Call me "Crash"

Everyone knows that the hormone rollercoaster is a given when you are in the thick of your cycle, but what about afterwards, when you get that BFN?

I decided to go back to Dr. F, my famous acupuncturist, who I took a break from for a year. He can help me with hormone stuff that Em, my other acupuncturist, can't, though he is clueless about IVF. After Dr. BloSunMyCha would not monitor my DHEA levels, I asked Dr. F to do it. I had to go off the pregnenolone I had just started taking for a week. I'll get the test on Wednesday. It can't come soon enough.

I think I'm having a hormone crash. I'm getting PMS symptoms and taking no hormone precursors to jump start my system again. I do think I ovulated, but my BBTs have been all over the map. My ovaries are confused.

I read two blog posts today that freaked me out. First was about a C-section incision busting open. I thought, ew, I don't want to do that, but chances are I would have to have a C-section because of my previous myomectomy to remove fibroids. Then, I read a post about a woman's PPD with anxiety. Talk about flashback, but I had that PPD/anxiety when I was pregnant. No one warns you about that. I've made myself sick on chocolate and lack of sleep in the last day and a half. I feel nauseous and panicked. If I didn't know better, I would think I was pregnant.

It seems that my expensive fertility treatment habit is now turning into an expensive car wreck habit too. Yeah, had another car accident last Wednesday. I'm ok, physically. The car isn't. I got a new lesson in trauma reactions, one I could do without. I froze in reaction to being startled while driving. Not good when there are other things moving around you that don't stop.

Seriously, this whole infertility gig sucks.

The Ice Princess Melt-eth

I really enjoyed all the comments on my last blog post. I was laughing at all the creative entries. Thank you everyone for helping me keep this light and fun! I really struggled with which name to choose for our totsicles (Dora, I like that too). I liked Snow Angel (Onwards and Sideways gets Honorable Mention as a close second), Yukiko, Flurry, Ben & Jerry (even though I was really looking for girl names), and Alpine. In the end, I picked totally different names.

I had one last trauma therapy appointment tonight before our transfer. I learned that part of what we do to integrate the trauma is to touch on the bad feelings from the trauma, then go to something that makes me feel good. I focused today on my garden. My hand hurt today from the power gardening I was trying to get in yesterday before I won't be able to do that kind of physical labor for awhile. This is the first year I have gotten my peas seeded before the end of March. "Peas in by St. Patrick's Day," is what I have always heard. I was a few days late, but I got it done. It's just as well that I did not get them in sooner, as we might get some snow tonight. I moved back and forth between the nasty feelings of the trauma to the wonderful feelings of my garden last year. In the aftermath of our loss, I poured all my creative energy into my garden, the best garden I have ever had. I recalled the awe inspiring encounters I had with the hummingbirds that would check me out at close range in the garden last year. I'm still feasting on frozen pesto from last year's monstrous basil harvest, and I just dug up the carrots that I left over the winter.

As I was talking to my trauma therapist, I started to think of the frozen embryo transfer as planting peas. I didn't plant just any kind of pea seeds yesterday. I planted snow peas. There was the name. My embryos are named Snow Peas! I decided that they would have the same name, because you can't plant just one pea.

I leave you with a picture of the sweet snow peas I harvested last fall. I'll be taking a break from the computer for a few days. In the meanwhile, I'll be off tending to my garden and my newly planted snow peas!!

Show & Tell: The Ring

Resourcing

Part of working with trauma is to find resources. These are resources that you find supportive and help you when you are feeling a trauma response. One of my resources is this ring:

The ring has two purposes. This is my great-grandmother's, but I more associate it with my maternal grandmother. The ring reminds me of all the nurturing that my Italian grandmother gave to me as a child. The ring and how it got here has an interesting story. My great-grandmother, who also was from Italy, came to this country with her husband. She sent her husband back to Italy to sell some land she owned and to bring the money back. He ended up bringing back this stunning diamond and sapphire ring instead. She was very angry with him because, as she said, "I can't eat that ring!" They ended up getting divorced.

