Is this the new normal? (Warning: Very Whiny)

I've been having a serious attitude problem since I got back in town from a conference last week. Every evening, when it's time to do our get-house-and-life under control routine after Leigh is tucked in, I just want to crawl in bed myself. Instead, I trudge through, very grumpily. I'm really not good company right now. And sure, some of this is pregnancy fatigue. After all, sometime soon here I officially turn the 3rd trimester corner, but a lot of it is just feeling really overwhelmed, and like we're already so buried we'll never get our lives back together.

Let's review how life has gone since that coveted BFP:
0) Lots of excitement and happiness. Enjoying lack of 50 million appointments.
1) Serious puking and pregnancy ick until about 16 weeks. Gail holds up OK and we lower standards dramatically, but house and life still slide toward chaos. (and for us, functional house (i.e. clean clothes, decent food, mess only couple inches deep) is essential for a moderate level of sanity.)
2) Entire family taken down by 8 weeks of viral bronchitis. All remaining holds on vaguely organized/functional life are lost.
3) Start to feel better. Get our lives slightly put back together.
4) Develop mysterious leg pain that makes walking extremely difficult. We don't have a car. Gail takes Leigh to/from daycare and does most of the weekend work for a couple weeks so that I can sit on my duff with ice on my legs.
5) Start to feel better. Get our lives slightly put back together.
6) The nose incident. Blessedly rapid recovery, but lose work time just before important conference.
7) Giant work crunch before conference. House and life slide further into chaos despite Gail's astounding efforts to keep the tide at bay while I neglect everything in favor of not making a fool of myself at said conference.
8) Gail gets really sick (4 days of 102-103 fever) while I'm gone at said conference and any progress we've made at all in keeping life in order is completely lost despite the kind caretaking of mother-in-law in my absence.
9) It dawns on us that we've done more or less nothing to prepare for our new arrival, other than wax eloquent on our blog.

I fear we are now *less* prepared for our new arrival than we were pre-pregnancy. And there is not really any light at the end of the tunnel. My next grant deadline crunch starts now. A family reunion is thrown in for good measure. Gail is currently at the "easy" part of her semester and that will change momentarily. Even under the best of circumstances, assuming optimum health, there is absolutely no way to fit the bare minimum of preparation jobs into the remaining weekends (which really only contain one working day due to shabbat).

Then we'll have a new baby, and our tenuous hold on sanity and order will slip even further.

Now, my mother-in-law might disagree, but despite being mathematicians, Gail and I don't demand a perfectly regimented life to stay sane and happy. We can maintain a certain level of chill in quite a few circumstances. But one of the things that helps us do that is that we generally have our life together enough to know our finances are roughly under control, laundry has not taken over the entire household, there is food in the house, and we know what is for dinner. I'm starting to realize that all of those things may not be true at the same time for the next...well...I'd rather not think about how long. It really just makes me want to give up and crawl into bed. Any inspiration for a much needed attitude adjustment welcome, but do be gentle. Assume all proper caveats (thrilled about the pregnancy, excited for Leigh to have a sibling, honored and blessed to be parenting with Gail, just really overwhelmed and crabby right now).

Optional Reading

The river only seems to flow backwards.

I nestle in the callused hand of the earth. I am new life pushing through the soil's crust. I spread my roots downward to vestiges of water, reaching for my Creator. If I am cut back I will emerge in a new place; send a soft, green bud to look again.

I am the fair, pink blossom in search of a bee, seeking to prolong my life against all odds, against the certainty of my death. I have endless flowers for You in my growing center, in the stems and shoots my soul puts out in all directions. Some day my tired leaves will nourish You. Watch out for me; send the red-winged blackbird to bring me home

Meditation on Psalm 91, part III
Janet Berkenfield, 1991

I never ever read the inspirational poems that other people post. I just can't do it. I guess I overdid it on the poetry in high school. I swore I'd never post anything inspirational. But apparently that isn't stopping me.

I first noticed this piece in our Chavurah's (think very small synagogue, with no rabbi, filled with hippies) home grown prayer book during the TWW for what was ultimately this pregnancy. I was in that place where you are hoping, yet trying so hard not to hope.

This poem gave me a sense that we could keep going. That cycle was very long and didn't look good. My egg was really old (day 27) and at several points it had looked like we'd have to skip the cycle. Surely it was just more wasted vials. But after I read this, I really believed that if someone was in there, they were trying their absolute best to persevere, and that if they didn't make it, or had never even had a chance, they would come back again. Somehow it hit the right mix of pessimism and hope, not in opposition to each other, but as part of the same whole. As I read it now, as we are trying to find a way as a family through was is turning out to be a rather difficult first trimester, ultimately looking forward to birth, it keeps turning over new meanings.

