Stress and Infertility

Infertility is a somewhat hush-hush topic, but it shouldn't be. Yes, it is private. Yes, a person's privacy should be protected. But, it is important for people dealing with infertility to know that they aren't alone (obviously) and that there are successful pregnancies.
My story is just that: a successful one.

Fundi and I got married in July of 2004. We were very excited to start a family and we started trying to get pregnant right away. In August 2004, I changed jobs and went from working a fairly sedentary job in an office and the community with people with disabilities to working at the Wal-Mart that wasn't even open yet. My job at Riverfront, Inc. was rewarding, stressful, impossible (for me), and at the same time, a good job. Riverfront allowed me to choose my own hours, walk to work (across the street) on most days and drive a company car (to other offices and potential job-sites) on others. I really enjoyed the people that I worked with. I guess that is the part that would probably be the hardest for most people. I liked the other employees and I liked the "Participants" as we called them. In general, though, the job that I was doing contained little interaction with either of these groups of people. My job was as a job developer. I was to go into the community (remember 2004... few open positions anywhere) and look for employment with a work site that would be accommodating to the individual, allow as long as necessary for the person to train, pay the person, and allow another person (a job coach) to also be at the work site during the job. This job would also have to be a job that a person with a disability could handle (depending on the person, this could be as little as one task or as many as possible). The job needed to be during times when the individual could get transportation to and from work. But, mostly, the employer needed to be open-minded, flexible, accommodating, willing to train (and train again), willing to accept mistakes (and sometimes lots of them), and pay accordingly. Really, this was a sales position. I was to go out in the community and sell a person with a disability to an employer. Now, remember, many many people are unable to get jobs out there. Many many people go unemployed because the don't have experience or they don't have transportation or they don't have the correct wardrobe or they don't have a good support system to motivate them. The people I was trying to find jobs for didn't believe in themselves, believed less in the employer, and were usually not willing to do anything above and beyond what they were comfortable with (sometimes that meant not wanting to work at all but having to be involved in this program because their parents were making them or their DVR Counselor was making them). Needless to say, the job was stressful to me. I sucked at it and I knew it. I wanted to be working with people, helping people, interacting with people.
One of the last straws was when I had (finally) obtained an interview with a certain employer that one of my participants INSISTED on working for. I had contacted this employer time and time again and finally I was able to get an interview for my participant. It would work like this: DVR (Department of Vocational Rehabilitation) would pay for a set amount of time for a person to work at a job-site so that the person could 1)gain experience 2)learn the job 3)not cost the employer any money while learning the job 4)prove to the employer that they were worthy of that job 5)if all was well at the end of the determined amount of time, the employer would hire the person as an employee of their company. This particular employee did not have her own transportation. She came from a poor family and had limited income very little of which was allotted for wardrobe. She weighed over 350 lbs and therefore had little stamina. I don't recall what her disability was. That really wasn't important. The most important detail was that she did not want to work. Her parents wanted her to work. Furthermore, she would not benefit from and income--her parents would. They expected to use her income to supplement their own (she lived with them after all) and she would not have a say in the use of her income. I picked this young woman (freshly out of high school) up from her house and returned to the Riverfront office to complete the job application and work on practicing interview questions. She was wearing clothes that were not flattering and that were dirty. She was also wearing dark and very chipped fingernail polish. Her face was unwashed and her fingernails were dirty underneath. Her shoes were tattered as well. At the office another co-worker and I did our best to get her looking as presentable as possible. We got finger-nail-polish-remover (from my cupboard across the street), spot cleaned her shirt, had her wash her face, and then practiced interview questions. We arrived at the interview shortly before we were supposed to be there. I was excited. This was going to go well. The interviewer was a little prick. A gay man with a super attitude (nothing against gay men or women at all) that is just who he was. He walked around like he owned the place and he couldn't have weighed over 115 lbs and stood taller than 4'9". We both looked like giants compared to him. If nothing else, we should have been able to intimidate him into a position. The interview did go well. I am happy to report that the young woman answered all the questions appropriately. When asked about transportation, I had all the answers. When asked about on-site support, I offered full-time coaching as long as necessary, spot checks after that. When we discussed pay, I told him that we would pay her for the work she did for them. Sounds like a deal right? We walked out of the interview with a "We'll call you if something comes up..." We didn't hear from them and didn't hear from them. They wouldn't return my phone calls, the interviewer wasn't in if I stopped by. Finally, I contacted the head hiring manager and explained the situation. Without hesitation, he called back the little weasel and got him to set up employment for our participant. We followed through. Everything was going well. The girl showed up to work. We were paying her to work, getting her there, we even obtained funds to buy the appropriate work clothes, we coached her. She had paid employment through DVR for 4 weeks for 40 hours per week. The first couple of days we had a coach there full time. Then, the employer suggested letting the young lady work on her own. He felt that they had a handle on the situation and that the young lady was doing well in her tasks. We all were feeling pretty good about the situation. That is, until, the young lady stopped showing up for work, unwilling to go because she didn't like the prick, her feet were killing her, she was too tired, she couldn't handle an 8 hour shift, the clothes were uncomfortable, she had to babysit late the night before. Oh yeah, I heard all the excuses. On and on. She finally did end up losing the job that we were paying her to do. We didn't even get to the point where we got her hired and this was one of the only places this girl was willing to work. Oh, of course, she was willing to do child-care. I'm sorry, but NO! there are certain people that are cut out for child-care work and she was just not one of them.
