Fairy Tales and Special Effects

This month's "assignment" for PAIL is to talk about our plans for the future, and whether or not to continue to try and have more children, and why we choose what we choose, and all that stuff. And honestly, in my mind, thinking about TTC is like watching a My.ster.y Sci.en.ce The.at.ter 3.00.0 episode. 

The whole world of prospective parents is watching this "amazing" film. Fairy tales like being able to time your pregnancy, spacing children, and live happily ever after are flashing on the screen... and surely somewhere, someone is buying the special effects?

But not me. Not IFers.

We sit in the back of the theater making pejorative and sarcastic comments... occassionally throwing popcorn at the screen, and talking about how naive and gullible the rest of the audience is for not seeing through the special effects.... and knowing that for them, it isn't special effects and fairy tales, it's reality.

Laughing at the show, because crying sucks.

So, having said that, what do I think about the movie and how seriously am I taking it?

Well dang. I take it pretty seriously. And despite all my best efforts, I still believe it "could be true." I still want the happily ever after. I still want to think that it could be possible for me to have as many children as I desire. But alas, I've been in the theater too long and my eggs...er, popcorn... has gone stale.

So, my stats.... I have PCOS and repeated miscarriages/high risk pregnancy and Hashimoto's and who knows what else... seriously, they can't decide or figure it out. I am 36, so officially "advanced maternal age" and I have been MIRACULOUSLY blessed with 2 children already. But I hear the clock ticking.

I'm from a family with 6 kids. My mom's family had... crap I can't remember... 11? I think? Maybe 10? I guess I could try to count them, but I'd surely forget one of them anyway, so why bother. And each of her siblings had a billion kids too. So when we had family reunions, we were a crazy spectacle. Think of it... 10ish uncles/aunts with their spouse, and 10-13 kids per family, all of the older ones already married and popping out babies like they were skittles, and even some third generation babies running around. Literally hundreds of cousins. (No, there is NO polygamy. LOL.) I haven't even met all of them, and I'm certainly not close to any of them. My dad's side of the family averages 6 kids per family... which is smaller, but still not a small family.

Growing up, and in early adulthood, I had absolutely NO DOUBT that I would have as many kids as my body was willing to pop out. I was thinking in the area of 8.
Ha!
*throws popcorn at the screen*
And spacing? I figured they'd be about 2 years apart BECAUSE that would give me time to breastfeed all of them for a full year, and then immediately get pregnant again and start over.
Wait! What? My body can't make babies OR breastmilk?
Huh.

So here I am at 36, in my last few years of even being able to pretend that it could still be possible to have more children.... and what do I dream of???
Four kids.
Two more... just two more.
Maybe twins, because then it's only hoping for one more successful pregnancy and that seems more realistic than expecting to survive 2 more rounds of TTC.
And if I somehow got my 2 more kids, what then?... I'd still want more. I'm sure of it. I would continue to try and try until my ovaries dried up and my uterus fell out... just plop, right there on the floor. That would be about the only thing that would stop me from hoping.
But honestly, I think 2 more is all I can even hope for... and even that is really wishing for a lot... but it's still my "goal" or my "vision" or whatever term you want to use.

Because of all my health problems and the extremes I have taken to trying fix them... I won't be doing anymore fertility treatments. My body really does NOT handle those well, and I've spent literally thousands of dollars just trying to get my health back to where it was before starting all of that. And I can't go backward, because I have 2 amazing children who need a healthy mommy to take care of them. So if I'm going to have more children (please please please) it will be up to the old fairy tale of "you can have a baby just by having sex at the right time."
Hahaha.
I know! Can you believe that?

So right now I'm back to charting and temping... not that my chart makes ANY SENSE. Nobody can discern any type of a pattern, and almost daily my charting service changes when it thinks I ovulated. So it's pretty useless. For instance, right now I'm on CD62, and it thinks I'm 10dpo, but the ovulation date will undoubtedly change again tomorrow. BUT it does keep me from spending a gazillion dollars on HPTs. When I get pregnant, my temps normalize. They go up and stay up. So as long as my body is freaking out and weird, and my temps are all over the place... I know I'm not pregnant. I may not know when/if I ovulated, or when/if AFV is coming... but I do know not to POAS. And that saves me a little money and peace of mind.

So, making a long story even longer... Yes I am TTC. Yes, I am charting and temping... and BD often. (Yay! A silver lining!) No, I don't have the luxury of worrying about "spacing" the kids for optimal whatever. No, I don't have the luxury of waiting until I think I'm emotionally ready to face all this again. Truth is, I'm out of time. If it's going to happen at all, it needs to happen soon. And I don't have any time to waste. So I'm going through the motions (hump hump hump. LOL. did I just say that?) but my heart isn't really in it. I am TTC in denial. Meaning, I'm doing everything that I can/should be doing to TTC... but I'm ignoring the fact that I'm doing it. I'm pretending to myself that I'm not really TTC. That way I'm hoping to not go crazy. To not get hurt. So that maybe I'll just wake up one morning, POAS, and have a happy ending... and wonder how I got there.

Popcorn anyone?