Lay off me, I'm STARVING!

Apparently, the side effects from Clomid set in about two weeks after you finish taking the pills. I can handle the cramping and bloating, but oh the ravenous hunger! I'm like Chris Farley's character in this old SNL skit.

When you're breaking into the package of cookies before you're even out the door of the grocery store, you know it's bad. After work the other day I consumed three giant cookies, two swiss cake rolls, half a bag of chili-cheese fritos, two marshmallow eggs, and a handful of twizzlers within an hour.

And right now I would kill for some Taco Bell.

Procreation Vacation?

I clicked on an MSN link the other day to an article entitled "Procreation Vacation." In my mind, this phrase surely meant taking a break from the exhausting task of procreation, but it actually refers to a growing trend among hotels to offer vacation packages for couples who are trying to conceive. You pay your $2000, spend three relaxing nights at an exotic locale, with massages and acupuncture and reflexology, sipping seaweed smoothies and other "ancient fertility boosters," and go home pregnant! Sounds nice, actually. If only it were that easy...

And here's a warning: apparently MSN monitors what you click on, because now every time I open my email, there are links galore related to infertility. One article that kept popping up today was all about how infertility destroys marriages. That's just great.

Yippee for hormones!

I was able to start Clomid this cycle after all! I recently finished my 5 days of popping teensy-weensy white pills. Seriously, they're so little, it's hard to believe they could do anything. And I had a moment of panic on day 3 when the pill almost went down the drain! No side effects yet. Just renewed hope that we might get pregnant in the next few months. It's so difficult to hope, and impossible not to.

We ate Chinese food the other night, and my fortune was kinda dumb, I thought. It was one of those that's not really a fortune, but more of a "words of wisdom." Annoyed, I tossed it aside, but then B picked it up and infused it with wonderful meaning. It said "be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it." B grinned and said it means I'll get pregnant with twins! Now, I place absolutely no predictive value on fortune cookies or my husband's interpretation of them, but just the fact that he thought to say that made me incredibly happy. Because maybe I'm not the only one who's thinking about babies multiple times a day.

Where's the stork?

A friend of mine, who has been dealing with infertility for over two years, recently shared this fantasy with me... She said that whenever she's out hiking, she imagines that just around the next bend in the trail, she will find a newborn, wrapped up in a blanket, lying under a tree, just waiting for her to find him. Because it's her fantasy, she can take the infant home and raise him as her child. No need for police or birth certificates or any of that legal stuff. She feels like she just wants God to drop a baby out of the sky for her...

And I thought this was an interesting fantasy, because we do want things to be simple. We don't want to be forced to deal with complicated sadness around first parents or discarded IVF embryos, and we don't want to wrestle with all the deep, yucky, selfish stuff inside of us, or the brokenness of this world, or how unfair life seems. I've been amazed at the big theological questions raised by infertility. And, of course these big questions are raised all the time by suffering and trials and injustice much more significant than mine!

And this also got me thinking about the storks dropping all the baby circus animals in the Disney movie "Dumbo," and how sad Dumbo's mother was when she thought she was being passed over.

Call PETA

I hit my dog yesterday. In public. In front of lots of disapproving dog owners.

I was at the park, leaning over to collect my doggie's poo, plastic bag on one hand, leash in the other, when suddenly my hyperactive friend lunged forward, spun around, and just generally went crazy in response to two little terriers walking by. I got tangled in the leash, fell on my butt, and the poo I was in the process of collecting went flying. In a moment of rage, my hand came down on my dog's rump (and I think it hurt my hand much more than his rump). He sat down and turned his head to look at me as if to say, "what's your problem?" As I brushed myself off and collected the scattered poo, I saw several people glaring at me.

I feel terrible about it, I really do. If there's one thing I've learned from having a dog, it's that my frustration tolerance is not nearly what I thought it was. And I feel completely undone when I lose the illusion of being in control. Being responsible for this creature that almost never does what I want him to do...it's enough to drive me to the edge of insanity. And really, he's just being a dog.

Maybe I'm not ready for parenthood after all?

Please just give me some drugs!

Got an email from my ob/gyn today. She wants to consult with a fertility specialist colleague of hers before starting me on Clomid. I don't know why. I feel like I've jumped through so many hoops already just desperately trying to qualify for medical intervention, and now she's telling me to just keep waiting. I'm especially grumpy about all this because my cycle started today, and I was convinced that I would start Clomid this cycle. Now, I'm stuck waiting until my body decides to have another cycle (which could be up to 60 days). I know, right? I've been waiting 15 months, what's one or two more? But it feels like an eternity, and no one else understands the urgency, leaving me to feel very much alone. The mood swings that accompany this "time of the month" are made exponentially worse for me lately by the intense disappointment that I am not pregnant. Again. I've been a complete wreck this week...yelling at B over socks on the floor, crying in the bathroom at work, and just generally walking around with a big black cloud over my head. Actually, just seeing Britney on the cover of a tabloid magazine with a supposed "baby bump" was enough to cause an emotional breakdown while standing in line at the grocery store.

One thing I'm realizing through all this is that I've definitely sold my soul to Clomid. I thought I was carefully guarding my heart from hoping too much, but if I'm honest, I've been counting on Clomid to be my miracle drug, and this delay in starting it has been devastating. I really need a reality check. We could get pregnant without Clomid, or I could take Clomid for months and still not get pregnant. And God is in control, blah, blah, blah. But it's hard to think a rational thought when you're hormonal and depressed! Thank heavens this altered state lasts only a week, and then I expect to regain my coping skills and sunny disposition. For now, I'll just take comfort in eating an entire package of purple marshmallow peeps.