Baby kitten joins the family!

We brought her home on Thursday evening. Coco Armatey's foster mother is a friend of D's; she currently has 18 cats living in her apartment in Queens. It was quite a scene. She cried the whole first night because she missed her brothers. I got up several times to comfort her, thinking: this is what it would be like to have a child. Well, maybe even more rewarding. And exhausting. Kittens don't need much. Isn't she cute?

Armatey: she's a one-eyed cat. Arrrrgh, Matey! Get it?

"No Sex Allowed"

I had an appointment with my OB/GYN today who did an ultrasound to check my innards and see if there was anything to be concerned about. He also wrote out a "prescription" for my husband to get his semen analyzed, and a referral to a radiology diagnostic center for me to get that HSG test next Wednesday.

Things I Didn't Know Before Today
1. That I wouldn't be able to have sex between now and when they shoot the dye up into my body
2. That there would be some "dye leakage" and bleeding after the HSG
3. That they would recommend a mild pain reliever before the procedure
4. That I have a small, tiny 2 cm cyst on my left ovary (doctor says not to be concerned about it at all)

Things I Still Don't Know
1. How they're going to go about getting semen from my husband (will a nurse named Vanka or some such be "assisting"? Will pornography be involved?)
2. How badly will the HSG hurt during and aftewards?
3. What color is the dye they'll use? Will I be leaking neon green all day?

Kitten update: Two nights ago at a dinner with friends, my husband said for the first time affirmatively that we are getting a kitten! We've made plans to go and pick her up next Tuesday. Yay!

UPDATE:
1. My husband was able to "produce" at home and bring the sample in.
2. The HSG didn't hurt even a speck. I felt like I had metal in my mouth all day, though.
3. The dye was clear; lots of leakage, but it was all invisible.

Hundreds of Women Crying

I cry alot. I cry at dog food commercials, I really do. I wear my heart on my sleeve. What I don't understand is why you don't see more people crying on the subway. I come into contact with thousands of people a day in my travels through this big city, and I wonder about the folks around me: didn't anyone get dumped today? didn't anyone lose a friend? didn't any of these women just find out that they weren't pregnant? I mean, there must be thousands of women in NYC trying to get pregnant. Odds are I'm riding the train with some that aren't finding success; I mean, jeez, it seems like I run into a pregnant woman every 30 seconds these days. So why aren't more women crying? Or are people generally better able to keep it together in public places than I am?

Hysterosalping-o-what??

Hysteria After a tumultuous weekend, I feel like a stereotypical woman who, at the turn of the century, was diagnosed with hysteria. I got my period early Sunday morning and completely freaked out. My reaction to finding out our July attempt was not successful was very different from last month--I was totally sad, blamed my partner for not trying hard enough and being not as concerned as me, and I was angry about everything: I was angry that he was on the conputer playing video games, angry that he wasn't helping me around the house, and angry at everything he did. I should have been put down with a horse anesthetic.

Dictionary.com defines hysterical this way:

hys·ter·i·cal

   /hɪˈstɛrɪkəl/ Show Spelled[hi-ster-i-kuhl] Show IPA

–adjective

1. of, pertaining to, or characterized by hysteria.

2. uncontrollably emotional.

3. irrational from fear, emotion, or an emotional shock.

4. causing hysteria.

5. suffering from or subject to hysteria.

6. causing unrestrained laughter; very funny: Oh, that joke is hysterical!

---

Origin:
1605–15; < L hysteric ( us ) hysteric + -al¹

1610s, from L. hystericus "of the womb," from Gk. hysterikos "of the womb, suffering in the womb," from hystera "womb" (see uterus). Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.

He didn't deserve my ire; and I shouldn't have let myself go off the deep end either.

Take steps; take charge. That's what I did on Monday morning.

I made my annual OB/GYN appointment and asked about a procedure called a hysterosalpingogram that a friend recently told me about. Dye is inserted into the uterus and fallopian tubes to determine if the passages are clear; and apparently, there is a slight increase in fertility after the procedure. I want it. My doctor called me back and told me that since we'd only been trying really on the right schedule for two months that he wouldn't immediately advise me to do it. He suggested waiting for two more months, sending D off for sperm analysis, and being persistent. And patience. He didn't recommend patience, but I think patience is in order. Even though I feel the clock is ticking.....

On the kitten front: D's friend brought over our one-eyed kitten to see if she got along with our existing cat. Things seemed to go well. Kitty Coco (the one-eyed one) will have her sutures taken out next week, and then, if I can get D to agree, we will bring her home.

