To procreate, or not to procreate…?
Men, look away. This is really a girly-only post…
So, over the last seven months I’d been waiting pretty patiently for a certain visitor to grace me with its presence. I came off the contraceptive Pill just after Christmas, and hadn’t had a period since. I’d been on the Pill for around 9 years so I was expecting to wait a couple of months for things to return to normal, but by the end of March I was still waiting so I headed off to the Doctor. She seemed bemused that I was complaining about not having a period… her exact words were “enjoy it while you can!”, confirming that these things can take awhile to swing back into action.
July rolls around… still nothing. My skin looks like a 14 year old nerd-boy (slight exaggeration, perhaps… but for someone who can count the number of break outs she’s had in the past 9 years on her fingers, it’s kinda traumatising!) I don’t want to be wasting my time at the Doctors this time around, so I lie through my teeth and tell her we want to begin ‘trying’ for a baby soon and the fact that I have no period makes it a little hard to work out my (currently non-existent) cycle, y’know? This little lie meant that I wasn’t brushed off and was sent off for some blood tests and an ultrasound of my ladyparts. The diagnosis is Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.
I have mixed feelings. I am relieved that there is a diagnosis, and with the diagnosis comes the treatment, in the form of a diabetic medication to reduce my Insulin Resistance. The treatment is improving things already, I have finally had a period after 7 months (who would’ve thought a clot could make a girl so happy!? … what? TMI?) and my skin is clearing up.
The diagnosis has implications though. PCOS does not necessarily equal infertility, but you can be reasonably certain that falling pregnant will not be an easy feat. Children were not something we were considering for a few years yet, we are both 25 and wanted to wait until our late-20’s.
Finding out that I have a fertility issue has made me think about having children more seriously. I desperately want to be a Mum one day, and the idea that it may not happen scares the shit out of me. I feel like I want to get started as soon as possible to give us the maximum chance of having children. It’s as though my ovaries are rotting away in my mind’s eye. At the same time, I don’t think my husband and I are quite there yet - financially or emotionally, and selfishly, I don’t think we’ve had enough childless adventures together.
I think I need to relax about this, because I know stress only makes the situation worse. I am such a control-freak though, this condition bothers me because it is completely out of my hands.
Defining a Grown-Up
I often say that I don’t feel terribly grown-up.
I do grown-up things. I’m married. I’ve bought new cars. I’ve bought houses. I work full-time, get promoted, am given responsibility at work. I’ve gone on holidays to foreign countries, without supervision. I contemplate having children in the next couple of years, and so it goes on… all very grown-up activities, but still I sometimes feel like a child playing pretend.
Don’t get playing pretend confused with being unhappy. All of the things I do and participate in make me happy or content in some way. It just doesn’t seem real sometimes. I find it hard to put my finger on the feeling, find it hard to articulate exactly what causes me to feel that way. Because it’s so difficult, I don’t know whether the feeling will ever go away.
Am I crazy? Does anyone else feel this way? Maybe only being a parent will make that feeling go away. Or perhaps even then I’ll occasionally feel like I’m watching the scene from the sidelines as I change my own child’s nappy, almost like an out-of-body experience… whilst thinking to myself “Which crazy bastard gave her a child?! She’s still a kid inside herself!”
Best Blog Post Ever. In the history of Blogging.
This is the exact kind of joy I want to get out of my children someday. Not just the first smile, the first steps… but the endless amusement they can provide too.
http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000749.php
RAISINS?!?
I swear, I have listened almost 400 times and it’s STILL funny!
Disconnected
Ever get the feeling you’re disconnected from your own life?
It’s a funny feeling, in the pit of your chest, literally like your heart is hurting. It’s as though you no longer know or remember who the true-you is. Did you ever know? The closest I’ve ever heard it described is on real-life medical shows when they tell the patient that a side effect of a medication is a feeling of ‘impending doom’. I remember having this feeling for the very first time when I was about 6 years old. I know I was around this age, because we still lived in England at the time. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but I felt a disconnection from myself and those around me, which suddenly caused me to feel so incredibly sad that I burst into tears. The feeling passed after a few moments, and even now as I try to recall more recent episodes of this feeling, I can’t put my finger on its trigger.
Sometimes it happens, it goes away, I feel fine and forget about it. As I get older, I’m beginning to worry more about it. My family has a history of mental illness, both diagnosed (great-aunts institutionalised) and undiagnosed (my mother has had a ‘mid-life crisis’ of sorts over the past four years, my sister has shown signs of having some rather large issues, both biological grandfathers have addictive personalities… one to women and generally being a butthead, the other to alcohol). I suppose I feel nervous that perhaps I might be next. I feel completely normal almost all the time, but once every few months, I’ll have a ‘moment’ where I feel like I don’t even know myself.
I think there is concern from my husband as well, that maybe I’ll do what my Mum did, throw up my hands, tell him to “get fucked, I want my youth back”, take half of everything we built together and proceed to piss it up the wall on plastic surgery and other bullshit. I can’t think of anything worse, I really can’t stand that element of my mother’s personality and her life, and cannot imagine going down the same road. But I doubt that was her plan either in her early twenties. How can I guarantee it? I want to be there for him forever, but what if my mind does all of a sudden decide it wants to be pashing young things at the disco once again… and the only thing standing in my way of that and world full of other fun is my husband?
Sometimes I feel like I can’t trust my mind in 20 years time. Is being aware of the possibility enough to stop it coming true?
