1. The Important Letter.
I've sent my mom the letter via my brother (I asked him to print it out). It ended up being a 4-page MS Word document (plus a paragraph on the 5th page). Still no word from her via SMS to me. I imagine it's going to take time for her to bury the dream that she's been having for us. I hope the other half of my letter gave her comfort, because the first half talked about my honest feelings when it came to our infertility journey. It was REALLY hard to write the letter and I was on edge the whole day yesterday while waiting for the response.
In the end I contacted my brother via YM and asked him how it went. She said that mom had cried. I was so emotional during our chat in YM and I started crying, too. My bro helped explain to her that I wasn't blaming her and that I knew she meant well, but that I'd like to be supported not by her praying about a miracle pregnancy or by her telling me to keep on praying to get pregnant. I have given her more ideas on what to pray on in the letter, so hope that helps, too. My bro said that she must be sad when she read about our struggles and all the feelings that I had during the tough period of our infertility journey. I sent her an SMS yesterday, telling her that I'm thankful to have a mother who prays for me and that I love her and I ask her not to be too sad because we're doing fine.
2. Infertility and Relationships.
Sometimes I feel that infertility is a double-edged sword. When I was preparing to write the letter for my mom, I knew it would crush her, too. I don't want to crush her dream for us, but I felt that it must be done for the sake of our relationship. I began to feel our relationship cracking and I don't want to lose our relationship. I was struggling to try to find a way on how to crush her dream gently and I hope I have succeeded in doing so.
Other than that, here's also something I wrote weeks ago about infertility and friendship:
"Infertility is a tricky thing to deal
with when you have a pregnant close friend whose pregnancy reminds you of your losses. As much as you'd like your
friends to tell you as many parts of their joys and sorrows and as much
as you'd like to tell your friends about your joys and sorrows, it's not
that easy to figure out the fine line. The fine line where you don't
want to burst someone else's happy bubble by telling them that their
stories trigger very soft spots within yourself, but then again you
wonder if you should let them know about at least some of them because
you want them to understand your journey. The fine line where you wonder
how much stuff you should tell your friends about your feelings because you fear that they
are going to hold back sharing their joys because they don't want to hurt you, but on the
other hand you don't want to miss all the lovely moments even if those
moments trigger some pain within your deepest self."
It IS a shame that infertility is affecting those around me this way, but I welcome the lessons that it's giving me (and other lessons that it will give me in the future).
3. I found this article via an FB share and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it for so many different reasons so I'd share it here too: Confronting the Lie: God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle.
4. A friend of mine gave me this challenge weeks ago and I've finally found my word for 2014.
My word of the year is “Disentangle”. I need to practise disentangling
myself from any emotional connection or baggage so that I can take a
step back and celebrate other people’s beautiful moments with them
without drowning in grief when their beautiful moments are the ones that
acutely remind me of what I will never have. I want to disentangle
myself from those heavy weights that make me want to crawl or drown in
my grief so that I can stand up and continue my healing journey.
Here's the challenge in case you want to participate: What Will You Choose For Your Word of 2014?
Last but not least, Happy New Year! Wishing you more peace, comfort, and healing throughout 2014!
glitter-graphics.com
What a month! I had some training to do in another city, then right after that we went on our holiday. Before the training, one of the August babies was born. I had had a feeling that one of the three would be born during our holiday and my hunch was right. My brother's second son was born on our second week of holiday and the third August baby has either been born or will be born soon (read: like tonight or at the latest tomorrow).
During our holiday, I was planning to blog and blog-hop, but alas, the wifi in our hotel area wasn't that reliable, but then again it was a good excuse to have more quality time with hubby. We spent lazy hours in the comfort of our hotel room to avoid the sweltering midday heat playing Angry Birds LOL!!! We also sunbathed in the lounges and then swam a few times in the pool.
I also kept in touch with my mom 'coz I knew my brother's baby was due next week, so I wanted the update. The thing was that, in one SMS my Mom told me that on my last birthday, she sent a morning prayer like this: that if it was God's will, she hoped I could get pregnant but instead, the one getting pregnant was my SIL.
I was taken aback when I read the SMS, because I had clearly told her at least a few times that we had surrendered to life without kids and she had agreed that it was a good idea. This time I replied to her that we had been enjoying our life without kids and that we had even stopped doing it on my fertile window already and that we had been blessed with other blessings and we were thankful for those.
I told hubby that if I got pregnant without doing it with him on my fertile window, that would've definitely rocked our marriage. In my mind, the time we spent baby dancing during my fertile window for months and months of TTC = no pregnancy. The time we don't spend baby dancing during my fertile window these days = no pregnancy, correct? If the time we don't spend baby dancing these days = a pregnancy, that wouldn't be a miracle at all. But anyway, we didn't really linger on the topic 'coz it was tougher to "debate" in SMS messages, so the topic changed. Thankfully whenever something like this appeared, she never really tried to keep pushing at it and she knew when to back down.
