Update: The stars are aligning nicely for my IUI next week. Planned Parenthood has been a sovereign pain in the ass to get my records from for some unknown reason; but today (well tonight for me over here) I finally got the right person on the phone and she promises me that they will re-fax my records over to MAMAH (since she also says that she faxed them first a week ago, I'll wait and see). I spoke to someone at MAMAH to figure out what the general timeline to the procedure looks like. They are open seven days a week, so no matter when I ovulate, I can come in to get knocked up. I had my first acupuncture appointment this past Wednesday. I really liked it. What i don't like is the herbal mixture I was prescribed to help my circulation and help my left kidney to catch up with my right...17 scoops dissolved in 2/3 cup of hot water twice a day with or after a meal. IT TASTES HORRIBLE! It's like trying to drink the bark of a burnt tree. It's mostly cinnamon and ginger and some other detoxifying stuff. Horrible. I hope it doesn't lose its effectiveness when dissolved into hot chocolate because that's the only way I can drink it without developing a stomach ache for several hours afterward. Overall, I like acupuncture though. My acu-doc also recommends that I see someone while I'm in Boston to help increase bloodflow to my uterus. Then two lucky things happened: 1)I found out that MAMAH actually has an acupuncturist on staff, but she only comes on Wednesday afternoons...2) There is an acupuncture practice upstairs from MAMAH in their same building. More pricey than at MAMAH, but....SCORE! Still pretty awesome. I'm excited and atwitter with anticipation. I almost cannot believe that all of the timing is syncing up for this to happen. Miracles and Blessings, right?
Wandering can be good for the over-focused creative. How did you wander well this year?
This seemed like such an obvious slam dunk...This year I was given the opportunity to wander very far and wide. This year I picked up my home, my cat, my life, my hopes and dreams, and moved to Hong Kong to follow my work babies. I'm really not sure how or even if that reflects the idea of "wandering well", though. It qualifies as wandering in the sense that I chose to change my path (or at least the place where I walked my daily path) and meander, after a fashion, in an unknown place not knowing what might lie ahead. It feels less like wandering when I think that I'm doing the same job with essentially the same people that I was with on the other side of the planet. Yes, I uprooted my life. But at the moment, and for nearly four years now, my work babies are my life. I've loved little J. since the day we met when she was two and a half months old, and grew to love her more every day after I accepted the job and started looking after her full-time when she was four months old. Little C. has never known a world that didn't have me in it. As far as she's concerned, Mummy and Papa come and go. They get on planes and go away for a few days or a few weeks, and then they eventually come back. But I'm the constant. Mummy goes and Papa goes, but I am always there. And I've grown not only accustomed to being that center of things, but I've grown to enjoy my place in the family. When we're apart for two weeks at Christmas, or a week or two in the summer, I miss them. When I visit my family, they ask me how the girls are doing. They want to see pictures and hear stories about my work babies. In part, I moved to Hong Kong because the time frame for the move was so short (I found out in mid-May and was on a plane over the Atlantic by mid-July). I'm the only nanny that they've ever had. A new home. A new country. New languages. No more familiar neighborhood haunts. No more friends from story times and pre-school in New York. I just felt like the very idea that the children would go through this whole transition and have to also adjust to a new nanny on top of it all would be too much for them. But in another sense, I moved to Hong Kong because the time frame for the move was too short for me to adjust to the idea of a world without my work babies in it. And even though I'd been steadily working up to making a baby of my own, my idea baby couldn't compete with the two flesh and blood babies that I've already been raising for the last almost four years.
But I got here and something changed. I found out briefly before I came that it would not be possible for me to continue my quest at baby making as a single mum in Hong Kong because assisted reproductive technology is restricted to married couples only in Hong Kong. It hit me like a ton of bricks, but I made my peace with it. I had to. I didn't (and still don't) envision leaving my work babies for at least a year, but more likely two. And I don't anticipate the family relocating back to the U.S., much less New York, in anything less than three to five years...if they end up in the U.S. at all. I made my peace with it and decided to pull out all the stops and really go for it when I landed back in the US in a year or two. I'd be two years older and two years less fertile, but in my heart there was no other way.
And then things changed again. I was so depressed after my last U.S.-based attempt at baby making didn't work out that I stopped charting for a time. But when I started charting again, I looked ahead...and month after month, it began to look more and more like I may have a chance to try again during my Christmas holidays in December. It could be my next/last chance! Then I changed. I'd gone into the whole baby making thing wanting very much to do it all at home on my own. To get the sperm on my own. To inseminate by myself at home. As if my baby would be more mine if I didn't have anyone else's help in getting him/her here. But now that I know that eight or nine days from now may be my last chance to even consider getting pregnant again for another two years, I have embraced the idea of getting assistance with my assisted reproductive technology. Instead of trying it out on my own at my Auntie's house, I've opted to go for an IUI and have it done by medical professionals who will not (and have not so far) treat me like a number, or a statistic, or payday and nothing more. Some of it's a little nerve wracking, but the midwives I've been in communication with have been nothing short of a miracle to me.
So, how have I wandered well this past year? I've chosen a different path, but I've realized that taking another route doesn't have to mean letting go of the place where I want to end up. My entire life, I've always dreamed of having children of my own. If I'm honest with myself, I never thought that I'd be doing it alone. This is not the path that I thought I would be on. But it's still a path that will (God willing) lead me to a fat, happy baby of my own. And I'm not alone. On my journey, I've come into contact with some of the strongest, most giving, most thoughtful women I ever could have imagined. Each trying to make a family in our own way. Each trying to shed some light and spread some love to another trying to do the same. And I've been reminded that I've never been alone. From the beginning of this journey, I've had so many well-wishers and so much encouragement from people who have been in my life all along. People who love and accept me for who I am. Who respect my ideas and opinions. Who believe in my ability to speak my ideas into being. People who want my dreams to come true just as much as I want that for myself. My people. We are a strange and far flung community, but we are a community nonetheless.
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