We are a blessed couple! We have had a relationship that grew with time, with distance not being a factor and a very strong and supportive family network.
Yes... we were from different places within India and for a nation as diverse as ours, it meant different cultures. The way we prepare our food (and obviously how it tastes) is different, our clothing is as similar as chalk and cheese, we speak different languages and of course religions. Something that holds true though, is the similarity in values we possess and our love for each other has grown stronger with time, be it in India or in the USA or any other part of the world.
Blessed as can be... we didn't think we wanted anything else in the world, until a vacation back to India from the US laid the foundations on trying to grow the family. OK, so we wanted a child.
Now, how hard could that be? We'd seen friends take to parenting and it isn't a big deal. There are a couple of simple steps to it:
1. Get to know your spouse
2. Get upgraded on insurance, if you need to
3. Get to know the hospital and doctor(s) you'd be seeing for visits as expecting parents and then, as parents.
4. Time permitting, read "What to expect when you are expecting" and all other similar sources of info. If not now, take it as step 5 or 6.
5. Do the baby dance.
6. Boom shaka laka and you are all set.
7. A journey in the clouds for 9 months.
8. Child Ahoy!!!!
Step 1 - Check! Step 2 - Check! Step 3 - Check!
Step 4 - That book is available everywhere. This babycenter.com website looks pretty good!
Step 5 - Check!
Now, the next few months were along these lines!
Step 6 - Pregnancy test - Negative... Huh! How? No problem... Let's try next month! Are we ready? Dates ready... Step 5 ... Go... and
Step 6 - What? Hmmm. Why not try all of the magic days? The internet talks of the optimal position and pillows to enable the little swimmers to go. Check! Very well... Calendar check... Dates ready...
Step 6 - Again? Is something wrong with me? Is it my wife? I can support her... After all, this seems to be a nice challenge on the "Till death do us part". We'll take it...
100 days are gone and the relatives that had known/ suspected are surprised. There is "idle talk" among others which points to this generation not knowing how or even not being interested.
Well... we've decided that if it doesn't work out in the next month, we'll take some tests. Guess what... it doesn't. Off to the clinic. A few zip, zaps and zooms later, the results are out. Wifey's fantastic. I have a million lads who seem to be a tad on the slower side. I like numbers and 1 millions has 6 zeroes. If each cost a dollar, I'd be a millionaire. Wait a minute! This is low... They are expecting to see higher numbers. Well, let's see what the doc has to say. He's a friendly man who in the nicest way possible shares the info. The count is low, the motility is low (so they wander off in different directions) and a chunk of them are oddly shaped (great help for those poor swimmers who're having difficulty as it is). Net result - It would be tough for me to reproduce, but... the silver lining to the cloud the doc gives is reassuring... YOU NEED JUST ONE OF THESE TO SETTLE.
Just 1 of a million. I'll take those odds.
Funnily enough, all your friends seem to be getting there without any issues. It's like Santa throwing chocolates/ candies and watching buddies collect one or more and you are the one child that is not able to get any.
Now, it starts to get tough at home. It is no fun watching the most beautiful woman of my life wipe away tears after a crescendo of anticipation month after month. I want to be able to see one test show a sliver of positive. What wouldn't I do for this? Leave a test behind for longer than a couple of hours and there is a minor shading on the magical violet line. Gosh! We rush to the doctor and are told to wait a bit more. I have no control over her thoughts and the same smiling woman I've left in the morning suddenly is all sullen in the evening because of some trigger during the day of a child/ having a child. It is not helped by well meaning relatives/ friends sharing that we ought to look for the right positions. It is tempting to tell them that we know the "prayer" routine and more thanks to the amount of reading we do. While asleep, there are a couple of nightmares, but there are also a few dreams of someone/ something in white. We take it to mean God is with us through this difficult time. She discovers the "999reasonstolaugh" website and boy is it a hoot!!! This definitely helps when an unknowing remark is made.
I make slight changes to my lifestyle. I discard the white and yellow onions and return to the red onions I've had from childhood (rumours are they make you more ready to perform). If not in cooked form, I supplant it with my diet after peeling the first couple of layers and thoroughly washing them (yes you have to brush your teeth and floss). We try "Internet available" pills which turn out not being as good as promised. A couple of months into it, I feel the increased testosterone forcing a facial growth. The sperm counts improve marginally. However, it has a dramatic effect on my health. My muscles weaken and I find getting out of bed a tough exercise one day. That ends that course. Circumcision is not expected to help and not medically proven. Thank God for Vicodine and doctors prescribing it even if it means a 3 month celibacy! :-) I even exercise about 5 mins every morning. Now, that cannot change the fact that no matter where you go - an evening walk, the weekly grocery shopping, a weekend getaway or even a vacation, there will be someone out there that's pregnant. This makes it tough for wifey. Younger women, older women, women much older seem to be getting the balloons and yet, here we are. Adoption in our home country is out of question with us being from different religions and adoption in the USA needs us to be citizens (which can take a while).