My great-grandmother lived with her daughter-in-law, my grandmother who also immigrated from Italy. My grandfather, who was 1st generation Italian-American, whisked my grandmother away from Italy after knowing her for three weeks and not speaking any Italian. My grandmother did not speak English and did not learn English until my mother went to school. My grandfather was known as "the American" to the Italians, and he was my grandmother's ticket out of poverty in Italy to a better life in America. She got the ring from her mother-in-law, she gave it to my mother, and my mother gave it to me when she got too fat to wear it. As the youngest in a family of six who usually gets worn out hand-me-downs, this is one I cherish.

Coming into the Present

The second purpose of the ring is to serve as a distraction. When you are experiencing trauma, you are not present. You focus on the trauma as if it was happening now. The ring and other things that catch my eye serve to bring me back into the present. When you experience trauma, you get extremely focused. You focus only on the trauma. The point of looking around is to see the bigger picture and to focus on other things. It also helps me realize that I am not actually experiencing the trauma right now, though that is what my brain keeps replaying.

I have been struggling with re-living the trauma of my past pregnancy and loss as I get closer to our FET transfer. Some days are better than others when I am not identified with the trauma. Other days, something sets me off and I'm stuck in this doom-n-gloom feeling. The "Dream Team" that I posted about previously are part of my pool of resources. The ring reminds me of my other guardian angel, my grandmother.

Angels sponsored by Mel's Show and Tell.

Shrink Shop

Let's review the checklist of things I need to complete before getting pregnant:

1. Buy a Car
2. Shop for a Shrink: I predicted this would take longer than buying a car. I am so far correct.
3. Finish 2008 taxes: I so loathe having to do this. Isn't there another blog I need to catch up on?

I did buy the car, which should be the topic of a future post, as I learned a lot of interesting things about car safety along the way. Basically, reader's choice won out!

On my mind now is the search for a new psychiatrist. I really wanted to find someone who specializes in treating pre-natal depression and anxiety and have it set up before my FET. I'm finding out a lot of good reasons for this.

1. It took me 3 weeks to do the research and make an appointment.
2. Once I did make the appointment today, it will be another four weeks before I could actually get in to see this specialist. I don't even know yet if this doctor will work for me.

The lesson is that this process takes a long time, which I already knew. If you have any inkling that you think you will have a problem with mental health during your pregnancy, you do want to find your psychiatrist before getting pregnant. If you are like me and thought that once you got pregnant that all your depression about not having children would vanish in a wave of euphoria, then you are going to be in big trouble. Once my mental health took a turn for the worse after the euphoria of initially finding out I was pregnant passed, I did not have the capacity to go through the search for a psychiatrist. I did try, but gave up after a few discouraging phone calls. Now that I am sane again, I can handle what seemed, when I was pregnant, an overwhelming task. I truly was sick at the time and needed help right away, not two months later. It's a sad story, but this is the reality of our ailing healthcare system.

Let's review the crap process I've already gone through in my search. First, I asked my RE for recommendations for psychiatrists in my area that specialize in prenatal depression. It took him a week to find those and get back to me. Of the two, one woman psychiatrist said that prenatal depression was not her specialty, but she could see me. She also gave me an off comment like, sounds like you just want medication management and not therapy, and that's not what I do. I didn't like how she misinterpreted my questions, so she was scratched off the list. Plus she is out of network with my insurance. With the next psychiatrist, I first had to get through the misinformation from his newly hired receptionist to find out that he does have some patients with prenatal depression he is currently treating, though it is not specifically his specialty. The problem with this guy is that he is out of network with my insurance and insanely expensive, $150 for half an hour. I'm always amazed that out of network shrinks won't work with you on their price. Scratched off the list. Next, take on the in network list of psychiatrist.

First, I called my insurance company to get a list of psychiatrists in my area. I had to endure the, "are you contemplating suicide?" before I could even ask my question. I was then given a bunch of misinformation and sent a list of psychologists, not psychiatrists that I had asked for. I decided just to do the search myself than frustrate myself with incompetent "mental health specialists" at my insurance company.

