Pamper Panic

The term expecting frustrates me immensely. I understand that you're pregnant and expecting to have a child, but being this is my first child, I honestly have no god damn clue what to expect. Aside from the cliché parts - no sleep, changing diapers, and being introduced to the love of your life - I'm completely in the dark. I try to read up on stuff to get a clearer picture of what's coming, but there is so much contradictory information out there it makes my head spin. Top that off with the insane marketing tactics utilized by the baby retail industry and I don't know how anybody doing this for the first time knows what to expect.

Kay and I were out and about, checking out our local baby stores and we walked into the hell on earth that is Buy Buy Baby. That store was not made with the first time parent in mind, with floor to ceiling marketing of baby doohickeys, and ruzzlestumps, and whatever the hell else the industry is trying to convince you that you need to keep your baby alive - that place is a living panic attack. All I want to know is how to take the best care of my impending child and that store made me feel like all I have to look forward to is my impending doom.

When it comes to learning how to use a new tool, or learning how to wire a garage, I usually just look up an instructional video on YouTube. I don't put myself in any situations where I could cut off my foot, or set the house on fire - maybe just lose a few bucks from extra materials from making small mistakes. Things are different with a child than with a piece of wood, I can't just toss it on the scrap pile if I mess it up. It's not that I'm incompetent or anything, I mean I've kept my suicidal dog alive for over year, and if you've read my previous posts about him you understand the incredible feat that is in itself. I just know what I don't know, and that's pretty much everything.

The anxiety was building up inside for a while and the longer I thought about it the more terrified I became. My stress in the whole situation culminated when I was at work and I got an alert on my phone. I have one of those apps that tells you how big your baby is, only mine is for expectant fathers and compares the size to lumberjack, wilderness-themed items like beaver tails and axe heads. The app alerted me that we had reached 21 weeks in the pregnancy. Out of curiosity, and naivety, I Googled how long a pregnancy lasts - 40 weeks. 40 WEEKS?!! WE'RE OVER HALF WAY!!

I lost it - I frantically started searching the internet for some kind of course, any course that would teach me how to make my baby not die. I found a number of listings for labor and delivery courses, but nothing on how to take care of a newborn. So I started searching for the best books for new parents, but the vast majority of books I found were geared towards the mother. Eventually, I found a couple handfuls of books that were specific to new dads, but upon reading the reviews they apparently were just condescending advice pieces for the stereotypical dad - "Don't go out for wings with your buddies so often.", "Offer to babysit once in a while so your partner can have a break." Babysit? It's called parenting you douche! This garbage did not at all resonate with the kind of father I plan to be, and only served to fuel my fear.

When I couldn't find what I was looking for, I texted Kay in a panic explaining my frustration - she answered nonchalantly, "Calm down, we'll figure it out" - this was usually my line! She's the pregnant one with all the hormones and I'm the basket case losing my mind because I don't know how to change a diaper. When she realized the level of freakout I was having, Kay called me at work to talk me down off the ledge. She did this by explaining to me how you go about changing a diaper and the differences between changing a boy's diaper and a girl's diaper. I'm quite confident I could have figured it out on my own, and it wasn't the largest part of my worries, but this new knowledge gave me the confidence I needed.

Kay sent me a bunch of links to some decent daddy-focused parenting websites - one of which uses car metaphors to categorize its subjects (I guess not all stereotypes are bad). I also ended up finding a couple of books on Amazon and having them overnight shipped to my door. It turns out learning how to care for a baby is similar to learning how to use a new tool, you have a little bit of upfront anxiety, it costs you a few extra bucks to figure it out, but in the end you have a new skill you can use for a lifetime.

Pink or Blue, Either Will Do

When we were planning our wedding, I think the question we got asked more than any other question that year was "when is your wedding again?", even from my own family. We would say August 27th, and it would go in one ear, they would nod, and then it would go out the other. It was extremely frustrating to tell the same people over and over the date we were getting married. So after we got pregnant I fully expected that everyone would incessantly ask when the baby was due. Instead, overwhelmingly, the question we get asked the most is, "do you know what you are having?"

One of the biggest decisions we had to make was whether we wanted to know the sex of our baby. I'm not going to debate the issue of gender neutrality here, or the pros and cons of teaching your children gender specific societal expectations and the harm we may or may not be doing to them, that's not what this is about. It's about whether we wanted to find out if we were going to have a little boy, or a little girl.

