To say I was surprised would not be entirely accurate. In fact (when I tell people this, they immediately get this look on their faces that says, “Does not compute.”), for the first two days that I knew, I couldn’t get out of bed I was so depressed. My head was so full of information about my broken ovaries and inadequate eggs that I was absolutely sure I was going to lose it. It’s the ultimate inferiority complex. The infertility inferiority complex.
Fourth of July weekend, I slept on and off and bargained with the Universe as I peed on stick after stick. “Please let me keep it. Please let me keep it.”
That I’m married to an optimist eventually provided a very necessary counterpart to my world-class worry. Though, it wasn’t really until this week’s ultrasound that I started feeling like this was the real thing. I’d even started showing the week before. Still not real. But something about watching the little guppy bounce around in there convinced me that whatever odds were stacked against us, we really did beat ‘em.
I am forever grateful for all the messages of encouragement and all the hearts and thoughts and prayers that went out for us. I don’t know why we go so lucky – but I am so grateful we did.
My feelings on abortion are complicated. My feelings on choice and access to care are not. Sent this morning via United States Mail:
Dear Senator Davis,
I often have a feeling of despair in regard to the political process, the lack of a real voice many of us have in it, and the increasing fervor to remove rational discourse from it. I do not feel that way today. Thank you for what you did last night. Thank you for standing up for us – both literally and philosophically – and for giving us a reason to hope.
If one day we are actually successful at spawning (I remain at the There’s Still Hope stage of this endeavor for now), I will likely begin every telling of that child’s birth story with, “I peed in a cup eighteen thousand times to get you.”
A brief note: If you were happy to see words on this page again, you’ll be less happy to discover that, for the foreseeable future, they’re likely be about bodily fluids and disappointment. But hey, if you stuck with me through douche-bags and disappointment phase, this won’t be nearly so head/desk. So there’s that!
And, back to peeing in a cup. Over the last handful of months, I have learned a number of things. Among them:
Fertility treatments are very expensive.
None of them are covered by insurance.
These things being true, my doctor and I talked about not talking about fertility treatments for a while. The Dork Lord and I are actually pretty lucky that we didn’t try and try the old fashioned way only to realize a year or two down the road that my parts were defective. Lucky, because the up and down of the monthly Did it Take? is really emotionally taxing. I paid that tax a handful of times before pain became a factor, the doctors got crackin’, and we had our answer even before we’d even asked the question.
Where do babies come from?
Not from you. Your ovaries don’t work.
That we can’t afford to pursue something more aggressive until next year, well, right now it’s really only taxing on my patience. It’s almost a relief compared to the pain of wondering. Almost. In the meantime, we’re keeping at the old fashioned approach – after all, what have we got to lose? The Dork Lord’s getting laid a whole lot, so he can’t complain. But he’s not the one peeing in a cup twice a day hoping that a little strip of paper will reveal that, contrary to all indications and doctorly predictions, your ovary came back from the dead and RELEASE THE HOUNDS! HERE COMES AN EGG!
Like I said, I’m still hoping, in a detached sort of way. And peeing. Always peeing.
I suppose it was to be expected. I mean, I did and I didn’t… expect it. If anything, I thought my age might be a complication. If anything. The women in my family line seem to get themselves in the family way just by thinking about it. Honeymoon babies, whoops babies, accidents and surprises (never mistakes. No, never). A sister with an eating disorder and no period to speak of? Babies! Just like that! And because my own inner lady workings always seemed to work with boring predictability, I took it for granted that I would do the same.
So much for granted, in fact, that during our house renovations this spring, we converted the guest room into a nursery. The door to that room stays closed. I don’t need to see the giraffe wall sconces to know that they are there, dimmed to off, while we make very vague plans about what to do next. While I silently contemplate how many of those ‘next steps’ we’ll take before I’ve had enough.
The Dork Lord wants a kid more than he does a new car, he says. Meaning, whatever it takes financially, is what it takes. In for a penny, in for a pound! What he doesn’t fully understand is that I may not be willing to go to those lengths. To be excavated and augmented for the off-est of off chances it will take. I am not one of those women who will suffer infertility for years and years because I will stop hoping long before that. Because my insides are not made of rainbows and unicorns and optimism. And I am not going to arrive at rainbows and unicorns after I cycle through the requisite stages of grief. I know me better than that.
