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May 14, 2008

So Not Off the Charts...

I started charting.

I never wanted to chart. I either purchased or was given all the necessary tools – calendar, thermometer, books about lady parts -- to start charting five months ago and I just didn’t want to. I could not face the fact that normal happy couple relations inside of a normal happy relationship did not reward me with a baby and I’m pissed off about that.

Well…

The emotion surrounding the non-baby has range. It goes from standard pessimism (the regular Melissa Beck brand) to annoyed to angry to holy shit oh my g-d am I crying alone listening to Wendy Williams on the drive home? Wow! I can’t believe I care this much to start crying with absolutely no trigger. Heeeeey! How you doing? (And to think, all these “donkeys” just get pregnant, just like that.)

Then there’s resigned. Some days resigned feels more like who gives a fuck? I’ll just stay skinny and vain and pour excess attention on the flatness of my torso to distract me from the fact that I hate my own ill functioning guts on the interior of said flat torso. It ain’t even that flat so I don’t know why I’m fronting.

It’s like: best friend soul mate husband, check. Mold-free, raccoon-free home filled with mid-century modern snobby furniture that I actually use freely without guilt, check. Money in the bank just in case the baby gets hungry or needs dental work (mad likely), check. A full set of culturally diverse grandparents on both sides! Who has grandparents? Everyone does, I know. But as a child, I didn’t really experience that. I had a grandmother in the Philippines and I was so little I can hardly remember knowing her. And sadly, I do not know much about her in general - not her death, not her life. Cool language barrier. It's really frustrating. Then, I had one American grandfather and he lived far away and he visited once when I was 9. He cooked me some eggs. He was adorable and tiny and well-dressed. He brought his girlfriend, yes he did. I enjoyed the irony of his name. A black man named Ivory. I would sit across the kitchen table from him and stare at him and find all the pieces of me, quietly amazed. He passed away a few years ago. I was really sad even though I didn’t know him like how people know their grandfathers in peanut butter commercials. So again, I ask. Um, what’s the problem, baby? Who do you think you are to deny my gifts?

Then I realize I am a freak. That I can’t displace the blame on a non-existent baby that it’s my responsibility to create. That I am becoming a crazy person, talking to myself. Having entire wide-awake dream sequences and fantasies about a person that does not exist. I am out of my mind. I always wonder if I’m getting lead poisoning from my thermometer, you know.

I even tried to convince myself that I had a learning disability to avoid charting. One look at all the boxes and symbols and I was like “Math? Oh hell no.” And I promised myself, with a timeframe, I’d only keep “trying” the regular way of you know, lay down with the man and stay optimistic. Like, “okay we’ll go three more weeks of the regular way and then I’ll try that thermometer.” Three weeks pass, cool period. Fine, three more weeks once my period ends, hardcore regular way and then maybe I’ll take the thermometer out of the package.

It was like I managed to make myself believe that if it required “work” or extraordinary note-taking that I was somehow damaged, stupid or incompetent. I don’t even really have self-esteem issues that deep, but I was just so mad at myself at the top of this unfortunately labor-intensive “journey” that I deemed it punishment to take my temperature every morning at 6 am and then to snoop all around and indicate which kind of cervical mucus I’m experiencing – yo, doing way too much. I will not, I will not! test the positioning of my cervix until they tell me that I am unlike every other human woman and I have a horn growing out of my back which is somehow obscuring my fallopian tubes and that it’s absolutely necessary. I’m all for body science – pilonidal cysts, ingrown toenails – love all that shit (on other people). But digging around myself for science? No thanks.

Ugh charting. It’s essentially staying after school, writing “I can’t get pregnant” on the chalkboard 365 times for every day of the year that I can’t get pregnant and then having to clean the chalkboard. Oh no, that murky water and that smell. That’s what charting is like to me. Can't you see I've learned the lesson though? YES it's difficult getting pregnant. Nothing in life is fair. You can't always have what you want. If you want something bad enough, you have to work hard. YES YES YES I got the memo in kindergarten. Shit.

I know! I know! Get positive. Get positive. Totally. I will. But I’m having a moment today. I started crying to Mariah Carey’s “Bye Bye” okay! I am fucking out of control right now!

Speaking of Mariah Carey, to the Glassjaw fans on dot net, I know the reason behind the coding of Last Lisp being filed as Mariah. It has nothing to do with me although the Beck household loves Mariah. He is a liar if he says he does not like her. I did not "own" you, I promise. I would not do that to you and I think you all deserve more than that. I, like you, am tired of the fuckery and want the album out already as well. I nag daily on your behalf so we are friends in that respect. K?

Okay now, where was I? The TCOYF icons are pretty adorable. And fine, I have learned some useful things.

Oh shit.

Did you know that it’s not a monthly appendicitis? That’s it’s ovulatory pain!

All this time, I thought my fucking guts would burst through my bellybutton once a month. I’d have this weird urgent pee that smelled like I ate asparagus coupled with this nagging tingling pain. I’d assume I had a UTI and I would keep going to the doctor and he would keep saying, “it’s nothing again, Mrs. Beck. I don’t know what to tell you.” I’d recount the symptoms again and again. Tingling, discomfort, only on this side, for maybe two days, sometimes less, bloating, minor cramps like my period is coming but it’s so not. Are you sure it’s nothing! And he’d look at me like I was a fucking asshole, like I enjoyed wasting his time. Sure, maybe he’s still annoyed that I made him Google Morgellon’s that one time I thought I had it. But I had real tingly pain. Fine, I didn’t have the fibers. But I had fucking tingling pain in my abdomen, fool. READ UP ON WOMENS HEALTH already, freak.

So this is today. Tomorrow might be better. But I doubt it. The entire baby train came to a screeching halt last week when Justin Beck left for tour, a day before I ovulated. DAMN YOU! He can manage to fly to Ireland and play the guitar and eat Lebanese food, but somehow can’t make it the 10 paces to the lab to get those swimmers checked. He just got home. I have yet to say this passive aggressively about the sperm analysis because I am in sweet mode because I really missed him and he looks really cute and stuff. But next week, stank mode and I will be demanding about that shit so I hope he’s prepared.

The good news is for my first foray into charting, I am not half the dumbass I thought I was. I understand it! I have 7 high temps post ovulation! Eleven more to go and boom, I’m off to scour the Internet for my push present. Did you know about push presents? I didn’t. You get presents (aside from the baby) from your husband when you give birth! I was reading about it on the message boards (another world of insanity and glitter and bizarre abbreviations). Louis Vuitton and everything! I haven’t gotten a LV since the summer of 2005. Dude, we could be on to something. I need the duffel, that’s for sure. I mean, I have to get home from the hospital after the birth…

Posted by melissah at May 14, 2008 08:27 AM