I printed off a list of all the psychiatrists within 25 miles of my house who are covered by my insurance and narrowed the list of 54 down to 6 women psychiatrists in my town or adjacent towns. Of the six, one had closed her practice, and four worked with other specialties. I did find one psychiatrist who does specialize in treating prenatal depression and anxiety, but only after talking with another male psychiatrist's office. I called her office four times in a week and did not get a response. I was a bit frustrated, but decided if I didn't get through this week, then forget it. Maybe they were on vacation last week, I don't know. I would have given up on this female psychiatrist, but I was going to make an appointment with another male psychiatrist who I was told specializes in prenatal depression by his receptionist. However, I had to call yet another person to actually make the appointment. When I talked to the appointment lady, she referred me to this other female psychiatrist instead.

Did I lose you yet? Yes, it was complicated and I'm going into all the detail to show how much research one has to do to find the right person. When you are in the throwes of serious depression and trauma, you can't deal with this overwhelming task. My other support fell apart too, because people, including my husband, were not used to seeing me my normal assertive-take-charge-in-control-self fall apart to a whimpering mass of protoplasm. I related this whole shrink shopping story to my husband, and he said he would have given up after the 4th psychiatrist. I called a total of NINE psychiatrists before finding the one, and I have not even interviewed her yet to find out if she will be a good match!!

Don't depend on your fertility clinic to help you out either. While my new RE did try to get me the proper referrals, which is more than I can say for my old RE who just pawned me off on their clinic psychologist who I didn't care for, the referrals were not psychiatrists who specialize in prenatal depression or postpartum depression! If a fertility clinic has their own psychologists, they specialize in treating the stress and depression that comes with infertility, not after you get pregnant. I believe the assumption, which was mine also, is that all would be well after getting pregnant. There are women like me, who have problems with all the hormones of pregnancy and it affects their mental health. As far as I can tell, it's similar to post-partum depression, though the actual mechanism in the brain is probably a bit different.

When I was pregnant and depressed and anxious, the doctors I was seeing either 1) ignored my depression or 2) judged me for not taking the Prozac I was prescribed. When an anti-depressant makes you more anxious, you don't have much motivation to take it! Hence the reason I am insisting on seeing a specialist in the area of prenatal depression and anxiety. If a doctor had said to me, "here is the specialist you should see that is covered by my insurance" that would have helped a lot. But out of three doctors who saw the state I was in, none of them gave me any recommendations for a psychiatrist. You truly have to be your own mental health advocate, and when you are mentally unhealthy, all you want to do is crawl under the covers and stay there. I did the best I could at the time, and I really wasn't seeing the right people. I hope I don't go through the same thing again, but I'm going to be prepared this go around.

Ed note: Upon proofreading this for the 10th time, I finally noticed that I started off with "before getting pregnant" not "before my FET". I was going to change it, but then I thought, how cool is that?

Isolation

I think there must come a time in every woman's infertility journey that she feels isolated. I've been feeling that way myself in the past day. It doesn't matter how many support groups I attend, forums I join, or infertility blogs I have subscribed to in my google reader, I still have moments when I feel like I'm alone and have no one to talk to.

I got an e-mail from the psychologist who runs the support group I used to attend in the big city a bit too far from my house. I intentionally keep my story private because I worry it will isolate me from others even more. Yet I also know there are those out there who would benefit from my story. It's a conundrum for me. She had this to say about it:

Anyone who doesn't respond to your - or anyone's - story with openness and an attempt at empathy doesn't know what they themselves has lived.

I was touched by this. It reminded me of some of the people in my enlightenment training group. Some have been through horrendous abuse as children. I do not need to know the details nor do I need to have had experienced something similar myself to have compassion for them. I've grown in my experience down this path of trying to have a baby the not-so-old-fashioned-way. I've learned to open my heart to women I never thought I had the capacity to. It has opened my eyes and heart to the struggles of all women.

