Gender Reflections in The Day To Day Ramblings

Wow! Thank you for all of the feedback on the last entry. It certainly drove the point home about why the majority of people choose to find out their baby's gender. You guys had so many helpful insights! :)

The more I read the notes, the more the main messages in each one were the same. It got me thinking about what makes me have absolutely no interest in knowing whatsoever. What makes my outlook on it different than 95% of the people who responded? I think it stems from our struggle to get pregnant. I know many of you also tried for awhile, used medicines and interventions, etc. so it's not exclusive to that...but I'm just explaining my side of it.

We made a huge decision in Nov 2012 to go off of birth control and start trying to get pregnant. We had discussed it regularly since our wedding in April 2011 but finally decided we were at the right place romantically, spiritually, emotionally, financially and professionally. We then tried every single month in the way only very organized people can do it. I was on top of my game with countless iPhone apps, websites bookmarked, books read and friends advised. I thought I knew it all and was prepared for it to happen right away and to get this ball rolling. I am intensely impatient and waiting for something this huge to happen was simply not an option. If I want something, I work until I get it. My entire life I had set goals, made plans, sacrificed and done anything necessary to achieve those goals simply because failure is never an option when you want something bad enough. I wanted to go to UW-Madison, I got in. I wanted to be a nurse, I became one. I wanted to work at the top ICU in the top hospital in the state, I made it happen. But no baby happened. No positive pregnancy test happened. Nothing happened.

We ended up visiting doctors in winter 2013 after a year of no success and we went through multiple invasive tests for both me and Rob before getting a Clomid prescription that next March 2014. Every single month for those 16 months I took pregnancy tests a few days before my period was due...on the day it was due...and each subsequent day it was late. I am a planner, a control freak, a Type A information needer. For those of you who referenced feeling that way, I get that completely. I took ovulation predictor kits so frequently I ended up buying them on Amazon for a cheap bulk rate and using them once or twice a day for 7-10 days each month trying to figure out when I ovulated as my cycles were 28-65 days in length during that time. It was all I could think about. It broke my spirit so badly I ended up seeking professional counseling for the first time in my life. When that didn't help after six months, I sought out couples counseling for me and Rob because I could not stop obsessing over why this wasn't happened and why something that I should be able to control wasn't coming together.

And in that time, during all of those dark and painful months, as I cried and was heartbroken over and over again, watching so many of my friends and coworkers get pregnant, I learned an important lesson: you can plan and prepare and do everything "right" while trying to conceive and still you really have very little control at all. I learned that, for me, this journey to motherhood was going to include some tough reality checks about the extent to which I can plan and control anything.

It took one month on Clomid, one guaranteed ovulation (the very first time ever that I had a positive ovulation test after all of those 100+ tests I'd taken) and we got pregnant. Apparently I don't ovulate and all of my careful data collecting, temperature taking, charting and analyzing and peeing on sticks upon sticks upon sticks never would have led to a baby without help from someone else. It was a miracle it ever happened at all.

And in those first few weeks while I kept it secret from almost everyone and I quietly nurtured this little soul growing inside me, I was reminded of my first lesson. As my body dry heaved and gagged at the strangest things, as I ate more than I ever thought possible and still ravenously needed more, as I craved things I'd never craved and felt sick to my stomach for three straight months...I was reminded I had absolutely no control anymore. I could take all the ginger supplements I want, eat all the protein in the world, snack on saltines until my mouth felt like sandpaper...but someone else, some tiny little being barely bigger than an olive, was in control.

Now, as I reach the halfway point, I'm beginning to feel movement inside me. Little flutters, little bumps around my belly, little nudges that an elbow or hand or knee or foot is dancing around in there. I lay awake at night, even after hard tiring days, and I can't sleep because I don't want to miss how it feels. I don't want to miss one bump or nudge, one moment when I get to experience this surreal connection with another being, one second that I share while this little one is part of me and I am part of them. I feel a bond with this little person, whoever they may be, like I've never known. I've loved people before but never like this. I've felt bonded and connected to others, but not as literally or as deeply or as innately. We are growing together, sharing my body - a place that I've long pinched and poked and judged and been frustrated by - but that I now am in awe of as it grows me the greatest gift that I will ever receive.

I find myself feeling very aware to appreciate every single step of this. The genuine magic that it happens at all. That I was lucky enough to get pregnant, that it has been healthy so far, that it works, that this is really happening. I wanted this baby for so long, so many months of painful defeat, so many times I was bitter with jealousy as those around me celebrated their pregnancies and I remained barren, broken and more and more despondent. I'm aware I may never get to do this again. That I may only get this one chance, these few months ever to experience this and so even if I'm sometimes uncomfortable or things are more difficult or I have to change my lifestyle in unpleasant ways, I am grateful I have to do these things because it means I'm growing a little person who is half me and half the love of my life. It's the most primal thing I will ever do and I have never felt more alive than these last few months.

And so, in that, comes my second lesson. Every pregnancy for every woman is different. The things we feel, want, need, crave, hate, love, experience, ache for and require of ourselves and others are as different as night and day. The things that make me feel better may make you feel worse. The things that calm your anxieties may heighten mine. And vice versa. As I read all of the notes yesterday I just kept thinking that it's interesting that for many of you, having more information about gender so you could plan and feel control (two phrases that were in nearly every single note) made you feel better. For me, the less I pry and try to 'interfere' with the journey and the more I let the powers that be stay in control, the more relaxed I feel. Again, I'm stating how I feel, not that how any of you feel is wrong or bad for being different. I know I tried to be in control and look where that got me. Nowhere. It wasn't until I got help from a doctor and gave up thinking that if I simply charted it all and wrote it all down and checked every fluid in my body with some sort of at home test that I could make it happen that I finally got what I had been seeking. Giving up some of the control was the key, for me anyway.

I appreciated your notes and I'm thankful so many of you spoke your truths to me. I'm glad so many of you have the option to find out and that that information is comforting to you and helps calm the fear, increase the bonding and make pregnancy a more 'controlled' thing for you. To each their own, perhaps a sub-point to my second lesson, and a truth I haven't been able to avoid.

So thank you for being on this journey with me, for sharing your two cents, for offering insight into a mindset that was intriguing to me. I will have countless more pregnancy questions and inquiries and impromptu polls...so stay tuned. You guys were some of the first people I told about this little belly nugget and your opinions, especially when they differ from mine, are some of the highest respected ones I rely on. So, thank you. :)