Let’s Talk About my Ovaries!

I don’t really have an update on the adoption situation. At the suggestion of my psychologist, we have been setting up visits about every three months, arranging the next one while we are together. It seems to be working okay, and I even feel some serious healing going on, which has been a nice relief. I didn’t cry last time we saw them at all, which was huge step for me. I still haven’t gotten to a point where I’m content with the whole situation, and I still have a ton of regrets, but I’m a point I can at least live with.

In other news (sort of, also it is going to get kind of TMI up in here), I have officially been off my birth control for 2 years as of February. Which is a really long time. I wouldn’t say we’ve been really trying to get pregnant for the whole time, but we have for at least a year. I finally got up the courage to go to a doctor about it, and apparently I have PCOS, which is a delightful treat! (It’s not.) Of course it decided to wait to show itself until now, and not four years ago when getting pregnant was the last thing I wanted to happen. Actually the diagnosis explains a whole lot of things, like why I’ve never had a regular period a day in my life and why I’ve had such a hard time trying to lose any of the weight from my pregnancy.

Anyway, my doctor is pretty optimistic since we did already have one, so silver linings and all of that, I guess. She put me on Metformin to start with which is pretty standard. I’ll stay on that for four months and see if it works before we start Clomid. I’m pretty okay with this whole course of action, I am on week three of the Metformin and so far the side effects haven’t bothered me much at all. I notice a little bit more stomach pain for a couple days after I increase my dose (I am going up to 4 pills/day over the course of a month), but that’s about it. I guess I am also supposed to be scheduling an ultrasound so that she can see what my ovaries are looking like, but I haven’t gotten up the courage to schedule that one. It just sounds so uncomfortable.

One thing that has become pretty clear to me in browsing certain message boards is that I am in kind of a weird position. I’m not a “true” infertile person, because I have one already, and I really don’t identify at all with people who are dealing with secondary infertility. I don’t have another one running around to distract me, instead it is made very clear to me with every update and visit exactly what I’m missing out on. I tried googling some stuff about birthparent infertility, but I couldn’t find anything relevant. Some articles about unexplained secondary fertility in birthparents, but mine is very much explained and certainly not a reaction to extreme grief.

So that’s where we’re at. Dealing with a thing on my list of Worst Possible Fears.

Just an Update

Lately my psychologist has been strongly urging me to get back in touch with J’s parents.

“Get back in touch” because I haven’t heard a single word from them since last August. Radio silence at my birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s day.

I can feel the blame in those last couple sentences perfectly clearly, but truth be told, I haven’t contacted them either. Their last letter to me got mixed up and included pictures intended for their older son’s birthmother instead of pictures of J. The letter accompanying it didn’t really seem to require or even want a response, so even though I tried, I gave up before too long because it was all starting to feel incredibly forced.

Anyway, she wants me to write them a letter and make a specific plan for getting together with them – every three months at the most, but at last twice a year. I promised I’d have at least a good start on it by the end of the weekend, but I’ve been staring at a blank email for the last three days. I know what my issues are, and we discussed them, but the end result was really just that I can’t not be a people pleaser as far as this is concerned.

So, that is where I stand. They are doing who knows what, and I am sitting around wondering what exactly that is and how I am supposed to convince them that I am capable of being present and available and reliable on a consistent basis, in spite of having fallen off the face of the earth almost a year ago.

moving house

I am getting all geared up to start blogging at my new domain! I say that, but it’s not really anywhere near ready to go. Ham is still working like crazy to get the coding and redirecting done and I’m still running around backing up the stuff from my various blogs so it can all finally be in one (carefully organized, like a lunch tray) space.

But! We are getting there and I’m excited. I’ll post again when I’m all ready for all, uh, 4 or so of you to update your bookmarks.

One Thing

I am only really, one hundred percent positive of one thing, two years into this:

I am really, really angry, and I really don’t like being told that I shouldn’t be angry.

Anything that I want to feel or that I feel like I should feel is almost completely clouded and blotted out by my anger.

For example, I am not excited by the chances and opportunities J will have in his life because I chose what I did. I’m not thrilled that he has an older brother who loves him more than anything ever, or parents who can provide for him far better than I ever could have, or a mom who can stay home with him all day.

I am just mad. If I had to take a stab at why, it would probably be because I was subconsciously taught/coerced/primed to make the decision I did for the first 19 years of my life without having a clue. I don’t blame anyone for that, I still dearly love my church and my family. I am not angry with them (although I’m sure plenty of people would point to that as the natural target, but for me, it’s not).

The fact that I don’t feel love for my son because I am just too angry to feel it makes me even madder. I go through the motions, sending emails and gifts and whatever, and since they seem to have no interest in seeing me or getting to know me at all that suffices. Thinking about the future worries me – I don’t want to be the heartless, unloving birthmother. I do love him, but I’m just so angry.

I am angry because no one ever told me that I didn’t have to place J. Parenting was never presented to me as a viable, acceptable choice. Everyone around me was obsessed by what family I would choose. Which two people would be his new parents? Which lucky kid would have a new baby brother?

What about me? Why couldn’t I be his new parent?

Two Years Ago

“Is he yours?”

It took me a minute to decide how to answer. “Yes! Yes, he’s mine,” I said.

“Oh. What about the dad, is he in the picture?” We’d been sitting together in Sociology every day for a few weeks now, and I was pretty sure the guy asking had a thing for me and really only wanted to know if I was available.

