Five weeks, four days and a whole new level of crazy

What was all that blissed out zen crap I said last week? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I lied.

This past weekend involved several mini breakdowns, a patiently handled 'emergency' telephone consult with the lovely Dr. B (whose assurances that all those cramps were 'good news if anything, evidence that your uterus is preparing in all the ways it should right now', were only partly comforting in a long series of moments when my body's mimetic ability to feign PMS symptoms really convinced me my next period was impending, those second lines really just another cruel joke), and nearly a full day of lying curled up in the fetal position, all mucous and red, raw skin and ugly crying.

I'm having nightmares and not managing to sleep very well some nights. And then freaking out because it occurs to me that my lack of proper rest and the overstimulation of my adrenal-cortical system is probably harming the fetus trying to grow.

And symptoms? Much as I've had quite a few, ill-conceived pause for thought don'tthinkdon'tthink! led me to wonder: what if I just dreamed all those too? Because, just as with every two week wait I've experienced until now, I want to feel pregnant and so I do? Because ya know, when your uterus has done such a spectacular job of not sustaining the life you created, it's hard to place even the teeniest amount of trust in your body or any of what it's experiencing.

This is the nasty progression of infertility schizophrenia to the nth degree.With the after-effects of recurrent loss thrown in just for measure. Because if some seriously bipolar tendencies weren't enough, I also have some major PTSD sensations around ultrasounds themselves. They're a huge grief trigger. I'm afraid that the healthy form of grieving that I've carefully, painfully built over the past years, all the ways in which I've managed to incorporate and honour my losses without allowing them to overtake me entirely, will all crumble should the u/s screen reveal what I dread it will: just deep, still blackness.

Ultrasounds are not harbingers of good news for us. We've been here, hoping and waiting, three times before. And three times those hopes have been dashed. And in each case the u/s machine was the instrument of torture delivering those blows. The ultrasound terrifies me.

On the one hand, I don't see how this could possibly end happily for us; it feels like that's something that happens for other people; the preserve of those blessed masses among whom I don't belong, but never for us. At the same time, there's a still-resentful and resilient part of me that's thinking: If it's happening for everyone else, don't we get one shot?

I'm not always this bad, every second. I have a lot of hope for this pregnancy to turn itself into the wonderful culmination of all that love and desire we've been nurturing for so long, in the absence of more practical acts of nurturing. The rapid succession of emotions on that crazy hopeterrorhope continuum does not make it easy though. 

I guess for now, I have to hang on to that resentful and resilient little voice which keeps me going. I always feel like when I reach that Fuck You place in my emotional arc, there's a lot of good momentum to pull me forward into a place of greater optimism and fight. (Though obviously, let's be honest: we all know that the real remedy for this particular malaise is just one, and that's to hear a happy, beating little heart next week.)

Also, as crazy and obnoxious as I know I sound right now, it helps just writing it out. Phew. Slightly better now. Yeah, let's go with that.

A special kind of crazy. Source