i + i = beginnings

It’s been months since I’ve written. I was in a dark, confused, bleak, and lifeless place. You know sometimes when you can’t feel and if you do it’s nothing but negative emotion driving more negative emotion. The place between nothing and existing. I just didn’t care. I just didn’t know what I was doing, what I stood for anymore or even who I was.
When you lose something that has a heartbeat that you never even met or lose a soulmate; I believe my grandmother and I were connect far beyond blood. Our spirits were intertwined. I keep hearing her say to me in her lifeless, breathless conversation on the day before she left her physical body “are you going to try again, I hope you try again”. She was the mother of all mothers. She bore 8 children. How she ever became the most spiritual, calm, loving, non-judge mental human being in the planet is a mystery.
She was born into a strict Italian family. Her mother a raging alcoholic, her father intwined in the mafia. I don’t think my grandfather was into anything major but I do know he had to flee NYC and not return out if fear he would be killed. My grandmother was treated like a slave in her own home. Relatives in Italy and her neighbors didn’t even know she existed. Her mother was controlling, abusive and wicked. During the Great Depression my grandmother worked job the factories through an illness that she in her later life found out was actually tuberculosis. Every penny she made her mother took from her. Which is ironic because my gran other sacrificed her entire life to give to so many. I could write about her forever. The selflessness is endless.
She always had a dream of winning the lottery and the night before she died, as my mother helped her frail, week body to the bathroom, she muttered” I wish I could remember where I put the numbers” my mother realizing what she had said consoled her and said “don’t worry mom. I have the numbers.
You see I want to be as amazing as my grandmother and mother are when I’m a mother. I am fearful that I won’t be. That ill turn out damaging my child beyond repair. I’m also fearful that I won’t carry another child to term or that this last chance at IVF won’t work. The thoughts can paralyze me to the point At times I’m not even sure what I want.
In this moment I am moving forward with preparing for another round of IVF. I met with a naturopathic doctor and will be starting a metabolic detox tomorrow and in 2 weeks will start acupuncture to increase our success rate at conceiving a healthy baby or 2.
From all my drug use and the toxins of our environment I believe this detox is essential to giving us the best chance. I want to feel healthy as well as be healthy. It is the combination of the mind, body and spirit that will get me through this IVF cycle.

~ Jessica (cleansing)

i + i = faith

It has been a while since I have put my fingers to the keys.  I have had life coming at my left and right.  It’s life on life’s terms, not on Jessica’s terms.  Since I last wrote I lost a friend, he passed away at home.  He wasn’t just a friend he was my hairstylist.  I know in my last post I put that I hated my hair but the truth was that I actually began to love it.  He was a talented and gifted person, and he lost his life too soon.  Nobody really knows the reason, but my assumption is that it was related to the disease of addiction in some way.  And the most tragic but not tragic was the death of my grandmother on January 5th, Valentina Antoinette (Pannoni) McGrail.  The most loving, caring, kind, compassionate person that I have ever known.  She lived a long life, she was 96.

So just in case you missed it, I lost the baby in October, lost a friend in December and lost my Grandmother in January.  On top of it Phil is doing his interferon and while  I love him, it is a difficult process to go through, as it is having an effect on his mood.  Lots of stress in the Dunn home, trying to adjust to the ups and downs, both of us.  In addition to all of this our puppy, while cute and cuddly, continues to pee in the house.

My new thing is asking myself, what would Valentina do?  The reason for this is because my faith had been waning and with the passing of my grandmother all of the signs that a higher power is working in my life were present.  She is with me and I know this now.  That whole come to believe thing well it has finally happened for me.I believe, I really do believe.

During the last conversation I had with my grandmother, where she was actually able to talk, because the day she died I did the talking and she the listening, she asked me when Phil & I would be trying for a baby again.  I let her know in March or April we would try again.  And that is exactly what we are going to do.  Although I have fears of not being a good enough mother, or afraid that it won’t work and I will be led down the disappointment road again, I ask myself what would Valentina do? And what I come up with is she wouldn’t give up.  She never gave up.  Even in her darkest hour she never shed a tear, she never complained and she always asked how everyone else was.  She was so selfless.  That is the type of person I want to be.

