Phoebe 101

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Phoebe...

Ok, this is no fairy tale, though I wish it were. Here are the basic things you need and want to know about me. My blog is about my baby making journey, cooking, gardening, natural living, and whatever I feel about blogging about. Phoebe is not my real name, but I think it's kind of a cool name.

I am now 43 (updated 8/2009). It took a while for me to find Mr. Magic, and we got married two months shy of my 39th birthday. My first RE visit was just before that 39th birthday. I always knew I would need high tech means to get pregnant with Magic, my husband, but I was very naive about what that meant. I thought, yeah, I'll just do IVF. Little did I know how difficult it would be and how much agony and pain it would bring me.

Magic had a vasectomy 15 years ago after the birth of his second son, thinking he was done with baby making, but saved some of his sperm, just in case. In that 15 years, he was divorced and we were married. A reverse vasectomy now will have little chance of being successful because the amount of time that has lapsed from his original vasectomy directly correlates to the amount of the antibodies that are produced against Magic's sperm.

My baby making journey, which has so far resulted in no baby, has consisted of:

1 IUI
1 IVF converted to IUI
1 IVF
1 FET

I have had my own reproductive problems myself. I had surgery for uterine fibroids, a half a pound's worth, before any RE would touch me. Fortunately, changing my lifestyle and getting serious about taking care of myself have kept anymore fibroids away.

High tech fertility treatments are completely against my own personal philosophies, but since it is the only way I can get pregnant, I suck it up. At this point, it feels like a very expensive hobby.

I did get pregnant from IVF #1 redo (IVF #2?) at age 41. I had serious fucked up problems with my pregnancy that was directly related to doing IVF. I know I would not have had these problems if I got pregnant naturally. One of them was that I had severe prenatal depression and anxiety and was not getting treated for it. I did try taking Pro>zac, but I had a paradoxical reaction to it, meaning it made me more anxious instead of calming me down. In retrospect, I should have been on anti-anxiety medication and a different type of anti-depressant, not an SS.RI type anti-depressant. However, because I was so out of it, I didn't have the energy or will to find the right kind of psychiatrist to treat me, and Magic didn't know what to do. It's difficult when your normally in-control-assertive wife suddenly turns into a withering mass of protoplasm. The doctor who did prescribe me the Pro>ac was my RE, and he did not monitor me. Big mistake when treating someone for mental illness, which is why I could not go back to him, and why I eventually changed fertility clinics and moved my frozen embryos. I probably should have been hospitalized, except on the outside, I was functioning. On the inside, I was falling apart. Even after I eventually got better, I have found it extremely difficult to find psychiatrists and psychologists who treat prenatal depression and anxiety, let alone any doctor or health care professional who understands it. Mental health care is seriously fucked flawed in this country, especially for pregnant women.

Unfortunately, my pregnancy had an unhappy ending, and I do not talk about the details of my loss on my public blog. I was traumatized by the whole experience, and the less I have that trauma out there in the world, the better it is for me. I know that my story could probably help someone, but I get nothing from retelling my story except re-traumatization. I do have a private blog that has my story that I created as an outlet for myself and my healing. I only let longtime readers/commenters access. You have to get to know me first before I will allow you access. If you request access to my private blog first to get to know me, I will have to respectfully decline your request.

I love receiving comments and I love the support I get and give by conversing with other bloggers. I do moderate all my comments. I usually publish all the comments I receive. On rare occasions, I will remove any comments that I deem nosey, mean-spirited, or unsupportive. If you return to my blog and see your comment gone (really, why are you coming back to check on your comment?), that should probably be your clue that I thought your comment was nosey, mean-spirited, or unsupportive. Rather than write another comment that is nosey, mean-spirited, or unsupportive that I will also remove, please simply click away from my blog.

Most of what you really need to know is here on my public blog. Thanks for joining me on this crazy ride.

Honey, I ate my doctor!

I ripped the flesh off his arms. My tiger jaws crushed his head and his brains squirted out like a popped zit. I felt good. Then, something shifted.

It was my second trauma therapy session with the new therapist. First, we went through all kinds of "resourcing", where you think of the support you had in your life, or something else positive in your life. For me, one of the big supports in my life was my little ol' Italian grandmother, who my friend Eurydice at Geeks in Rome duly nicknamed "Grandma Cookie". As the name infers, she was a wonderful cook, and she was always making Eurydice and I cookies as kids. At the time of my session, I wasn't sure this was going to be a good resource for me, because all I could think of was how depressed I was that she was no longer around.

