Cody Wayne

This guy turned 28 yesterday. We celebrated his big day with a pizza party with a few friends and their children. We were home by 8:30 on the couch watching Orange is the New Black. I realize this is what 28 feels like: early bedtimes and pizza parties with toddlers. The world keeps progressing with or without us these days.

On a regular basis I am perplexed by my relationship with Cody. The ease with which we came to be a pair in this world is unlike the rocky and somewhat non-existent road I traveled with men before he came along. Cody was the first guy who liked me without any strings attached. He wasn't scared by my intensity. He didn't mind that I was/am nearly taller than he is. He understood my humor. He constantly chipped away at my walls. He bought me flowers and wrote me sweet notes. He constantly reminded me that I was different in a really good way. And I needed that so much when I was younger.

Cody is the best part of my life today. The longer I am with him the more our relationship has transformed beyond those two kids in college. Cody's support over the past two years of us trying to get pregnant has made me love him more than I knew possible. He now fills so many roles for me that I simply wouldn't let him have years ago. I trust Cody more than I used to. I respect his opinion more than anyone else's. I believe in his loyalty to me as his wife and his friend. I savor his positive attitude and unrelenting faith that there is an end to this process. He is the best human being I know, and I am grateful to have celebrated the last nine years of his life as his girlfriend and wife.

Regardless of how or when our infertility story ends, I recognize the difference between Cody and Katy before and after the discovery of my busted ovaries. Every once in a while, I am perfectly okay with the idea of keeping Cody Wayne all to myself for as long as possible. Or at least until I'm thirty five at which point I realize I have to get serious about finding a kid to call to our own.

Happy Birthday, CP!

32 Days Later

A few good things happened in the past 32 days...a homeless dog is no longer, a blood test claimed that I ovulated for the first time in the past two years, and a good friend of mine is pregnant. Those are all good things that happened in the last 32 days, which is how long it took me to start my period and realize that me being pregnant is not one of the good things I have going on.

I really thought this might be the month. I took Clomid. I had a properly sized follicle. I got a trigger shot. My progesterone level was plenty high. I also fostered a dog (which I realize seems completely unrelated to me being pregnant) on the pretense of giving him away as soon as a home was found; then I got so attached in the approximately twelve hours that I had him that I had to give him back to avoid the anger of my less-dog-obsessed husband and my completely-not-dog-obsessed current dogs. Before I managed to convince my uncle to adopt the dog, I found myself in a sobbing heap on my laundry room floor as I tried to savor my last minutes with Jojo. After the fact, I told myself that my reaction to that sweet little Rat Terrier had to be excessive, right? No emotionally stable human would react to a stray dog that way, right? I told myself that maybe just maybe my craziness could be traced to some sort of hormonal surge in my body. After the Jojo tears, I also had a few days in which I swear my nipples felt weird. Another faint check in the "could I actually be pregnant?" column. I also went to a yearly check-up at which Dr. Bell gave me a pregnancy test to take home with me, like they do toothbrushes at the dentist. Maybe? Finally, I recently found out that a friend of mine is expecting a child. We could pregnant together, right? That would be cool. We could call each other and complain about the growing fetuses in our wombs. We could compare belly sizes and share weird pregnancy symptoms and celebrate in the little humans we are creating. People do that, right?

Wrong. I'm not living in a world in which emotions can be attributed to pregnancy. Or a world in which you commiserate with another woman about your pregnancy. I'm not in that world. Everyone I know around me is in that world, but I'm not.

I think I knew all along that I wasn't pregnant. I haven't been pregnant the past twenty-four months that I've thought I might be, so why would I be now? However, I keep asking myself how many times I won't be before I ever will?

The good news in all of this is that there is an obvious connection between my infertility and personal plight to save every homeless dog on this earth. Felina is proof and now so is Jojo. Maybe I can't have human babies, but I sure can fill that void with sweet fur children whose parents don't love them nearly enough.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Mother's Day

Mother's Day is weird when your mom has cancer and you're infertile. A weird strain exists between the woman who birthed me and her daughter who can't produce viable eggs.

My mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (for the third time) on April 22, 2011. I didn't know it at the time, but after the dust of doctor visits, specialists, biopsies, and treatment plans settled, I was left with a sixty-something-year-old mother with a cautiously optimistic outlook on the future but a terminal cancer diagnosis nonetheless. My mom is a cancer patient and she will be for the rest of her life. It has taken me the better part of the past three years to understand what that really feels like on a daily basis.

My mom's diagnosis was the impetus for me trying to get pregnant around two years ago. I told myself that I could out run cancer. I could get ahead of the situation. I could get pregnant and give birth and allow my mom some years enjoying her grandchild before cancer took anything more from her and me. I wanted to have a child for her more so than me. Today, I recognize the flaw in that plan.

In my experience, the word "mother" exists alongside the word "cancer" - an unavoidable reality of a parent living with the disease. However, my mom has defined her role in my life as so much more than a survivor of cancer. There are a slew of monikers that my mom embodies, many of which she has earned through her unflinching acceptance and strength to fight back against cancer.

Mother's Day is a good day. I'm not focused on my struggle to become one. I'm not focused on my mom's health. I'm focused on my mom and my place in the world as her daughter. I'm focused on all of the good that swirls around both of us. I'm focused on the person I am today because I have had the privilege to be my mom's daughter for twenty-seven years. I'm focused on the ridiculously awesome parent I will be one day simply because of who my own mom is. I'm focused on right now because it does no one any good to try to figure out anything else.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - "I'm always pregnant!"

The first pregnancy test I ever took was completely unwarranted. I was convinced I was pregnant with Cody's child (conceived through immaculate conception, of course). I stressed myself into my period being late, and then proceeded to advertise my anxiety and irrational fear of pregnancy to all of my closest friends, until one of them bought a pregnancy test to end the madness. I obviously was not pregnant. However, what's most interesting about this story is that I did not worry about being pregnant just that one silly time. This happened to me more than once. I used to take pregnancy tests like candy. I've even dabbled in the world of emergency contraceptives (just once, I swear). I. AM. CRAZY.

Anyway, I had a period for the first time since Lupron last month. I imagined there would be more anticipation of life post-surgery and post-Lupron. Last July when I had the procedure to remove the endometriosis and then started Lupron injections, I told myself that all of that hassle would be worth it. Dr. Bell, as well as the internet (my much more informative second opinion), ensured me that a person's best chances of conception are the months immediately following a laparoscopy and Lupron. Last month was the month. Or as it turns out, it wasn't much of anything. I had two ultrasounds both of which revealed small follicles and no ovulation. The surgery, the Lupron did not combine for a magically fertile month. The ultrasounds entailed the same subdued, ambiguous responses from the lady examining my reproductive organs. Same pathetic looks. Same half-hearted promises about next month. Same sinking feeling. Same sad elevator ride back to the real world where people don't know that your ovaries don't work and your insides aren't like everyone else's. Same experiences I had before Lupron except less traumatic.

I did not once imagine that my fertility issues were solved. I knew that a minimally invasive surgery and hormone therapy was not enough to fix this mess. The internet had given me enough statistics to understand that severe endometriosis is not generally a quick fix. I no longer think I'm pregnant. Ever. Even with all the sex in the world, I still don't think I'm pregnant. I am on the opposite end of the spectrum than the crazy kid bumming pregnancy tests off her friends all those years ago.

Alright, alright...I have a confession. I am not completely cured of my "I'm always pregnant!" attitude. Despite the small follicles and proof of no ovulation, there was an excruciatingly long wait for my next period. I honestly didn't pay much attention until it had been 34 days and still no period. I kept telling myself that I was still messed up from Lupron and the extra long cycle was just a side effect. I knew I wasn't pregnant. I wasn't, right? I managed to hold off until day 36. I knew there was a test leftover from months ago and on a whim I gave in. There was a few seconds in my bathroom alone staring at the faint line forming when I thought that maybe, just maybe the ultrasounds were wrong. Maybe the lady measured wrong. Maybe the follicles were bigger than she thought. Maybe I ovulate on day 25, rather than 14 or 21. Maybe some force stronger than ultrasounds and ovulation had come into play and this was the moment that I would start writing a completely different story about an unlikely pregnancy, despite all of the naysayers.