I paused for far longer than was comfortable for either of us, not sure how to answer this question either. Finally: “Well, it’s complicated, but no, he’s not.”

I neglected to tell him that I wasn’t really in the picture, either.

Bleh

His birthday last year was just another day for me, I took the time off work but didn’t really need to. This year, I’m taking birthday and placement day off again, but I’m already having trouble.

I keep crying all over my papers at work, and I still have 6 days till placement anniversary. At this rate, I’m going to be completely hysterical by the end of next week.

Birthday gift is almost completely taken care of, Ham’s mom makes handpainted wooden jigsaw puzzles, so we’ve asked her to make one for Frog and one for his brother, Frog’s bus themed, of course. I’m pretty excited, since it fits all of my criteria (wooden, handmade, sturdy, bus-themed) with the added bonus of being custom designed and made by Ham’s mom. I’d been surfing Etsy for weeks and just remembered about the puzzles last night, so I was thrilled.

We might also get him a wooden train, too, but I can’t decide.

Is this disjointed? It feels disjointed to me. I guess it’s that time of year.

I am not sure HOW to feel.

ACouple have never once asked for a visit. They seem somewhat excited after I ask and we are planning the visit, they are comfortable, pleasant, and linger when the visit actually takes place, and they always mention how nice it was afterwards.

But they’ve never made the first move here. I spoke on a panel and briefly mentioned this once, and a PAP came up to me afterwards and said maybe they are just trying to be considerate of my feelings, and don’t want to make me feel obligated to do something that is too painful for me at that particular point. Which, okay. I can understand that.

However, when I first wanted to ask for visits, I actually dragged them back into the agency (no short drive for either of us) to sit them down and impress upon them how important this is for Frog, and how it is about him, and not me, and they should not be afraid to ask for visits.

Really, what it comes down to in my mind is that they just don’t value the open adoption relationship and what it means to Frog. Of course, their reasoning for this could be that he is only 2 and is not asking questions yet, and things could improve. We still email much more than they were emailing their other birthmom at this point, so maybe it is just a matter of age. They are maintaining the current relationship and waiting to ask for more until it will be most helpful to him? I don’t know.

Which, it feels like I’ve mentioned all of this before, but I wanted to mention it again. Because that is what has been on my mind lately.

Buses

Frog likes buses. Like, LOVES. BUSES. We went to our local Children’s Museum with them in March (did I mention that? the visit didn’t fall through after all, and went quite well), and in the museum the have the front part of an actual city bus for the kids to play in. Frog wouldn’t come out for anything. He just sat there with the biggest grin on his face, shrieking “BUS!” over and over. I kind of enjoyed that. One of my first words was bus, actually.

So, he likes buses. His mom emailed me yesterday to give me an update, and his love of buses featured heavily. Since his birthday is coming up in a few weeks, I am looking at all things bus. Or train. She said trains were big too.

Anyway, I can’t decide how to do the whole birthday thing. I basically just let it go by the first year, I didn’t get him anything, sent them a Happy Birthday email, and left it at that. This year, I’m having some trouble. I want to see him this time around, not on his birthday, but near. I want to get something that I can play with him with, since I had some trouble interacting with him at the last visit. I spent more time with his 7 year old brother, which felt strange afterwards. I am wanting to work on that.

Which, actually, all of this requires setting up another visit, so…

Ugh. This never really ends, does it.

Firsts

For the first six months of Frog’s life, I went to the bookstore every month to read the applicable chapter of What to Expect the First Year to get an idea of what he was doing that month. I saw pictures and things from his parents, but i never really felt like I knew what was going on with him that month. My vision of his life was fragmented and abstract, like I was getting pictures from different babies of varying ages who didn’t really link together very well. I still feel that way about it.

Anyway, I have no idea what is age appropriate, and what milestones he should be reaching when. I quit checking up at the bookstore.

Apparently he said his first full sentence a couple weeks ago (maybe a week ago, they have never given dates of milestones, which I find irritating – what if I was keeping a baby book of those kinds of things? I should just ask). “I want yummies,” apparently, which I find find hilarious. There wasn’t enough food in the world to keep me full when I was pregnant. I never had any cravings or anything, but I would eat almost anything (as long as it didn’t have refried beans or guacamole in it). They also mentioned that one of his first words was yummies.

My grandparents were going on a cruise while I was pregnant, and I remember being so jealous because, ALL THAT FOOD. They could eat whenever they wanted, without having to pay for it every single time!

Anyway, I guess all of this is to say that I’m glad I can pretend that all that hunger (I was perfectly well fed, so that wasn’t a thing) while I was pregnant had some bearing on his current life. I don’t really think he looks like me or Ham, so I tend to cling to anything that seems to link us even remotely.

I Failed to Mention

Visit was postponed until tomorrow. For sure this time!

They had strep (first parents, then kids) the previous two attempts to meet. So, after my freak-out post last time, you’d think I was feeling even worse off, maybe?

I feel fine. They seem excited and truly apologetic about having to put it off. The visit is still only two hours, but I’m feeling more interested in making the most of the visit rather than second-guessing all of their (supposed) ulterior motives.

Plus, I am going to let them know tomorrow that we are moving out of state this summer. Which, that is a whole other post about my conflicting feelings and things.

edited to add: We didn’t move out of the state – Ham found a job here just in the nick of time.