At some point in the session, we focused in on the feeling in my body. I was angry, but frustrated that I could do nothing about what happened. I was told to focus in on the energy of that, and guided to tune into my animal instincts. I wanted to rip my doctor to shreds. My therapist handed me a scarf and told me to go for it, to bite into the scarf like I would my doctor. If I hadn't already read some of Peter Levine's book "Waking the Tiger", a pivotal book on trauma therapy, I would have thought she was nuttier than a fruitcake. Levine writes about how animals are not traumatized like human beings are. They learn to shake it off. Humans have the same animal brain, as well as our "human" part, the neo-cortex. Levine says that we get traumatized when the energy that a traumatic event evokes gets stuck. This might be an event where one could not escape harm, like surgery or a car accident. Levine's therapy, called Somatic Experiencing, works, I think, by touching into those same animal instinctual responses. When I read about it in his book, I wondered, "how is this going to work for me and my particular situation?" I couldn't really see the connection.

Now I know, it is an experiential thing. I declined the scarf, but took my jacket to bite into, figuring it would be more polite to slobber on my own clothes than someone else's. My therapist told me to get into the biting. I bit and shook my jacket, envisioning my RE's lifeless body being crushed in my powerful jaws. I did not feel like the powerless patient with no control any longer. I felt powerful and strong. I went home feeling quite good.

This was in contrast to the previous week's Traumarama, in which I spent about 24 hours being pretty wound up after my first trauma therapy session. My therapist told me that a day to a day and a half of being tweaked out after a session is good and showing I am integrating the material we are working on. Huh? Ok, I was a little more than tweaked out, I was borderline suicidal, and even took a Well.butrin to get through the day, though I've been completely free of it since early September. I didn't get it, but if my therapist was saying it was progress, then I'll take it!

I can tell things are shifting. I feel like working out again. I actually feel ready to try again, though I am daunted by the long list of things that need to be taken care of first, one of which is getting Magic on board again. He does not want to see me all freaked out again, for good reason!

Tomorrow is my six month anniversary of the loss. I had a feeling it would take at least six months to heal from this. I wonder how I will feel about this unhappy milestone? Right now, I feel there is no need to wallow in what happened, but to focus on the present healing and work towards the future. One change I have noted is a genuine feeling of my internal support, something that I was so lacking back when I was depressed and anxious. I hope this feeling will continue to grow and carry me through the difficult times I'm sure that have yet to come.

And now I can think of Grandma Cookie with a smile and all that she did for me when I was a kid.

The Drama Called Trauma

It happened one day in July. One of those moments when the Universe was nudging me, and I was just awake enough to notice. I'd been talking about how I had been traumatized during my pregnancy experience and the outfall, but I hadn't been recognizing how the trauma was affecting me. I thought depression was the only symptom of trauma.

I was attending my first weekend enlightenment training after an eight month hiatus. In the hallway, there was a postcard advertising this book:

I thought, "I need to get this book. This is what I've been experiencing."

I went to Buns and Noodle to try to find the book. Instead, I found this book:

I read how trauma is an instinctual response to being overwhelmed, and how the energy can get stuck in our bodies if we don't have a way to discharge it, basically causing the trauma to replay over and over in our lives. I now had a doorway to understanding my seemingly irrational behavior during my pregnancy.

It is any coincidence that both these authors live in my groovy western town? It appears that not only do I live in alternative medicine mecca, but I apparently live in trauma therapy central. Who knew? I wish I knew back then.

Land of the Free

Home of the Brave

It's been a rough week for me. I started out the week feeling pretty good. I felt I had found some meaning in our loss. I felt some hope in transformation through The Phoenix Process. Then, just when I thought I was doing better, reminders of our loss kept popping up. I haven't been getting much sleep because of these things bothering me. This morning's experience pushed me to act.

After a restless night, I woke up depressed. I allowed myself to grieve some more in bed, sobbing, and wondering how I would get through this. These feelings are intensified by the fact that I am ovulating. I can feel my uterus today, and it strangely feels similar to when I was pregnant. Yesterday morning, I woke with a clear message in my head: "I do not want children." Well, that's true, in that I didn't want children right at that moment. I wondered if it was really a true feeling, or a reaction to the trauma I experienced while pregnant. I went to the office and was completely engrossed in my work, when another reminder hit me like a 2x4 in the head. I walked in the bathroom, and one of the pregnant women in my office just came out of a stall with her very large belly exposed as I nearly ran into her. A cascade of emotions began flowing from my heart. First jealousy that she was having the baby girl I should be having. But no, I wasn't angry with her. It wasn't her fault, what happened to us. Then, wishing that we had never been put in the position we were in. Angry with our clinic. Regretting that we had been put in a shitty situation that I never wanted to be in. I spent the rest of the day mulling over the events between work commitments, and it continued into an emotional session with my therapist. My therapist described what happened to us in a metaphor, about all the efforts I had put into getting pregnant and what happened afterwards: "It's like you were driving 65 miles and hour, and you hit a brick wall that you didn't know was there. Now, you are left to pick up the pieces."

