MicroblogMondays: Hope for the Future

On January 20th, the kids and we all had breakfast while watching the inauguration.  We explained to the kids that we have a new president and vice president.  And this is the first female vice president of our country.  After hearing that, my daughter Bunny asked, “What about me?”  My husband answered her, “This is exactly what the vice president said, that you can be anything you want to be.”  There was a twinkle in this three year old’s eye as she pondered what that meant.

I teared up as I watched my little daughter pay such close attention to this historic moment on the screen.  Four years ago, days before the previous inauguration, we were about to transfer the two embryos that would become our twins.  On that transfer day, I couldn’t have possibly imagined this precious moment with my precious girl on January 20, 2021 given how uncertain the future felt four years ago in regards to parenthood as well as the state of our nation.  Our future at this moment is also uncertain with the pandemic and the state of this world, but as the glass ceiling shatters, this is certainly a big step into the right direction.  There is hope for a better future for my children.

MicroblogMondays: Deepest Fears

I cried during my therapy session last Friday.  It was a soul-cleansing cry that was so unexpected but at the same time so good for me.

My therapist and I have been working on finding the cause(s) of my panic attacks or anxiety symptoms, such as heart palpitations and lightheadedness.  She suggested a book for me to read.  In that book there is a tool called a Daily Mood Log.  I have been using the daily mood log to document any upsetting events, my emotions surrounding them, and my negative thoughts about them.  After I write them all down, I am supposed to come up with neutral thoughts that are true 100% of the time to replace the negative thoughts.  (Instead of positive thoughts as stated in the log, my therapist suggested neutral thoughts because positive thoughts are not always 100% true.) So the last few weeks I have been finishing up two to three of these logs each week in order to understand more about my thoughts and feelings.  I noticed that the first couple of weeks most of the mood logs were about Okra’s tantrums.  Since his extreme tantrums have dwindled down, I find myself focusing more on the aches and pains I feel on my body and my negative thoughts and feelings surrounding that.  It is almost like because I don’t have to focus on Okra anymore, I have more room in my head to look for something else to worry about.  Last week all of my anxiety or worries had to do with any physical symptoms that I felt: throat irritation, phlegm, blocked nostril, gum irritation, skin irritation, muscle pains.  My mind would go really far and I would wonder if I had cancer or COVID.  Especially now that the COVID numbers have gone up in the last few weeks and with the new variant showing up in my area, I find myself having anxious thoughts even going grocery shopping.  After going grocery shopping last Tuesday, I panicked for a few second wondering if I caught COVID afterwards.  The following were the negative thoughts I wrote down: “I have COVID despite being careful”, “It is easy to catch COVID even if I wear a mask”, “I will get COVID no matter what I do, “I will get COVID even just grocery shopping”, and “I will die of COVID”.  I am also supposed to write down how much I believe each thought.  For these thoughts, I wrote down a range between 50% to 70% for each.

In the book that my therapist recommended, the chapter after the daily mood log is called “Uncovering Your Self-Defeating Beliefs”.  These are beliefs that are either about what you believe you need to be or do in order to be a worthwhile human, or about what you believe your relationship with others need to be like.  In the book, it explained that your self-defeating beliefs are always present, but negative thoughts only come when you are upset.  You use what the author calls “Downward Arrow Technique” to ask yourself that if a negative thought were true, “Why would it be upsetting to me? What would it mean to me?”  Once you come up with another negative thought, you ask the same questions.  You repeat this process until you eventually come up with your self-defeating beliefs.  When I first read that chapter, I just started doing my daily mood logs and felt overwhelmed by this process of “Downward Arrow Technique”.  My therapist told me to just get myself familiar with writing my daily mood logs first and not to worry about the next step.  Last Friday during my session, my therapist and I went over my negative thoughts regarding COVID.  After we talked about them, she asked me if I was ready to talk about finding my self-defeating beliefs.  I was like, well okay let’s try it.  She told me to pick a negative thought.  So I picked this one:

“I will catch COVID despite being careful”

She asked, “If that were true, why would it be upsetting to you?”

