Do I get a prize?

I recently went for my annual checkup with my family dr, & while my blood pressure was holding steady at 120/80 (yay me), apparently my ferretin (iron) levels were very low. Yep, not only am I hypothyroid & hypertensive (not to mention infertile, but that's neither here nor there…), now I'm anemic too! Do I get a prize??

I went to his office again this morning to talk about it, & he showed me my results. "Normal" ferretin levels are about 10-280-something -- I was at 10. He gave me the name of a non-prescription iron pill I could get at the drugstore, & I got a bottle on my break this morning. I'm hoping they'll do the trick, without too many side effects. I asked his receptionist if I needed to come back for another reading, & she said to call when I've finished the bottle.

Apparently heavy periods can be a major factor behind anemia, & I've certainly had some of those lately. I just figured it was perimenopause raising its ugly head. I've mentioned it to Dr. Ob-gyn and he's never seemed too concerned. Family Dr. asked whether I was feeling fatigued. "Hey, who isn't??" I said. I wish I just could feel normal & healthy -- it seems like there's always something... -- although I realize that both "normal" & "healthy" are relative terms & that I really don't have that much to be complaining about when compared to the problems of others…

In other news, we (finally) bought a vanity on Tuesday night. Couldn't get hold of stepBIL (apparently he was out of town), it wouldn't fit in the car & the rental van wasn't available, so we wound up having it delivered. Even though we bought it Tuesday night, the first available delivery date was today (!) & "anytime between 7 a.m & 6 p.m.," of course. Dh took the day off to stay home & wait, and it finally arrived around 11 a.m. Not quite sure how it's going to look (I think the wood colour is fine but I would have preferred a white marble-ish top), but I was under pressure to make up my mind…! What do you think?

StepBIL arrived late in the afternoon, tore out the old vanity & sink & set some floor tiles where the old one used to be. He'll be here bright & early tomorrow to resume work (grout floor tiles, paint, new toilet & new vanity). Dh & I will be going out for part of the morning (just as well, it gets awfully noisy in here sometimes when he's working...!). Our pg loss support group is holding a waterfront fundraising 5k walk/run. It's been going on for a few years now but this is the first year we'll take part (walking, NOT running!! & paying a flat entrance fee vs collecting pledges) -- at least, so long as the forecasted rain holds off...

Time to watch the U.S. presidential debate...! Happy Friday, & have a good weekend!

It could always be worse...

I've always said that -- no matter how much I may whine & complain about my life -- I thank the Powers That Be that I was born a woman at this particular time in history (late 20th century) and in this particular place (Canada), recognizing that the vast majority of the world's female population doesn't have it anywhere near as good as I do.

Granted, it's not fun or easy being childless & infertile -- but, as this article reminds us, those of us fortunate enough to live in North America still have it pretty darned good, all things considered...

Where I've been lately...

The last few weeks have been a total madhouse chez Loribeth & dh. Let me describe some of what's been going on, topic by topic:

Babies: The weekend before last, we were at FIL's house -- and so was stepBIL-in-law (stepMIL's youngest son) and his wife, with their new baby boy. I brought a gift (Baby Gap) & even held him for awhile as he slept and his bursting-at-the-seams-with-pride grandmother & aunt fawned over him. Oddly enough, it did not faze me in the least.

Monday was my pregnant coworker's baby shower at the office. Somehow I got roped into helping organize it & take pictures, not to mention (another) trip to Baby Gap for a gift, & a trip to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of pink champagne (we knew it was girl) on behalf of one of the bosses. Again, it did not faze me (much). Going home on the commuter train that night, though, I couldn't help but notice two very pregnant women -- one across the aisle & one just down the aisle. THAT irritated me and made me want to rant about the injustice of the universe, for some reason.

Pg coworker's due date was Oct. 3rd. Her last day was originally supposed to be last Friday, then it got moved back to Wednesday… but Wednesday morning, we got an e-mail that her water had broken, & by noon, we had another e-mail (from her husband's BlackBerry), telling us where all the stuff she had been working on was, & by the way, she was 9 cm dilated & ready to push (!!). The baby (girl) was born about an hour later!

