by Band Back Together | Nov 19, 2015 | Anxiety, Infertility, Unemployment |
I want a baby.
I want one so bad that I can feel the aches and pains as if I’d been punched in the gut.
I turned 30 this year. I know intellectually that 30 does NOT mean all is lost. Emotionally? It feels like the beginning of the end.
I FINALLY got my husband on board with infertility testing. Seriously? Took freaking forever. He wants a baby just as badly as I do, but apparently he thinks they come from the brier patch or some shit. He did his testing, and he got the high five from my doc when everything on his end turned out fine (seriously, a high five. You can’t make this shit up).
Then I got laid off.
Sonofabitch, I seriously got laid off and half of our monthly income is gone. Unemployment in my state is a joke, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?
But “nothing” is what it means for any future infertility testing, or treatment, or any of my hopes and dreams. Even once I find a job, the momentum is gone, and my husband isn’t on board anymore because there’s so many other things he wants to do with that income (i.e. shiny toys). Fuck this shit.
Yes, I’m pissed. I’m pissed because I gave up my dreams for a family and to be married to this man, who admittedly, is pretty darn perfect in every other way.
He’s supportive and loving and attentive, but he doesn’t have the ambition or attention span or whatever to actually TRY for a baby in the medical sense. So, I basically gave up my lifelong ambitions and dreams for something that may never happen.
Fuck you Universe.
How can this be happening?
I’d like to say that I know everything will work out fine in the end, but my overreaching anxiety keeps me from being that optimistic. Instead, I cry when he goes to work.
I cry and I hope that this month will be the magical band aid. “Maybe this month will be the month that defies all odds, right?” Yea, it hasn’t happened yet. 55 months since we started trying. 4 years, 7 months and we still don’t have a baby, and there’s no indication it will happen anytime soon.
A blocked Fallopian tube, fibroid tumor, hemorrhagic cyst, and God knows what else because I can’t afford further testing. Basically, I’m fucked.
My reproductive system has said “Fuck You” in a magnitude of epic proportions.
But all I want is a baby. I used to daydream about how I’d tell my family and what I’d name my child. I’d imagine life with several children and how sweetly chaotic it would be. I’d think about the best places to live in our area with access to the best schools, and how many children we’d have.
Now all I want is one.
Just one healthy baby.
Is that really so much to ask?
by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2015 | Abortion, Abortion Recovery, Hospice, Rape/Sexual Assault, Trauma |
I saw the lights on the ceiling. I felt the tear. The nurse held my hand with saintly love as I sobbed. A part of me died in that moment, a ripple through the eons.
I was 21 and a newly graduated nurse when I went through my abortion and had landed a prestigious hospital job. My mum was accidentally pregnant at the time at 40 with my brother who I later helped to deliver with the midwife (after I had undergone my abortion)
I freaked out. I couldn’t move back home in a small town with a pregnant mother. My boyfriend said he wasn’t ready for a child and we couldn’t afford it (I later discovered he was wealthy and had not been honest with me). He was living far away at the time going to university.
As he slept in my room one night at the nursing quarters against the rules of no men, we were discussing what to do. I got caught with him in my room and I was kicked out by the nun. Pregnant, I went to house hunt by day after my night shift work. The nun who found us gave me one week to find a place after I begged her. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell a soul.
My boyfriend booked a hotel for the week as I was homeless and I went through with the abortion. I didn’t want to go through with it but I was so scared, alone and overwhelmed. I always said I would have a child if I accidentally became pregnant, but I just didn’t realize what it was actually like to be in that position.
The first doctor I approached rejected to care for me due to his religious beliefs so I had to hunt for a doctor who would.
I went to get counselling afterwards and was paired with another religious man who rejected me so I had to keep searching for help. I gave up.
I went back to work and it was a very hard year. I saved a few lives and I decided to work in hospice to become more familiar with death. I nurtured people through their losses.
Many hard, lonely years accompanied me with multiple instances of sexual assault and trauma I started to have difficulties coping. I always comforted myself with the idea that losing a child to help others may be excusable as a choice but when I left my career, in those last days I sat down by my friends nieces side who was losing her new baby that had just been born. It was dying in her arms and her tears dropped on that babies face. I watched that baby die as I said goodbye to my career. She didn’t know of my past and now I hear she wants to be a nurse. The chain continues.
My whole family said I was always the mothering, nurturing type and I would have the most kids. I am childless and not married. Tortured by bad memories. Too lost for words.
You don’t forget but you learn to live with it. Its a silent shame for me but I see now with my history of abuse I needed to feel some control over my body. I don’t feel it was the answer now, and in retrospect I would like to say I had all this courage to stand up to this invisible community who bad mouthed people but I was a young vulnerable frightened girl. While I was being accused of being a baby murderer I was saving their lives in hospital.
I think now about it more in philosophical ways. The things we should terminate in our minds and and how a new beginning can start for us to live a happier life. My God believes in redemption and love.
by Band Back Together | Nov 16, 2015 | Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Pediatric Cancer, Perfectionism, Self Injury |
I learned about narcissistic parentification today. I’d been aware of narcissism and parentification as separate things prior to this, thanks to my son’s father, but I didn’t realize these two things often went together.