This morning, when I sensed into my uterus, I felt her love. I felt her love for a child. Since our loss, the couple of times I have ovulated, I've felt a renewed desire to have a child. Even if I am not ready to go there yet or I am considering quitting all efforts to get pregnant, ovulation pulls me back into wanting a child. This drive feels stronger than my will.

I was feeling all this love and desire for a child again, so I picked up a book I had been avoiding, Understanding Your Moods When You are Expecting, and dang it, if there wasn't a story that paralleled mine right on the pages I opened to. My heart stood still, ready to break all over again. Luckily, the story did not say what the outcome was, but it did confirm that I was not crazy.

I have been fairly cryptic about my pregnancy loss experience for many reasons. It was a complicated situation that not everyone would understand, but I believe would be a helpful story for those who are ready to hear it. Unfortunately, Blogger does not have password protected posts. Wordpress does have password protected posts. I tried to get comfortable again with Wordpress last night, but I really don't like it. Today, after reading this uncanny story similar to mine, I found the only way to protect my posts in Blogger is to create a separate private blog and link the posts. I am going to try it out today, on Independence Day.

"The truth shall set you free"
American's have this thing about the truth. We value the truth. Our Constitution talks about our truths (guess I'm feeling a bit patriotic today). While I am a lover of truth, not everyone is. Sometimes, I feel like I'm having this conversation with the blogsophere, or maybe even myself, when I think about sharing what happened to us. It's one of the great scenes from an American movie classic, "A Few Good Men":

Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson): "You want answers?"
Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise): "I think I'm entitled."
Jessup: "You want answers?"
Kaffee: "I want the truth!"
Jessup: "YOU can't handle the TRUTH!"

This scene from the movie will raise hairs on the back of your head. It's such a great performance by Jack Nicholson, that I couldn't resist including it here again. Americans, if you're not feeling patriotic today, this will surely make you question your country!



She's Got Ovaries
In the book Broken Open that I talk about in my previous post, The Phoenix Process, the author, Elizabeth Lesser, writes about her extramarital affair that she had for a year before divorcing her husband. I thought that was pretty ballsy of her, or, as my friend likes to say, "she's got ovaries". The affair and her former lover was what prompted her decent to the fires of hell, metaphorically speaking, and she emerged like the phoenix from the ashes to transform her life that was true to her real self. When I first read it, I thought she was being awfully self-indulgent, but as I pushed my ego's judgment aside, I saw that she was making a point. That life might unfold in such a way that you find yourself doing things you that you never thought you would do, but that there is a method to the Universe's madness, or at least, I'd like to believe there is. She didn't have to divulge this controversial thing that she did in her life, but in her candor of her humanity, I got the point she was trying to make, probably much more so than if she just lectured about the process without the personal connection. I got it, and I respected her for her honesty and humility. Sometimes, it takes an experience like hers to really crack you open.


If you would like to read my story, e-mail me at phoebephoenixtales@gmail.com to request access to my private version of this blog. Please also write a line or two about why you would like to read my story. If I like what you say, or I know you are a regular reader from your comments, I'll grant you access. My story may be potentially disturbing to you, so consider that in your request. If you want to read my story for entertainment purposes only, then I'll have to decline your request. If you are a lover of the truth, then I welcome you. It goes something like this...

Not What I Expected When I Was Expecting

Limitations

Rock: 1, Me: 0

I was reminded by Busted Babymaker's Show and Tell that I had a memorial tree to plant, to honor our lost ones. I set out to plant our tree in our yard, the spot that Magic and I had picked out. The story of my planting the tree had many metaphors to my life.

I thought, how hard can it be to plant a tree? I thought the same thing when I first knew I would have to do IVF. When I started digging, I realized how tired I was and that it was going to be more challenging than I thought. Certainly, IVF was a lot more challenging than I thought. I really wanted to plant this tree for what it meant to me, so I was inspired to forge onward! As I dug down, I encountered rocks. I thought, "I'm not going to let a few rocks get in my way!" I envisioned them as the fibroids that had grown in my uterus and I was removing. That was the first obstacle I had to deal with before I could even consider IVF. I felt vindicated as I pulled more and more rocks out the hole.