So please understand when I don't share the particulars of my history. It's traumatizing to me. As I get closer to my FET, I relive the horror of my previous pregnancy. It's not something I can really explain very well. It's a feeling; a feeling of impending doom. I also understand now that my trauma goes back to experiences in other lifetimes around pregnancy. I can't explain that because I don't understand it. I'm not even sure I really believe it, but at the same time it makes perfect sense to me. Apparently, I'm still working out trauma from these other lifetimes too. Today, all I know is that I feel incapacited by it all. I know I am still grieving, for all the losses, this lifetime, and others, no matter how strange it may sound.

Re-Group

I'm nervous. Tomorrow is my hysteroscopy with the new doc to make sure everything is A OK in Uterusville. Then, the FET consult. Dates. Drugs. I don't know if I'm ready for this. We don't even know if FET is the thing to do. Maybe we should just start all over with fresh eggs? But can I go through all that stress of the unknown and fun life and death decisions? Can I leave my babies in frozen suspension forever?

On the bright side, I joined a new support group today and did not have a trauma reaction after telling my story. Whoo hoo! I practiced the techniques my trauma therapist gave me in which I cycled my nervous system. I could actually feel the cycling as I sensed into my feet and toes as I felt the intensity of the emotion rise up. I felt myself trembling to let off some of the energy. The night is still young, and sometimes the reaction is delayed, so we shall see. Maybe I'll have one big massive trauma meltdown in the doc's office. Nah. I usually can dissociate enough to make it through, though I may walk into some walls or some such delirious behavior. Can't I just stick red hot pokers in my eyes instead? It sounds so much more sooooothing.

I did figure out that some of my craziness this past weekend, in addition to the full moon induced lunacy, was a stuck trauma reaction. I think I was having this energy come up that wanted to move through. I was soooo angry. Then, I would crying for no apparent reason, just because it felt good. Magic wanted me to tell him what was going on. I said I didn't want to talk about it. The truth was, I didn't have an answer and was annoyed that I didn't know what was going on.

Until tomorrow...

Sinking Feelings

I finally came to the realization, with Magic's help, that I can not go back to my old RE. I think it came down to feeling like I could not trust him or the embryologist to take care of me in the future. I also do not believe they would ever take any responsibility for their carelessness. I have thought about going back many times, rehearsed what I would say to them, and it feels too traumatic. As it is, I dissociated the last time I went to the new RE's office.

I didn't want to check my e-mail tonight. I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I forced myself to e-mail him today, my new RE, to tell him that we are ready to move forward with our frozen embryo transfer. I knew he would have answered. I didn't really want to know the answer, to know that I will be going back in that cold environment where I have to shut down my emotions. Where strangers do things to me that I really don't want to think about. And who knows what the outcome will be. It all makes me sick.

On the other hand, I want to meet her so badly. I hope she will accept one of our frozen embryos. I don't know if I can go through another loss. I don't know if I can go through another IVF cycle. I hope that she will come this time. I hope she is ready. I hope I am ready.

Something in Me Has Died

I think this is otherwise know as trauma. I was feeling all great and hopeful after our clairvoyant reading, until I talked with my SIL. I told her how we were going to try again, and she says, what if X happens again. I couldn't believe how insensitive she was. I spent the rest of the weekend crying and depressed. I didn't even want to go to the Messiah Sing-a-long, which I do every year around this time. I didn't feel like singing anything, let along Hallefuckinglujah.

In fact, I just feel like a part of me has died. I feel no joy in my heart. I didn't even do anything for Winter Solstice, one of my favorite holidays because there is no hype about it. I just didn't feel like celebrating the coming of light. I got in a fight with my stepson about him smoking pot in our backyard, which we have told him numerous times is not cool. I'm grumpy all around. I hate all the commercialism of Christmas. I hate all the buying and I hate how my stepsons are materialistic monsters. Magic and I agreed not to buy each other gifts this year. I am so grateful to cut down on the amount shopping this year. I hate what infertility treatments have done to me.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which means the two-day Italian Christmas cooking extravaganza begins. I somehow roped myself into cooking for 10 for Christmas. It's homemade ravioli this year, and yes, I'm doing it all gluten-free for all my Jewish friends and relatives! Now I just need to get to Whole Paycheck for their 36 hour Christmas Eve shopping spree. I can shop at 3am there if I want. Just what I wanted for Christmas. Bah humbug!!