I had a laugh trying to explain the significance of having your water break to two of my (single, male) co-workers in their early 30s. The one guy was quite concerned because this was a few weeks earlier than due date -- was the baby going to have to be in an incubator? I said I really didn't think so, not at this point in the pregnancy. I tend to forget that not everyone is as well-informed about all this stuff as I am. And then I had to reflect ruefully on how it is that I know all this stuff when I don't have any (living) children to point to as evidence that I've earned my stripes…

And speaking of work...

Work: Year end activities are gearing up. I need to find my mojo, and fast. Enough said...!

Dh works in a trading job for a brokerage on Bay Street -- the Wall Street of Canada. As the old saying goes, when the U.S. sneezes, Canada catches a cold (or something like that…), so needless to say, the recent carnage on Wall Street has had repercussions here, & been pretty stressful & exhausting for him.

Of course not only is he dealing with a mess at work, he's also dealing with one at home:

Home: As I mentioned in a recent post, we are in the middle of a bathroom renovation. Our bathroom has early-80s beige fixtures, which I can live with, but the doors on the vanity keep falling off, the toilet sometimes runs (& runs… & runs…), & the tub has been rusting & mildewing. A few years back, it was leaking onto the floor of the linen closet behind it. Some new taps & caulking fixed that, but last winter, we noticed it a wet spot on the living room ceiling close to the wall, right below the tub. We recaulked the tub, but it immediately started leaking again. Dh finally agreed with me that more drastic action was called for. And so… bathroom reno!!

His stepbrother (the new dad) is doing the work for us. He has a small business doing this sort of work. He was here three days last week, during which he replaced the tub, tiled & grouted the walls, and stripped the old wallpaper. We haven't heard from him in a few days (even contractors who are "family" can act like typical contractors, it seems...!), but I think he was waiting for us to make our minds up on a vanity, which we ordered tonight & should arrive on Friday. (Speaking of stress...!) My mother is coming for (Canadian) Thanksgiving in mid-October, and is very scent sensitive to things like glue & paint smells -- so I want to have this done & the house well aired before she arrives.

It's times like these, when everything is covered in drywall dust, that I'm thankful we don't have small children running around the house! -- although I must admit, he has been amazingly tidy, cleaning things up as he goes. Thank goodness!

I'm hoping to post some before/during/after photos for a future Show & Tell... for now, if you'd like a peek at some of our choices, here are some links with pictures of the tub, wall tiles and accent border tiles. I'm planning on dark blue towels, shower curtain, bath mat, etc., to pick up the blue in the border tile. : ) The vanity we picked is a dark reddish-brown wood with a beige marbled look top which I'm hoping will look OK with the tiles on the wall as well as on the floor.

Travel: We spent last weekend visiting friends (fellow bereaved parents, who now have a toddler son) in a small city about a 1.5-2 hour drive away. Left Saturday morning, returned Sunday afternoon. They moved there six months ago & have been hounding us to come for a visit. She & I started comparing calendars back in June, & this was the first date we could come up with that was mutually agreeable (!).

We're very glad we went -- we had a really nice time. (And returned with a severe case of house envy, lol -- they have a two-year-old 2,700 foot four bedroom house with a kitchen/family room/eating area across the back of the house that is to die for.) I'd forgotten how refreshing even a little weekend getaway to visit friends can be. It seems silly, because of course we have no kids and few obligations to worry about -- there is no reason why we can't just take off for the weekend or a mini-vacation as the spirit moves us -- but it seems like we never do, at least, we haven't in the past several years. I'm hoping there will be more such trips in the near future.

"Just adopt," indeed....

Also in The Toronto Star earlier this week: a front-page feature article on how international adoptions from many countries are becoming increasingly difficult. The comments section includes some hot debates on all sides of the adoption issue.

Book/articles: "Nobody's Father"

This week, the Toronto Star is running excerpts from a new book called "Nobody's Father: Life Without Kids" -- a collection of essays by childless/free men. It appears to be a companion volume to a similar essay collection called "Nobody's Mother" (which is in my huge "to read" stack).

Today's essay is a by a father whose only son died of cancer as a teenager. Even though our circumstances are very different, there is much in his account of grief that I can relate to. Dh said he could totally relate to the line "bereaved parents have an indifference to life." As usual, the reader comments are highly interesting.

There are links to the previous two essays, and there will be more tomorrow & Friday. These men come at childless/free living from a variety of circumstances. I'm sure infertility & pregnancy loss are probably covered somewhere, but will have to find the book to find out for sure...!

