Look world, no hands!

It often feels to me as though this whole experience of infertility and ttc after loss is like walking a tightrope, trying to strike that perfect balance that'll allow you to keep moving forward, one cautious step at a time, while hoping and praying you don't fall again, (or at least that the falls you do make don't leave un-healable wounds). There's the balance we try to achieve as babyloss parents, in honouring the past and the memories of our children while finding something like hope for the future. Once we feel like we've mastered that (or ok, really just survived in stretches of more than 24 hours), there's the constant balance between doubt - which in itself we hope serves as a kind of padding against the disappointment, the crashing fall, that we're always sure is only one pee stick away - and possibility. The possibility that in the midst of all the (often wretched) plodding forward, someone somewhere will just throw you one scrap of luck of the 'I'm so blessed' variety, that this time you'll end up on the good side of the odds. Dwell on the tightrope beneath your feet too long, and it's all really enough to completely exhaust you emotionally and physically, and then you might lose your footing altogether.

Then there's balance of the more mundane variety. Mundane as it may be, in my effort to convince myself of some semblance of control and proactivity, I manage to spend a fair bit of energy on that too. How to look after my body, what to put in it ( a regular preoccupation since the excesses of December), how to build it up.

Acupuncture has been instrumental in helping me find this balance, and I've been in search of a practitioner I could work with since we arrived back in the UK. In Portugal, I was lucky enough to find a lovely acupuncturist who not only helped to mend my body, but soothed my soul. The Portuguese are not on the whole enthusiasts of complimentary medicine, but my acupuncturist was a fellow transplant who served mostly the expat community. She had a very new-agey, but very compassionate approach, which I loved. She listened to me pour out my love for S, and she calmed (but didn't belittle) my fears for the future. I miss her every week, actually. So it's been a tough act to follow.

I've tried a few and am now on my second guy locally. He seems to be a very old school Chinese medicine practitioner, which suits me fine, and makes for a new experience. Along with acupuncture itself, I'm getting acupressure (tui na [those face and scalp pressure point massages are phenomenal, and leave me feeling like jello - in a good way]), moxibustion and cupping (gua sha), and herbs. Most of this is quite new to me, but for now I'm willing to run with it, particularly as I leave his office feeling lighter, more relaxed, and possessing (if only temporarily) the dexterity to put one foot in front of the other and forge ahead on that tightrope. Together with my January detox, it's leaving my body feeling cleaner, stronger and healthier than it probably has been for a while. All tools I need for the balancing act.

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I can't claim to be entirely pure in my wholly whole foods, no booze, no meat detox though. Although I don't eat anything processed, I'm not great at cutting sugar, and chocolate is an ever-present threat. We've been working our way through the holiday left-overs, and they're down to a tiny little stash. Until this week, anyway.

A while back we had put in a request to have some necessities and a few inconsequentials sent from Germany. This week, we received a lovely package from some thoughtful relatives, containing all the requested items, and then some. It was like Christmas morning all over again! H is something of a marzipan nut, and I've been converted myself - but to the really good, rich, almondy kind you find in German and Austrian baking, not the sickly sweet, artificial type that I was introduced to as a child in Canada or that you find here in the UK. Here's the haul we inherited in the folds of that package. (I especially have a fondness for those marzipan potatoes, which I was first introduced to during my student days in the Netherlands. They're so cute and weird and tasty).

What am I supposed to do with all this chocolate?

And so, just as the last of the holiday crap was being purged from the house, we have this to deal with. Oh well, I guess there's nothing for it but to wade in. After all, it's all about finding balance, right?