Exhausted

This has been a sort of rough week for me.  I'm tired.  Not just physically because of working extra hours and trying to keep up with everything I'm supposed to keep up with, but spiritually, emotionally tired.
I was talking to one of my friends and telling her about what the chiropractor said about giving up gluten.  She's been down a lot of the road we're travelling right now (and has two beautiful children, by the way), and she asked me if we'd ever been tested.  And it was like a light bulb went on in my head.  We haven't had any tests really except some bloodwork and a simple look at Jeremy's swimmers.  Really not even scratched the surface.  I have no idea what's causing my infertility even though I have a name for it -- PCOS.  But that tells me the symptoms and not the cause.  She pointed out that a lot of the tests are fairly inexpensive and if they test for something like tube blockage or endometriosis, my insurance should cover part of it as it is a health concern outside of just infertility.  It was like a cloud had lifted off of me when she said that.  Of course, right now we still can't afford even a "cheap" test, but maybe sometime in the nearer than later future we can.  And then  maybe we can get some answers besides just PCOS.
I'm just tired of thinking about it all, though.  I'm tired of it taking up so much of my life, inserting itself into so many of my thoughts and worries and prayers.  I'm tired of feeling like I'm in a holding pattern and unable to do anything about it.  I'm tired of the emotional ups and downs.  I'm tired of overanalyzing everything my body does, every pimple, every twinge, every secretion.  Every munchy attack.
And to make matters worse, I'm making myself paranoid now.  After having two ruptured cysts two cycles in a row . . . and knowing that they ruptured while having sex (sorry if I offended you, but you know this is a blog about infertility and that you can't get pregnant without having sex), I'm afraid to have sex during the last week or so (give or take a week, considering that I never really know when the last week of my cycle is) of my cycle for fear that it will happen again.  Sigh.  Can you see how tired I am?  I'm exhausted.

But I LOVE Bread . . .

We had dinner with our friends last night, one of which is a chiropractor.  He had agreed to talk to us about some options he might be able to help us with in the future.  I loved how he talked about treating not only the symptoms but the whole body.  He wants to run a lot of tests on basically anything and everything to try and figure out what is causing my PCOS.  And I love the thought of working on not only the symptoms but the cause.
Here's the struggles I see about going through this:

• We can't afford the tests right now, and definitely can't afford them all at once.
• He wants me to give up gluten.

I have said several times to Jeremy that I hoped our kids would not have a gluten allergy because I wasn't sure how I'd deal with having to do all the gluten-free stuff.  According to our chiropractor-friend, about 80 percent of people in the world are allergic to gluten.  Jeremy says that it's because there aren't as many varities of wheat and rye and barley anymore.  But it's still weird to me to think about it.  I know that you can make bread with other things . . . and brownies and cakes and cookies.  But I'm still not sure about it.  It's a lot to think about.  As much as I want to be pregnant, why am I even hesitating at this suggestion?

Why Not?

I know I've heard this in the past few years, but for some reason it hit a note or something with me today.
Our ladies' Bible class on Wednesday mornings is studying the book "Respectable Sins."  Today, we talked about the chapter on not being thankful for everything in our lives.  Our teacher is the mother of the friend I talked about in my previous post, the ones who found out their baby has all sorts of abnormalities and might not live long enough to be born.  We were talking about how we should not only be thankful for everything, but also be thankful in all circumstances.  She shared a bit about her son and daugther-in-law and what they were going through.  And she said something along the lines of "I didn't say 'why them?'  Why not them?"
And I thought, why not me?  I've asked many times over the last few years, "Why, God?  Why us?"  Why not us?  What makes us better than everyone else on the planet that I think I shouldn't be allowed to suffer things that life throws at us?  I know it's not God causing our pain.  Nothing bad comes from God -- it's against His very nature.  God is love.  When someone told me that a year or so ago, I didn't want to accept it and believe it.  Now, though, I understand it more.  It's not God causing my problems.  They're just problems that happen because I live in this sinful world.  Yes.  He allowed me to go through it.  But He's also been with me to help along the whole time.  I'm so grateful to Him that He has allowed me to live long enough to get through my waivering faith stage and back into the state of mind where I can trust Him again.  So, why not me?  Isn't it better that something like this fall on my shoulders because I have God to help me through it?  Wouldn't that make it easier for me than for someone who doesn't have that hope?  Isn't that a scary thought, deep as it is?  But why not?