The diagnosis itself came from a nurse – not even my doctor – over the phone one afternoon while I was at work. The doctor won’t answer when I call back with questions about my condition, either; I’ve landed on a list of the childless and desperate and those calls get triaged. Leave a message. Someone will call you back. That someone will probably be a nurse so you’d better not expect to speak with the person who’s been forearm-deep in your lady parts.
Having thanked the nurse (for what now, I wonder), I sat there for a minute, blinking at the gray wall of my cubicle before sending a text to my husband, who called back immediately, wanting to talk about it. I did not want to; I didn’t answer.
This is, actually, as close as I have come to talking about it. I will avoid discussing the actual diagnosis, though, so do not ask about it. Because it feels so personal – and so personally devastating. If you know me at all, you understand why we won’t talk about it. Why it’s such sacred territory we just won’t go there. One of the first reactions to the news was from my sister who asked, “Are you going to adopt then?” I’d been officially barren for all of ten minutes and already I knew everything I needed to know about my predicament: Keep it to yourself. Because no one will know what to say. Even those who should know better.
I know I should, but I take no comfort in the shared experience of infertility – the message boards and support groups of other women who’ve gone down this same road. I spent only a few minutes on one of those message boards and felt nothing but disdain at the weight of this unbearable disappointment being condensed into pithy acronyms by women whose hopes were made and dashed by the indeterminate differences in the firmness of their cervices or the soreness of their boobs. I have nothing to say to women whose periods they still call Aunt Flo or refer to sex as a Baby Dance. Grow the fuck up.
“You’re all fucking idiots,” I whisper back at my iPad and switch over to the news (also replete with idiocy) before landing an episode of Veep. There’s an odd sort of comfort in foul language.
The disdain is directed inwardly, too, and so much more malicious. I’ve been filled, until there is no space left for much else, with a self-loathing that words cannot form an adequate description of. It’s hate, raw and ugly. And no one can understand it. Not my husband. Not my sisters (two of whom are pregnant, incidentally). And the silence makes the hate run even deeper and colder. You have to hide it, you know. There’s not really room in the world for people who feel so much ugliness.
Some days, though, there’s an odd sort of perkiness to this new reality of mine. I think about all the vacations we can take without a bit of guilt. About all the things I can have and the temper tantrums I won’t have to endure. But that’s false and fleeting. Mostly what I am is numb.
If you sent in a donation to help with the sick kittens a couple months ago and you did not get a thank you note – I’m sorry! I sent them! Perhaps without stamps on them (or something similarly stupid), because some people aren’t getting thank you notes and they haven’t come back to me, so it’s the only thing I can think happened. Plus, it’s totally something I would do when dumb from sleep deprivation.
Please don’t think I forgot you or I was being rude. I’m going to send out a new batch this weekend (I’ve already put stamps on the envelopes!) and make it right.
Dick and Jane are my tenth and eleventh rescues since moving into our house last May. Each time I say, “I’m done! NO MORE KITTENS!” – when my heart feels worn out and my shoulders ache with the tension of worrying over the well-being of these tiny creatures, over whether I’m doing it right – the neighborhood delivers another wayfaring furkid. Surprise! The feral population on our street alone is a tremendous and heartbreaking problem. An epidemic. And sometimes, I feel so overwhelmed by this fierce personal responsibility I feel to each and every abandoned, mistreated, deserving animal. And that’s why “NO MORE KITTENS!” turned into “OKAY, JUST THESE TWO KITTENS.” Because someone has to do the right thing.
Dick and Jane came running down the sidewalk on Sunday night. I was on the front lawn, waving to a neighbor when they came sprinting, darting into the road. Their story is particularly sad. Two weeks ago, at ten weeks old, they were thrown out of a neighbor’s house to fend for themselves – because one of them was having problems with the litter box. I have since come to realize that he is terrified of it. My mind reels with images of possible abuses. What’s more, they hadn’t eaten in days. The abandoner didn’t want to leave food on the front porch, “because [she] didn’t want all the other stray cats to eat it.”
I know all this BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME.
Nonchalantly. Like animal abuse and abandonment is totally understandable.
It’s sickening.
So, now they’ve been to the vet, gotten their first vaccinations, tested negative for diseases and parasites, and our litterbox-shy friend is improving drastically in that area. The most devastating part of this just might be how much they simply want to be loved. They can be in the middle of the craziest kitten romp (pounce! tumble! chase!), but the minute I sit down, they climb into my lap and purr themselves to sleep.
