Not So Bad

Our early morning trip to the fertility clinic for our intrauterine insemination wasn't so bad. In fact, it was kind of nice the way it worked out even if I did only get two hours of sleep. We left home at 5:30 which I know is normal for many people with regular jobs, but for me it's like entering an alternate reality. I had so little sleep I was punchy and delighted by the birds' activity and the clean smelling air. It seems like I've ovulated on a number of holidays this past year of trying to conceive: I know Thanksgiving and Christmas for sure off the top of my head, and I think a few more if I were to check back through my calendar. Every time this happens we think how nice it would be to say our baby was conceived on Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or Independence Day, with fireworks (even if it did happen in a doctor's office).

Because it's the 4th of July there were no workday commuters on the road so we breezed onto the 7:05 ferry and Delia shot her load for the lab early. While we were waiting for them to prep and analyze it, my brother-in-law brought our nephew Mr. Squishypants down to meet us for breakfast at McDonald's. Seeing his two year old self running with a huge grin down the sidewalk to meet us and listening to him giggle and pronounce all of his new words with so much babyish concentration and accomplishment was bliss, and of course a huge reminder of why we're going through all of this to try to get pregnant. Seeing my family on his face and in his expressions, seeing my sister and my grandpa and my grandma and my mom and even myself radiating from him is like being reborn into a world with more love.

The only medical office open in the entire many-floored building was the fertility clinic so we knew that everyone we saw coming in and going out was there for the same reason we were, and there were A LOT of people which was both reassuring and depressing. In my typical asshole fashion I couldn't help judging the people I saw and comparing myself to them. The first people I really took notice of were a somewhat unattractive couple with an overweight lady in high water track pants. I couldn't help feeling like "here we are: all of nature's duds who aren't supposed to breed." I prayed that our cup 'o cum wouldn't get mixed up with theirs.

We had a couple of hours to observe the other "duds". While I assessed them from a distance, trying to pinpoint their problems I promised Delia that I wouldn't allow myself to say shitty things like this once we have a kid, but look at her, the one in the designer camo sweatpants and glossy black bag: that dud is anorexic. No wonder she can't get pregnant! And listen to this other one with the smoker's cough sucking down the coffee; her man looks healthy enough but they don't stand a chance with what that girl's doing to her body. The duds by the window? She's clearly over forty.

I knew I should be ashamed of myself; do I want my child to be a judgmental ass the way I am, looking at total strangers and rejecting them them as "duds" in my head to make myself feel better about my own inadequacies?

Then we saw a beautiful couple, younger than we are, the picture of all-American vitality. I felt so much better after I saw them. They looked like the kind of people who never have anything go wrong for them. It made me feel better having them in our pool of duds, knowing that not all of us are so easy to point at and diagnose as being infertile because of natural selection. Maybe we're just impatient. Maybe we're "special". Maybe the things that are right with us are more important than whatever is wrong. Or maybe nothing was "wrong" with the perfect breeder couple. Maybe they're only in the big city for the holiday weekend before he heads off to war and is just banking some sperm for the love of his life to use in case he dies or gets his nuts blown off in Iraq. Who knows?

Last night after my nervous, bitchy anxiety mini-attack over stupid things (worrying about being late, worrying about driving, grinding my teeth with resentment over the shitty timing of things and the potential of missing one of the few things I love doing with a large group of strangers: watching fireworks) I had another attack, this one of self-loathing. Am I ready to be a parent when I deal so poorly with such tiny monkey wrenches being thrown into my plans? How would I feel if I had a kid who acted as ridiculously as I act? I'm going to screw my kid up by being a tense little asshole! No wonder I can't get pregnant!! BECAUSE I'M A FUCKING SHITHEAD!!! I should stop now before I create new life just to ruin it with my craziness!

But then it was morning and I didn't feel like an asshole anymore and good songs came on the radio while we were driving. Cowboy Junkies version of "Sweet Jane" off the Trinity Session at 5:53 am was surely a sign as was "Closer to Fine" on the way home. I can't believe there was a huge time in my life where I could sing along to that entire song without choking up and crying.

*****

The doctor stood there with the sealed envelope and told us it contained our report with Delia's sperm analysis. Even though we know her sperm is good, it was like fucking Oscar night or something waiting for him to rip it open and tell us if we were winners, especially since she shot a big load just day before yesterday: 36 million and some other numbers I didn't catch. They never tell you what is average or what would be considered superstud strength, they only tell you they're looking for a number over 10 million.