Coincidentally speaking, another IFer friend sent me a message during our holiday. She and hubby had tried different alternative methods to get pregnant, but for the last few years (just like us), they had surrendered to the idea of life with kids. The problem is that apparently her parents kinda want to push them to try IUI. It seems that if they try IUI and then don't succeed, then they'll drop the topic 'coz IVF is just way too expensive for them.
The problem is, my friend isn't sure if they want to try. First of all, they have to think of both ways it can end: a failure or a success. After spending a few years of living life without kids and not thinking of life with kids, are they really ready to have a baby? However, if the IUI fails, are they ready to experience the emotional turbulence all over again? I just told her that I hoped she and hubby could make the best decision for the both of them and then accept whatever consequences coming out of the decision. And I hoped that she and hubby were on the same page concerning the decision.
Anyway, back to the August babies. My bro asked me to find some baby boy's names months ago and I gave him at least a dozen. Mind you, it was TOUGH to try to find out what kind of names (or meanings of the names) that the parents would love, even though he's my own brother. Anyway, turned out that the second first name was one of the names I gave him (actually it's one of the names I've liked since long ago and I did tell him so when I told him about that particular name - they do tweak it a little by adding two additional letters at the back of it, but still it feels nice to know that they do use it 'coz that was probably the only time I could contribute to a child's name in my entire life). :-D
Other than that, we've had a really relaxing two weeks in Bulgaria. We were feeling lazy this time, so we didn't really travel around to other places, even though it was possible to do so. We had two full body massages that was rather cheap, but quite satisfying. Now my challenge is to try to remember the things I need to remember at work and to remember the new things I have to do and figure out where things are at work 'coz they've changed the layout pretty drastically while I was in Bulgaria. But it sure feels nice to come back home and be able to catch up with friends and blogger friends. :-)
Last year started with a sad bang, which was my Dad's passing. This year started with pregnancy news from my bro's wife. I hope everything goes out fine until labour. I feel fine about the pregnancy news, though I'm not over the moon happy, but I'm happy mostly for my Mom 'coz she's been wanting to have another grandchild for a while.
Anyways, one thing I felt strongly was more relief (than when my bro had his first child). Relief 'coz it means that my parents will get more than one future generation to carry on our family name. After all, my parents only have me and my bro. And relief 'coz the next time my neighbours ask me about our offspring, I can tell them that my bro has two already and that should be more than enough LOL!!!
A few weeks ago I met a friend of mine and we talked about many topics, but we did cover the same ol' question.
Her: "So what about you? You haven't planned about babies or don't want any or are you trying?"
Me: "Errr...we did try but it didn't work out, so now we just carry on our lives without thinking about babies anymore."
Her: "But that's sad. I have a friend who tried for 12 years. They went to the doctors and they said they couldn't get pregnant naturally without going to the lab, so they decided to just give up. After they gave up, she got pregnant! Have you gone to the doctors? Do you know what's wrong with you?"
Me: "Well, first of all we didn't check ourselves up because if it was found out that there was something wrong with either one of us, then the person may feel bad about it. Plus sometimes the doctors can't even find out what's wrong and we feel that it'd be bad, as well. So we decided to just not do anything and resign to life without babies."
Her: "Oh...that's sad."
Me: "Well, I don't want to keep on staring at this empty hole created by the non-baby situation. I don't want to keep on thinking about the fact that we have no kids. I want to focus on the good things that we have and dwell upon them instead."
Her: "Ah, I understand. That's a good way of thinking."
We left it at that and then moved on to other topics. :-D
I forgot to write down about what my Mom wrote in her SMS about a few months ago. You see, I had sent her an SMS about some friends' pregnancies and MAYBE she thought that I had changed my mind - that their pregnancies had somehow make me yearn to be pregnant, because she wrote something like this: "Well, you should think positively and just keep praying so that God will grant you a pregnancy."
I was really shocked to read her words, because in the past I had clearly told her over and over again that we had surrendered to life without kids and we were not interested in trying any other means to be pregnant. So I told her again that we didn't want kids anymore and added that I had just asked hubby a few days prior about his stance on this matter and he said flat out that he didn't want kids anymore. I just wanted to make sure that he was still of the same opinion. So I hope next time I share my friends' baby/pregnancy news with my Mom, she won't write things like that anymore. Once is fine, but if she keeps writing that, I'm gonna be irritated (though knowing her, she most probably won't write such a thing again to me LOL!).
Anyhow, on a good note about us, we've booked a trip to Rome this spring. WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!! Can't wait! It'll be our first trip there, so we're excited to see what it looks like. :-D
