Stark contrast

Today I skipped work.

I feel a little guilty, but I truly and absolutely needed it.

I need time to reflect what all that has been happening means and I also found that it has nothing to do with the way I was living some months ago when I got pregnant.

Major work issues, big proposals to fund Fertility.Care in Mexico and an overwhelming amount of requests on this matter from IF couples to institutions to my own training program, our adoption process, my own health issues, my grief after my miscarriage, family pressure, etc.

I also found the Fertility diary I was using when I was trying to get pregnant a few months ago and I was blown away....

Its a diary where you put all your medicines, alternative therapies, thoughts, feelings, excercise and diet related to IF and it helps you keep track of everything. I used it to motivate myself to get healthy and to become closer to God.

I found it last night and it was fascinating. And it hit me right in the face.

It journals the 2 months prior to my 1st ever pregnancy after 3 years of IF. I had decided to follow the path that Ran.dine Lewis had suggested to me in her Fertile So.ul retreats. I was very, very clear to her that I would never do IVF and I was suprised since she completly agreed with me and actually was very interested in Napro.

She had told me: From true LIFE comes LIFE. From living life to the fullest in terms of health, spirituality, joy, peace. Only from truly living can you be truly fertile.

Embark in this journey fully and you will be fertile, maybe not have a baby, but fertile in terms of living LIFE.

So I had embarked on a true quest for this balance. I yearned for LIFE after 3 years of never ending grief (please read my side bar and you will learn what these 3 years were like). I yearned for a baby, but was letting go. I wanted to LIVE.

My diary has all of this written down:

I ramped up my prayer life doing several group novenas (St. Gianna Molla, Our Lady who unties Knots, St, Anthony) and had become a regular at Adoration. I set a time each day for meditation either with books or with CD´s. I was in regular contact with Him.

I was doing the practitioner work that I found that I loved deeply. I was able to combine it with my full time work and it gave me tremendous joy. I felt the call of a vocation.

I was doing excercise via Nia ( a type of dance with body expresion of feelings), Tai chi, was on a strict anti-inflammatory diet, was taking tons of supplements and doing accupuncture regularly. I lost weight.

I also was on the full dose of T3 for the first time, high doses of vitamin b12 which my nutritionist thought I was missing and started Nal.trexone.

I also was fully in love with my DH. I felt an intense love for him that I had not felt since the beginning of our woes.

I started to enjoy life as I had not before and I was truly, truly, truly happy when some close friends adopted after 10 years of IF. Something that I was not able before .

It gave me tremendous hope instead of envy.

And in the midst of this all I got pregnant.

I was shocked. My heart was now fully open to adoption and this happens?.

I also was fearful. I knew miscarriage existed.

And then 5 weeks later I miscarried.

And I ended in the hospital 4 days later for 4 days of contractions, full blown bleeding and anemia. Physical and emotional pain I had never felt in my whole life.

Full blown grief. I could not pray anymore. I did not take care of my body. I did no care anymore.

A strack contrast to when I got pregnant.

During the last 2 months I worked my way up the grief. I started to regain my energy somewhat (although not fully) and tried to find balance. The start of the adoption proceedings has given me also some peace.

I thought I had conquered the grief when last week I lost my footing again. And reading this diary showed me how much.

Major issues at work (i had my first ever confrontation with my conterpart that was doing bad things last Friday and I almost quit my 12 year old job). I need to work and I cannot lose it. And although it seemed DH would get a great job it has not materialized and it seems it will not.
So I left the office feeling completly tied to a job I do not like anymore.

Fertility.Care has become a burden rather than a vocation. I have not been able to handle all the requests for presentations, offfers of donations, etc. I am the first practitioner in Mexico in the last years and this means that I am starting many things. There is a tremendous need for this and people are excited.

On Friday I was called to a meeting with a major player on the Bioethics arena in Mexico and he wants me to meet with 2 of the most important pro-life donors in the country. They have heard about Napro and want me to present a plan. They set a date for next week.

This is very, very serious money and I felt like it all was on my shoulders. The weight of the world on me.

He tells me this is my responsability since there is no true option against IVF, but this one.

And I am inundated with IF requests.

And I have not even been able to graduate.

What does God want from this? Instead of peace I feel fear? I need urgent discernment.

I have not excercised and my diet is a joke (I have been on an anti-inflammatory diet again since Tuesday of last week and have not done it as I should).

I have not done meditation, nor prayer. . .

I have not retested my thyroid which I suspect is again off and my mucus cycles are irregular (Variable return of peak type mucus) and I am afraid of what this means.

Did the doctor harm my cervix? Is it from the miscarriage? But both local Dr and Dr. H have told me to start to try to conceive since last cycle.

My cycles were my consolation in the midst of IF Tons of 10 CKL during the fertile phase. I have not seen it since I got pregnant. Now its a confusing array of 4´s, 10 SL´s and one minor 8 KL. In stark contract to 5 days of 10 CKL even 2 or 3 times a day! My body is not cooperating anymore.

I also have noticed that the feelings of grief have returned.

I want to be a mother more than anything and God asked me to give Him my baby.

Yet I can be happy and alive living a childless life, adopting or being a biological mother.

I want to LIVE like in the glorious months before I got pregnant. Close to God, very healthy, doing what He wants , happy.

My DH needs me, but more important of all I need myself heatlhy , focused and able to discern.

And I need God.

So today I skipped work and started the day with excercise, a long talk with a very close friend that knows my journey well , reread my fertility diary and will end it in Adoration, puting things in true order.

I will try to listen to Him.