Friday, August 21, 2009

Coping

A very lovely mother on the girly message board I frequent has found herself in a desperately awful situation with a very, very sick child and of course, as in all these situations, she reports that a posse of well-meaning individuals throw up their hands and say "I Don't Know How You Cope!".

She feels she is NOT coping - but I'm sure my fellow fertility-challenged friends will empathise with this. I am not quite sure what the parents of healthy children, the parents of three happy rapidly-conceived, healthily-carried children spaced ideally, think the alternative is. Are they saying that if they were the parents of a sick child, they would just walk off and leave them in hospital? If they had problems conceiving, would they give up on having children (although I know this is the solution that some do end up deciding on)? Would they give up on their marriage? Stay in bed all day for 5 years?

Sometimes, as we come up to the 5th anniversary of starting to try to get pregnant, I find I just have to get up every day. And I just have to stay married. And I just have to try and see if there is a step forward.

We are officially booked on the adoption course next month. Unusually, it doesn't clash with anything. In case we do decide either to revert to domestic adoption, or go with the UK approval/US domestic adoption process, we think we should do it. It may be that we pay for it and don't use it, but it's here, now.

In other news, I've been told by the hospital to go away for a couple of months and have some physio - those who believe the NHS involves interminable waits for everything take note - I had my hospital appointment on Friday, was rung up about physio on Monday and had my first appointment on Tuesday. I am taking the exercises seriously and consequently have had to up the pain relief (though I am still not great with codeine, and was very woozy this morning after taking it last night due to a very achy arm). I went to the GP for some better anti-inflammatories and pain killers and she suggested a higher dose of ibuprofen (cheaper, it turns out, on prescription, so I have two large boxies of pink Smarties) and the codeine.

She also gave me a repeat prescription for the high dose folate - if we are, in fact, going to be spending the next year mired in immigration paperwork, rather than adoption soul-searching, I can probably stand a little reproductive suspense. Though currently, despite our best efforts, anything, er, active, is rather painful and awkward.


2 comments:

BABY STEPS said...

Wow, 5 years ttc, that's rough. Adoption, I'm glad you have somewhere to maybe move foward, through the haze of infertility uncertainty.

Anonymous said...

I am totally with you on the 'I don't know how you cope!' brigade. For some reason being told 'I don't know how you cope!' makes me very cross. 1) it just seems lacking in compassion to me, and 2) what do they expect us to do, exactly? If we did pitch a fit and stay in bed for a month, it'd be all 'what's the matter with you, you Drama Lama?'

Good luck with the adoption course. It's good to have options, it's good to be able to choose what you do. Hope it all goes well.

I'm sorry your poor arm is still giving you grief. Fingers crossed the admirably swift physio appointment helps.