Thanksgiving Up Side the Head

It all started last weekend. A friend of mine invited me to his annual pre-Thanksgiving potluck. Since Magic and I aren't invited to many parties, I figured we better go! Turns out I knew most of the people there, and their kids. It was great seeing everyone, but I was not prepared for the effect of seeing the little ones on me. It brought up another wave of grief which surprised me in a way. I thought I'd moved beyond that, or at least, wanted to believe so.

As the actual day of Thanksgiving neared, I dreaded it. I knew there would be more small children and I didn't want to go through the same thing I did last weekend. I worked late Wednesday so I could spend less time with Magic's relatives, and avoided the kids that night. I was dreading going to my SIL's all day yesterday. When I had arrived, I saw two baby carriers. No one had warned me that my SIL's friend with the twin infants would be there. I braced for an internal meltdown.

Instead, I leaned into it. I asked to hold both of the twins at one point. I successfully held one of the girls for about five minutes or so, to the amazement of both parents, as this girl apparently doesn't like to be held by anyone but her mom and dad. They made having twins look easy.

One of the things that has to happen before I transfer my frozen embryos is that I need to be ok with twins. When I first saw those twin baby carriers yesterday, I thought the Universe was being cruel, but upon reflection later, maybe I was being pushed in a direction I wouldn't have chosen to take otherwise. I call these "spiritual 2 by 4s", as in, getting whacked upside the head by one. I think if I had known that there would be twin infants at Thanksgiving, I would have stayed home. I'm glad I didn't know. I actually think I needed a whack to get me out of the funk I'd been in the last day.

One other observation, the panic attacks are lessening. The trauma therapy seems to be helping me. My session on Monday is what really tipped off that wave of grief. I did not specifically work so much on my loss, but this awful feeling I have gotten since a child in a recurring nightmare. I don't have the recurring nightmare anymore, but I get the same feeling from the nightmare in conscious life now. I have never figured it out. We just worked on regulating my nervous system in the session, and not the content. The content isn't the point in trauma therapy. It's all about the nervous system, or as my therapist would say, nervous system calisthenics. I'm learning how to move back and forth between focusing on a happy memory, which makes me physically feel relaxed and calm, to touching into the trauma or unhappy memories. It helps me not get stuck in the trauma or negative feelings. I can't say I regulated very well yesterday, though I did recognize that I was stuck. I was obsessing on the negative.

I'm not ungrateful. I actually am more grateful now since my tragedy than before. I have regrets and a lot of grief still. I've been able to make some progress with forgiving myself, but it can be hard on days like yesterday. I was sick and in a completely different place back then. I can't change what happened, but I can learn from it and hopefully move on.

Maybe This Wasn't Such a Good Idea

"Can you let yourself take a break from this for awhile?" said my trauma therapist last night. She was referring to my planning on trying again and the emotion it has been bringing up for me. When I think about being pregnant again, the panic attacks start coming up and I worry that I'm going to have a repeat of my past experience.

I thought maybe it would be a good idea. Maybe I should take a break from blogging and think about getting pregnant. As I checked my e-mail today, I went into automatic comment moderation when one comment showed up. Next automatic blogging action is to check on all my blogs. I noticed that I reacted to the entries I read, and thought again, yeah, maybe it would be a good idea to take a break.

Another comment showed up in the meanwhile, and I wondered why all the sudden I started getting comments today after not having a blog entry since Sunday. The commenter's signature reminded me, "from ICLW". Oh yeah, I signed up for the monthy Comment-o-thon. Nice timing.