I was getting a pretty good hole, but I was still finding more rocks, until it all became one huge rock. I couldn't get a handle on how big the rock was or if it was a series of rocks. I brought out the big guns. I always thought of IVF as "bringing out the big guns". I was on pretty high stims my first cycle, but had a lackluster response and we converted to IUI. The second cycle, they threw everything at me, putting me on maximum stims with a few other goodies thrown in. I got out the rock bar, a six foot long bar of solid steel with a pointy end, and proded around the rock. I even managed to break up some of the rock, but in the end, the rock won. I wasn't going to muscle my way through the expanse of this rock that was covering the entire bottom of my hole. I also wasn't going to plant a tree in a hole where it couldn't put down roots. I sat at the edge of the hole, realizing I had to admit my limitations. I was going to have to walk away from this hole, and that is how it was for my pregnancy.

Eventually, I gathered enough strength to put the soil back in the hole the same way I had removed it. I cleaned up, moved the tree to a new spot and left it for another day. A part of me felt defeated, but what can you do when you have limitations? I really wanted to plant that tree yesterday, but I am not Super Woman. I could have beat myself up about it, but that wouldn't have done me any good. I'll get that tree planted some day, but yesterday wasn't the day to do it. Instead of pushing myself to get the tree planted, I took a nap, which is what I really needed. It's a hard thing to admit the reality of your limitations in the midst of your dreams. Sometimes, I think I should be Super Woman and I do beat myself up. Sometimes, I wish everything had turned out different.

I reflected on the metaphor of this experience. In the path of life, you sometimes come up against a rock wall and you can't do anything about it. All you can do is turn away and find a different path, even if it isn't the one you imagined. In the meanwhile, I'll keep watering that tree until I can get it planted.

"Empty Cradle, Broken Heart"

"Surviving the Death of Your Baby" by Deborah L. Davis, Ph.D

I appreciated the recommendation of this book after our loss. It allowed me to get in touch with my feelings of grief on a deeper level. I read passages of the book to Magic, and he too got in touch with feelings of grief he did not realize he had. When he did, I did not feel so alone in my daily sadness. This book offers a sensitive approach to families dealing with grief related to miscarriage, stillbirth, pregnancy interruption, selective reduction, and neonatal loss.

While I think the whole book is good, there were certain chapters that spoke to me the most. I'll include some excepts from the book here.

Painful Feelings

"Grief encompasses many painful feelings and some are especially difficult to express, cope with and work through. Feelings of failure, anger, guilt and vulnerability to tragedy are common among parents whose baby has died.

Three of these feelings - anger, guilt, and failure - arise from the belief that you are in charge of your destiny. Until a tragedy strikes, you may have thought you had control over what happens to you.

This sense of control is the source of many of your painful feelings. You may be angry that your baby died in spite of happier plans; you may feel guilty you could not prevent it; you may feel there must be something wrong with you that such a terrible thing could happen. If you interrupted the pregnancy or refused medical heroics, you may feel an additional sense of responsibility that can heighten these feelings. You may agonize over the questions "Why me? Why my baby?" You want answers to ensure more control in the future.

Another approach is to realize that you don't always have the power to prevent bad things from happening to you and that misfortune can strike even when you least expect it. This vulnerability to tragedy can be a terrifying feeling to face.

To avoid the fear and helplessness that come with vulnerability, you may want to hold on to anger, guilt or failure for a while. These emotions protect that comfortable illusion of being in total control. Later, as you begin adjusting to your baby's death, you will come to the painful realization that you don't have control over everything that happens in your life."

Making Peace with Agonizing Decisions

"If you faced life-and-death decisions for your baby, resolution of your grief may seem incredibly difficult.

Decisions Parents Face
Perhaps you enlisted the aid of reproductive technology. You greeted the news of conception with joy, only to be faced with decisions regarding the risky business of a pregnancy with multiple babies. If more than two or three embryos were implanted, you may have to consider selective reduction in order to improve the chances of any of your babies surviving. You may have taken a leap of faith and tried to carry all the babies, but none of them made it. Or perhaps you chose reduction, but all the babies died. Either way, or if there are severely disabled survivors, you may feel punished for your decision.

In our culture, there is considerable social pressure to reach for miracles and employ the most technology possible to save a life. Carrying multiple babies to near term is considered a brave undertaking where surely, healthy babies are the reward. Parents who take on the care of a severely disabled child are looked upon as "courageous". Extensive and invasive medical treatments for critically ill newborns are referred to as "heroic measures". In contrast, selective reduction, pregnancy interruption and refusal of aggressive medical intervention are generally not considered "heroic". As a result, parents who choose these options often feel judged, isolated and unsupported. The purpose of this chapter is to point out the heroism in questioning medical technology, the virtue of rejecting the goal to save every life, the sensitivity in recognizing the complexities of a situation and the wisdom in choosing to let go. Indeed, it takes a lot of courage to meet death head on.