Money saved on the durexes is the best thing, but there is no supplement to the heart ache. Weeks drag into months and more weeks the add into more months. These months add up after some time to a year and then double. Still, no magic bumps. We've given it all. It happens like clockwork - you measure from LMP. I ensure I have the fresh batches every two days. (Heck! We even take an O cycle with a daily routine.) Still nothing. We've gone for a couple of IUI treatments and it has not helped either with a child or with the bank balance. We now are exhausting our stay in the USA and need to return home soon. We are now confident that having a child naturally is out of question.
Sad that nothing has worked, we decide to hold off and try again in India (someone said IVF treatment was cheaper!) Carefully keeping one Boom shaka laka almost a week before the O cycle, she travels back to India. I return a month later. There is some personal constraints on our return and settling back in the country takes time, so we live in different cities for a little while. When we finally are together, we realize she probably has developed a cyst in her time in India as the LMP has been missing for long. We go to the Gyn as soon as we possibly can. She shares the news that we are 3 months into pregnancy. Something has worked. It is not clear what, but something has... something surely has...
This was not medically possible. We were outside the O-zone. We had 30 hour flights which generally are not recommended within a couple of weeks of the swimmer connection. We had a hectic period running around and settling down in India. Was it the change in lifestyle? Was it the special prayers offered for us? Was it the blessings of others like us blessing and egging each other to get there? I do not know the exact reason, and like to believe it was a bit of everything, but from deep deep within my heart, I am thankful that we now have a son. We were so sure there was no child within that we were doing our reading on cysts that having the Gyn say, "You are with child" was positive and unsettling at the same time. It was a miracle and we named him based on "Gift of God". He is now a happy 3 year old child.
It was a journey of over 1000 days and the vagary of emotions we experienced has strengthened our bond and faith in the kind-hearted. Thank you for the wishes!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have taken some time to share this. Much longer than I thought I'd take, but I sincerely hope it can provide a ray of hope in the journey of you or your loved ones. Now, I was not the one scouring the posts and blogs during the journey, but I am humbled by the love my wife took back with the 'baby dust' shared from the different posts on the Y! groups and other similar places in our journey. The discomfort in the heart is more troublesome than most people understand and I hope you find some solace as you read this. We continue to pass on the shower of the baby dust, best wishes and sincerely pray for those of us still on the journey. May you have the miracle as well!
Yes... we were from different places within India and for a nation as diverse as ours, it meant different cultures. The way we prepare our food (and obviously how it tastes) is different, our clothing is as similar as chalk and cheese, we speak different languages and of course religions. Something that holds true though, is the similarity in values we possess and our love for each other has grown stronger with time, be it in India or in the USA or any other part of the world.
Blessed as can be... we didn't think we wanted anything else in the world, until a vacation back to India from the US laid the foundations on trying to grow the family. OK, so we wanted a child.
Now, how hard could that be? We'd seen friends take to parenting and it isn't a big deal. There are a couple of simple steps to it:
1. Get to know your spouse
2. Get upgraded on insurance, if you need to
3. Get to know the hospital and doctor(s) you'd be seeing for visits as expecting parents and then, as parents.
4. Time permitting, read "What to expect when you are expecting" and all other similar sources of info. If not now, take it as step 5 or 6.
5. Do the baby dance.
6. Boom shaka laka and you are all set.
7. A journey in the clouds for 9 months.
8. Child Ahoy!!!!
Step 1 - Check! Step 2 - Check! Step 3 - Check!
Step 4 - That book is available everywhere. This babycenter.com website looks pretty good!
Step 5 - Check!
Now, the next few months were along these lines!
Step 6 - Pregnancy test - Negative... Huh! How? No problem... Let's try next month! Are we ready? Dates ready... Step 5 ... Go... and
Step 6 - What? Hmmm. Why not try all of the magic days? The internet talks of the optimal position and pillows to enable the little swimmers to go. Check! Very well... Calendar check... Dates ready...
Step 6 - Again? Is something wrong with me? Is it my wife? I can support her... After all, this seems to be a nice challenge on the "Till death do us part". We'll take it...
100 days are gone and the relatives that had known/ suspected are surprised. There is "idle talk" among others which points to this generation not knowing how or even not being interested.
Well... we've decided that if it doesn't work out in the next month, we'll take some tests. Guess what... it doesn't. Off to the clinic. A few zip, zaps and zooms later, the results are out. Wifey's fantastic. I have a million lads who seem to be a tad on the slower side. I like numbers and 1 millions has 6 zeroes. If each cost a dollar, I'd be a millionaire. Wait a minute! This is low... They are expecting to see higher numbers. Well, let's see what the doc has to say. He's a friendly man who in the nicest way possible shares the info. The count is low, the motility is low (so they wander off in different directions) and a chunk of them are oddly shaped (great help for those poor swimmers who're having difficulty as it is). Net result - It would be tough for me to reproduce, but... the silver lining to the cloud the doc gives is reassuring... YOU NEED JUST ONE OF THESE TO SETTLE.