I have always been of the belief that the gender of your baby is the last great surprise in life. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong, but to date there has been nothing that has entered my mind that could exceed the surprise of finding out whether we're going to have a boy or a girl. I picture myself running out into the waiting room to see our families and exclaiming "it's a girl!", and being excited no matter what word it is that I exclaim.

My beautiful wife, Kay, on the other hand, hates surprises, particularly surprises that she knows are surprises. For example, if I bring home flowers, she's happy with me for doing so, but if I were to tell her on Monday that I have a surprise for her on Friday, she will pester me incessantly until I tell her exactly where we are going, what we are doing, and what the activity requires of her. In most cases, this ruins my well laid plans - and then she feels bad for ruining the surprise, and then I feel bad because she feels bad - it's maddening, but I've learned to cope by keeping her surprises to myself. Unfortunately, she can't exactly keep the surprise of being pregnant from herself - so that was the first problem I foresaw.

The second issue I expected, arose from Kay being a planner, with that Type-A personality that forces her to be in control of all aspects of her foreseeable world. So not finding out the sex means no gender specific purchases, it means no expectations, it means waiting till the last minute to get things ready that we might otherwise have needed - basically it means no planning.

In my eyes, all the foreseeable issues I expected revolved around Kay. I didn't expect that it was me that would have all the difficulty. When we started hitting up the baby stores in the area I found out that "gender neutral color" apparently is synonymous with "no color at all". So wanting that "last great surprise" was starting to mean that I'd have to sit in the nursery, a white and grey clinical setting, with a throwback to the masturbatorium I had worked so hard to forget, and get depressed while trying to rock my screaming baby back to sleep. I was not having it, and I started to second guess my decision. Kay on the other hand, was calm, laid back, and was like "it's fine, we'll just have the shower after the baby is born" - meanwhile I'm having a nervous breakdown because I'm thinking I'm going to damage my kid by depriving it of color in its early years.

I eventually chilled myself out and realized that I was being ridiculous, and what really grounded me was an epiphany I had while making a long solo drive early one morning. As I was driving, I was picturing in my mind that the day had come, that the baby was coming, and we hadn't found out the sex. The baby came out and I was ecstatic to find out the gender, and just like I had imagined previously I walked out into the waiting room to tell everyone what we had - but this time, instead of saying it was a boy or girl, I said "I have a son" or "I have a daughter". That subtle difference changed everything for me, what it did was make that child mine, my responsibility. It really set in that I was going to be a father, not just have a boy or a girl - and I didn't care anymore about what color of clothes it was going to wear - what I truly care about is having that surprise moment when I meet my child.

As cliche' as it sounds, Kay and I really just want the baby to be healthy, we'll be ecstatic no matter what we have, but full disclosure; Kay thinks it's a boy, and I think it's a girl - "may the odds be ever in your favour".

Operation Incubation

Now that Kay is pregnant, the emotional roller coaster has finally come to a stop, at least for me (Kay is pregnant after all). Life is a little bit calmer, but quite a bit more interesting, as we do baby research, and make baby lists, and shop for baby stuff. It's also full of new surprises and things to get used to.

All-day Morning Sickness
They say morning sickness is pretty standard in the first trimester, but for Kay, it was all day sickness. She was nauseous pretty much from getting out of bed in the morning till going to bed at night. I don't think she ever vomited, but she definitely came close. For the first few weeks she did nothing but lay on the couch, until my incessant nagging (its my blog, so I get to take the credit) got her to go to the doctor and get a prescription. She still occasionally gets a little sick, but not nearly as bad as it was in the beginning, when I had to keep five different kinds of ginger food options in the house at all times, ranging from ginger candy to ginger tea.

Super Human Sense of Smell
Kay's super-sniffer has seriously astounded me. The sensitivity of her nose has increased exponentially since becoming pregnant, which apparently has something to do with an evolutionary trait to make sure she doesn't ingest anything that might harm the baby.  Just walking through a door into a large building has made her turn to me and say: "someone is wearing too much perfume" only to figure out that person was on the opposite side of the building.

Cravings are Real
Kay's cravings have not been as unusual as some that I've heard, mostly she craves vinegar. We made a batch of pickled garden carrots recently, and I'm positive they would all be gone already had I not told her that they take time for the pickling to set in. So in the absence of eating our stash of pickled carrots, I came home to find her eating potatoes doused in vinegar...apparently we were all out of chips.