But it wasn't the moment. There is no different story. The naysayers were simply reality-staters and I am not pregnant. The month that I have been waiting for since July has come and gone and the severity of the situation only continues to grow.

Next month we will try Clomid and a trigger shot. Next month we will continue ultrasounds in dark, sad rooms. Next month we will ride the same elevator and see the same faces. We will sit in the same waiting room and lie on the same table. We will measure follicles and endometrial linings. We will stare at our feet and make our husbands ask all the questions. We will scour the internet to try to guess the next step, to imagine what the next month holds. We will tell ourselves that this wasn't the right month. We will convince ourselves that we don't really want a baby right now anyway. And then in 28 days or 37 days, we will start all over again in hopes that someday there will be two lines on one of those stupid tests.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Babies and God

I used to think that having a baby must be the closest manifestation of God that a human can experience on earth. The idea that I could (theoretically) create a person, carry them in my womb, and then deliver them into this world used to assure me that there was something bigger at work in this universe than I could conceptualize. I used to think having children was a miracle that God controlled. I assume by now you've noted the past tense of the first three sentences. I used to.

My thoughts about God and babies are very different now. The past two years have allowed (forced?) me to view having kids from a much more scientific, much less miraculous filter. It’s not just my struggle to get pregnant that has jaded me. In the midst of not being pregnant month after month after month, I have paid a lot more attention to who is getting pregnant.

Case in point, Michelle Duggar’s reality TV show is currently exploring her attempt to have her twentieth child. I know. I know. The Duggar’s are not the folks to use as evidence against God’s role in pregnancy, but we must all admit that it is pretty looney tunes that she is considering having twenty children all to herself. My next reality TV pregnancy debacle is pretty much every person on MTV’s Teen Mom or 16 and Pregnant. I just recently watched Jenelle Evans abort a child and then get pregnant ON PURPOSE mere months later with a man that she’s been dating for eight weeks. She then proceeded to explain to her first biological child that she is pregnant with his brother or sister (it’s a boy by the way that she named Kaiser, logically) and then leave that first child with her own mother to continue to raise. Mind blowing. Outside of reality TV, I have spent the past two months teaching a girl in my fourth period English class who is with child. She is sixteen and has hot pink hair. She can’t pass freshman English, yet she managed to get pregnant. I don’t have the opportunity to see her on a regular basis anymore because she was recently put in jail for truancy as part of her probation program. She is now sixteen, pregnant, and in jail. I’m twenty-seven, barren, and ridiculously normal. 

It just doesn’t add up. It’s hard for me to understand God’s willy-nilly system for handing out embryos. If pregnancy is a gift from God, if it is divinely inspired, what am I doing wrong that Jenelle is doing right? How is my fourth period English student a better candidate for a baby than I am? I’ll stop there. I know better than to compare myself to Michelle Duggar. She seems like the sweetest lady that ever existed. I don’t mind if she gets the big 2-0 if she’s willing to put up with Jim Bob. A saint I tell ya.

It’s not just reality television and teenage pregnancy that have shifted my ideas about children. When someone starts considering removing eggs from your body and injecting them with your husband’s sperm in some lab somewhere, the glossiness of conception sort of wears off. There’s nothing miraculous about latex gloves and microscopes. There’s nothing Godly about $10,000 to outsmart natural selection. This isn’t about God. I can’t have children because the cells in my uterus attack the rest of my body each month. God didn’t give me endometriosis just like he doesn’t control whether I get pregnant. Jenelle Evans doesn’t pray for babies in between joints. Fourth period pregnant kid doesn’t conceive because of God’s plan. She gets pregnant because she’s sixteen and irresponsible and apparently fertile.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if you attribute getting pregnant to God then you also have to attribute not getting pregnant to Him as well. And then you’re left wondering how in the world any of this makes any sense at all. People have children when they’re bodies allow it. Not when God does.