I wondered if my trauma therapist thought that my reliving my trauma from my pregnancy was too much for me. I am making progress. I uncovered some really old baggage last night. I need to go there. I have to do this if I'm going to get through another pregnancy. The only way is through it.

If you are new to reading my blog, you are going to notice here that I don't tell my "story". I've learned that it is better for me not to retell my story because it re-traumatizes me. This is the first time I have been aware of being traumatized in my life, though I am sure it has happened before, and now I understand what it means to experience Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. My latest mantra is, "I'm not going there," meaning I'm not going to succumb to the nervous system overload that trauma causes.

I can tell you some parts of my story on my babymaking journey. Fibroids, IUI, IVF, prenatal depression & anxiety, multiples, and loss. I prefer to think of my blog more as Eat, Pray, Love, some of my most favorite topics to talk about.

For the Record

It was a panic attack.

The meeting with Dr. G set off a whole string of reactions. I recovered fairly quickly, after two days, but still, there it was.

The worst part of it was hearing that I would be at a greater risk of having a repeat of what happened before. Still a small risk, but not as small as you would think, up to 10%. I'm just not ready to deal with that yet. I get nervous just thinking about it.

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.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The Traumarama continues. Yesterday was my first trauma therapy session with a second therapist. I'm taking the shotgun approach. I felt good after the session, which I took as a positive sign. However, I had my usual agitation in the evening before going to bed. After listening to my Brainspotting CDs for 45 minutes, I finally got calm enough to sleep. Unfortunately, Magic wasn't sleeping well either, and he ended up waking me up about three hours after I fell asleep. I've been up ever since.

While I feel I made some progress in my session, I'm back stuck in my reactive state again. I swear, sometimes I feel like the Universe is after me. I walked out of my session feeling pretty good, and there is a dead squirrel right outside the driveway that wasn't there when I went in. I try not to let things like that bother me, but then I got upset when one of my favorite characters in the TV show "Heroes" got killed last night. The littlest things just build into a giant mushroom cloud.

Sometimes I feel like I'll never get beyond this, that I'm too damaged. I feel completely hopeless. I feel that this trauma will keep me from ever being a mother, and of course, there is the piece related back to my mother, so it feels like a vicious cycle. When I get like this, I feel that I'm to blame for everything, which of course isn't true. There is no reasoning in a state like this. You just wait for it to pass. You just hope that it will eventually pass, sooner rather than later. The blame takes the place of the not knowing. I want to know that everything that happened was ok and that everything will be ok. I either come up with answers I can not feel settled with or no answers at all. I'm not sure which is worse.

All I wanted was to get pregnant, be happy, and have a family. It was the story book ending that wasn't. Kinda like my childhood. I thought I was ready to be over it, but apparently I opened the Pandora's box without even knowing I was doing so.

I've always wanted to be a mom, and even after all that's happened, that hasn't gone away. I'm just a bit more wary of what I ask for.

If I didn't have so much to do at work, I would have taken another sick day and tried to get some sleep. I'm sure the sleep deprivation isn't helping either.

Progress

I hope I don't sound too "woe is me" on some of my ramblings about depression and trauma. The intent here is to educate, while some of you may possibly be here for the entertainment factor. I actually view crisises such as depression and trauma as catalysts for change, usually big change. I think such was the case last week. The Traumarama caused me to go out and get a book I've been thinking about for some time. I'll do a review of that book later. After reading that book, I think something shifted, if ever so slightly, in my consciousness. It's not what happened over the weekend, it's what didn't happen that delighted me.

Did anyone see the birth announcement of Lisa Marie Presley's twins? I typically see these tidbits of earth shattering news when I log into my ya.hoo account. The amazing part about it was that (pause for emphasis)...I was not fazed at all!! No reaction what so ever.

Ok, when you don't have a reaction, there's really not much to say about it.

I think I've made some progress here.

Trigger Un-Happy

It was an exciting week in Trauma land this week. I had not one but TWO trauma triggers.