The Baby-Bump
Kay was so excited to start seeing some progress in the growth of her bump. She took progress pictures to watch it grow, which definitely helped, and I was really surprised to see how fast it grew. It hasn't led to too much discomfort yet, but she can't sleep on her stomach anymore (her preferred position is face down starfish, taking up the entire king size bed), the baby is basically always sitting on her bladder, and we have already gone shopping for special pregnancy pillows to alleviate her anticipated sleep issues, although she couldn't make a commitment to any of them.

Crying at the Drop of a Hat

Not everything, but pretty much anything will make Kay cry. Obviously the amount of hormones surging through her body is what makes her emotional and trying not to laugh is the hardest part of dealing with these situations, but I try to be as supportive as I can. Especially when it's me singing a song she doesn't like that brings her to tears, or interrupting her show to ask her questions, or getting scratched by the cat, or feeling like an imposter because her belly isn't big enough yet. In my opinion, it's adorable, so I just give her a hug and keep my chuckling in my head.

Given where we've come from, it's been really nice to have a relatively uneventful pregnancy to date. While it hasn't been without its challenges, a little bit of normalcy in our lives has been a breath of fresh air - even if potatoes and vinegar are your benchmark for normal.

Getting off the Fence

We finally did it. We made our dreams come true. We have a baby on the way and I'm as happy as I could possibly be, but after seeing that little heartbeat flicker I've had this feeling I haven't been able to shake, that there is something off. I'm told that a woman feels like a mother when she becomes pregnant - the whole having a baby inside you thing really helps to make things real for you, but a man feels like a father when they meet their baby. At first I wrote this feeling off as just that, a delayed daddy reaction that will go away when I meet my baby in April.

It didn't work out that way, the giant pit in my stomach just kept growing. I had fought my way through this whole ordeal and I used every weapon I had. I did tests, and consults, and more tests, and treatments, and research. I got second and third jobs and managed our budgets. When I had done all I could do medically and financially I wrote blog posts, and participated in Facebook groups, staying positive and trying to help others through their own struggles. By every definition of the word, I had earned this triumph, so why did I feel like this?

I've met some awesome people along my journey that were dealt the same crappy hand, many of them much worse. I met couples that have both male and female factor infertility, others that if only they had the money - could make a go at treatment. Couples that have had their hopes lifted, only to then experience devastating loss I can't even begin to imagine, many of them time and time again. That is where the pit in my stomach comes from - a giant bowling ball of guilt weighing down my joy, and forcing me to wonder why it's me that deserves this child, this life, and not all the other people that may be more qualified, more able, and more deserving of their own child.

I tell myself it's okay, that those people understand, but I've been on the other side and I know they don't. It's a shameful feeling to be jealous of your best friends for getting pregnant and having kids, to be angry with them for being able to create something that you can't. I know that feeling and it's not easy. I'm still just as infertile as I ever was, but I'm no longer part of the community that lives it and my very presence in that community doesn't give the hope you would expect it to, it just gives more heartache.

Taken on our honeymoon in Scotland - the start of our journey.

So here I've been, sitting on the fence figuring out where I fit in and avoiding the inevitable loss that comes with leaving the community that's given me so much. I know this isn't where my journey ends, in fact it's really only the beginning, but it is a parting of ways. The kind of mutual "farewell, until we meet again" that you give a fond
travelling companion.

So to those that have been there for us, that have struggled alongside us and continue to do so, that have given us their warmth and shared our worries, our fears, and rode the rollercoaster with us - to all of you, I wish you all the luck and baby dust in the world, until we meet again.

Look at that Embryo!

The day I found out about my infertility was probably one of the worst days of my life. As I explained in a previous post, I sat in the office, listening to the very matter-of-fact doctor tell me about my 6 sperm, five of which were useless, and how there was almost no way I would be able to father a child naturally; the one goal I had in my life at the time. K told a family member later on that she always thought the first time she would see me cry was when our child was born - not in the car outside the doctor's office. Neither of us gave up hope though, and we supported each other through every bit of it.