So I offer it here, in case anyone actually reads inspirational things. Maybe it will hit the right blend of pessimism and hope for someone else.

What we did right without knowing it: Part I

I don't want to sound too whiny about not "going first" as they say, because truly, Gail bearing our first child ended up being by far the best choice for our family, but not necessarily for the reason that prompted us to make that decision in the first place.

Our motivating decisions around "birthing order" were 100% age determined. Gail has 6 1/2 years on me, and the clock was ticking. I wasn't yet out of my 20's when we started planning in earnest, so I had a little more time.

Soon after we started down this road, I realized I hadn't really understood what I'd signed on for. This was by no means the way I had ever expected to become a mother, and the feelings that I had during the pregnancy kind of blindsided me. It was way harder than I expected. I felt invisible and unnecessary. The constant comments by our SMBC lesbian friend who was pregnant at the same time that clearly implied I was peripheral, kind of a perk for Gail, but by no means an essential member of our family, really got under my skin (to be clear, I'm all for SMBC, and many of those comments were probably not ill intentioned, but they still stung). I had deep fears about how I would come to mother this child, how I would be seen by the world, how I would be seen by our families, how I would be seen by our child. Gail walked around to constant accolades and questions about due date (which of course, got annoying for her eventually), but when I told anyone I was "expecting", the best I got were blank stares, confused congratulations, and a quick change of topic. I had to constantly remind people that, no, I couldn't take on anymore projects because my BABY WAS DUE ANY DAY. They couldn't quite process it. After all, wouldn't Gail be taking care of the baby? Why couldn't I take on just this one more thing? After all, I wasn't pregnant. A close friend actually told me I shouldn't take any leave, since wasn't I more like a dad anyway? (to which I say, no, I'm not a dad, and also dads should also be supported to take leave). Ah, but there I go getting whiny again which was not my point.

Though actually, it kind of is my point. Gail is just a bit more likely than me to keep complicated feelings to herself (which is not to say she can't "process" with the best of them, quality lesbian that she is). Alas, the same would never be said of me. Not in a million years. One of the things that we did right without knowing it was having me, the one who is more likely to speak up if something feels strange or unexpected, walk the road less traveled. Pregnancy and birth are really hard, but they are common. Most women become mothers that way, so there are stories, there is support. There really isn't much out there for us non-bio-moms, and what is out there, isn't too encouraging (thank god I found chicory during the pregnancy). We needed me to notice what was strange and complicated about this path, and to point out the ways that it our family isn't like all of the others. Gail, bless her, totally met me on this. She didn't take my worries and over-analysis as any kind of threat. She didn't let my occasional black mood take away from the joy she experienced while pregnant (she sure was a sparkly and peppy pregnant lady, I tell you. She walked 3-4 miles in the pride parade, a couple days before Leigh was due, in the rain, smiling & laughing. Amazing.). Instead, Gail realized I was noticing real stuff, and jumped right in. As a result, by the time Leigh actually arrived, we had worked through a lot of our buried beliefs about motherhood, and decided they didn't really reflect what our family was going to be. We anticipated some spots where we might hit rough patches, and had a lot of practice talking about how this was going. It ended up being so much smoother once Leigh arrived than either of us expected, precisely because we had worked through so much, and thought of a few good strategies ahead of time. That wouldn't have happened so smoothly if I wasn't so...well...let's say vocal...and perceptive. (It's kind of like how we don't say that Leigh is "bossy," instead, she has "leadership skills")

Parts II & III to come: Accidental Economic Advantages & Accidental Implications of Naming

About ready go call it.

CD24. Sensitive OPKs are still stuck in the same "almost positive" spot. I'm getting nothing on the cheapos. No smiley faces. Had EWM but not really anymore. Still no temp spike but it's looking like a no go.

Our clinic charges a storage fee if you miss three cycles. I already missed August due to work travel and now this one due to a stupid cycle. Like we need more pressure next cycle. I know they're going to offer Clomid but I'm not there yet. I know my body does this in response to travel and I also know that I am capable of ovulating on my own (OK, if you define "on my own" as 3+ acupuncture visits prior to ovulation).

The only good news is that I'm not making everyone else in my house miserable. I'm not even miserable. I just feel kind of apathetic and hopeless. This was our last shot at spacing less than 3 years. I used to really think we'd have kids closer than three years.