The week started off with more enlightenment training landmines. We do this thing in my enlightenment training that's kinda like group therapy. I was working on some particularly lovely issue about my mother, when in the middle of being all vulnerable and open, one of my group member's phone beeped. That's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that he said; "sorry about that, my wife is in labor". All eyes turned to him, with a couple of female group members making ooh-aah eyes at him. It didn't help that I had already been obsessing that I was supposed to be delivering about this time. As I felt my whole nervous system beginning to go haywire, I managed to hold it together enough to say, "I'm done". I thought I had dodged a bullet, but the trauma reaction came around and got me the next morning with a full blown panic attack upon waking, much like the ones I experienced when I was pregnant. I called in work sick and moped around much of the day.

I recovered from that when just two days later, I get a phone call from the local multiples group I joined back in April calling to see how I was doing. Apparently this woman didn't talk with the women I broke the news to in July. I said something like, "I don't think you got the message..." Then, the uncomfortable reply of, "well that doesn't mean you can't be part of our club. We have people that work on that kind of thing." My jaw dropped, as in a Katie-Couric-interviewing-Sarah-Palin type of jaw dropping.

"...if you don't want to talk about it, I totally understand..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Talk about ruining your day.

Before, I used to talk about how I was traumatized. Now, I get to experience what trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder means. Trauma is something that happens in the lower brain center, the limbic brain, and your nervous system. Trauma is also experienced physiologically, such as in panic attacks or dissociation. Triggers are anything that remind you of the trauma and set you off emotionally. In my enlightenment training, you are encouraged to feel your feelings. During an enlightenment training exercise a few weeks ago, a woman in a group of three next to my group of three decides to let out an ear-piercing scream. My group was exploring the openness of love when this scream happened. I was immediately reminded of my mother being crazy and screaming. All my good feelings vanished, my nervous system started going haywire, and I started shutting down. This is an example of what a trigger can do to you if you have not worked out all your trauma.

In hindsight, I realize the trauma began last year. I think each loss the fertility treatments brought was a new trauma. Then, my pregnancy opened up memories of trauma that were deeply hidden. One of them, I think, was my birth trauma. I'm not sure about this, seeing as I didn't have language back then to remember the trauma, but I had this recurring nightmare as a kid about being suffocated. The dream was so confusing because it had very abstract images, but with a crippling sensation of being crushed. The feeling of being suffocated come up again when I was pregnant. I think it might have something to do with being born breech with the umbilicord wrapped around my neck and being blue when I was born.

Next week, I will start back up with the trauma therapy, so I'm hoping that will help.

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.

Playback

"I'm watching something really cool about 9/11," my stepson called from the family room. "Ah, this is so cool!" I had to see what he was watching. It was a documentary of 9/11 from the average person's video camera. The second part of the documentary was the people on the street who were behind the camera describing their experience. I was glued to the screen, like a deer in headlights.

One guy was filming this man who was listening to a radio on the hood of a car, and looking at the World Trade Center Buildings with one of them burning. All of the sudden, you see the second plane crash dead center into the second World Trade Center Building. "Aaarrgh," we all scream in the living room, like it was happening that day. Except that my stepson was seven then. I met him about a week later after 9/11.

The same guy describes the footage of these firemen we saw earlier in the documentary. They are heading off to the World Trade Centers with a hose and a fire extinguisher, with expressions on their faces like, "what are we supposed to do with these?" He explains how none of those firemen made it that day. More groans from our audience.

My husband and I are now too depressed to eat dinner. My stepson recounts how he was too young to really understand it then.

It reminds me of when I was pregnant. I felt like I was having similar playbacks of my childhood. When I was growing up into young adulthood, I always thought I had a great childhood. I never really made a connection between the periods of depression and suicidal thoughts I had as a teenager and my childhood. After having a series of bad relationships in my 20s, I finally decided I needed to take a look at myself rather than blaming others for my problems.

When I was pregnant, having these childhood memories traumatized me as much as watching this 9/11 documentary tonight did. Only back then, my nervous system was so easily triggered that I couldn't deal with all these traumas piling up on one another. It was a train wreck waiting to happen...