Happy Implantation Day!

Today would be the day that the egg would dig a comfy little nitch in my uterus if all else went as planned. If the egg is fertilized, I hope it finds the space acceptable. : )

Things I Don't Know

I wrote this review on my LivingSocial: Books page on Facebook. What I didn't say in the review is how the book affected me personally. Cohen was not that much older than me when she discovered she was pregnant at 6 months, and her writing about her ambivalence about (even hostility towards) her pregnancy was fascinating to read as I try so hard to conceive. Granted, I have only two of the four strikes against me that she had to grapple with: I have not-such-great health insurance and I'm of "advanced maternal age," but unlike Cohen, I am not a DES baby and I am not taking teratogenic drugs. It's hard to imagine not being aware of the pregnancy in the first six months--especially as I am hypersensitive to anything going on down there these days, but if you've been told for more than a decade that you are infertile, I suppose you wouldn't be looking for those signs.

Her discussions around her feelings about taking care of a child with a disability were hard to read. I don't know where I come out on that one yet, and I don't think anyone does that hasn't faced it. I just hope that I would be less depressed and more communicative with my partner than the author describes herself being.

The scariest part of the book was her description of her process of laboring and giving birth. At one point she says that a doctor told her that after 35, a woman's ease at giving birth and her needed recovery time increases exponentially. I mean doctors say all kinds of shit, so hopefully that's not altogether true, but it does make me feel like I ought to start doing yoga like, now.

Here's my review:

Anyone working in the field of abortion rights should read this book--today. I heard an interview with the author on NPR a few months ago and scrawled the name in my agenda so that I could remember to order it. I forgot about it until I attended the premiere of the Human RIghts Watch film festival a few weeks ago to see the film "12th and Delaware" about a corner in Florida where on one side of the street is an abortion clinic, and the other side is a Crisis Pregnancy Center--basically a "clinic" set up to fool women that they provide abortion services but instead offer them a sonogram and aggressively and with lots and lots of lying, try to convince them not to have an abortion.

There are like, tens of thousands of CPCs that have cropped up all over the country, and it is part of the culture shift around abortion. If we simply demonize the right to lifers and we don't start examining our feelings about life and answer the hard questions about abortion, we're going to keep losing this culture war and women's lives will be at risk. Alice Eve Cohen's articulation of why abortion rights are important in the face of her decision to keep an unwanted pregnancy are starkly and refreshingly honest. Her thoughtful revealing of her struggle around this pregnancy should be front and center in discussions among those of us who fight to retain abortion rights in this country.

Solstice Disappointment

When you have a yardsale, you see tons of kids--newborns in little front-packs, babies in doublewide strollers, toddlers knocking things over . . . And when you go to a yardsale, you see tons of baby detritus--plastic pieces of things that look necessary but it's unclear what they are, stained onesies, weird yesterday's toys . . . We had a yardsale this weekend and what I saw was all that AND proof that this is not the month.

I wasn't as sad as I expected to be, mostly because I kept reminding myself that this past month was the first month that we were really on target with our timing. Its so strange, it's not the baby part that I feel saddest about, it's this feeling that my body isn't nurturing anything. I get that feeling when I have my period, I get it during that time in between when my period ends and the time that I am "fertile." So, basically, half of every month for the past year I've felt like a non-nurturer.

I have to turn that around. I have to create a hospitable womb. (Nothing I'm saying here is knowingly supported by science, by the way). I am going to take the prenatal vitamin every day. I am going to stretch and exercise. I am going to take this "super oxygenated female fertility formula" from our chiropractor. I'm going to avoid yogurt at all cost. (I have this weird feeling that yogurt strengthens your body's ability to fight invaders, and that Nat Geo special on the journey of the sperm made me feel like sperm was being treated as invaders by my body).

I'm also going to make sure that D's little guys are as young and fresh and frisky as they can be (by ensuring that he has lots of orgasms over the next month!)

Three more months of quackery and then I'll pack myself off for some professional consultation.

Thanks to my two good friends who are new mommies and passed along about $75 worth of ovulation tests. I'll start them the day after my period ends and we'll see what we can do this time around.

I have to investigate how common it is for fertilization to happen, implantation to happen, and then immediate flushing. The spotting I had several days before my period made me feel like there was implantation, but that it was not sustainable. I wonder what I can do to turn that around?