la Matriarch

I’m back with a vengeance. 

Here’s the stuff I’m ranting about this month:

1. The bathroom remodel is done but every time I walk in there I’m reminded of how much I despise Ivo
2. Weddings - I never knew they were such rackets and I’m mad about it.
3. Scottsdale Arizona - a sea of white folks.
4. Trying to have a baby sort of sucks.
5. There’s a strong chance I had swine flu (HAD!)
6. People are compelled to ask me if I feel different now that I’m married.  Like they can’t help themselves!
7. Western medicine is overrun with closed-minded-bastard-know-it-alls.
8. My angelic nephew is not so angelic after all.  Apparently it’s reasonable to bribe people to take tests for him all over a piece of .30 cent candy.
9. I can’t stop thinking about John and Kate Plus 8, which makes me feel like a crazy bitch.

I could go on and on.  Stay tuned.

Now that we’ve been thinking about having a baby and I’m in that forbidden age range, I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on the Internet about Advanced Maternal Age.  Scouring the Internet for information is nothing new, I do it with all my obsessions.  And in my search for information about women in my age group having babies, I’ve found discussion boards mostly related to infertility. 

From what I can tell, women who experience infertility are in like a club or something.  They have their own language with their own acronyms that I don’t know how to interpret.  And although they seem to be very supportive of each other, there seems to be a sense of victimization within the community.  This is not unique to infertility, we are pros at victimization in the name of just about anything in this country.

I realize it’s easy for me to sit here, never having tried and failed to become pregnant, passing judgement on these women, but it almost seems like they become more invested in the idea of infertility than they do in the idea of motherhood.  It reminds me of alcoholics who come to define themselves as alcoholics, hanging out at AA meetings with other alcoholics, volunteering their alcoholic status to near perfect strangers.  To me, investing that much of your soul into something like that means you’ll never get over it, and I simply don’t buy it.  Why would you want to keep reminding yourself of something so terrible all the time?  Wouldn’t it be more fun to really get beyond it?

When I went to see my OB/GYN and mentioned to to her that I was considering trying to have a baby she informed me that they’d be sending me right over to an infertility specialist.  After I basically told her to go fuck herself regarding that particular part of the plan, she reluctantly agreed to “let me try on my own for 6 months but that’s it!”  Then she instructed me to start using an ovulation prediction kit and come in 7 days after ovulation to get a blood test for progesterone.  I asked her 3 times to explain the purpose of the blood test but she just kept telling me that “it will let us know if you can support a pregnancy” ummm WTF does that mean exactly?  Anyway, when she brought me the information sheet about the harmless progesterone blood test, it said BASIC INFERTILITY WORKUP.  At this point I’m seriously offended that I’m being labeled infertile without ever even trying to become pregnant.  I brought the paper home then promptly threw it in the trash.  I refuse to own that label “infertile”.  If I accept it then I believe my chance of actually being infertile becomes my reality.

I’m of the opinion that we create our own destiny and I kind of feel like becoming totally invested in infertility is sort of writing your own maternal death sentence.  It means spending almost all the time focusing on how you are NOT having a baby, and I think that can actually keep you from it.  I realize that banning together to talk about infertility creates a support system for people who are going through something terrible, but doesn’t it just perpetuate the infertility-ness?

I had a conversation with my guy tonight that scared the fucking life out of me. 

“You’ll be 50 when the child is 8, what if you are just too tired to handle it? My mom is 56 and just wants to sleep all the time.”

There were many other comments that freaked me out but the one about age was the worst.  It’s because there is not a damn thing I can do about it.  I’ll be 41 in October no matter what.  I can’t change that. 

What if I don’t have enough energy?  How do you even determine something like that? 

I don’t think I can do this.

I’m consumed with wondering if I’m too old to get pregnant.  I’m good at getting consumed over things.  That’s what I do. 

I read something the other day that said that women my age have a 1 in 30 chance of having a baby with birth defects.  That’s high!  That’s much higher than the chance I had of never being able to talk again after my thyroidectomy. 

MD “there is about a 1% chance that I’ll damage your vocal cords during surgery and that you won’t be able to talk again.

me “WHAT??? that seems high!”

MD “well, there are risks with any surgery”

me “how many of your patients have had this type of damage?”

MD “1%, Gina.”

He was so annoyed with me but who cares.  How am I supposed to react when you tell me that the surgery is not that bad except for the possibility that I may never be able to talk again when I wake up?  It was at that moment that I realized just how much I loved to sing. 

So, I beat that statistic, but I didn’t beat the only-five-percent-chance-it’s-cancer-one. 

These are thing kinds of things running through my head.  It’s not all bad, though.  I’ve also found a couple of cool blogs I like over at Babble.  My favorite is The Fosters.  And besides reading blogs I’ve also been looking at all kinds of green baby diapers. 

Next week I see my Internist for a check up.  No decision has been made about whether or not to actually have kids.

Last night I was up for hours past my bedtime reading all kinds of stuff about “advanced maternal age“.  Apparently there is a proper diagnosis for people like me who, for many reasons, find themselves thinking of having children late in life.  The top two reasons it seems that people are 40 and trying to get pregnant are either that they’ve been trying for a million years but have an infertility problem and/or they met Mr. Right way later in life. 

The information on Advanced Maternal Age is just as variable as information you find on the internet about any other topic.  Reading this stuff made me feel sort of like I did when I had Thyroid Cancer and was consumed with reading information about it.  One second I’d be all like “whew! I’ll be OK. I’m not gonna die” and they next second I would have read a few horror stories and find myself in tears wondering how many more years I’d live.  It was so out of hand that my Endocrinologist nearly fired me over it.  I remember one day while I was in his office whining about something I’d read on the Internet and he suddenly morphed into pissed-off-father mode.  “Gina - you have GOT to stop reading that crap! The 80% of people who survive Thyroid Cancer don’t spend hours per day writing stuff on discussion boards because they’ve gone on with their life.  If you insist on reading this stuff for yourself then let me give you some sites where you can get good, accurate information.” 

So, while I read all the horror stories about women over 40 struggling to get pregnant and/or having babies with birth defects, it suddenly hit me that it’s possible that there are countless women over 40 who’ve had their babies and are enjoying their families rather than fooling around with discussion boards about having babies. 

Be careful about what you read on the Internet.  It really can be all-consuming and scary. 

image from mosterguide.net