Domestic Enemies...

So, my wrist has been acting up a lot lately, and it's been really hard for me to type. When my wrist goes out, my fingers swell to the size of little sausages and get very stiff. I swear, it's tons of fun :-)
So, in the effort of actually continuing to post on occasion, I will repost something that I started writing for another blog and then realized that this blog had already posted on the subject. This other blog is geared for mommies of all natures, and they run a series called "The Domestic Enemies of the  _______ Mom". So, here is my list of Domestic Enemies of the Trying to Conceive Mommy!

1.       The Well Meaning Relative- About a year after we were married, and after we’d already been TTC (trying to conceive in barren-speak) for several months, my father-in-law passed away suddenly. We travelled to the funeral, and I met a lot of my husband’s extended family for the first time. At the funeral home, I met my husband’s paternal grandmother. We made our polite introductions, and she quickly followed up with, “So, you’ve been married a year and you’re not pregnant yet? Aren’t you ever having sex?” Thanks Grandma, nice to meet you! That same week, my mother-in-law looked at my thicker-than-at-my-wedding body and asked if I was pregnant. “Nope, just chubby.” At least the stranger behind us thought that one was funny…

2.       The Expense/The Insurance Game- My husband and I have never been able to afford medical intervention for our infertility. We accidentally paid out of pocket for a very few tests before realizing that no matter what they told us, out insurance didn’t actually cover any expenses that might possibly be linked to infertility. I had more than one conversation with insurance representatives over the phone who promised me that this next test or this next appointment with this new specialist would absolutely be covered, only to get a giant bill in the mail a few weeks later. Awesome.

3.       The Overly Fertile People That Suddenly Surround You- In the five years we’ve been TTC, we’ve seen friends have their first, their second, and in a few special cases, their third or fourth children. More of our friends/family have “accidentally” become pregnant than I care to keep counting. At one point or another we’ve had no fewer than SEVEN coworkers become pregnant at the same @#$^ing time. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled for each and every one of them, but it is an exquisitely painful reminder of what you can’t have when you see yourself suddenly surrounded by bulging bellies at every turn.

4.       Your Period and Everything That Comes With It- As exquisitely painful as it is to see bulging bellies poking out at you all the freaking time, that awful red smear once a month is like a stab directly to the heart. There is no clearer sign of how you’ve failed once again to do something that should come so-freaking-naturally. Except, perhaps all those negative pregnancy tests….

5.       Miscarriages- A dear friend of mine has been TTC for almost two years now, and she got the prized positive this past spring. She got to experience all the elation of finally being pregnant and finally getting to tell all her friends that they were finally having their baby. Then, she miscarried. As devastating as all those damn periods are, I can’t even imagine what this must have felt like.

6.       The Know-it-All-For years, I’ve been hearing unsolicited advice about how to get pregnant.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on what I’m doing wrong. “Try doing pregnancy yoga, it’ll really help!” Yup, I want to watch a bunch of pregnant women bending over…. “Try putting your legs over your head and keeping a pillow under your butt, you’ll conceive in no time!” Um, ow? “Try cutting out all caffeine and alcohol” Caffeine AND alcohol? Are you nuts? I’m more than happy to cut them both out for the sake of an actual pregnancy, but personally, I won’t cope with the stress of TTC without my two favorite vices.

7.       Abortion-Forget all politically correct niceties, at the end of the day abortion kills babies that haven’t been born yet. After working my butt off just to make a baby for five years, I can’t even pretend to understand how someone could possibly want to kill their baby, and it makes me angry. Like, wanting to punch things kinds of angry. Pregnancy is inconvenient to you? Keep your legs closed. You got raped? I am truly sorry, but I can’t imagine anything more wonderful coming from something so tragic.

Through all this pain, we’ve known joy. About three years ago, we adopted our son through the foster care system. He comes from such an abused, neglected background; I can’t even begin to describe it. We had wanted to adopt an infant, but when we saw his picture on-line, we were smitten. He looks just like my husband. He’s also a teenager, so we have never had the opportunity to parent a small child. So, we keep trying. We keep trying because we have absolute faith in the plans that God has for us. Without His divine comfort and guidance, we would never make it through all the pain of the past few years. We might get pregnant someday, and we might not. It’s not for us to know, it’s up to us to obey, and praise God, even in the midst of this strife.

