Peaks and Valleys July 30, 2004
Warning: mother-in-law vent below.
Wednesday was a pretty good day for me in the grand scheme of things. We had a great IVF consult, and I experienced a sense of nervous anticipation and excitement all day long. Yesterday, not so much. It didn’t help that my day started with a blood draw, and for some reason it hurt more than the previous ones.
Then I received an email from my mother-in-law. She had sent me a poem entitled What a Baby Costs. I’m not going to post it here, but the gist of it was that having a baby in your life is worth all of the work that they comes with them. This is what she wrote at the opening of the email: “I had been looking for this poem that I read many years ago. Just a little inspiration to know that what you are going through will be worth every penny and every moment of doubt and disappointment.” Really? Do you think I would put myself and your son through all of this if I didn’t think it would be worth it? This email just made me ball. I’d give anything to be a mom. I want it so badly. I don’t need anyone telling me it will be worth it.
This morning I had two more emails from her in my inbox. The title line of one read: “A prayer was sent for you.” I guess she had sent it from some site that sends out prayers, I don’t know. Anyway, it was St. David’s Infertility Prayer. I had never heard of this. Here it is:
Thank you, Lord for all the blessings in my life. Help me to remember them as I face the challenges of infertility. I pray that I can surrender myself into your hands. Let me accept the reality of this situation and have the wisdom and coura
ge to take action where I can. Strengthen my body, mind and spirit to endure the trials of infertility. Keep me ever mindful of the needs of others and grant us your peace. Amen.
No offense to anyone , but having this sent to me is not helpful. It makes me feel like shit, to be honest. The first two sentences make me feel guilty to feel mad, sad, depressed, etc. about infertility. Right now, I need to let it take over my life. I know that doesn’t work for some people, but I just can’t focus on “happy things” when I’m dealing with something of this magnitude. About the third sentence, I’m not surrendering to anyone. The only way I’m staying semi-sane is to take control of the situation as much as possible. Oh, and the last sentence, it just sounds like, “Your problems are not significant enough to focus on over everyone else’s needs.” I’m sorry, but I need to focus on me and others going through the same thing (ie. my blogging friends) right now. I know I’m probably over analyzing this whole thing, but that’s just where I am right now.
The second email from her this morning was a link to Resolve of Houston and a note saying that this might be of interest to me if I hadn’t heard of it. Um, yes. Resolve is one of the first sites I went to when we were first diagnosed with infertility. How could anyone as research driven as me, not know about Resolve? The other thing is, there’s a link to Resolve’s site on the new blog I created for our families.* If I’ve linked to the site, don’t you think I’ve heard of it?
* Yes, I started another blog just for our families. (I’m not about to send out the link to this one, am I?) Here, about a month ago, I was debating this very subject. I decided to go ahead and do it, and I’ve been very impressed with our families. The amount of support we’ve gotten has been amazing. No one’s been judgmental. They’ve all just send kind words, and want to know if there’s anything they can do to help. I may regret my decision to keep them all up to date on this whole IVF mess, but right now it’s working for us.
I know my mother-in-law means well and has good intentions in all of this, but her emails are just reminders of the pain. I guess these emails are better than the one’s she sent before. After I emailed my hubby the latest this morning, he emailed me back and said that he’s going to email his mom about all of this. I really don’t know if that’s the best thing to do. I don’t want to get these kinds of emails anymore, but I don’t want his mom to be pissed at me. My relationship with my mother-in-law got off to a rocky start, to say the least. Let’s just say, that at one point in time (many years ago when my husband and I had only been dating a couple of months) she threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave her house. The first few years of our relationship did not go well with respect to my husband’s parents. They hated me. Then my mother-in-law got breast cancer. She’s ok now, but it totally changed my inlaws. Ever since then, our relationship has been much better. So, after all that, I don’t want to go back to them hating me. It’s a tough situation.
Yesterday ended with me balling my eyes out in my husband’s arms. It just all hit me at once. I’ve been trying so hard to be so strong and determined, that I haven’t been dealing with the underlying feelings of sadness and despair. Plus, I don’t think that dealing with some hard core PMS has helped any of this. I feel a little better this morning. Sometimes it just helps to get it all out.
- Posted in : various other ramblings
- Author : amanda
Comments»
Could it be possible for you to talk to your MIL? Explain to her how you feel, even though her heart is in the right place, what she is doing is upsetting you. My MIL was one of my best friends but she did stuff
that hurt me all of the time without realizing she was doing it, and it hurt her when I didn’t talk to her myself rather than having my husband talk to her. But every situation is different.
I hope everything works out. :)
When do you expect to officially start your IVF?
Jennifer a.k.a Summerbreeze
Hi Jennifer. I don’t think I would feel comfortable talking to my MIL directly about this. We have an ok relationship now, but my husband’s family lives across the country, so it’s not like I see or talk to them that often. I guess I really just don’t want to hurt her feelings, because I know she’s not intentionally trying to make me feel badly. I don’t know if we’re going to do anything about the situation or not. My husband said he wanted to talk about it before he actually decides if he’s going to email her. Maybe I’m being too sensitive, I don’t know.
On the IVF front, today is cycle day 1 for me, so I have a call into the IVF coordinator. I’ll be starting bcp on Sunday, so I guess that marks the official start. Thanks for your thoughts.
Hey, I know the national Resolve site has some great info geared towards ‘those on the fringes’ of IVF - meaning your family and friends. At least I think it was on the web site and not somewhere else thru them. Anyway, maybe just find that article and send it out to her and anyone else that needs it (use the BCC field for all addresses that way they have no idea if its just them or a billion others!) with a note that says something like “Hey all, I know that this is not just a hard thing for us but for those that love us. So many want to know what they can do to help - thought this article could say it better than I can. Thanks for your love and support.”
It’ll give her the outline of what a third party is deeming “useful” vs “hurtful” and it won’t be you saying “leave me alone!” Yeah, its mildly passive agressive, but sometimes you need that. The thing about it is - I can see your point, but I also read what you write and know that she’s really only trying to be supportive and helpful. Yeah, it makes you cry and it hurts and you don’t need to keep hurting any more than this whole darn thing does anyway - but unless someone tells her the *right* way to help, she won’t know and just keep fumbling around the way she is now. Good luck - both with MIL and IVF!!!!
Thanks for your good wishes, Sandy. I have several of those articles from the Resolve site bookmarked. I do know that my MIL means well, and I’ve always tried to preface my gripes with that sentiment. It’s just that sometimes I need a place to bitch and moan. Just being able to complain about it on my blog helps. I do think your point about conveying the “right” way to help is a good one. Oh, and I’m all about being passive aggressive.
ha! I hear ya Amanda - my whole blog is often nothing more than a place for me to whine. :) vent away - its your blog!
Amanda, one thing to be careful about, on your “family” blog you’ve got links to several other blogs (including mine), and on MY blog I have a link to your REAL blog.
Just something to keep in the back of your mind, if you are concerned about family finding this blog they could in fact find it through someone else’s.
Good luck now that day 1 is underway. Anxious to hear from you how this goes, I will be about 1 month behind you with our first IVF.
Dawn, the link that’s in this post is just to another post in th
is blog. I think that is what you were referring to. My family blog is under a totally different blogger account, and believe me, there are no links to anything in my “blogworld” on that one. I’m sure they could find this blog if they were to do enough digging on google, but I watch my google search referrals just in case.
I’m anxious to see how things go from here on out, too. I’m glad that you guys are going to be able to “move on to the big guns” and I hope it works for you.
Oh, and if by some chance any of my family members stumbled across this blog, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. This is me, and I guess they would just have to deal with that.
Amen, sister.