before.  She was with me, and showing me things about herself, things she loved, paintings she had painted, stories about herself.  Nate was in it too, but working a job that I "knew" he had never done.  It was a very friendly dream - I had the feeling that his mother was simply trying to introduce herself to me, sharing part of herself with me.  I told Nate the "ridiculous" dream I had had, how it was a nice dream, but impossible to be true.  He took me to the basement in his house and asked, "Was this the painting you saw in your dream?"  With astonishment, I nodded.  I said, "But it can't be true - you were in it, but you were working some job I know you never worked."  He shook his head and admitted he had held that job years before.  I was even able to accurately sketch the patch that had been on his uniform in my dream.  I was stunned, and a little weirded out by the dream - had the "tone" of it not been so friendly, I would have been a lot more freaked. 


Later that week I had another dream - this one was of Nate and I in the future.  I saw our older selves - I was washing dishes in the sink of a strange house, Nate was next to me.  I turned and casually asked Nate to go tell "Gracie" to go get her shoes on - we had to go or we were going to be late.  He did, and in my dream I followed him down the hall of an unfamiliar ranch house, into a back bedroom.  There was a girl of about 9 or 10, sitting on the edge of her bed, bent over tying shoe laces.  As she straightened, I saw she had the same colored shoulder length hair as me, and Nate's eyes.  As I stared, there was a "voice over" telling me about the girl.  It said, "This is Gracie.  Actually, her name is really Lorena Grace, but we call her Gracie - Lorena, after Nate's mother, and Grace because it was such an overwhelming act of God's grace that we were ever able to have a child at all."  I tried to brush the dream off as ridiculous as well, but it stayed with me.


More recently, I have had dreams that I was pregnant.  In each one,  there was the sense that this was impossible, but incredibly, it was true.  I was always in the 2nd trimester, a time I knew to generally be "safer" to actually believe in the viability of this pregnancy.  In these dreams, I experienced the unprecedented joy of impending motherhood that I never allow myself to even imagine in my waking moments.  It is such a piercing, aching, overflowing joy.  Unparalleled by anything I have ever experienced on this earth, although there is a sense of fear, too.  But the joy wins out.  And in each. and. every. dream, the moment of most anticipated joy is the moment I reveal the pregnancy to Nate.  To me, that is the pinnacle of joy - the sharing of this, the knowledge that I have been able to give this to Nate.  I both love and hate these dreams.  It is the only place I ever actually imagine pregnancy with the joy and fear it holds for me - the overcoming the impossible.  It's a joy I have only ever experienced in these dreams - nothing in real life has come close, not even the joy of my wedding, when I thought I would explode with joy.  But these dreams also mean I have to wake up to the realization that they are not true and not likely to come true.  And I know the devastation and ache of empty arms and an empty heart.  And worse, the awareness that this is something I cannot give Nate.

3.) Add a link at the bottom of your post to this URL giving a basic understanding of infertility: www.resolve.org/infertility101 and this URL giving the background of National Infertility Awareness Week (NIAW): www.resolve.org/takecharge.

4.) End your post with a new, positive “what if“–a best-case-scenario for you personally.  What you hope to see happen–either for yourself or for someone else.
     If I'm shooting for a "realistic," positive, "What IF", I guess it would be:
         
          a.) "What IF we are able to defeat and bury Smaug, or at least subdue him to a more manageable, salamander sized issue?  And no other major health issues raise their heads, at least not for another 40 years?


          b.) What IF we are able to have a child of our own come into our lives?  I cannot begin to imagine the joy possible.


          c.) What IF the first two come true and I am able to be the kind of mother I dream of becoming? With allowances, of course, for being human.


          d.) What IF WE are able to experience this, and Nate knows the joy of fatherhood - that we both know the joy of being the parents we long to be.  And however it happens, I'm able to share in the moment with Nate when he realizes he's going to be a dad?


Put this way, do these positive What IFs seem too much to hope for???  I scare dare to even go there.


5.) Return here and add a permalink to your post to the Mr. Linky widget at the bottom of this post.
     I'm past deadline and I can't find Mr. Linky.  It doesn't matter if I'm able to be considered for the award, just being a part of this amazing project is beyond words.


OK, It's now 4:38 am and I'm trying to wrap this up.  It seems somewhat disjointed and rambling to me - I definitely wouldn't say it's my best written post, but it's one of my most honest.  Thanks, Mel for this amazing opportunity you're giving us to share in.