Playing with Fire

            As young children, we are all taught a few basic lessons; “Don’t play with matches”, “Don’t stick things in electrical sockets”. I think, for the most part, we all take these lessons for granted and expect that everyone above the age of about five or six has been taught this lesson, and will abide by it.

            Young children are naturally curious and want to explore the world around them. Through the loving input of parents and other caregivers, children learn to explore in safe ways. They learn not to touch hot stovetops, to not touch broken glass, not to play with matches. They learn these actions can not only cause pain to themselves, but to those around them. They learn to control some of these exploratory impulses.

            My son was not so lucky. As a child of about five or six, he was living with a mother who was “too tired” to put food on the table for her three small children. If she was at home, she was lying on the couch. If she were not home, she would leave my son and his sisters with her boyfriend of the moment. More often than not, the children would be just plain ignored.

             So, instead of the normal period of exploration that most children go through, my child was trying to find food. He was trying to potty train his little sister, so she wouldn’t get beaten. He was trying to figure out how not to get beaten himself. He would walk to the store and try to figure out how to steal some food without getting caught because he simply needed to eat.

            Because of this profound lack of parenting in his early life, my son never learned a few key lessons that we all take for granted. He simply was never taught how to have compassion for those around him. He was never shown it; he had no idea what it looked like. He was too busy trying to survive. To this day, he doesn’t understand how to put someone else’s needs before his own. He doesn’t understand that other people have thoughts and feelings that can be hurt by the things he does. He hears people tell him that again and again, but he doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t understand why someone would want to put their own wants or needs last. It’s all about survival.

            When we were new parents, we had no concept of the depth of his disabilities in this area. We allowed him all the freedoms one would normally accord a child approaching the teen years. His bedroom was his own, and we didn’t see the need to inspect it often. That all changed the night the fire alarm went off.

            It was the middle of the winter, around 3 in the morning. The smoke alarm jolted my husband and I out of bed and the dog sat up shaking. We raced into the hallway to our son standing there, wide-eyed saying “I think I know what happened”. His door was open, and thick, black smoke was pouring out into the hallway. I turned to look into his room and I couldn’t see the window on the far wall. The room was barely six feet wide.

            He quickly admitted that he had been trying to melt Lego pieces so he could build cars that looked like they’d been accidents. He also copped to sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night a few nights earlier to swipe a box of matches. He’d realized that the matches were burning entirely too quickly to melt the Legos properly, so he’d tightly rolled sheets of paper to make little torches. When he was done, he’d stuffed the still glowing torches into drawers full of paper. Thank God, they snuffed themselves out almost instantly.

            My son spent much of the next day cleaning every surface of his room, and throwing away all the papers and tainted Legos. The bedding all had to be washed and every little cobweb now stood out in vivid black against the white walls. The carpet stunk for weeks.  We also began to do periodic sweeps of his room for contraband.

My husband and I went to the store and bought a few new “toys” for ourselves. We purchased a second fire extinguisher that was mounted right outside our son’s bedroom. We purchased a smoke alarm that we mounted right inside our son’s bedroom. We even bought an alarm for our son’s door. He is no longer able to leave his bedroom in the middle of the night without us realizing it.

We thought this incident was long behind us, and some of these more dangerous impulses were under control. That is, until this morning. My son has a small fan in his room (the window doesn’t open, another lesson we learned) that he unplugs each morning while he’s getting ready for school. Today, through some brand of magic, as he was pulling the plug out from the wall, the metal prong from his belt buckle came into contact with the prongs from the fan. Both the outlet and the plug were quite scorched and it flipped the circuit breaker in the house, just as my husband was getting into the shower.

In his ever-present survival mode, my son quickly tried to explain that it was an accident, as he was getting dressed. He’d left his belt open and the prongs accidently brushed into each other when he bent over. My husband had him reenact this action, and to no surprise of anyone, the two prongs stayed far apart. The story quickly changed to reflect that the belt had been in his hand, not around his waist. The truth was hiding from no one.