I was home with Leigh yesterday and she was taking her baby doll everywhere and keeping me appraised of it's state. It needed lots of naps. It had a bath. It "pooped in the tub" which she "cleaned up" and then put the baby on the potty. I was sitting with her on the couch and she ran off to get the baby, brought it back and said "baby sleep on your lap now" after which she tucked it in carefully (not very SIDS friendly, face down, blanket over head...) and instructed me "No wake a baby up...shhhhh."

Her baby kick came out of nowhere. Maybe she's picking up on what's going on, or maybe it is the arrival of younger kids in her day care class, but I couldn't help thinking about her as a big sister, and really really hoping she gets to be one...though we'll probably need to supervise her "tucking in" techniques.

Can We Get Our Sanity Back?

Lyn isn't kidding when she says she's a pessimist. I like to think of her as an "extreme pessimist." Throw any situation at her and she can tell you how it is going to go horribly wrong. Leading up to our wedding, we used to play a game called "Everything is Wrecked." To play, your partner names two completely unrelated things, like "fish" and "ice cream." Then you have the challenge of describing how the two elements combine to wreck the wedding. Lyn used to be absolutely amazing at the game.

I just asked Lyn why fish and ice cream means that we won't have a second baby. Lyn says, "I've been eating a lot of fish because of your new diet thing. Also I've been eating a lot of dairy my whole life and I refuse to pay extra for the organic milk. So if I actually manage to get pregnant, despite all of the hormones in the dairy that have surely made me infertile, then the kid is going to shrivel up and die because of the mercury in the fish." So you can see that Lyn's still got it after all these years.

Living with an extreme pessimist isn't easy. Living with an extreme pessimist who is trying to get pregnant is nearly impossible. Sunday night I got really mad because Lyn spent the evening freaking out about a variety of things. I tried to be nice and helpful several times (and once I even managed to be nice in a nice way rather than in a snarky way). But end the end neither of us could behave well enough, so we went to bed mad, which I hate to do (it's really hard to fall asleep if you are mad).

I wish that Lyn didn't get so self-absorbed and angry at the world when the TTC isn't working so well. But I understand why she does. It really sucks and that's not Lyn's fault. So maybe I wish she just kept everything inside so that I don't have to see it because it's pretty damned unpleasant. But that doesn't seem quite right (not to mention the fact that it would never work -- Lyn is pretty much an open book). So maybe I really wish that if she's not going to talk to other people about about the shittiness of TTC, she'd at least pour some of her nasty stuff out to the blogosphere rather than getting it all over me. OK, there's an idea I can live with.

Just to be fair, you should know that I'm an obnoxious optimist that likes to ignore problems until they go away. As mentioned above, Lyn is a pessimist, and when she encounters problems, she prefers to protest loudly while carrying a sign that says "The End is Near." This is just about the only difference between us, but it's a big one. Sometimes it works in our favor. I spout off a lot of crackpot ideas about the next great thing we're going to do, Lyn finds 75 reasons the next great thing is in the toilet, and then together we find a way to fix all the problems and actually get something done. We get a lot of things done this way that never would happen otherwise, either because I completely forget to think about anything practical or because Lyn couldn't get started because she's sure it'll never work. So it works for us a lot of the time.

Other times it works like it did Sunday. Lyn starts to gnash her teeth and roll her eyes about how she won't be able to do an insemination appointment tomorrow and, oh yeah, she's not going to ovulate anyway. I respond by ignoring the real problems and saying some variation of "It will all work out, honey." Lyn responds by blowing everything up in a desperate attempt to get me to acknowledge there's really a problem because she feels like I've left her alone in the crazy world of TTC. I repeat my same theme of "It will all work out," but through teeth that are clenching tighter and tighter.

Tonight, as I write this post, Lyn claims that things might go better if I don't, in her words, "just roll over and try to keep me happy." In particular, I think she'd be much happier if she wasn't the only one noticing and worrying about all the problems. That's fair.

So maybe we have a little bit of a truce. I'll try to acknowledge and investigate possible problems, making use of some of my natural optimism to keep us moving forward. We're a team here after all. Lyn, for her part, will try to put some of at that negativity out there for you legions of lovely readers instead of me (lucky you), and maybe be a little bit nicer.

[P.S. It's Tuesday morning now that I'm actually posting this. Things are much more cheerful around our house, but we are still waiting for those pee sticks to give us some love. CD 21 and counting.]