Too many posts, too little time...

I'll bet I have more than half a dozen posts started -- in my drafts folder, in jottings that I e-mail from work to myself at home during the day, in my head -- about the political campaigns in both the U.S. & Canada, about my time at home in September 1998, about grief & spirituality (in response to a 6x6 meme at Glow in the Woods), about seeing & holding stepBIL's new baby last weekend & then helping to organize pg co-worker's baby shower yesterday (I survived both just fine -- although the sight of two very pregnant women on the train home later last night just about did me in...!).

But life has this funny habit of getting in the way of the stuff we REALLY want to be doing, now, doesn't it?

For one thing, year-end season, our busiest time of the year at work, is now in full swing, & I am SWAMPED. :(

For another, we are in the middle of a bathroom renovation!! starting with a new tub & tiles (after our old one was so unkind as to leak through onto the living room ceiling, even after multiple attempts at recaulking). StepBIL is doing the work for us & is doing a fabulous job... but he was here until after 8 tonight, & there are still trips to Home Depot to make, drywall & cement dust to clean up later, etc. etc., not to mention the inconvenience of traipsing up & down to the other bathroom in the basement for showers, etc. (I'm hoping -- fingers crossed -- to do a post about it for Mel's Show & Tell on the weekend.)

Thursday night is our support group meeting, and this weekend, we're off to visit friends (also bereaved parents -- former support group clients, in fact) -- a date we made in back in JUNE!!

And I have dived into "The Baby Trail," the next Barren B*tches book club selection.

So if my posts have been scarce & my comments on your blogs scarcer, now you know why. Soon, soon...

The problem with other people's pregnancies

...is not just that they are a reminder of what I almost had/don't have/will never have. It's also that every new pregnancy means however many months that I have another pregnant woman and baby to worry about. To pray about. To hope, through my jealousy, that they'll never have to know the things I now know.

My pg co-worker had an appointment this morning & was supposed to be in the office later. Around noon, my boss sent around an e-mail that sent chills down my spine. My co-worker had left her a message: she'd been sitting at the dr's office/hospital since before 8 that morning. She finally realized, after about two hours, that they had forgotten all about her (!!). Then, the ultrasound machine "didn't work." And now she had to wait some more, because the dr was in surgery but "wanted to talk to her." So she wouldn't be in the office after all -- after her appointment was (finally) done, she was heading home and would "work" from there.

To anyone else, this is one of those "dr's offices, what can ya do?" bureaucractic bungles that you roll your eyes at. (And given what I've heard about this particular hospital, I am not at all surprised...!)

Any mother who has ever experienced a stillbirth, however, will no doubt be reading between the lines, as I did, and letting their imaginations run amok. Broken machine? The dr wants to "talk" to her??

I honestly felt physically ill for awhile. I even e-mailed dh about it. I waited all afternoon, bracing myself for another call or e-mail... which, thankfully, never came.

I will still be holding my breath tomorrow morning, though. And probably every morning until I hear that the baby is safely here, and everyone is OK.

My co-worker lives in the same general neck of the woods as I do -- the same area that the pregnancy loss support group that dh & I help facilitate draws clients from. One of my greatest nightmares is to have someone that I know come walking through the doors at one of our meetings.

Not only that -- the hospital where she is set to deliver her baby has had a troubled history when it comes to obstetrics. They will tell you all is well now, of course -- but at one point, a few years back, there was talk of closing the unit entirely (leaving a population of several hundred thousand people without obstetric services & travelling to other hospitals further afield for care), because of the "problems" there, which were well documented in several of the local newspapers. Let's just say that I have heard about some of those problems firsthand, but for reasons of confidentiality cannot discuss them with her (or here). She IS aware of the hospital's reputation -- & in fact switched drs mid-pregnancy because of what she'd heard from a friend -- but she is not aware in the same way that I am, I am sure.

So many secrets to keep. So many emotions to keep a lid on. I know pregnant women often say they feel like they're going to "pop." Right now, I do too. Just a little while longer...

Update, Friday morning: All is well... she's is just stressed out, understandably. It HAS been a stressful pregnancy for her (me too, lol). She was telling me about her day yesterday & that she has to go back in for more bloodwork tomorrow, saying, "What else can go wrong?" While I sat there with a semi-smile frozen on my face thinking, "You really, REALLY don't want to know..."