So, yet again, we find ourselves at a crossroads. How does one parent a child who has the emotional maturity and impulse control of a small child, while still allowing that child the freedoms accorded to most teenagers? I’m not talking the privilege of going out with friends on a Friday night; I’m simply talking about being able to trust that he won’t do something to hurt himself or someone else. For the time being, we’ve removed anything with a plug from his room. I know this is a bit of an overreaction, and not a real solution. I guess the contraband sweeps will have to extend to anything metal now.

My Traditionally Nontraditional Family

            I was raised in what used to be a normal, two-parent household. My parents have been happily married for 36 years. My husband was not so lucky, his parents divorced when he was a teenager after a less-than-happy marriage. My husband and I have been married for nearly six years, and we are in it for the long-haul.

            We belong to a conservative, Catholic Church and practice our faith fully. We did not have sex before we got married and attend Mass every Sunday, no excuses.  Although, much to my husband’s dismay, I curse like a sailor, we do not take the Lord’s name in vain. We bless our food before each meal and regularly pray for an end to abortion. We are not like most other couples our age.

            About nine months after we were married, we started trying to have a baby. After about eighteen months of trying without a hint of success, we started to pursue adoption. We couldn’t afford an international adoption, so we looked into our domestic options, and quickly decided we would adopt through the foster care system. We began our search by looking at children’s pictures on-line and kept coming back to the picture of an eleven year old boy. We had been looking for a younger child, but were inexplicably drawn to this not-too-little boy’s picture again and again. I called the agency the next morning.

            After several background checks and months of training classes, our now twelve year old son moved in with us just in time to start school at the local middle school that year. We had been apprised of his various troubles and we thought we were prepared to handle it. We had no idea what we were in for.

            Our son had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, reactive attachment disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He was also extremely small for his age, and now at 15, still only stands four feet ten inches tall. He struggled dramatically in school, and we quickly realized he needed a medication overhaul. I hate that my child has, at one point or another, taken five different mental health medications and two different growth treatments. He simply cannot function without these medications. Believe me, we've tried, and it’s not pretty.

            But, at the end of the day, he finally has the home he has deserved his entire life. He has two parents who love him and are committed to providing him with what’s best, no matter what. He has two parents who are involved in his schooling, and meet with the school whenever needed. He really hates that sometimes, but he no longer tries to convince us he'd rather be back with his birth mother. When he came to us, he was entering the sixth grade, but only reading at an early second grade level. Starting the ninth grade, he’s gained more than four years’ worth of reading skill in a little more than three years.  He misses his sisters sometimes, but he loves his cat and his dog. He loves his church, and is forming strong bonds with the other kids in his youth group.

            Raising a child with mental illness is never an easy trip. Many days are good, many days are not. There have been some extremely rough patches when we all wanted out. We have a sign that hangs in our living room that reads, “Forever and for always, no matter what”. We live by that.

            So, we get by. When he first moved in with us, our son used to ask which one of us he would live with when we got a divorce. Not if, mind you, but when. He would actively try to make that happen. It’s taken years, but he finally understands that won’t happen. We have to work at it every single day, family is work. Love is work. Love is worth it. Family is worth the effort.

Finding a New Normal

The past several months have yielded a lot of changes around here.  At the beginning of the summer, I packed my family up and we moved three states away. My husband and I had talked about someday moving back home to be closer to my extended family, almost since the day we were married. We always figured we’d stay in Maine long enough to see our precious little church grow, thrive and be able to survive without us.

After struggling to take off for several years, our lovely little church in Maine finally closed its doors early this past spring. We were sad to see it happen, but not surprised when it finally did. We lost a very large part of our lives that day.

We’d seen the closing coming down the pipeline for several months and had been talking more openly about the possibility of moving in the near future. We wanted to prepare our son, who at 15 had already lived in more homes, and been the new kid at school more times than he’d changed grades. We struggled with putting him through this change again, since we had just moved him to a new school the year before, but it wasn’t going well. We didn’t care at all for the education he was receiving, and were not prepared to continue fighting that hard until he graduated high school.

So, when the church closed in early March, we let him know for certain that we would be moving away this summer, probably right after school got out. To put it bluntly, he did not take the news well. The next several months were some of the toughest we’d faced together. But, through the grace of God, we made it to the end of June, when we said some tearful goodbyes, packed the truck and headed to our new home.