It was the same doctor who did my HSG (I thought I blogged about that, but I guess I didn't -- oops) so I felt comfortable that I was in good hands. He showed me the catheter and explained what he'd be doing. Of course I expected cramps, especially since I couldn't take any anti-inflammatory meds this time, but things started getting tense when he had to throw the catheter into the sink and get another one. More poking and cramping that felt like it HAD to be penetration and another catheter thrown in the sink as he explained that it had no bearing on my ability to get pregnant, but that my cervix is angled, ACUTELY angled (because of my tipped uterus), in such a way that it just makes his job a wee bit harder. Before he threw the third catheter in the sink he showed me how the soft tip simply bent over when being confronted with my cervix. Finally with the fourth catheter he got it threaded in all the way and shot me up with Delia's specially washed sperm. We stayed in the exam room with me lying on my back for the recommended fifteen minutes to allow the sperm to swim up my tubes and I wished we'd brought our cameras because we could have shot some gyn porn or at least behind the scenes footage all that time. I was tempted to steal one of the catheters and our syringe, but worried we'd get "caught" and be thought of as freaks even though it's all just garbage and we PAID for that garbage. Oh well.

I'm feeling mildly crampy and uncomfortable tonight, but I don't know if that's the after-effects of the IUI or general ovulation crampiness heightened by the Clomid which can get bad enough that it wakes me up at night. Anyway, it's not exactly painful right now, just vaguely sore, tender and tight-feeling.

Now we've got another two week wait.

"Nice" Timing

We decided to get an intrauterine insemination (IUI) this cycle, which means Delia will jack off into a cup at the doctor's office, they'll "wash and specially prepare" her semen then they'll "place it" into my uterus "through the cervix using a small catheter."

I detected my LH surge tonight, so we have to go do this tomorrow. Since it's the 4th of July, they are only open until noon so our appointment has to be before then, way before because they have to prep the sperm first. I'm pretty stressed out about the whole thing because of the long drive (2.5 hours minimum) on a drunk driving holiday with all the traffic and potential for missing ferries. I'm very anxious about driving anyway AND I fucking HATE mornings, especially nasty early mornings where I'm getting up to have someone penetrate my cervix. I wish I could feel celebratory about this, but I'm feeling really tense about the whole thing.

On the bright side, the moon will be waxing and, as Delia pointed out, it will be cool to say our baby was conceived on the 4th of July.

I'm not sure if we're going to stay the night at my sister's house in Seattle to avoid having to drive home on the 4th, so I've canceled my webcam shows for Saturday the 5th since we might not be home, and even if we are I wouldn't be able to do shows with penetration or orgasms (read about the conflicting information I've heard/read on this HERE). There probably won't be much of an audience anyway since most Americans are off partying this weekend.

Keep your fingers crossed for us, or whatever you'd like to do to wish us well!

(IN)Fertile (?) Trixie

Some loosely connected thoughts and reflection on how it feels to stake out a space on the internet that you might not qualify for, and what it means to be fertile or infertile (or something in between):

I knew when I started this blog and bought the domain FertileTrixie.com that it could be a misnomer; while the majority of sex I've had in my life has been protected, I have also had a lot of UNprotected sex with a number of men (plus one busted condom) when I was not on hormonal birth control over the years and never once gotten pregnant (that I know of); at thirty-four years of age when we started trying last year, I knew that there could be a reason I've never had an unplanned pregnancy and that the reason could be infertility. I'm not trying to brag about having unsafe sex, just sharing the information so it can be applied to our attempts to conceive now.

Anyway, by putting myself out on the internet as "Fertile" Trixie, I didn't assume that I actually was/am fertile; I just hoped for the best. I also considered other names, like PregnantTrixie, FecundTrixie, TrixieGrows, TrixieBreeds, BreederTrixie, etc. I dismissed all of those for one reason or another and chose FertileTrixie because I like the idea of exploring fertility both as a sexual fetish and in a broader way. I like the idea of thinking of myself as fertile, whether I'm able to get pregnant or not, naturally or not.

While I knew there was a chance getting pregnant could be a challenge, I didn't dwell on it or plan ahead for what I/we would do if it wasn't easy, except to agree that it wouldn't be the end of the world. I did know I might feel awkward about calling myself something I might not be, but not so worried about it that I'd avoid it by waiting to develop this site until after I'd gotten pregnant or after the first trimester or whatever. It's not my style to *wait* (which is part of what makes this so hard) or to keep secrets just to avoid fallout.