Could Be Worse

One time, when I was a teenager, I think, my parents got me a book called "It Could Be Worse."  It's a children's book about two kids who are complaining and their grandfather tells them a story about all these horrible things that happened to him -- the point being that it could be worse.  Evidently, I complained a lot as a teenager.  And still probably do.
And sometimes God reminds me that it could be worse.  Yesterday at church a couple got up to thank the congregation for their prayers.  Their daughter was born at something like twenty weeks.  She weighed a pound and something ounces.  She is now over a foot long and weighs several pounds, but will be in the hospital until April.  I can't even imagine the worry and heartbreak and longing that couple is going through right now, knowing that it's a miracle their daughter (Autumn, by the way, if you want to pray for her, too) is even alive today.  That, to me, would be worse than not having a child at all.
I have a cousin and several friends who have miscarried.  That, to me, would be worse than what I'm going through.  At least now I know that I'm not losing a child when my cycle starts over.  I imagine it would be harder to lose a child than to never have one at all.  To have that hope and then watch it slip away.  I have friends have lost a child, too.  It breaks my heart to even think about it.  I can't imagine how it would hurt, but God knows -- He lost a child, too.
I have another set of friends I'm praying for right now who are supposed to have a baby girl in April, I think.  She went in for an ultrasound and found out something was wrong and now they are going through lots of tests, to try and figure out exactly what their baby is going through and if it will live long enough to be born.  To me, that would be worse.
And I think about how maybe my situation isn't so bad after all.  Even though all our situations have some of the same heartbreak, I feel out of all of those situations, mine is the least heartbreaking.  Maybe you disagree.  But I'm reminded that it could be worse.

Tears for him

I let myself cry a bit last night.  It needed to happen much as I didn't want to admit it.  The strange thing is that I think I was crying more for my husband than for myself.  Much as I want to be pregnant -- and I REALLY want to be pregnant and a mommy -- it breaks my heart more to see how much my husband wants to be a daddy.  I know it's not really either one of our fault more than another.  It's just the way it is right now.  I just feel so helpless when it comes to making things better for him.  So the look he gave me when I informed him my cousin is having not one but two babies (the one who is married on my mom's side of the family, not the other one on that side or the one on dad's side -- sheesh.  I have a lot of pregnant cousins!), it broke my heart.  And as I started praying last night before sleeping, I couldn't help but pour out that sadness to God and allow a few tears to fall for my sweetheart.

A New Thought

I am not one of those people who thinks she has to recycle everything she can (although I do recycle when I remember to -- or catch it before my husband throws it away), who thinks all her vegetables and dairy and meat have to be organic (I always thought that just meant it was a carbon-based life form), or who tries to use renewable energy (also thought energy could not be created or destroyed).  So, you can probably also assume that I am not one who automatically thinks things like, "Oh, a chiropractor or accupuncturist would heal me right away!"  I'm not saying that any of the above are wrong and I highly respect people who live that way.  My aunt actually works for Nissan selling the Leaf so I really can't say anything bad.  I just don't understand the extremes that some people go to and I also know we can't afford to do a lot of that stuff.  Anyway, the point of this post is not to say yay or nay for or against any of it.  It is to say that I have a friend who is, to a certain degree, that type of person, and she has recommended that we try chiropractic for our fertility problems.  As a woman, I understand the feeling of needing to fix my friends' problems so I wasn't mad at her when she suggested it or when she went ahead and spoke with another friend of ours whose step-mother-in-law is actually a chiropractor who specializes in women's health and pediatrics.  As she pointed out, it would probably be a lot cheaper than some of the fertility treatments we could do and might be something that helps anyway.  We can at least go talk to her.  So, as I usually do, I sat down at my computer and did some searches to see if I could find anything about it.  Really, I'm sort of skeptical of all the health claims chiropractors give you about how they can fix anything and everything that ails you.  But it did help my husband's migraines when he was going to one, so what do I have to lose, right?  And I did find some promising articles, including one on yahoo.com that said a study done had almost 100% positive results within 20 months.  No.  I don't believe everything I read on the internet and it didn't say what all these women were suffering from, if any of them had PCOS or anything else similar to what I have.  But it's stuck in my mind now.  Could this be a new option for us?

Calling it What it Is

I have to admit, I'm having a selfish day.  A what, you ask.  Don't you mean a bad day or a grumpy day or a sad day?  Nope.  Selfish.  As in, wallowing a bit in self-pity.
Okay, so maybe it's not as selfish as some I've had in the past.  I really only wallowed for about half an hour.  Partly, because I didn't let myself call it a bad day.  I called it a selfish day.  Yes.  Sometimes you have to feel sad.  And sometimes you have to let yourself cry and work it out of your system.  But I also realize that I need to follow the advice I wanted to give quite a few of my facebook friends the other day.  As I was skimming through their statuses on New Year's Day, I of course saw all the normal well-wishes for a happy new year.  But quite a few of them said something along the lines of "I hope this year is better than last year."  And all I wanted to post on their page was, "Then, make it better."  Seriously, I know you can't control what happens in your life -- trust me.  I, of all people, know that.  But you can control your attitude about it.  Just because bad stuff happens to you doesn't mean it's a bad year.  Think about everything good that happened that wasn't bad.  Seriously, not everything in your life can be bad, even if it feels like it.
So, basically, I'm preaching to myself and my husband, too.  But, if we all start thinking about that, I think it would help all of us have a better year.  Because you're probably tired of hearing me complain about the bad stuff that happens, and I'm tired of hearing so much complaining from other people.  Let's all try to focus more on the good stuff that is happening, and the good stuff that can come from the bad.  And let's MAKE 2011 a great year, no matter what happens.