Today I am heading back to Weight Watchers to find out my fate.  I am sure that I will be a paying customer again.  A friend of mine says that we “eat our feelings”.  Well I am not willing to keep eating, so I have to get on that scale and face my reality because that is what Valentina would do!

~ Jessica (restart)

i + i = life and death

Please forgive me for the title of this post.  See the thing is while I am excited about this pregnancy I still want to contain my joy for a little while longer. Being pregnant is definitely a blessing and a miracle.  I was pregnant once before, at the wrong time in my life, and I miscarried.  There was life and death all in one week.  I was excited back then when I took that test, and I even cried.  I never thought I could get pregnant so I knew then that it was possible.  I asked that ever pressing question, why?  Why did I miscarry?  Of course these things happen and when I look back on it, it was a blessing is disguise.  Phil and I were definitely not ready to take on a child at the time.  I myself was just getting my life on track and could barely take care of myself.  So now here we are pregnant!!  The nurse called and for a second one tear fell from my eyes.  I was in TJ Maxx my favorite store of all time when she called.  When I called Phil to tell him, he congratulated me!  Funny I know, and I said well congratulations to you too Mr. Dunn.  We laughed.  He later sent me a text reiterating and I quote… “We’re having a baby!!”  Everyone around us is so overjoyed and happy.  It makes me a little uneasy because I want to be able to not talk about this information with everyone but I set myself up for it by letting people know we were doing IVF and that made breaking the news to everyone later on impossible.  And I, I want to see the blood work doubling. I want to see those HCG levels going up.  Once I do then I will feel more relief.

You see my life has been marked by a series of life and death situations.    For instance when my sister delivered my niece, Josephine, the following day Phil’s mother lost her battle with lung cancer.  When Phil & I bought our home, the same day my father was admitted to the hospital into ICU due to his already present heart problem, and things were not looking good (he recovered but it was a good 2 weeks before he was release from the hospital).  When we went in for our transfer, we found out that one of our friends girlfriends was taken off of assisted breathing and last week she lost her battle with cancer.  So as you can see where there is life there is also death.  It is just a natural part of life. Something we cannot avoid!  I know, I know, I sound morbid but I don’t mean this in a morbid way at all.  I am a skeptic, and that isn’t always the best way to be but its just what I have become from past experiences.

Phil will be starting is Interferon in a few weeks.  This also makes me a little uneasy.  Not knowing how this will effect him scares me.  Are we crazy for doing this at the same time or what??!!   I can’t be stressed out, and he can’t be stressed out but yet we are doing 2 very stressful things.  And did I mention that my family doesn’t know about his Hep status.  We chose not to tell them, it was something we both discussed out of fear of judgement.  We also discussed that depending upon how he feels we may have to break the news to them.  But that bridge will be crossed when we get there.

Last night I had awful pains in my stomach, but soon realized it must be gas.  It frightened me. I had all these terrify thoughts running through my head.  And did I mention that I have a cold.  UGGGHhh… Not sleeping very well, sore throat, cough and now sneezing and there isn’t a thing I can do about because I am pregnant!!  The woman at the blood clinic told me that being sick is a good sign because when you are pregnant your immune system is down, and boy was she right. I am pregnant!  Woot Woot!

I want these children more than anything in the world.  I have waited what seems like an eternity for this moment.  There is also fear.  I am obsessed right now with looking up pregnancy foods and want to be sure that I am eating the right way.  That what I consume is good for my unborn children (child).  I found this great tracker on the USDA website called Super Tracker.  It helps you track what you are eating and graphs all the food groups out for you.  It tells me I should be eating 2200 calories and I think that is way too much!  I think it may be a little off.  But I like the graph it gives you.  It breaks everything down by categories and lets you know if you are eating right.

Jessica (aware)