Please share this post with anyone you think may be able to open their home to Dick and Jane.
These beauties come in a matching set (I am most firmly set against separating them, considering the trauma they have gone through) and come in a fashionable silvery gray – a complement to even the most sophisticated fall wardrobe!
We are, it would seem, squarely out of the woods. And our minds.
The little one who wouldn’t play? Now she won’t stop. Nelly not pictured in the video. She was off plundering and/or conquering foreign lands. I’m now pretty convinced she’s half Viking.
“The good part is, you will be able to put them down humanely.”
I stared at the vet tech, put my hand over my mouth and choked on a sob. At eight weeks old, the kittens had contracted feline distemper, a virus that, with rare exceptions, is lethal in kittens. Mama cat had been adopted the day before and the antibodies from her breast milk had run their course. The kittens were defenseless.
“We call it the ‘wasting away disease,’” she said. “Their immune systems are simply too immature to fight it.”
When the tech took the kittens into the back to make them more comfortable with fluids and anti-nausea injections, I sank into a chair and cried, my mouth buried in the crook of my arm to muffle the sound of hysteria. A text from my mother read, “Best thing is to say goodbye.” Our family had dealt with distemper before. It was devastating.
I gathered up the kittens, the antibiotic I knew we had little hope of keeping in their violently churning tummies, paid the vet and went home to cry pitilessly into my husband’s shoulder. Once the kittens had fallen asleep, I began scouring the internet for information on Feline Panleukopenia. I shouldn’t have. It was horrifying. Nothing I read gave me any hope of them lasting more than three days; I understood then why the vet had only given me five days worth of medication. He knew they would be dead before it ran out.
Medical science told me to let them go. But I could not. My reading told me that the virus was like the parvo virus in dogs. Our family had dealt with parvo before, too. It required around-the-clock, intensive care, forced fluids and nutrition. And faith. Else, how could you spend hour after hour battling something you can’t see? If I could keep the kittens alive long enough to develop antibodies against the virus, they could make it. But first I had to take on fever spikes, drops in body temperature, shock and dehydration. So I held them while they shivered, tucked them inside my sweatshirt and cried streams of snot onto my sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I said, over and over. “You deserve better than this. Better than me.”
In-hospital care would have cost $500 per kitten, per day. It was simply not an option for us. I was eaten up with remorse and guilt.
Day Two: Monday
Every two hours, day and night, I gathered up the babies and squirted Pedialyte from a syringe into their tiny mouths. They shuddered and cried and I stroked their backs while I whispered, “Please don’t throw up. Please don’t throw up.” They did anyway. We took two trips, one in the morning and one at night, to the vet for fluids and anti-nausea injections. At 4:00AM, Nelly drank on her own. Nelly, who twelve hours before had convinced me of the doctor’s advice to let them go. Each time her body heaved to throw up, bloody water came out the other end.
“How long can I let them go on like this?” I asked my husband, a hand over my face to hide the ugliness of my agony.
“Until you know the medicine will or won’t work.”
With Nelly stabilizing, I had a bit of hope we could save at least one. The others fought through unbearable nausea and debilitating diarrhea, crying when their stomachs cramped hard enough to force thin, foamy water from their otherwise empty tummies.
My husband woke me between feedings. “What happened? Is everything okay?” I had been crying in my sleep.
Day Three: Tuesday
I took another sick day to nurse the kittens, sleeping while they slept. Two more trips to the vet (after a kind and generous gift from a Facebook friend I’d never even met, continued care was made much more doable) and countless attempts at peeling Nelly off my yoga pants when she’d scamper up them to perch on my shoulder like a parrot. The runt of the litter, it both surprised me and didn’t that she had such verve. Such fight. When she went into the litter box and, for the first time in days, did not cry, I clapped when she produced a real poop. No one has ever been so happy to see poop, ever. Twelve hours later, Hamilton followed suit.
Day Four: Wednesday
With two kittens stabilized and two still showing little progress, I had to go back to work, stomach sick from constant worry. Gentry wouldn’t eat and Holly wouldn’t engage. At lunch, I went home to do a round of fluids and food and as I cradled Gentry, I heard a sound – the slightest little hint, barely perceptible, that he had a stuffy nose. Kittens who can’t smell don’t eat. I ran to the bathroom where the Little Noses baby nose spray was from our last Mission Impossible: Kitten Rescue and dosed him up. By evening, he was going back for thirds.