Our ongoing experience of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant is teaching me a lot and making me reconsider many of my opinions and positions on fertility issues, parenthood, myself, my spiritual beliefs (and disbeliefs), privacy, human nature, and the in/fertility industry(ies). I plan to blog about those things in more detail.

One major expansion that's widened in my mind is between the definitions of "fertility" and "infertility"; fertility (like sexuality and so many other things) is more of a spectrum or a collection of many attributes (not just one: fertility or infertility), especially with where medicine and science are at. There are so many *small* things that can interfere with getting pregnant that don't really mean a person or couple is INfertile: hostile cervical mucous, being out of shape or overweight, ejaculating too often, residual effects of hormonal birth control, having debris in fallopian tubes that can often be easily unblocked through testing, etc. These are hurdles that can be overcome with time or exercise or a relatively simple procedure that's far less of a big deal and expense than getting your wisdom teeth pulled. In other words, you can be hugely fertile in the most necessary ways (popping healthy eggs, producing healthy sperm) but just struggling with some interference.

I like that. It makes sense to me; I'm not INfertile; something is just INTERFERING with my FERTILITY.

I can't stop thinking about when my dad was intubated; his lungs were so bad he started hallucinating and the doctors had to traumatize his body further by hooking him to a machine to breathe for him ("hooking up" is such a misleading way to describe intubation, but anyway). He was on death's doorstep. The doctor asked us if he had a living will or had ever instructed us what to do if he were on life support. My dad had been very specific all our lives that he wasn't to be kept alive artificially, but we knew that THIS WAS DIFFERENT! The doctor made me feel like I was defying his wishes by insisting he stay hooked up to the respirator, but I'd just had normal conversations with my dad twelve hours earlier! It wasn't like he'd been in a car accident and had his brain bashed in and would be rendered a vegetable. Even though my dad would have died without the machines, there was a whole lot more grey area than I'd been prepared for when thinking about "life support" on a theoretical level. It wasn't a decision my dad or any of us could have prepared for in advance. My dad was glad we didn't pull the plug on him; even though the few years he lived after that were hard and his quality of life was severely diminished, he was unequivocally thankful to be alive.

It used to be easy for me to say I would never do anything artificial to have a baby, just like it used to be easy for my dad to say he didn't want to be kept alive by life support machines. Now I recognize that there are lots of medical and natural methods of boosting fertility, and obviously not all of them involve fertility drugs and test tubes. Of course, I must have known that on an intellectual level before, but didn't bother to think that hard about it when I developed my harshly judgmental positions on fertility treatments and the people who use them. And now that *I* am in the position where the most artificial methods of conception might be our only options? You bet we are considering them, even the test tubes and Clomid. And I can't help feeling that if there is a God or Karma or a threefold law, that I am GETTING WHAT I DESERVE right now. That I have brought this tribulation upon myself by being a snotty, judgmental, know-it-all little bitch.

In some ways I'm grateful for this experience, even though it's hard. It's an opportunity to grow that I couldn't have planned for and wouldn't have chosen so it feels valuable to me. It's also become an opportunity to blog about something that is/has been a struggle for a whole lot of people. Many women can relate to this, whereas fewer women can relate to what I usually blog about (being a webwhore). It could be something that bridges the porn gap, which will be interesting (and potentially challenging) to see develop.

*****

After the past six periods or so we've gone through the same thing, We'll try it one more time the natural way. Because every cycle we learn something new or do something different or have different interruptions. We know Delia's sperm is good, and now we know that my tubes are not blocked, my hormones levels are right, and there's nothing obviously wrong with my uterus or ovaries. We know more tricks than we knew before and have only been really consistent with testing for ovulation in the past three or four cycles. We now know we really shouldn't jump the gun just because my hormone levels are rising, but need to WAIT UNTIL AFTER IT'S FOR SURE.

And we know we can't be trying to shoot tons of porn content and doing a bunch of webcam shows where Delia's spilling her precious goddamn seed so this month? We've got a more stringent cut-off date on our calendar for all of that.

So. We're not going to take any fertility drugs or try to inseminate me in a doctor's office . . . not, THIS month, anyway.

To Test or not to Test?

Today or tomorrow is about the earliest I can do an early pregnancy test (its directions say up to five days before your period is due), but I think I'm going to try to wait a couple more days. It's too hard seeing a negative and not knowing if it's because I'm really not pregnant or if I just tested too early.

