B-O-R-I-N-G

I've read lots of posts from bloggers who may not have posted for a while saying they've not been posting because there isn't much going on in their lives to report. In a frenzy of originality and a deep need to contribute to the blogosphere, I thought I'd join the club. Still PPA-suffering (see post below), drinking some parsley tea (see here - the site looks a bit sketchy but other research on the almighty internet seemed to confirm Sister Zeus's theories) to no avail, and trying to be patient. Argh. So boring. Though I have to say that even those "warning: severe boredom ahead" posts from other people are better than not hearing from them at all. I'm in the dark ages without an RSS reader so I still check the blogs I read manually to see if there's anything new, and even when the post says there isn't anything to report, there is always a little something. I think that's the marvel of blogs in the first place. Even relatively mundane reports are interesting because they're about people, whom you may or may not actually know, but who are often sharing pretty intimate things about themselves to essentially the whole world. And people are cool, man.

Phew! That's enough philosophizing from me for one night. Back to the waiting game. So much waiting and we haven't even hooked the engine up to the baby train yet! Good Lord, this is going to be difficult.

PPA

I've been doing some research about lack of periods after going off the pill and I think I may have PPA (I don't think that's actually the acronym but it sounds better than post-pill amenorrhea). It's probably a bit premature a diagnosis, given that I am 4 weeks late as of today and they don't start calling it PPA (or so says the internet) until after 3 months, but I'm not pregnant so there's no other explanation. OK, there's the explanation that says that you should be PATIENT (see previous post) and wait for your body to take its sweet time going back to au naturel. But then there are lots of people who apparently go off the pill and start up right as rain right away. As an example, my massage therapist is pregnant and she was telling me about going off the pill a few months before they started trying. I surreptitiously, in the guise of general curiosity, asked her if her cycles started up right away and she said there was no break at all. Wrong answer. I'm still on the cuttlefish train, but maybe this is like the liver fix - eventually effective but slow and steady. Bonzo doesn't seem too concerned about it, though. He's so laid back about life and I guess this is no different. We had talked about trying as of April but it doesn't look like that's realistic at this point. We both think I should have 2 periods before we start just to make sure things are really moving. So we wait some more. On the bright side it means more sushi and coffee, both of which I really like. Hmmmm, maybe it's coffee time now....

Patience is a virtue I am not fully familiar with

I like results. I guess that comes with the territory of having a fairly strong type A personality, but once I decide something should be I want to to happen. So when I went off the pill I wanted things to kick into gear right away. I'm pretty clear that you can't force large-scale nature to do anything so why should you be able to dictate what happens in small-scale nature? Why indeed. So much for my plans - two weeks late and still no sign of a period. Grrrr. I was so impatient that when I was last at the naturopath (as an aside - it must look like I go to the naturopath all the time but I don't. I think it's a common discussion subject simply because I'm trying to get my body on track in general but particularly to make it baby ready) I asked him whether there was something homeopathic I could do to re-regulate my cycles or whether it was better to let my body come to it naturally after being medicated for so long. He said the super natural way could take up to a year so there were definitely naturopathic options to get things moving a little faster. He gave me a homeopathic remedy made from a derivative of the ink of the cuttlefish. It's supposed to help with the side effects of the birth control pill, which he thinks my lack of period essentially is. I have 80 pills, one a day, but I have high hopes that it won't take that many. We'll see. It's going to take more than 6 pills, I can tell you that much. I thought I felt a twinge of cramping today on the bus so maybe things are slowly coming around but I'm not holding my breath.

I think another part of the problem is that I'm nervous about trying to conceive, which is a state we haven't even gotten to yet but why not worry about it now? I'm already a bit nervous about the unknown and also because I know how many people do have troubles conceiving, and then add to that a feeling like my non-periodness is a sign of being broken and it makes for some anxiety. As if life weren't stressful enough. I really need to learn to relax.

Come on cuttlefish!

Ready or not

I always try and hide a smirk when people say that they are really and truly ready to have kids, since I don't think that that is possible. How can you be ready for something so important that you haven't done before? I don't think you can. You can get all your ducks in a row and be in a place where you can visualize kids and being able to take care of them properly, but ready? So that said, my husband and I were talking about being "ready" to have kids this morning on a walk on the beach. I was asking him whether for him having kids was part of an assumption that he would do some day in the natural course of things or if he made a conscious decision that he wanted them. He said both, which is a reasonable answer. I said it was both for me, too, but that lately I had been thinking about what having kids is going to do to our lifestyle and wondering whether all the hassle is worth it. I look at people with their kids and most of the time it looks wonderfully cute and touching and full of love, but sometimes the kids have runny noses and are screaming and have a dirty diaper and I think "Is the love you feel for your kids enough to make this manageable?" I'm pretty sure that it is most of the time, but it's another one of those unknowns. Until you actually feel the love I've heard and read many describe for your own child, you can't know how it's going to affect you. And when I see the snivelling, grubby, foul tempered creatures that kids sometimes turn into, it gives me pause.

The other thing, as I said, is that I really like our lifestyle now. Besides working too much, we have a really good time together, hanging out, sleeping in (not too late but enough), going to the movies when we want to, swinging by the mall on the way home, and just doing nothing when we feel like it. I have enough experience with kids as lifelong babysitter and big sister to know that that just doesn't happen anymore with kids, at least not with any regularity, and that takes some preparation to deal with.

I think these thoughts and questions are just my manifestation of the inability to be really ready for kids. Most of me feels ready but obviously not every part. I'm going to take that as a sign of normalcy.