Living with the Decision: The Doubts
While some parents may have felt that there was only one way to go, others feel torn. With all the options being terrible, you may have felt it was an impossible decision to make. Even after all is said and done, you may still harbor some doubts.

Since you feel so badly, you may wonder, would the other choice have been better? But really, you feel badly not because you made a bad decision, but because you had to make a tough, painful decision. Moreover, none of the options offered total solutions. Each one held its own risks and created its own problems. Most likely, you would feel equally bad or worse if you had chosen the alternative.

You may wonder later, "If I had more time, would I have made a different choice?" But even with all the time in the world, you probably would have made the same choice. You made the best decision you possibly could - under terrible stress - weighing all the information at hand and balancing many factors, including the welfare of your baby, your marriage, yourself, your other children and even your future children.

If you were pregnant with multiple babies...you may be haunted by media images of families with multiples, and think to yourself, "I could have done that". To be in this position is terribly difficult...You did the very best you could with what you had. And remember that television and magazines tend to idealize multiples, and belittle the risks, hardships and craziness of the pregnancy, NICU and parenting.

The Guilt
Guilty feeling are very common in parents who employ selective reduction, interrupt a pregnancy, refuse aggressive medical intervention or disconnect artificial life-support systems.

If you employed selective reduction you may feel particularly angry at yourself for not trying to carry all the babies. Or perhaps you refused selective reduction and you're angry that you didn't consider the risks of multiple gestation seriously enough. Try to remember that whatever your decision, you were trying to guess what route would lead to the best outcome, without any definite signs to show you the way. In making your decision, you did reach for a greater good. Also remember, your decision came from how much you loved and wanted those babies, not the opposite.

It may also help to remember that guilt is a nearly universal feeling among bereaved parents. It is normal to feel guilty: this does NOT mean you did anything wrong. Instead of being angry at yourself for the decisions you made, be angry that you were put in the position to make a choice between "terrible" and "horrible".

Support Networks: Coping with Harsh Judgment

When you make the decision to let go and say goodbye to a much-loved baby, you may worry that some friends and family will judge you harshly. Even if you try to keep it a secret, most social and family circles exchange information freely. As a result, it may be impossible to completely avoid judgment and harsh remarks. So how do you face everyone? Eventually, as your grief softens and you come to accept that the decision you made was best, it will be easier to be around others and talk openly about your experiences. In the meantime, however, you needn't withdraw until you resolve you doubts. You only need to learn to survive others' comments. To do this, try the following suggestions.

• Gather insight into what drives those who judge you harshly. Many judgmental people are limited by simplistic thinking or their own emotional issues. They may cling to a black-and-white view: Life is good and death is bad. There are others whose capacity to reason shuts down when they hear the word "baby".
• Learn to shrug off harsh remarks. Especially in the thick of your grief and doubts, it is normal to be upset by unkind remarks. You can reassure yourself by saying, " it doesn't matter what they think. It wasn't their body, their baby, their family, their decision."
• Face your feelings. While shrugging off harsh remarks is a valuable skill, the other side of the coin is to examine the feelings that are brought up.
• Remember, you don't owe anyone a list of justifications. Even if some people don't accept your decision, they can refrain from being hurtful to your."

Obviously, these are complex and difficult issues that the book discusses, but these situations are realities. Often, the consequences of fertility treatments are not widely discussed because they are so charged. If you feel like you resonated with the contents of the book I shared here, but don't feel comfortable leaving a comment, you can e-mail me. My e-mail address is in my profile (click on my name on the right sidebar to get there).

Shell Shocked

It's been less than a month. Why do I feel this way? I realized that I'm shell shocked. I keep waiting for things to get better. I keep waiting for the pain to go away. It comes and goes in different waves of different emotions. Sadness, guilt, anger, doubt...I keep going back to "why did this happen to me?". The Wizards tell me it's too soon to think about anything else but grieving.

We were told by our clinic that what had happened to us was 0.4% of their last 750 cycles. How do you plan for 0.4%?

I can't help but think about trying again, but I also am too terrified to go there, too traumatized to even think about it. I know I need to sink into the sadness, to allow the grieving. But sometimes, it feels like too much. It wasn't supposed to be this way. How much more can I let my heart break?