When we arrived, neither of us had jobs. It was kind of fun, none of us had to race off to work or school and we could laze around in our pajamas and occasionally unpack a box or two. We’d go to friends’ houses for supper, spend time with my parents and grandparents and watch entirely too much Phineas and Ferb.  It was a nice, easy summer.

By the end of the summer, my husband had found a job, and our son was going back to school (high school, eek!). I was still looking for employment, although half-heartedly. For many years, I’ve harbored a not-so-secret fantasy of being a stay-at-home-mom. I’ve wanted to be able to cook all my family’s meals from scratch, hang laundry outside on the line and can things like jellies and jams. Since I’ve been home all the time, I’ve been able to do all that, plus many more little things. I’ve been able to reorganize closets when they drive me crazy and I’ve been able to make some of my own cleaning supplies again. I’ve been able to make lunches for my husband and call my son’s school when something comes up. I love this gig.

Still, it’s an adjustment. I still need to find a job, and I’ve gone back to school for nursing. When I announced my plans to go back to school, my dear friend told me it was about time. She always saw me as a nurse when we grew up. I refuse to believe that I’m growing up.

So, here I sit, still in my pajamas at nearly nine thirty in the morning. My son and my husband are both off to school, and I was awake to see them off. So far, I like this new normal…

A Quick Introduction to Stretchy Mom Copes

First, I feel like I need to explain the title of this blog. When I was about 13, I began to have some problems with my right knee. I had been kicking a soccer ball in the backyard with my dog one night, and my knee hurt for days afterward. My parents took me back and forth to the doctor over the next few months, as it wasn’t getting better. The pediatrician referred us to an orthopedic surgeon who commented that my joints were more flexible than usual. He said it wasn’t unusual for girls my age, and that I could expect to grow out of it in a few years. Over the next few years, I began to have pain in my other knee, and both my ankles.

Several years later, I went off to college and began to have pain in my hips and my back. There were days I struggled just to walk across campus to get to my classes. My parents took me back to the doctor who referred me to a rheumatologist. He checked me for a number of different joint conditions, none of which seemed to quite fit my symptoms. The one that came closest was Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, type three. He wouldn’t/couldn’t make a diagnosis because thinking at the time didn’t allow for positive diagnosis without a family history. No one else in my family has joint problems. I left there with a daily regimen of over the counter pain medications.

For the next several years, I was back and forth to the doctor with various joint ailments. I tried several treatments, from steroids to various pain pills to all sorts of physical therapy. Nothing made a significant difference.  After much trial and error, I found that a mix of Vicodin, muscle relaxers, rest and ice was enough to manage the worst of my symptoms. Of course, the side effects of the pills prohibit me from taking them during the day, but it makes a big difference at night. I also saw a different rheumatologist who gave me a diagnosis of benign hypermobile joint syndrome, which also happens to be known as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, type three.

So, in a nutshell, I live with chronic joint pain. I’ve got the joints of someone more than twice my age and I’ve got arthritis in my right knee and degenerative disc disease in my back. I have swelling and stiffness in my hands and wrists and near constant back pain. However, I am so fortunate. Most people with my condition are MUCH worse off than I am. Others face constant joint dislocations that have to be professionally reset. I’ve only dislocated on a few occasions, and I’ve always been able to manage it myself.

Despite all this, I live. In high school, I trained as a figure skater. In college, I climbed a few of the Adirondack High Peaks. Right after college, I packed up my life and moved to Maine, away from everything and everyone I knew. Four days after I moved, I met the man who would later become my husband. We fell quickly in love and were married 14 months after we met for the first time. When we struggled to get pregnant, we adopted our son through the Maine foster care system. I’ve worked for years with children with disabilities, and am currently enjoying a less-than-voluntary-but-highly-enjoyed stay at home mom gig. Several months ago, my family and I moved from Maine back to New York to be nearer to my extended family. Also, I’ve gone back to school to pursue my nursing degree.

So, that’s the brief overview of the life I’ll portray in Stretchy Mom Copes.  It won’t always be pretty, but I’ll try really hard to make sure it’s funny!