Getting a life...and becoming a better wife

My husband and I went to dinner with his boss last night at a really good sushi place. This is the first sushi restaurant I have been to that will make the rolls with brown rice if it is requested. I was able to eat most of the rolls without breaking my diet and must have a had a little to much to eat because I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. On our way home from the restaurant, we had a conversation that we seem to be having a lot lately. It seems that I have changed both in my personality and in the way I act around/treat my husband. I guess I have been so preoccupied with what is going on with my body that I haven’t even noticed the changes taking place. Before my diagnosis last year, I wasn’t serious about anything (accept my husband, my family and my bargain shopping), I was light hearted,shared just about everything with my husband and was pretty much a push over. I guess as I have gone through this experience, I have learned to take things more seriously (like my health), to stand up for myself , let my opinions be heard and have become much more independent. I have also stopped sharing everything with my husband. There are just things that I don’t think he needs to know. For example, how my CM changes through out the day or how many times I have gone number two in a day. Besides, He tends to get upset when I bring up my fertility or he just doesn’t respond. So basically I have not been able to discuss the main focus of my life with him….and that is bound to change our marriage and myself a bit. I thought by writing about it, I would be able to get everything out without this communication issue causing problems in our marriage and I thought it was a great plan…but I guess I was wrong. My husband told me that I have my head so deep into getting pregnant that I don’t even realize how much I have changed. I’m not saying he doesn’t want me to stand up for myself, he just wants the same light hearted, fun person he married. I don’t know if I can be that person right now…I mean I feel light hearted and am not very often in a bad mood it’s just that life experiences change people and I don’t think I have changed for the worse. I have also become more responsible and more appreciative which are good qualities right? I do feel awful that I have been putting every last drop of energy and focus into healing my body and trying to have a baby. It isn’t right for me to do that and I didn’t mean to do it….it’s just that as my research continued, more and more of my friends/family members became pregnant and the blood test results kept rolling in, I got more and more addicted to finding an answer and the one doctor who believed I could have a baby on my own. Now that I have both of those things, it still isn’t enough. I am now obsessed with my new diet “lifestyle” determined to erase all damage to both my reproductive system and the rest of my body. I consider Mr. Juicer my new friend, who I am starting to rely on to help make the concoctions that will heal all my internal wounds….and my husband sees him as a torture device that sounds more like a wood chipper grinding the kitchen cabinets in the morning then a juicer. After my husband made his point, it was a long car ride home. I sat there and wondered if I could even re-direct some of my focus to something else….and I really don’t know if I can. For once I feel like I am making a difference, that what I am doing might actually help someone else. Having said that, I love my husband and don’t want to loose him because I can’t budget my time and focus and it would be pretty selfish of me to not even try. He told me he is not going to leave my side but that it is my choice on how we live the rest of our lives. We can spend our lives being miserable, waiting for the positive test result that may never show up or happy, appreciating what we have and enjoying each other. I, of course, like option two but I am telling you what, I can’t stop what I am doing. I feel like I am closer to restoring regular ovarian function to my ovaries then I have ever been….and I am not letting anyone get in my way. I would always have the question “what if” if I stopped trying and trust me, blaming my husband for me stopping my crusade would not be good for our marriage at all! I will just have to try and not put all of my focus on my cause and try and enjoy my husband a little bit more. I know I wrote that I was going to do that….and I thought I had been doing it the last few days but maybe not?? I think this whole process is so rough on relationships not only between husbands and wives but between family members and friends. There is the awkwardness of a friend never truly knowing what to say to the person they know is suffering. The feeling a hopeful grandmother gets as she watches all of her friends become grandmothers wondering if she will ever hold her own grandchild and the moments were husband and wife are laying in bed trying to find the right words to say after she has just hung up the phone with another friend sharing her pregnancy news. It’s tough, going through any medical issue is and my advice to anyone going through a medical fight right now is to…get a hobby. Find a new focus and believe me I am taking my own advice, especially after last night. From personal experience though, don’t make your new focus shopping that can turn ugly (as I have experienced). You end up with no money and a bunch of things you don’t need…and a frustrated hubby. Find something you like to do that takes your mind off your diagnosis maybe even something that can help you heal. Yoga is very good for you and painting changes focus and is used as a healing technique and you don’t have to be Picasso. You can create a lovely stick figure piece that is sure to make you feel better. I have read about a bunch of Eastern Medicine clinics that hold healing painting seminars. One thing that I believe has really made a difference in my case is writing. Even if you are not going to publish your thoughts and feelings online for all to read, writing is a great way to release your feelings without overloading any of your loved ones. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) wake your best friend up at night or interrupt your husband at work but your journal (or in my case my blog) is there for you whenever you need to talk. Along with writing my hobbies now include focusing on creating a list of yummy fertility juices to share with others, re-decorating my house and after yesterday improving my marriage. Hear me now, I can be a better wife, decorate the house and heal my body…after all I am a woman and we are best at multi-tasking. Notice I put be a better wife first so that I can remind myself that is the most important of the items on my list…hope it works :0)