Just 1 of a million. I'll take those odds.
Funnily enough, all your friends seem to be getting there without any issues. It's like Santa throwing chocolates/ candies and watching buddies collect one or more and you are the one child that is not able to get any.
Now, it starts to get tough at home. It is no fun watching the most beautiful woman of my life wipe away tears after a crescendo of anticipation month after month. I want to be able to see one test show a sliver of positive. What wouldn't I do for this? Leave a test behind for longer than a couple of hours and there is a minor shading on the magical violet line. Gosh! We rush to the doctor and are told to wait a bit more. I have no control over her thoughts and the same smiling woman I've left in the morning suddenly is all sullen in the evening because of some trigger during the day of a child/ having a child. It is not helped by well meaning relatives/ friends sharing that we ought to look for the right positions. It is tempting to tell them that we know the "prayer" routine and more thanks to the amount of reading we do. While asleep, there are a couple of nightmares, but there are also a few dreams of someone/ something in white. We take it to mean God is with us through this difficult time. She discovers the "999reasonstolaugh" website and boy is it a hoot!!! This definitely helps when an unknowing remark is made.
I make slight changes to my lifestyle. I discard the white and yellow onions and return to the red onions I've had from childhood (rumours are they make you more ready to perform). If not in cooked form, I supplant it with my diet after peeling the first couple of layers and thoroughly washing them (yes you have to brush your teeth and floss). We try "Internet available" pills which turn out not being as good as promised. A couple of months into it, I feel the increased testosterone forcing a facial growth. The sperm counts improve marginally. However, it has a dramatic effect on my health. My muscles weaken and I find getting out of bed a tough exercise one day. That ends that course. Circumcision is not expected to help and not medically proven. Thank God for Vicodine and doctors prescribing it even if it means a 3 month celibacy! :-) I even exercise about 5 mins every morning. Now, that cannot change the fact that no matter where you go - an evening walk, the weekly grocery shopping, a weekend getaway or even a vacation, there will be someone out there that's pregnant. This makes it tough for wifey. Younger women, older women, women much older seem to be getting the balloons and yet, here we are. Adoption in our home country is out of question with us being from different religions and adoption in the USA needs us to be citizens (which can take a while).
Money saved on the durexes is the best thing, but there is no supplement to the heart ache. Weeks drag into months and more weeks the add into more months. These months add up after some time to a year and then double. Still, no magic bumps. We've given it all. It happens like clockwork - you measure from LMP. I ensure I have the fresh batches every two days. (Heck! We even take an O cycle with a daily routine.) Still nothing. We've gone for a couple of IUI treatments and it has not helped either with a child or with the bank balance. We now are exhausting our stay in the USA and need to return home soon. We are now confident that having a child naturally is out of question.
Sad that nothing has worked, we decide to hold off and try again in India (someone said IVF treatment was cheaper!) Carefully keeping one Boom shaka laka almost a week before the O cycle, she travels back to India. I return a month later. There is some personal constraints on our return and settling back in the country takes time, so we live in different cities for a little while. When we finally are together, we realize she probably has developed a cyst in her time in India as the LMP has been missing for long. We go to the Gyn as soon as we possibly can. She shares the news that we are 3 months into pregnancy. Something has worked. It is not clear what, but something has... something surely has...
This was not medically possible. We were outside the O-zone. We had 30 hour flights which generally are not recommended within a couple of weeks of the swimmer connection. We had a hectic period running around and settling down in India. Was it the change in lifestyle? Was it the special prayers offered for us? Was it the blessings of others like us blessing and egging each other to get there? I do not know the exact reason, and like to believe it was a bit of everything, but from deep deep within my heart, I am thankful that we now have a son. We were so sure there was no child within that we were doing our reading on cysts that having the Gyn say, "You are with child" was positive and unsettling at the same time. It was a miracle and we named him based on "Gift of God". He is now a happy 3 year old child.
It was a journey of over 1000 days and the vagary of emotions we experienced has strengthened our bond and faith in the kind-hearted. Thank you for the wishes!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have taken some time to share this. Much longer than I thought I'd take, but I sincerely hope it can provide a ray of hope in the journey of you or your loved ones. Now, I was not the one scouring the posts and blogs during the journey, but I am humbled by the love my wife took back with the 'baby dust' shared from the different posts on the Y! groups and other similar places in our journey. The discomfort in the heart is more troublesome than most people understand and I hope you find some solace as you read this. We continue to pass on the shower of the baby dust, best wishes and sincerely pray for those of us still on the journey. May you have the miracle as well!