When I was flying home from Mexico a few days ago, there was a Baptist preacher seated in the row directly in front of me. I know this because he was having a conversation with a man beside him about God. He was sharing his testimony as Baptist folks would say. Later in the flight, the preacher proceeded to type on his laptop about his recent experiences in Mexico doing mission work. In between the seat backs, I read his screen as he went on to explain that people often get hung up on why life is not fair. The preacher noted that people question the existence of God when they have terrible things happen to them. Things that they deem not fair. I'll be the first to tell you I don’t think it’s fair that I am struggling with infertility. I do think I would make a good mother and Cody would be a good father. I am not on heroin. I am not sixteen. I have a job. I pay my taxes. I don’t smoke cigarettes. I have really exceptional hand-eye coordination. This is not fair.

I started paying more attention to the blinking cursor on the laptop in front of me. I started to wonder if maybe this man’s response about fair and unfair life experiences would be the explanation I needed to quit questioning God’s role in pregnancy and honestly God’s role in everything.

The preacher’s response eventually boiled down to this: humans don’t actually want a fair God because that would mean we would all be going to hell because we are all sinners. Moreover, humans don’t actually know what they need or want so our thoughts of fair and unfair are pedestrian (my word, not his) desires that aren't actually what God deems fit for our lives. There were a lot of biblical references in there, but I stopped reading after that. My hope for a message sent from above was lost on me. . Some people get pregnant. Some people don’t. It depends on anatomy, not religion. You don't have to believe in God to get pregnant. You don't have to deserve a baby (whatever that means). God does not release eggs and swim alongside sperm. He doesn't attach an embryo to a uterus. Human bodies do that just like dogs and horses and squirrels. 

I say all that to say that sometimes you just draw the short stick, regardless of whose hand you think you’re choosing from. 

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Square One?

In August 2013 I took my first Lupron shot. I worried that I would spend the next six months a crazed, hormonal shell of a human like the horror stories on the Internet. I worried about bone deterioration and depression. I worried that my ovaries would never recover. I worried that I would never get to be even the endometriosis-ridden version of my 27 year old self that existed before I took that shot. I worried that all of this effort would not result in a pregnancy. The only worry I have left today is the last one. Eight months later I have returned to pre-lupron Katy. In fact, I assume I am a more healthy version of myself. My ovaries work again. All one and a half of them managed to crawl out from their medicinal hibernation. All one and a half of them managed to prove the women on the message boards wrong. We're back. I've been in Mexico for the last two days playing phone tag with the nurses at Dr. Bell's office and relaying the news of my return from menopause. I found myself asking the same questions I was asking nine months ago. Infertility Groundhog Day. "What do I do now?" "Am I okay?" "Am I normal? " "Do we just try to get pregnant? Like everyone else?" "How do I get pregnant?" As before, the answers from the other end of that phone line were delayed and hard to understand, no matter if I'm in Arkansas or Mexico. At the end of the phone conversation, we decided on an ultrasound on day fourteen to determine if I ovulate. This is the same process that resulted in the finding of the cyst on my left ovary a year ago. This whole infertility mess is just a system of circles. Monthly circles. Yearly circles. We just keep running the same race over and over again. Nonetheless, I'm glad to be off of Lupron. It wasn't as bad as I imagined it might be, but there were some notable issues associated. I haven't felt particularly healthy for the past few months. I've broken down in tears in front of a middle-aged man (whom I still have to answer to on a regular basis at work) in the midst of trying to fight for my female athletes to receive the same treatment as male athletes. The embarrassment I still feel about crying while trying to convince a man that we are equal human beings is simply too much for me to bare. A few weeks later I adopted a dog that I stalked for days and days. I cried uncontrollably as the flea-ridden canine sat on my lap in the car. I referred to her as my "spirit animal" in between breathless sobs of appreciation as my husband sat stunned in the driver's seat. It's safe to say that Lupron has had some interesting side effects. I am glad those things have subsided. Despite all the tears and weirdness, there was one good thing about the last eight months of Lupron. I got a break from the race. There were no negative pregnancy tests to be taken. There were no days to count. There was no timed intercourse. There was no analysis of basal body temperature or other bodily predictors of fertility. There was nothing to worry about. No disappointment to be had. It was easy. I have to admit the reality of trying to get pregnant month after month is a much more difficult race to endure than the side effects of Lupron. I feel like I'm back to square one and as confused as I've ever been about pregnancy. Also, this time around I am even more invested in making this work with the scars (both physical and emotional) to prove that I am willing to sacrifice for the same outcome that some of us experience with such ease. I am willing to work for a child although the past two years of childless life have certainly left me with a notably different perspective on creating life. I tell myself that years from now all of this will make sense; the resolution will be evident. The longer I live without a child of my own, the more I realize that the much sought-after resolution does not necessarily have to involve me being a parent. Parenthood is no longer the only acceptable ending for me or us. It's taken two years to understand that the infertility race does not always end with a child. I feel like I should confess that the articulation of my new acceptance of infertility struck me while lying by a pool in Mexico as I stared at the ebb and flow of the Gulf of Mexico. We all know a good beach can round the edges of even the most jagged stones in life.