We did a second embryo transfer over the summer - something we kept secret to allow ourselves a little bit of privacy the second time around. Privacy was important to us for two reasons; it prevented us from having to explain to anybody if it didn’t work, or so that we could surprise people and tell them on our own terms if it did work.  We didn’t want to lie to people, but people generally wanted to know what was happening and weren’t usually shy about asking – so we had to tell them something. Usually it ended up being some kind of vague answer meant to throw them off the scent; “We’re just playing the waiting game” or “We’re saving up for the next transfer”. These answers were usually enough to cut the questions off.

"Look at that Embryo!"

The process for the second transfer was basically the same as the first time, K had to show up with a full bladder and squirm in the waiting room while waiting to see the doctor. Then when the nurse came to get us, we got all dressed up in our hospital gowns and booties before getting escorted to the procedure room. When they showed us the second embryo on the giant screen in that room, I turned to K and said “ Look at that embryo! That’s a good looking embryo. I’ve got a good feeling about that embryo.” Everyone in the room was amused, or at least I was.

The procedure took place the week before my younger brother's bachelor party - a five day camping party so full of debauchery that “epic” is the only word fitting enough to describe it. That said, five days out of cell service while your wife is going through endless terror that something bad will happen with the embryo inside her doesn't make for a supportive situation. So every morning I would wake up and drive to service, to call her and reassure her that everything was going to be okay, a task much easier said than done.

After an excessively long party and a five hour drive home, the first thing I wanted to do was shower - so after unloading all my gear, that's exactly what I did. I was getting dressed when K came into the bedroom and said she wanted to ask me a question - if she could go buy a pregnancy test. I immediately said no because we had agreed prior to the transfer that we weren't going to do any home tests, we were going to wait until the blood test to have confirmation - that way we could prevent any false positives or negatives and in turn stay off the roller coaster ride of emotion. She responded by holding up a test she already took and said "But I want to see if this one is right". I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at the test strip she was holding up for what seemed like 10 full minutes before I looked are her and said "It says yes?" She nodded. "Are you sure?" She nodded again as tears welled up in her big brown eyes. I gave her a soft hug and wiped a tear from my eye, everything we’d been through that year, everything we’d done, all the pain we’d dealt with, the money we’d spent, the extra work we’d put in – even just to have that moment with her, made it all worth it.


Baby at 12 weeks

Baby at 8 weeks

So 8 more home 

pregnancy tests, three blood tests,
two ultrasounds, and several weeks of nausea later, we are happy to announce that K is 12 weeks pregnant, with an expected delivery date of April 20, 2018!





To All The Hopeful Dads

An Open Letter to All the Hopeful Dads Out There:

I know what you're going through. I've been there. Maybe what you want is your own child to dress up like you, to play games with, or teach things to. Maybe you want nothing more than to give your partner what she wants more than anything in the world - likely both. I know how you feel, because I am there.

Don't blame yourself. You can't control it any more than you can control the weather. It's not your fault so just don't. You're allowed to be angry. You're allowed to be sad. You're going to be both, but don't ever blame yourself. It's easy to get caught up in the masculinity of things, but don't let pride hold you back, because there are solutions. More than a handful of times I've heard women talk about how their significant others refuse to get tested, or even talk about their issues. Don't let this prevent you from feeling the joy of fatherhood. Instead of feeling shame that you are not a man, be the man you're meant to be and deal with the problem.

Stay positive and find the humor in the process. Other people may not get your jokes, but they don't have to because the jokes aren't for them. I was playing on a volleyball team over the summer and a member from the other team dove for the ball and hit it under the net - smack dab into my junk. Consequently, I hit the sand like a sack of potatoes. When I finally recovered someone apologized and said, "I hope I didn't mess anything up", to which I responded - "that's okay, they don't work anyway" - nobody laughed, but the joke was for me.

Remember that you're not alone. Your partner is going through this too - and likely they need you more than you need them. Don't isolate yourself, and don't isolate them. This will pass, and it will make you both stronger, but only if you let it. Your resolve is being tested. Don't fail the test. Don't pass the test. Nail that test to the damn wall - and then put a baseball bat through it because you're strong enough when you're together.

Don't let ignorance get to you. I read an article about the Alberta government considering covering the cost of fertility treatments, much like other provinces already do. I was dumb enough to read the commentary. I'm not sure why I expected people to be supportive and understanding, but I was wrong. Instead I saw comments about how people who have fertility issues should be forced to adopt instead. Don't let people like this get to you, they don't know what they're talking about, and their self-righteous ignorance has no bearing on your life. What they don't know is that adoption is actually a far more expensive and far more time consuming process. Not to mention the discrimination of denying someone with the inability to have their own children naturally - the option to try.

