Eat, drink and be married!

Face it, the power of social media has long taken a toll on the influx of information that we all get exposed to every single ticking minute of the day. And, the more connected I am, the more information I get.

And reality is...the circle of life revolves around schooling, dating, working, getting married and having children. Mid thirties throws me a curve ball, it matters not who graduated with 0 points at O levels, straight As at A levels or for that matter was the first to be proposed to.

It's about who is having kids, planning to have and have. Those who already graduated into parenthood belong to a different clique. It somehow gives people the right to

1) Be overly concerned on your as-is status.
2) Dish out information like a know-all (refer to point 1)
3) In the course of doing so, be completely ignorant that life does go on with or without your piece of happy news.

I already admitted we are infertile and trying. Yet these are silent struggles. It does not matter how many times we tried naturally or unnaturally, at the end of the day I have no kid to prove the effort.

The glib tongued cantonese sure has a best way to phrase this - 爛肉多朋友. Translated as bruises know many friends, it's only when one is in pain, every plausible cause of pain becomes obvious. I seem to be more sensitive to remarks made with reference to our current situation: childlessness or simply put, I have more of such company nowadays.

Well meaning friends

And it seems that the well meaning friends are no longer well meaning anymore. 

So we broach the topic of well meaning.  

Every quarter, I get posed a "well meaning" question by a friend who by the time this entry goes out would have delivered her third bundle of joy. We have never met regularly since she started her bundles but these  intrusive questions have been.  Fine, I have had my fair share of being unmarried and having the audacity to ask married couples when they are going to get married. Shame on me. 

I've reached a point where I have progressed from sharing my frustrations to leaving it to God and now laughing it off as "enjoying life first". 

And the standing ovation moment comes when the reply comes fast and furious - how envious she is of my predicament because she can no longer travel the world because of her commitments. 

Instantly, conversation is over and I bid her farewell with a "delete chat".

The attention seeker

Exactly 1 day after my first failed IUI, I finally composed myself and led a decent half day without shedding a single tear or being upset about the failure. Lunch was exceptionally good because I took the effort to take the bus and search for a place I wanted to try. Simple pleasures and out of the blue I receive a notification from a friend/ex colleague who has been trying for awhile and I even suggested him getting himself checked out. 

Exact conversation copied and pasted. 

"Yo.."
"Wassup"
"Asking you, got bring baby back from your trips?" 

Well, the most recent trip had me jet skiing, snorkelling and jumping all over beaches, if I had a belly, it must have been filled with food. A nagging thought though stuck with me, maybe he had finally hit jackpot. 

"Hahaha, what? No I didn't. Why? You brought back one?"
"Not exactly..."

What is a 'not exactly', this ex-colleague was already getting on my nerves to say the least. It's either a yes or no. 

"Brought one there instead. lol." 

Good heavens, so they are pregnant. What a radical way of announcing baby news these days. I frown already at my screen. 

"Not exactly???"
"I'm gg to be a FATHER!!! :)" 

My heart broke when I congratulated him. Broke because of the effort he took to announce this, milk for a congratulations and...the more exclamation marks I put, the lump in my throat was getting bigger and tears were threatening to fall.

"Wah congrats!!!!!"
 "Hehehehe, thx thx. Wanted to share with you first mah. U r the 1st girl to know. After my brothers. Hehe. My side that is. Her side I dunno liao. Lol." 

The conversation continues half heartedly and the flurry of messages comes wham-bam-f-off-mam

"U planning or not? Working on it already? I tell u...cannot dont believe...We tried so long and so hard...then one day her mum asked her go pray to Goddess of Son Giving...1 week later...tio liao" 

And he continues to dish out advice on when to bed the husband. Right. Spoken like an expert when my own fertility specialist cannot even get my egg and his swimmers to meet on time. This friend was demoted to ex-colleague on the spot. I can choose to unfollow friends' updates on facebook, but I had no shield towards this happy news that whacked me hard in the gut, and I was the so-called "special first girl friend to know." OUCH. 

Update: The second attempt was made to introduce the Goddess of Son Giving to me. Uhhhhh, thanks but really no thanks. I believe in God.

For sure, all these will pass and we will look upon life as having "well lived and well travelled". Until then, I have learnt that if parenthood has a place for me, I will never ever broadcast it carelessly on social media or even cherry pick unintended audiences.

Valentine's oh valentine's...this particular over commercialised and over romanticized date right smack between my wedding anniversary and birthday has always been special for me - a crazed die hard romantic. The Hubba would love for me to declare this a day of no expenditure or indulgences but seriously, HOW CAN?

Plans for this date usually happens way ahead for me, being the planner I am especially. Honestly, if I could have things my way, I would insist on breakfast in bed, bespoke flowers, a dinner surprise and a Valentine's gift. At this juncture I suppose every man would curse upon Cupid for shooting them the arrow called love.

Well, that's how romance is played yes? And sorry I am not sorry, romance cannot die after marriage.