The following are the negative thoughts that I came up with after asking that question repeatedly with the “Downward Arrow Technique”:

“I will get very sick”

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“I will die”

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“My kids won’t get the care that will get from me because I am dead”

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“My kids will grow up without me”

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“My kids will be miserable growing up without their mom”

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“My kids will be miserable, unhappy adults, and not be able to life a fulfilling life without me being around”

……

When I got to that point, I started tearing up.  I tried to hold back my tears but the more I wanted to, the more I felt like crying.  I ended up sobbing uncontrollably for a few minutes.  Why?  I asked myself.  I felt this deep pain inside of me when I dug deeper and deeper into my fears: me being dead and not be able to watch my kids grow up.  I was ugly crying while trying to catch my breath so I could talk.  I was crying and talking and crying and talking.  I told my therapist that mortality had been on my mind because I really want to live to see my kids be adults and want to be with them every step of the way.  It is not that I don’t trust my husband.  I do.  I am sure that the children would grow up to be happy, healthy adults even without my presence.  BUT, I so want to be here to witness it and be an integral part of their lives.  The thought of not being around for that really pains me.  I told my therapist that this probably has everything to do with me bringing them into this world after all these years of infertility.  I feel a tremendous responsibility to be healthy and alive in order to take good care of the two human beings that I so desperately tried to bring into this world.  I tried so hard to have children early on but infertility happened and I was already 43 when they were born.  When they grow up, if I am still alive, I will be in my 60s.  I have this fear that I won’t live to see them get married and have kids.  It hurts my heart to even think about leaving them behind.  This is why every time I think about my health, I go into this deep fear of something really wrong with me.  I am afraid that my kids, who were conceived with the help of an egg donor, would grow up hating me for bringing them into this world without me being around to protect them.  I was so surprised by these tears.  I did not even know that I had these fears.  I wonder if I didn’t have any fertility challenges, if these kids were made with my own eggs, or if I had them in my 30s, I would still have these fears.

My therapist is so good.  She waited for me to cry and to finish my thoughts while looking at me with so much compassion and empathy.  She then said to me, “You must have been carrying a lot of pains all these years.”  She suggested that I be kind to myself and practice self love by writing myself a letter about all the fears that I have. She also suggested I write the grownup version of the kids a letter, telling them things that I want them to know if they were to grow up without their mom. Before we parted, she kindly said, “Take good care of yourself this week.”

After we ended our session, I just sat there and was in awe of all that was uncovered.  Therapy is powerful.  This tool is powerful.  I didn’t know that infertility and the pain associated with it still haunt me.  Now that we have uncovered my fears, maybe this is the light at the end of the tunnel for reducing and eventually eliminating my anxiety symptoms?  I sure hope so, but I know there is a lot of work ahead of me in order to reach that place of wellness.

MicroblogMondays: Transfer Anniversary

Two days ago was the 4th anniversary of the transfer that resulted in our children.  Four years seems like a long time, and it sure feels like a long time ago.  My gestational carrier and I still have a cordial relationship.  I send her videos and pictures of the kids once in a while, and she receives a present every year from us for the kids’ birthday and Christmas.  We don’t communicate regularly, but I think very fondly of her.  One of my friends has been waiting to find a gestational carrier to carry a pregnancy for her with the donor egg embryos that she made back in January 2018.  She is not married and somehow it has been difficult to find a gestational carrier.  After many shoes that dropped and needing to switch several agencies, she is finally going to have one of her embryos transferred into her new gestational carrier middle of this month.  I can’t help but wonder about what may happen if we were to transfer our embryos into a gestational carrier during this global pandemic just like my friend. On top of all the complications and worries about having someone out of town carrying our child, we’d also have to worry about the gestational carrier following a COVID-safe protocol that we would have set out.  I am not so sure if our gestational carrier would have been the best person for the job.  Let us just say that her views regarding the pandemic are vastly different from ours including the need to wear a mask out and about and the part about not mixing people in different households.  I can only imagine how difficult those months of pregnancy would be and what they would do to my sanity or anxiety level.  But you know, if that’s the case, and you want a baby, you just have to do what you have to do, but life would be exponentially more difficult navigating the life of having another person carry a pregnancy for you.  And we may not choose my gestational carrier for this important role.  I feel for my friend, and I can only hope that her gestational carrier is reliable and trustworthy.  I am hopeful that a year from now she gets to celebrate the transfer anniversary of her baby.  And I am hopeful that by then the world will be a much better place.