Try not to hate the people that tell you, "Don't worry, it will happen." They're just trying to help in the only way they know how. Remember that they would fix it for you if they could, but they're more helpless in this than you are. As much as you want to punch them in the face, they really do mean well.

And finally, don't lose hope. It's a long, arduous, and painful journey - but the best things in life are worth waiting for.

Sincerely,

Lefty the Hopeful Dad

One Year Down

As I write this I'm sitting at my desk in my home office, in a cloud of a my one-year-old dog's foul gas, reflecting on the past year. I guess I could take the path down the road of irony and say that it's fitting that my dog crop-dusted me as I was trying to think of a way to describe the last year of my life. I could go on to explain how difficult it has been on me, my attitude, and my marriage. I could take the easy road and wonder why it's me that has to go through this instead of someone else. I could think about all those things and wallow in my own self pity, but I'm not going to. Instead I'm going to tell you what I love about my life and why this past year has been one of the most rewarding I have ever experienced.

I learned how to love my wife.
You can take this statement any way you like and make all kinds of assumptions about it, but what it comes down to is that marriage takes a lot of work. Committing to one another was a declaration that we would do whatever it took to make our marriage work. Unfortunately, in order to understand what "whatever it takes" means, you really have to be tested through some kind of adversity - and adversity is never pleasant. We were struck with our own this year having been touched by a cancer scare and infertility, but we faced it head on, hand in hand. We supported each other and we took the time to understand what each of us needed from the other. I can't say it wasn't difficult, I can't say I would wish it on others, but I can say it has made us both truly understand and accept each other.

I learned to let go of the little things.
When mountain-sized problems are looming over you, getting wet crossing the stream seems a little less daunting. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the word, I still get angry over little things on occasion, but things like my puppy chewing the legs off my old-fashioned wooden office chair, my shirt getting bleached in the washing machine, or somebody stealing my parking spot just aren't worth getting worked up over. Chairs and shirts can be replaced and there's always another parking spot (unless it's Christmas, in which case, stay the hell away from the mall and order your gifts online because it's 2017), but I can't replace the time I would have spent raging about those things, or snapping at my wife for something not worth snapping about.

I learned the value of a dollar.
Fertility treatment is an expensive undertaking, even if you have good benefits, and saving up the money for it really put us on the right track. Obviously it set us back a pretty penny, but instead of going back to our old spending habits, we decided to take our saving to the next step. We took the money that we had been spending on fertility treatments and instead started dumping it on our debts. We paid off our credit card, one of our student loans, and two-thirds of one of our vehicle loans. We showed ourselves that all we needed was a priority adjustment in order to accomplish our goals - and now as a byproduct of our goal of having children - we have been able to take several steps in the right direction toward our goal of being debt free.

I've become a student of patience.
Patience has never been my strong suit, if you ask anybody that knows me they'll tell you I want everything, and I wanted it the day before yesterday. Kay isn't much better, in fact, she has a tattoo on her wrist that reads "Patience is a Virtue" which serves two purposes: it acts as her own gentle reminder when she becomes impatient, and it acts as rage fuel when she's being impatient and I tell her to look at her wrist. So when I say that I've become a student of patience, I truly mean that it is a work in progress, but what helps me to stay patient over such a long arduous process is reminding myself that the best things in life are worth waiting for; over, and over, and over, and over again.

I started writing again.
I used to write all the time. I would write rants as an outlet for anger, poetry as an outlet for sadness, letters as a way to communicate things I didn't want to say. In a sense I grew up writing, but I never really took it seriously. In fact, when I started this blog I wasn't taking it seriously, it was just another way for me to deal with my own life. This blog has allowed me to reconnect with my love of writing and helped me to express my passion for it by giving me something meaningful to write about, something that others who are struggling can relate to.

Kay and I will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary this month and when I look back on the last year of our lives, it only gives me hope for the rest of our life together. We are all shaped by our experiences, but who we are and how we choose to look at our lives is what makes us the people we are. I choose to look at my life as an incredible one, full of love and learning - one that I wouldn't trade for the world.