Day Five: Thursday
Holly isn’t much for playing yet (aside from toying with the string on my sweatshirt) but she’s eating, drinking and cuddling – no longer choosing to slink off and sleep alone under the sofa. Nelly and Hamilton are driving. me. effing. crazy. Which is to say, they feel great. Gentry is getting there, too.
I told my boss that I was going to sleep through the night and start wearing eye makeup again, because I feel safe in saying, we did it, no more crying. Yeah, it will have to be bargain basement eye make-up after $850 in vet bills over four days, but ask me if that’s too much to pay not to have to euthanize four eight-week-old babies. Or don’t ask; just have a look for yourself.
Nelly & Hamilton (who still needs a mommy)
Holly & Gentry
And last but not least, Mama Nox, in her new home with her new favorite boy, Caleb. All but Hamilton have new homes to go to (as soon as they’re all better) but this adoption gives me the most joy. I worried and worried and worried (as I do) that Mama Cat wouldn’t find a home. But someone scooped her up into a loving home with a little boy who wants nothing more than a kitty of his own to sleep on his bed. My heart hurts, a little, with how happy that makes me.
Hoo-boy, am I in a fix. To make a long story short, on Sunday, I rescued a mother cat and 4 3-week-old babies. The mother was starving so she was very amenable to being scooped up by the resident cat whisperer and is quite contentedly living in our spare room/office.
For now.
I am taking care of 9 cats. It’s exhausting. And expensive.
These lovely creatures need homes. They are the sweetest most exquisite little beings. I’ve spent the last several days hand-feeding the babies while mama got her strength back. What a handful! Last night, we learned how to lap from a dish! It was all very exciting. Everyone is getting strong, healthy and adventurous and so playful.
Here are some factoids:
1. Four babies and 1 mama, all very adoptable. The mama is less than a year old, sweet as anything and I’ve never met a cat who wanted to be loved so much. I get a lump in my throat thinking about what she went through, being uncared for.
2. Two boys, two girls. Currently named after Texas Rangers. KittenFace Gentry (don’t tell the others that he’s my favorite), Hamilton, Nelly and Holly (after Holland).
3. I will get them all fixed if I have to. I just can’t keep them. NINE CATS. DID YOU HEAR ME? NINE.
Please, pretty please, email me (thisfish at gmail dot com) if you live in the area and would like to meet them. Even if you can only foster! The no-kill shelters in the area are currently full but that won’t always be the case.
Please pass this on to anyone else you may know who has a big heart with room for a little fuzzball. The idea that they might not go to loving homes keeps me up at night with worry. They are so very sweet and helpless.
We are going out of state on the 25th – I’m desperate to get them caring parents by that time.
It’s impossible to get stills of these little guys right now – they wiggle! So here’s some video I captured a couple days ago.
I’m still here. I have no intention of shutting down my blog completely, which is why I haven’t posted the official sign-off some of you are asking for. I might not have much to talk about right now, but that doesn’t mean it will always be that way.
In fact, last week, my nephew Andrew was born, which is among the most meaningful things I have ever participated in. His dad got very ill and I stepped in as birth partner to my sister. Extraordinarily moving. And I was going to post about it, but then I got back to my email and lo and behold, there were quite a few about the blog. And among the friendly how-are-you emails were a handful of why-haven’t-you-posted? and don’t-you-owe-your-readers-better? emails and it started to feel burdensome, right out of the gate.
Doing something out of obligation sucks all of the joy right out of it and all I want is to love it again, to actually need it again. Which may or may not make sense to you.
I’m living Ground Hog Day. Wherein Ground Hog Day is actually Pay the Bills Day. We’re living and working and sleeping and eating all with the goal of paying off our debt so we can start a family. We meet financial goals by maintaining a strict budget and we maintain a strict budget by not doing jack shit. That’s just the way it be. It is boring and repetitive and stifling sometimes. And it certainly isn’t anything to write about.
Since December of 2010, we have paid off roughly forty thousand dollars of credit card and student loan debt. We have about half of that left to pay and even typing that sentence makes me want to retreat back into the quiet of my spreadsheet. See?
It’s just the way things are and it won’t always be. So while I’m sorry to those I have offended by not making a proper exit, it’s just not something I’m ready to do.
Andrew Michael Christensen. Hours old and minutes away from puking down my shirt.