Yesterday my 6-year-old son attempted to stab himself in the eye with a pencil. This occurred after being asked not to throw paper.
He decided he needed to punish himself.
Thankfully, my husband caught the pencil and it never touched our son’s eye. Still, it was terrifying. This is not exactly new, although this is the most extreme self-punishment to date. Often when my son thinks he is in trouble for something, he will self-discipline by hitting himself or knocking his head against something. I’ve asked him why he does this, and he tells me that it’s so that he remembers what not to do.
We have an extreme perfectionist on our hands. This, too, I’ve known for a while. He has always been the kid who won’t try anything if he’s unsure he has it mastered. I had to get down on my hands and knees and physically SHOW HIM how to crawl when he was a baby! He wants to do everything perfectly the first time, and he will hide the fact he knows how to do something until he feels he can demonstrate the skill perfectly.
We’ve told him again and again how much we love him and don’t want him to hurt himself. We’ve told him it’s okay to make mistakes, that it’s expected and even necessary in order to learn and master new things. We’ve emphasized the fact that he isn’t in TROUBLE when things like this happen – that we are just reminding him to help him learn for next time. Yet, it doesn’t seem to register. He hurts himself anyway.
He is a 6-year-old self-injurer.
Lord knows he has plenty of reasons to behave this way. He is fighting cancer, has changed schools and residences in the last year, and is about to become a big brother.
And then, well, his dad is narcissistic…
Since my son’s self-injury has escalated even though the rest of our life has calmed down, I looked up the effects of narcissism on children today. And that led me to narcissistic parentification.
I learned that children of narcissistic parents are more prone to pediatric anxiety and depression. They can be self-destructive, have an irrational fear of failure, and either have difficulties in school or strive to be perfect.
Everything I read reminded me of my son.
by Band Back Together | Nov 11, 2015 | Brain Injury, Health |
I used to be really good at writing.
And thinking.
I could think out an essay or a plot line or a response in 5 points all at once. It felt like my brain fired on 6 different cylinders and I could see from multiple perspectives at once. I could be writing an introduction knowing how it was going to end and where the body would fit into this. I never lost my train of thought. If I learned a fact once, I could recall it instantly and know where I heard it.
What I’m saying is, I used to be (or at least, feel) smart. I was an A student, the A student who is awkwardly quiet in class because she knows the answers and has answered every question and it feels weird when you answer every question, don’t people get annoyed?
It would be comforting if I was getting dumber because I was getting older. That would at least be normal. To have spent the last five years knowing I’m not as smart as I could be and wondering is it because I’m on this brain medication or is it because I’m not a 20 year old college student anymore just makes everything worse.
If nothing else, it succeeds at it’s intended purpose, but I’ve failed out of school, been accused of anorexia, can’t focus for shit, and can’t multi-task, so who even am I anymore?
I miss being smart.
by Band Back Together | Oct 29, 2015 | Anxiety, Depression, Infertility, Miscarriage |
We waited for him.
We prayed, we hoped, I cried. Miscarriages.
We spent money that we didn’t have and I went for daily ultrasound, blood work, tests. Infertility. Devastated and alone.
I blamed myself because I could have been a better person and been a better wife and a better friend.
We tried three months of infertility treatment which included shots, pills, and having people know your private parts better than you do.
Epic failure.
Depression.
A miracle! They call it “Spontaneous Pregnancy” – something that was not supposed to happen. Overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to God.
Anxiety
by Band Back Together | Oct 22, 2015 | Asperger's Syndrome, Autism, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Help A Parent With a Special Needs Child, Parenting, Special Needs Parenting, Speech Disorders |
I am the mother of identical twin sons. They turned two in November.
At 12 months, they seemed to be moving right along in their development. They were walking, starting to say words; everything seemed fine. I was a little worried they were late in talking, but they were talking, so that was something. By 15 months, they still had very few words but they were both doing some signs and also had a full repertoire of “action” songs in their arsenal. By 18 months, there were no words. None. No signs. No action songs.
Everything was easily explained away as a boy-thing, or a twin-thing, or an identical-twin thing.
We tried not to worry.
Friday, they had their first visit with Early Intervention. I wanted to get their speech back on track as soon as possible. Language delays were our number one concern. Of course, in the back of our mind, we’d thought about autism, but we weren’t going there unless we had to. It’s too difficult.
After thirty minutes of watching the boys “play,” and watching their interactions with me, the Early Childhood Development teacher and the Speech Pathologist, there was an early diagnosis of sorts. They weren’t as concerned with the language as they were all of the other things: they didn’t really play with their toys, they didn’t really interact with, well, anyone in the room.
Early Intervention wanted to proceed with autism evaluations.
The next thirty minutes involved me, sitting on a chair nursing my four-month old. Trying to not to break into an ugly cry, trying to keep it together and sound somewhat intelligent until I could get all of these people who just brought my whole world crashing down, out my door.
My sons are perfect.
And I don’t know how to fix them.