MicroblogMondays: Delight

One of the tools my therapist and I discussed about is to track my son Okra’s tantrums and my anxiety symptoms to see if there is a correlation between the two.  I have these blank calendars I printed from the internet to meal plan. I took one and started writing down Okra’s moods and tantrums on a given day and how I was feeling on that particular day.  I started middle of the month in December.  That coincided with Okra stopping his appetite medication.  He had a video follow up visit with his GI specialist on that day.  He had been on this appetite medication since September to help increase his appetite and hence gain weight.  His weight went from being on the 13th percentile to 41st percentile, so the medication did help tremendously.  However, I noticed that he had some wild tantrums that seemingly came out of nowhere.  The intensity and duration of them had increased since winter started.  There was an epic tantrum that lasted one hour 45 minutes that really worried me, that something could be wrong with my precious little boy.  I had read that this appetite medication can affect some kids’ moods.  I brought it up with Okra’s GI specialist and she agreed that it was about time for Okra to recycle the meds, which means for him to be off of it for 5 to 7 days and restart it for the medication to have its maximum effectiveness again.  At the same time we could watch Okra’s moods and see if being off of it makes a difference.  At that time, Okra was having these huge tantrums that were recurring every few days.  He was easily triggered by some very minor things and everything became a struggle.  Even when I fulfilled his wishes and gave him what he wanted, he would immediate flip flop and say he didn’t want it.  He would go yes/no yes/no many times for many different things while crying uncontrollably.  I was desperate for these tantrums to go away.  I am also quite sure that these extreme tantrums did not help with my anxiety symptoms.  Okra stopped his medication on December 16th.  He had one extreme tantrum on December 19th.  He then became calm with some typical toddler whininess for the next few days.  We restarted his appetite medicine on December 23rd.  I gave him one dose at 7:45am.  He woke up happy and ate his breakfast happily.  At 9:35, he suddenly flipped and got upset for no reason and threw a huge tantrum seemingly out of nowhere.  It was like a switch was flipped.  I immediately thought of the appetite medication so in the chaos of a tantrum, I wrote the GI doctor a quick note.  Fortunately she usually writes back quickly.  She told me to stop the appetite medication and see how he does in the next few weeks.  I am so thankful for a doctor who responds promptly.  That morning Okra ate a huge snack despite having a huge breakfast earlier that day.  I wonder if the medication had made him super hunger and if he couldn’t read his own hunger cue and got really upset/angry because of that.  After we stopped the medication, Okra was calm except for some instances of whininess and small tantrums for nine whole days.  Even when he had a tantrum, he showed the ability to recover very quickly.  I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with my son on those very calm days.  It was such a delight to hang out with him and we were able to do so many fun things together and have great bonding moments.  He did have one day of extreme tantrum on January 2nd.  When I was waiting for the tantrums to be over, I was reminding myself of what he is capable of and I knew that this would pass.  And it did.  He was back to being his normal happy self yesterday.  It was such a delight to see.  Okra may not be eating as much as when he was on meds, but I’d rather him be a happy child than suffering from side effects of the medication.  I know his last extreme tantrum did not have anything to do with the medication because he wasn’t on it.  I sometimes still worry about something being wrong with him.  Our pediatrician did give us a referral to a developmental pediatrician in case I wanted to get a consultation.  I am suppose to fill out these questionnaires before scheduling an appointment.  Something is stopping me from filing out these forms.  I guess I am waiting to see how things unfold before I subject him to any sort of testing.    Anyways, back to my therapy homework.  Marking on the calendar really helps me to see if there is a pattern of Okra’s tantrums and how I am doing emotionally and physically.  I am happy to report that out of those nine calm days, I was symptom-free for six of them.  Even when Okra had the big tantrums on Saturday, I wasn’t affected and haven’t felt any lightheadedness, heart palpitation, or general uneasiness.  It is such a welcome change.