Katy Vs. Her Ovaries - Did I get had by Aunt Flow?

 I started my period in the wee morning hours of a slumber party in 1996. I was almost twelve-years-old and celebrating the end of a school year and a friend moving away. I wasn’t the first. I guess I was aware that the same fate would befall me as it had some of my friends. Nonetheless, I was embarrassed and upset. I remember refusing to utter a word to the throng of tween girls strewn throughout an empty living room piled high with sleeping bags and pillows. Remembering this milestone years later, the paradox of a slumber party and menstruation strikes me as an accurate portrayal of growing up.
         After a few hours of careful analysis, I finally accepted that I must share this occurrence with at least one person in this world. My mom would hand me a Maxi pad and ask a few uncomfortable questions about the occurrence and then we moved on. Silent partners in the world of women. Sometime later, after the initial shock wore off, my period became public knowledge amongst my sleeping bag friends. My mom eventually assured me that periods were not the end of the world (granted, all of this conversation occurred in hushed voices) and that I should actually be grateful for this dreaded monthly happening, for a period would allow me to fulfill what my mother still touts as her proudest accomplishment: having children.
        My friends and I were notably less sold on the power of a period. We spent years sharing tampons and stories about the trials and tribulations of growing up female. Some of us cursed more than just the inconvenience of a period, angered by the sacred possibility of pregnancy in our hormone-driven world of adolescence. I always respected reproduction far more than most of my friends. My seemingly regular cycles bolstered my mother’s “be grateful” approach to menstruation. I always trusted that the agony endured would one day be worth it when I was thirty and married and a mother.
        I haven’t had a period in eight months now. Lupron fulfilled its promise of “shutting down my system” as the doctors communicated to me. I feel like I have caught a glimpse of life on the other side of womanhood, a snapshot of menopausal Katy, complete with bone pain, hot flashes, and unwarranted tears. Even after Lupron is technically out of your system, a person does not immediately go back to a normal reproductive being. There is a window of time before a patient starts producing hormones and eventually has a period. This is what got me thinking about periods and puberty. This flip-flop between a healthy twenty-something-year-old to medically-induced menopause and now to waiting and wondering when (if?) these busted ovaries will ever start functioning again. I am becoming a woman. Again.
       After I was diagnosed with endometriosis, I started wondering when the disease started setting up shop inside of me. Were the cells of my uterus attacking their reproductive friends since that fateful summer night in 1996? Is the moment that I walked through the door to being a child-bearing woman also the exact moment that my body started fighting against itself? Did I endure the “be grateful” advice from my mother for nothing? If I had ever had uncommitted, unprotected, premarital sex with anyone, could I have even become pregnant? Or was all of this a sham? Have I been unable to have children for as long as I thought I could? Did I get had by Aunt Flow?
       I used to believe that people get what they deserve. Call it karma or blessings or whatever you will, I used to think that things work out the way they should. The longer I exist with the ever-present infertility cloud hanging above me (and my husband) I wonder if maybe all of this is a lot more of a crap shoot than I’d like to believe. I worry that those years of periods were nothing more than annoying.