In the beginning we videotaped my early morning pee tests to try to get the exciting moment saved for posterity. After about ten negative attempts (some within the same cycle, so not ten months) I just couldn't handle burning up more tape on the same sad results. Dragging out the camcorder over and over again to witness myself failing to accomplish the most basic human function added a layer of repetitive humiliation and depression to an already stressful task so I really had to stop. It was horrible waking Delia up for my early morning pee, both of us heading to the bathroom, cranking up the little motor on the Canon and having to both sit around waiting to preserve our disappointment forever on digital video. Even though the footage is still good for pee lovers, it got real old for me real fast.

Deciding whether or not to videotape and/or otherwise share our precious and pathetic moments on our sites is always a challenge for us, but even more so with trying to conceive and share (plus eroticize) a pregnancy. Documenting and sharing it seems even more valuable since it's a once-in-a-lifetime (or maybe twice-in-a-lifetime) experience, but for the same reason it's also important to preserve enough of our experiences AWAY from cameras so that we can just feel what's happening without being photographers/models/subjects/whores and without altering the experience by adding those elements to it.

If I am going to have negative results (which I've had a lot of in the past nine months) I can handle waking up by myself and doing the test, then telling Delia when she wakes up that it was negative. It becomes harder and I feel more like a loser when she gets up with me and watches/waits with me for the results. And it would be EVEN MORE DIFFICULT if I had promised members to tape it and had to keep sharing the bad news. Over and over again. And maybe never "deliver" (in more ways than one). Which is why I didn't promise that, and why I started just testing without even telling Delia.

I realize that being infertile wouldn't make me a "failure" or a "loser". I realize I "shouldn't feel that way". But the truth is that documenting things AMPLIFIES and ALTERS their emotional significance. That may not make rational sense to some people, but it's the reality. Events ARE impacted when they are observed.

Taping and testing. Not sure what to do about either of them this week. I'll decide tomorrow what I will do the next day. Or maybe tomorrow I will sneak into the bathroom by myself, pee in my glass, and dip the stick. And be the first person to know whatever it is or isn't or I'm not sure of -- the only one who knows what the test says for at least a few minutes.

Uh-Oh

One of my biggest concerns going into this has been losing the emotional stability of being on the pill. Yes, I know that I'll get those benefits back once I'm pregnant, but before that and during breastfeeding? I'm nervous.

In the past I've had some pretty serious issues with depression, violent mood swings, and all of that jazz from PMS. Those symptoms weren't really limited to just a week before my period started, either. Being on the pill with its consistent dose of regulatory hormones was like MAGIC. I loved it.

Now that I am off of it I am feeling the jagged claws of hormone shifts in these ways:

I AM SO HORNY I WANT TO RIP MY HAIR OUT.
I know you think that's cute and happy, but my entire pelvic bowl feels so cranky and demanding and on edge, it's fucking nerve wracking.

I AM UBER BITCHY & EASILY AGGRAVATED.
The slightest irritations make me want to throttle people.

I FEEL DEEPLY SAD.
When something makes me sad, something that would normally be no big deal, I feel it to my core, like a major heartbreak.

One of the things I loved about being on the pill is that my bitchiness and sentimentality seemed very superficial suddenly. I felt more prone to expressing these emotions through stereotypical chatterbox nagging or crying suddenly at stupid things, like commercials, but only for about four and a half weepy seconds and then it would be gone. I'll say it again, because it has been so striking to me: the emotions I felt were very superficial, and underneath them I felt very smooth and stable.

Not on the pill? Nothing feels superficial. One of the cool things about being on it, though, that I think I can take with me is that I feel more comfortable crying. So on Saturday when a book made me sad? I cried. HARD. And when it made me sad again a few pages later? I cried again. HARD. And when watching Northern Exposure made me feel sentimental? I cried. HARD. I cried hard on Saturday so many fucking times, my face got bloated. I also masturbated a lot (but not while I was crying).

And right now as I write this? I feel like a platoon of cunt-starved soldiers couldn't satisfy my pussy, it's feeling so demanding. It's not like I'm dripping wet with arousal, it's more of an incredible sexual tension in my pelvis. It's a feeling of being wound up and aching for release.

Today

I ordered some cycle beads today; if all goes well and I am FERTILE I probably won't even get a chance to use them.

I took a long walk by myself in the damp woods. I stripped off my fleece sweatshirt and stretched under an apple tree in my sports bra while my shoes got wet in the grass. The longer I was out there, the more the sky cleared of clouds and the sun warmed everything. It felt goodgoodGOOD.

I wasn't nervous about making this "get pregnant" decision when we made it, but soon after I started getting a little freaked out inside and that feeling lasted a couple of weeks, but now I'm getting really excited and feeling at home with myself and the idea of being pregnant and being a mom.