The Hubba and I have had a fair share in this game called dating and every single time, we reminisce about the past...bad dates come up...as much as the guy would love for the day to pass in a blink, the women want it to last forever. So why do it wrong when right is just a step away?

Here's how not to do it, single guys - 

Not have plans

The worst of all mankind. Well, have no plans and admit there are none. I have had a date literally walk me into a hotpot restaurant on February the fourteenth and declare that he would like hotpot since the prices weren't inflated. Oh, flowers were of course out of the question. A white lie would have been easier, yes?

"Just be free for me."

The interest is tickled when Valentine's is broached and insist that the date is spent with him. BUT no confirmation nor details are given until work is settled and I suddenly become priority at 8pm on Valentine's. Hello?

Movie marathon

Been there, done that. The only party happy in this is likely to be the more maniac movie watcher of the two, and of course the popcorn seller. I sat through 3 movies consecutively and declared it once in a lifetime, never again. And guess what? By the time the last movie ended, it was February 15th.

The list goes on almost forever - I sound like an encyclopedia for bad dates already. But that leaves space for another Valentine's tell all ya?

The journey to conceiving was planned for. I type this as I am trying to, I'm not sure what made it seem like a breeze. At least in all the teen pregnancy articles, it does seem so but fertility is pretty much the taboo topic once we all hit the marriageable age and of course, what comes with it child bearing.

It took much courage to pen this down, whether or not to share with likeminded folk our journey or spread the awareness that infertility can hit nearly anyone. It will be a lengthy post...one that was written and re-written so many times...I lost count how many.  

I very much wish that I had it textbook way, nothing is wrong, I have children when I want to and flood my social media accounts with their updates. And in the most cliche manner ever, life is never perfect and we don't live fairytales.

I'm sorry for sounding like I am the only one facing this in this world but until you have been through any of these struggles, you may never know. Thank you all well meaning people for checking in on us every now and then OR better still tell us how wonderful life is with kids, I wish I can say more to "We are still having fun" or "In God's hands"...because it's painful even having to answer.

How about, lay off and wait for the good news?

Of the things that were thrown at us during this journey - 

It is normal to try for at least a year.

People try for years, some decades. I salute that kind of patience and perseverance but impatience does get the better of me every now and then. The kind of questions that plague include - are we infertile? What should we do if we were? Did we have the finances to support...etc. However, if you do have a nagging thought on checking things out, chances are its your intuition at work and it probably is true.

Strange thing is, I already had a bugging feeling before we got married and a well meaning single friend had shared "women's problems" with me and though outwardly I brushed them aside, I thought something may be wrong with all the painful periods. 

"Try not to be so stressed" is a fallacy

The vicious cycle is, the more you don't get pregnant, the more stress there is. I admit stressing the husband even, so much so he was frustrated with me, at me and at us.

BUT, it is a fallacy.

How can one "not be so stressed" when the clock is ticking - bio clock and time clock both! Fact is, the more people say so, the more those damned stress levels climb. Do we go bonkers during the supposed ovulation period? HAHA, yes we do.  For real, stop telling someone to "take it easy" because that's noise to the ears.

Hope floats, hope drowns

For as much hope keeps me going every cycle, the same hope drowns me when Little Miss Red reports. I hate to say how emotionally challenged I get but I do and become such a mess that I feel sorry for the Hubba facing all of this.

In His Time

You would have seen this mentioned here before. I turned to God again, maybe someday he will answer my prayer once again. Only time can tell if all our efforts are futile but every cycle brings hope and for sure, we both are clinging onto the hope that one day, we will be parents.

So the story goes...

Sometime 4 months into trying, I went for a routine full body check and it revealed a higher than usual ovarian cancer marker. Put onto six months of contraceptive jabs which was necessary yet the side effects throw me off guard every now and then.

We resumed trying again after Little Miss Red normalized herself - that state of false menopause did bring much joy I must admit - none of the nonsensical PMS symptoms, no mood swings, even my allergic reactions towards squid and chocolate were silenced. Sounds like a good time of my life I must say.

One month, two months, I went back into that same stage that we were months back before discovering the cyst. Lots of resentment towards his travelling and missing the O and what nots. I hated myself even for counting cycle days, days past ovulation and being ultra sensitive to symptoms that may suggest we were successful.

It reached a point I questioned if we were even ready for our lifestyles to be disrupted, my spending habits to change and there will not be any of those whirlwind trips we make every now and now.

But you can never be truly ready for anything.

And all these while people around me continued to have children, one after another and it's that stinging feeling of when will it be me? Will it ever be me?

I finally made the decision to see a TCM. There are tons around to choose from  which just indicates how huge an issue infertility is to the rest of the nation. Fate would have it that I ended up not seeing one - and headed straight for a fertility specialist instead.

Straight up, a fertility specialist is NOT a gynae. A gynae specialises mainly in pregnancies and occasionally, gets involved in cysts, fibroids and women problems in general. A fertility specialist does assisted contraception.

The journey continues.