"Ovulation" countdown

So I am now on “ovulation” countdown 4/2011.  I say “ovulation” now because apparently what’s happening to me is not actually ovulation but my body faking me out and pretending to ovulate.  So I had some signs yesterday (right on schedule) and have begun the fun pee-on-a-stick (or “POAS” as they call it in fertility land) daily ritual, waiting for that surge.  I hope I actually “ovulate” on Friday when I’m due to have my ultrasound.  Not because I think we’ll be able to try (this is extremely unlikely) but because I want to see what my lady parts look like when it’s pretending to ovulate, not a day later as with my last ultrasound.  I’m just curious.  And there is that little part of me that thinks this is my month, this is the month when the birth control and weird travel bugs will finally have worn off and I will for real ovulate.  But I don’t have my hopes up for that.

Lately I’ve been filling this waiting time by reading blogs.  I’ve never read blogs in my life before, but now I’m drawn to them for obvious reasons.  I think the thing I’m amazed by is just how many women are doing this – and having problems.  But I guess if you’re not having problems you’re not blogging; you’re busy being a happy Choice Mom, enjoying your easy pregnancy, not finding the need to vent online.  It’s kind of like my WTE app.  All the women on there are having problems conceiving and need to talk to other women having the same problems.  The ones who get and stay pregnant move on to the pregnancy boards.  So it may look like everyone has issues; but we’re not hearing from the women without issues.  I try to keep that in perspective.

I’m amazed by how similar our stories are, though.  I was all in a huff because the clinic wasn’t open Sundays and was giving me mixed messages about ovulating/not ovulating, contradicting blood tests, etc, and I haven’t even tried yet.  Turns out this is just the tip of the iceberg.  A common theme on these blogs is having to change clinics because they infuriate you, changing donors because they turn out to be no good, tests that say things that turn out to be untrue and/or irrelevant, health issues that need to be addressed first for months before being able to try (could have been me with the hypothyroid issue that turned out to be false), and then of course the many, many tries, sometimes followed by nothing, sometimes followed by a miscarriage.  Reading these blogs makes you wonder how anyone ever has a healthy baby.  And yet everyone I know has healthy babies. 

It makes me wonder about the handful of older women I know without children.  If we’ve talked about it, many say they made the choice and have no regrets.  And I believe them.  But I wonder if I’d tell people that ten, twenty years from now - would I admit I’d done all this?  Would I tell someone I didn’t know very well that I spent a year or two of my life in my late thirties/early forties desperately trying to have a baby on my own, bankrupting myself and driving myself to the brink of insanity, only to fail?  Would I?  Or would I just try to come off as a serene independent woman who never felt that motherly twinge, just so we can all be more comfortable?  I wonder.

Another common theme I’ve discovered on the “single and trying” blogs is the issue of control.  Most women admit they’re control freaks (I actually believe most people in the world are control freaks.  I’d say, like, 80%) and this whole issue of fertility drives them nuts because they have no control over it, and they’re not used to that, in this highly evolved world where most things are now wrested under control.  And I feel that, absolutely.  But I’m no stranger to that ugly feeling of being out of control, knowing there’s nothing you can do, and having to just sit around and wait, because that to me is exactly how dating was.  I just wanted a nice husband, but I had to wait around for some man to (slow zoom in on his entranced face) fall madly in love with me and decide I was “the one”….which never happened.  So this maddening, frustrating, “why can’t I do something to just force this to happen” feeling is VERY familiar to me.  It’s not a shock.  But it doesn’t exactly jibe with the whole “I’m taking charge of my fertility” empowerment feeling choosing to be a single mother should have.  Well, I guess it would be this way, if you didn’t have fertility problems.  And as I write this, I may actually not – I still may get pregnant in the next few months.  But I might not. 

One comforting thought I often tell myself is, “even if you were married all of this would still be happening.”  Being in a relationship sure doesn’t save you from infertility, it just drags another person into the mix.  If I were married and trying, I would not be as proactive because I’d be one of those people who would want it to “just happen” and wouldn’t want to get all clinical right away.  I also wouldn’t be as aware of the stats and would think I had years to work all of this out, which I now know is not true.  And at least I can endure the pain of future BFNs on my own.  I have to say I much prefer that to having a husband around waiting for that pregnancy test result, and then wanting to protect his feelings as well as deal with my own, and not wanting to make him feel like a failure but secretly wondering if the problem is in fact him and not me.  All of that stuff.  At least I can say “it’s definitely me” and get aggressive now before it’s too late. 

Another comforting thought I have is at least as a single woman I can actually do this.  I think often of my younger cousin and what an awesome dad he’d be, and how I know he just wants a nice family, but hasn’t met the right girl.  See, he has to find some woman to have a baby with.  And she could turn out to be a psycho, or could decide she’s “not in love anymore” and then he’s relegated to seeing his precious children every other weekend.  You have to admit, that’s pretty fucked up.  I on the other hand, because I have the right parts, *might* get to make my own biological children and not have some other person involved wrecking everything.  So as much as there are things about being a woman in this world that kind of blow, I have to admit this part is great.  Well, assuming you don’t have fertility problems.  Then it’s not so great.