A Month of Purity

Today is my last day of eating junk food for a month. I decided that my approach to my infertility so far (i.e., wailing and gnashing of teeth, getting angry at my body for being "wrong," and comforting myself with potato chips and ice cream) was not actually that productive. If I'm going to give myself a fighting chance, I really should be eating well so I am as physically healthy as possible.

Plus, this enterprising chick gave up eating anything produced by Monsanto for a whole month, which is way harder. Any processed food, anything with corn or soy, most vegetables, and most meats come from Monsanto or its subsidiaries, which doesn't leave a whole lot of options. She had to subsist on seaweed and nuts for a couple days until she found some suppliers of guaranteed Nonsanto food. In the end, she had a really healthy month - and she ended up pregnant! Which she seems pretty calm about, but for me it would be trumpets and banners and wild, joyful/tearful celebration.

Giving up the sugar is going to be the hard part for me. I crave sugar so much that sometimes when I'm reading a book or working on my computer I literally can't concentrate, my desire to get up and get something sweet is so strong. I can feel that 90% of my attention is devoted to wanting a cookie, and only 10% is on the task at hand. But I know refined sugar is bad for me. It ages the skin, it causes acne, it messes up the metabolism, it's hard on the kidneys, it's bad for the teeth, it's linked to various cancers, it makes one fat. I even made myself a list of 30 reasons why I should stop eating sugar. And I tried to give it up for Lent this year, but only lasted about a day. My willpower is incredibly weak when it comes to sweets. Last year I actually did successfully give up sugar for Lent - but oh, how I longed for it; it consumed my thoughts during the last few days. I stayed up the night before Easter and dug into a pie with my bare hands at midnight, and in the days after Easter I binged on sweets. Going sugar-free for 40 days didn't reduce my desire for it one whit.

Still. In the larger scheme of things, this should be an easy sacrifice to make. And I want a baby ever so much more than I could ever want a candy bar. So even if denying my sweet tooth can only distantly and very indirectly affect my infertility, by improving my overall health, it's still worth doing.

So, July is going to be a pure month for me. No sugar, no junk. And no whining. I will just think positive thoughts about my ovaries producing beautiful glowing white eggs.

At the same time, I am jumping through the hoops to get referrals and preauthorizations for treatment at a fertility clinic. Just passing all their diagnostic screening criteria to demonstrate that I have a problem (as if not having a period in three years wasn't proof enough) will take months, so it will be ages before I can actually get the treatment I need. But I'll try to be patient.

Last week I confided in a friend that I am going to this clinic. And it turns out she's going to the same one. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby for a while now, and she's been working with this clinic for the past year. No luck yet. I wish I'd known so I could have given her some support. And I feel greedy, somehow, that I am trying for my second child and working myself up into knots of self-hatred and sorrow about it, when she doesn't even have one child yet. I thought about it and realized that if I somehow had the power to choose which of us would succeed in this endeavor, if it could be only one, I would choose her, just because that would be fair. I really would. So perhaps when I'm feeling particularly miserable about being infertile I can remember that and a buddhalike calm will come over me.

Somewhere Out There

Somewhere near my house, a fawn is having the worst night of its life.

I was walking home this evening when I came across a doe that had been struck by a car. It looked like she had walked just a couple of paces from the road and then collapsed right at the edge of the shrubbery in the park. Her forelegs were folded in and her head was tucked, the way our greyhound used to sleep. Her eye was liquid and dark and open. I stared at her for a long time, even though I was pretty sure she was dead, because I just couldn't believe it. I kept waiting for that eye to blink. I felt like somehow she couldn't be dead. One of her forelegs was scraped raw and bloody, but otherwise she didn't look injured. Usually when I see an animal by the side of the road, its eyes are just sockets, and it looks all mangled up and awful, but she looked like she was just lying down, waiting for me to leave.

I felt - not sad, but awestruck, I guess, at being in the presence of death. There before me was someone who had passed through that great and terrible experience that's waiting for all of us. I used to feel that way when I saw mothers with new babies - I'd think "She has been through childbirth," and I would wonder if it would ever happen to me. But death is infinitely more scary and you know it definitely will happen to you. It's too big for the mind to really process.

Then I noticed that her udder was swollen like a cow's. And I thought that she must have been returning to wherever her fawn was hidden, where it had lain all day, not moving, barely breathing, trying to be scentless and invisible. All day long it must have been getting hungrier and hungrier, waiting for its mother to return. Finally it was dusk and she was on her way. But she never made it back. And right at that moment, as I was staring at her, the fawn was somewhere hidden nearby, getting desperate with hunger, but perhaps still afraid to move. I wondered if it would eventually get up and wander somewhere, if it knew how to eat anything yet. I thought how I felt when I was nursing and away from my child, how as the hours passed I grew increasingly anxious to see her, how sweet and what a physical relief our reunions were - and how, if I were killed on my way back to her, my greatest sorrow would have been for her loneliness and fear, not for my own life unlived.

Humorectomy

A friend of mine has a theory that the act of getting married causes people to have a humorectomy. He noted how so many of his friends used to be interesting, spontaneous, funny, clever, etc. before they got married. Now they're just bland and never want to go out.

Another friend chimed in with, yes, not only is that true, but it happens, oddly enough, even to people who were living together and essentially married for years before they actually tied the knot. You'd think they wouldn't change, but they do.

Is it because they've "won," so they no longer have to act interesting and keep their beloved liking them?
Is it because they get caught up in nesting and don't care as much about the outside world?
Is it because they're following a standard behavioral mold set by those who have gone before (including, unconsciously, their parents)?

I'm definitely not as interesting as I used to be before I got married. I chalk it up to working too much (no time to read) and having a kid (no opportunity to go out). If I didn't have those things going on, I'd still be sneaking up forbidden spiral staircases in the cathedral at night, and rappelling down cliffs on weekends. I'd be going to Scrabble tournaments and entering strawberry shortcake contests and rehabilitating mourning dove chicks. I feel like the fun, slightly weird, loner-wild Erin is still in there, still inside me, just waiting until I have time in my life to be like that again. I hope she doesn't die. Hang in there, I want to tell her. I'm sorry I'm so dull right now, but I'll be you again as soon as I can!