My married friends are staying away from me because I’m going through a separation.
BANG.
There. I’ve said it.
Some of this is of course meant jokingly because we’re all busy moms and frankly it’s damn hard to make the stars align in favour of a margarita and good old-fashioned catch up.
Some of it however, means exactly what you think it means.
“I can only come out for a couple hours because M is watching the kids tonight.”
I’m standing in a room full of extremely powerful people. It’s a Canadian Women in Communications event and I'm a last-minute tag along addition.
“I’m Erica’s date,” I find myself saying. It’s easier than delving into an explanation of what exactly I do these days—a smattering of project management, design, writing, marketing, brand building, film production and motherhood.
I shake my fist at you, evil Telogen Effluvium! You are my arch nemesis! Gah.
A severe dip in Estrogen can make your hair shed quickly and leave you feeling well, bald. Whether you’re post partum, changing birth control, recovering from a miscarriage or just plain stressed — separation, ahem — here are 3 things to keep in mind when you’re terrified about losing it all.
Whether you reconcile or go your separate ways, at some point during the rollercoaster ride of separation, you start asking yourself terrifying questions.
For kicks.
Here’s a sampler: “What if I never have kids again?” or “What if I die alone, while my kid is with her dad, and no one discovers my body for days?”
Hello, my name is Kat, and I have my own Crazy-Making Inner Monologue.
You’re going for a regular ultrasound check up in your first or second trimester, and you find out that your baby has stopped growing.
Your world shatters in less than a moment. Your life slams on the brakes. Your heart will never be the same. And it’s just the beginning.
Not only have you just found out that you have lost your child, but you also have to figure out the most upsetting thing in the world: how you’re going to get it out of you.
Everyone seems to gloss over that, and I’m not sure why.
I am not good with pain—physical or emotional. I laugh inappropriately, I zone out, and I bare all my teeth in a pretty freaky ‘I’m OK—really I am’ grin. (Think: Disney's Beauty and the Beast. "Show me your debonaire smile..")
Last week I was sitting in the hospital emergency room, waiting to be seen for a leg injury. Nothing overly exciting had happened—during a fun visit to the cottage, I ripped my hamstring while waterskiing.
As I sat under the neon lights my head started spinning.
What is support? Why does everyone have advice to give? And when do you draw the line when things start to feel, well, yucky, for lack of a better word?
I’m not wearing my wedding ring and it feels very strange.
The truth is I haven’t worn it in weeks, but it’s only now, looking at Hubs’ bare hands that I feel odd. Somehow when he removed his, it got me looking for mine. Like I have to visually confirm its absence.
Sometimes I still feel its imprint and my thumb darts across my palm searching for the thin bands on my fingers. It’s like having a ghost appendage.
Looking for books to help you through your fertility funk? Here are a few that I used to bring me back when I was teetering on the edge of baby-crazy. You know what I’m talking about. ‘Crazy Baby-Making Lady’ is pretty much like the ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ equivalent. Except we can smell our own HcG spikes and talk to our uterine linings instead of to Fluffy the calico. But I digress..
I remember feeling totally jipped by Mother’s Day while I was trying for Baby Girl.
I knew I wasn’t a mom yet but come on. No wine, no soft cheeses, no caffeine, no sushi..and I had to sit there as my family toasted every freaking mother on the planet adding sweetly-intentioned supportive comments like ‘..and soon, God willing, Kat will be a mother too..”
The applause and clinks of glasses softly blurred the sound of my head hitting the table repeatedly. Kill. Me. Now.
You should feel 110% comfortable with your fertility specialist, because you are going to spend some very intimate moments with them. That is in all likelihood, an understatement. If you have a first appointment looming in your agenda, here’s what you want to ask before you get down and dirty.
Will you be taking any samples at my first appointment?
I haven’t written in over a week because I’ve been emotionally paralyzed. I was busy researching some great posts on ‘eating for fertility’ and even started compiling my essential ‘trying to conceive booklist for body and soul’ — these posts are totally coming, I swear.
Family planning, fertility issues, and miscarriage blow a hole in your life. The stress can leave you asking "How do I get over this loss?” or “When will I start feeling better?” and you will not know the answer. That is, until you find the elusive reset button.
My reset button, it turns out, involves having a baby with an ex-boyfriend. Wait. What?
There are some times you should simply not go shopping, because what you bring home serves as the sad reminder that you are chemically prone to hallucinations, momentary lapses in bad taste, and rationalization frenzies. This is also referred to as Why-the-hell-did-I-buy-that Syndrome. Let me demonstrate with the chilling conclusion of...
If you have ever brought home a retail prize before your period only to think “Oh MY GOD. What the HELL was I on when I thought this was ok to purchase?!” when the hormone fog clears, then this article is for you and your monthly sonic boom of estrogen.
Think of it as another kind of Caveat Emptor for women alone. Women who during their weepiest, chocolate-eating-ist times would do well to remember that only buyer’s remorse and retail suffering awaits those who dare to go..
I’ve never been ashamed or quiet about my grab bag of neuroses. I don’t exactly sport them like club scout badges, but at the same time I find the human brain fascinating, and ‘normalcy’ somewhat like the Loch Ness monster: keep looking for it people, and good luck with that.
You need to have good food, good sex, and good conversation. You need to put aside the silly arguments you’ve had about which Wiggle is the best dancer, how to refinance your mortgage, or why Caillou seems emotionally stunted. You need to stop squabbling about who remembered to buy milk and whose turn it is to change a diaper. Let’s just cut to the chase...
You need to pretend that you never had kids. Just for a weekend.
Someone please tell me why you can get nitrous oxide for something as simple as getting your teeth cleaned, but removing a chunk or two of flesh from my endometrium doesn’t warrant so much as a Tylenol. Seriously?
I had 2 biopsies almost 10 days ago and I’m still involuntarily crossing my legs when I see anything that vaguely reminds me of a speculum. Shudder.
