Trust

I am slightly panicked at the moment.  As you know, I started the pill and clexane a couple of weeks ago so I feel like the cycle has started but then of course, I have been having breakthrough bleeding for the past week, along with pretty bad cramps..  It is not even just a little bit of spotting, it is actually a lot (sorry TMI).  I don’t think that it matters in terms of the cycle, I mean, the thinner the lining when I start the Progynova the better, right.  It is just an inkling that my body is not responding as it should be to the drugs.

I am always trying to be positive about my body but years of hatred of it has left some very bad habits.  I need to trust myself and trust my body that it knows what to do.  The weird thing is that it’s not as if I haven’t been pregnant before.  This is a bit of a revelation because after the last two failed cycles, I seem to have transported myself back in time to when I had never been pregnant, never seen those two lines on the test, not carried a baby full term.  It is weird that something that was so profound and meaningful in my life has been relegated to almost feeling like a dream, I mean how is that even possible?  I seem to be so desperate to find the bad in myself that I have forgotten that my body was there for me at the best time in my life. 

I got pregnant and it was a pretty uneventful pregnancy.  I was looked after well by my OB but the main thing is that my body did everything that it was supposed to do.  So how has all of that goodness been wiped away by a couple of failed cycles?  In many ways, I was so worried in the pregnancy that I didn’t even relate that JBB was in my body and when he was born, it was like I had never even carried him.  In my mind, I had even believed that my main contribution to JBB’s existence was the fact that I found the clinic.  How can this happen – I really just think that after a lifetime of blaming my body for the ills of my life that I went back to what I know.  I think that this is very sad but now that I am aware of it, I can make some steps to change.

Last night, JBB was pretty cranky so I had Thomas the Tank Engine on the TV and he was snuggled up to me and it was at that point I tapped in to how utterly grateful that I was able to carry him, to grow him from an embryo and to take care of him from the day he was transferred.  I think that this is a big breakthrough – I feel so much better about myself and way more confident that I can once again get pregnant and carry another child full term.  

Only seven and a half weeks until I fly to Thailand, I am ready to trust my body again, I am ready..

The Surrender

Thank you to you all for your amazing support and comments, you have been a lifeline to me in a very dark week.

I'm okay and not. I'm getting there and not. We already had plan b (plus plan C and D) in place before the negative was 100%. The plan being that I will go back on my own to Thailand for another FET but not for another 6 months. We need a break, we need to regroup and we definitely need time to heal. The last few months have been tough.

I was reading a lovely website called the Fertile Heart where I saw the questions 'what if The failure of your last IVF was the key That begins to unlock the mystery of your misconceptions? What if spending time with your tender broken heart can balance your hormones and help you heal every other failure that you Have avoided experiencing in your eventful life?' these questions resonated powerfully with me and I have been thinking of them ever since. For starters it has helped me to avoid the spiral of self recrimination and bitterness that normally accompany a cycle failure and that can only be a good thing, right?

Secondly, it has awakened me to a war that I have been fighting for years, a bitter hate filled war of disappointment and loathing. The sad, dismaying truth is that I have been waging a war upon and against my body for most of my life. I say things to myself that I would never say to even my bitterest enemy. I am constantly disappointed and deeply loathe how my body looks, feels and performs. I have tried for years to beat it into submission, to bend it to be what I think it 'should' be. I never give myself any credit for the successes that my body, or even my core self has achieved, not even the fact that I carried and bore the most beautiful and perfect human being imaginable. In my mind, I tell myself that it was luck (and that he was tenacious) and that that any successes that I have had are in spite of myself and my body and not because of it.

I have also realized that this is at complete odds with the persona that I display in all forms of my life. I want everyone to see me as perfect, strong, capable and successful where inside I credit myself with none of those things. Even blogging anonymously hasn't coaxed me into realizing this or publicly admitting it until now.

So I now have a profound feeling of sadness and grief at so many years wasted at odds with that which should be my closest ally. But how to start to align myself back to, well, me? I said 'back to' though off the top of my head, I can't think of a time when this hasn't been the case though surely when I was a child there was no hatred and self recrimination there, right.

I have decided to surrender. I am raising the white flag. I'm declaring peace in my time. What comes next? I'm not really sure but firstly, I'm going to try and be friends, I guess after all, surely all good relationships begin in friendship?

The basketballness of things.....

In the last couple of days, my stomach has really popped out. So much so that I feel that I finally really look pregnant. In a weird way, I think I guess I was denying that I really looked pregnant. Mainly because of the reason that I had a dent in the middle of my stomach so I didn't really have that round, basketball look - I felt that I looked more fat that pregnant.

Now, I really feel like I look pregnant and I tell you, I like it!! I am very basketball like and I feel really good about that - if I am brutally honest, I can't stop going and looking at myself in the mirror (narcissistic much!?!?). This is great news because I have always had a very fraught relationship with my shape. Funnily enough, I had finally accepted my pear shaped body - loving my flat stomach, small waist and top and accepting of my larger thighs and bum, no longer trying to exercise them away, just accepting that this is the shape I was born with. Then I got pregnant and I have to admit, I kind of freaked because my waist disappeared straight away and I was bloated right from the beginning so my flat stomach was also gone.

For a long time I felt that people were looking at me and thinking 'here we go again' because I thought they would think I was putting on weight again (being the yo-yo from way back) and not that I was pregnant - I mean, honestly, as if people don't have enough to do with their time!! I did go through a time where I felt like I needed Tim Gunn or Trinny and Susannah to tell me what to wear since I had no idea to dress for my new shape. Now I have decided on an 'emphasise the bump' strategy - it is very freeing.

It is nice to like my body after many years of (quite frankly) blatant hatred of it. After feeling for many years that my body had betrayed me because of the issues that I have, I really feel that I have started to embrace my body. It is nice to feel appreciate of my body and the fact that I have finally been able to experience pregnancy. I feel very womanly and probably for the first time, satisfied with my body. I am sure that I will continue to struggle with my body issues into the future but I feel that I have really made huge leaps.