Shortly after that, Wal-Mart advertised for openings in all departments. I took 7 people to interviews at the hiring site. Of those 7 people, I was the only one who got a job. There were valid reasons that Wal-Mart didn't hire the other 6. I personally wouldn't have hired any of them either. Wal-Mart interviews were all the same: the first interview was conducted with a manager with the same questions for all of the interviews. If all went well at the first interview, the person was asked to return for a second interview. At the second interview, Wal-Mart has each applicant complete a personality evaluation and then conducts another question/answer session. Then it is decided if a person is hired or not. After that, Wal-Mart conducts drug testing and pre-work paperwork including tax-forms, emergency contact forms, etc. Later, in my Wal-Mart position, I would learn and understand the hiring process more intimately, but at that point in time, I was just happy to know what questions would be asked so that I could prepare my interviewers for the questions they would be asked. I memorized the questions on the first interview (not my own) and then would practice asking questions on the way to the interview. If the person was lucky enough to get a second interview (I feel that these were sometimes given just to pacify me) I would work with the participant on those questions as well. Many of the participants seemed to do a pretty good job of letting Wal-Mart know that they wouldn't be a very good employee. One girl, when asked what a weakness of hers is, said "I'm shy." When asked if that would be a problem with employment at Wal-Mart, she said that she didn't like people or being around people. She is the only participant that I took for a Wal-Mart interview that I think would have worked out well if they would have found a good position there for her. She was really high-functioning but depressed and suicidal. With good support, she would have easily stocked shelves overnight or done janitorial work. The interview was stopped right there. They didn't even finish the first interview for her. Another guy answered the questions on the personality evaluation as though he should have been in prison for everything from drug use to stealing to who knows what (I feel that stealing is wrong--answer disagree; I believe a majority of people smoke marijuana on a regular basis--answer strongly agree; If a customer gave me money to look the other way when they stole something, I would accept the money--agree). On and on it went. There were great big red flags for the people that I took to these interviews. Not just little quirky problems that could be worked out. After that, I knew I needed another job--hence the seventh interview. My interview went well. I hadn't really thought of what I wanted to do past loss prevention or supervisor. (What department? I guess I would let them decide.)
I ended up being hired as a Domestics (departments 20, 21, and 22) Supervisor (or manager as they call them in some stores). I would be in charge of ordering, stocking, and managing the curtains, blinds, bedding, juvenile bedding and furniture, rugs, and kitchen soft-goods (towels, placemats, rugs, curtains, napkins, tablecloths, etc.). I was excited, nervous, hesitant, and ready to go! I quit my job-developer job at Riverfront with the agreement to come back and work when I could (which is exactly what I wanted with Riverfront). Riverfront has been really great in that way. When I am able to do the jobs at Riverfront that I excel at: working with the people, doing paperwork and computer work, organizing things in general, I am awesome at my job.
Our first weeks on the Wal-Mart job were not at Wal-Mart at all but at a small area in a strip mall that had once been a carpet store but had gone out of business. We trained for two weeks. We learned about all the paperwork, the responsibilities, the pressures we would be under. We talked about getting into a routine. We discussed employees and how to handle the people who would be working under us. I wouldn't have any employees directly under me to begin with, only floating employees who would be assigned on a once a week (or less often, I would find out later) basis. We interviewed people for positions that still needed to be filled. We learned and learned and learned. I loved it. I was really in my glory. When we finally got into the store in mid-September, it was literally a great-big-box. The place was empty. There were no shelves, no signage, no merchandise. NOTHING! Only other people that have seen an empty Wal-Mart really know how large a Wal-Mart actually is. It was absolutely amazing. Our first day in the store, we saw a great majority of the shelves and fixtures go up. So many people working together and getting stuff done. It was amazing. The next six weeks went by so quickly. They were stressful with long hours sometimes going close to 70 hours in week. On a new marriage this is not the best thing. We fared well, but I know that Fundi would get jealous about my long hours and extended time spent with other men. My boss and I got along really well and ended up talking a lot. He had an 8 year old son and was divorced from his wife. He had sole custody of his son and needed someone to talk to about the stresses of life. I made many friends, whom I would talk extensively about to Fundi. All that time spent at the Wal-Mart didn't allow for much bonding time either. Before we knew it, the Christmas season was over and then Valentines Day (which we started merchandising for on Christmas night when everything Christmas went clearance).
Around Valentines Day, I saw a woman at church who had recently lost a lot of weight. I approached her (knowing her pretty well as she was an old boss of mine) and asked her what she had been doing. HMR is a program that was offered at a clinic only an hour away. They required a weekly meeting (like many diet programs), weigh in, and purchase of food. If anyone is interested, let me know and I will talk more about HMR in a future post. From March 2005-August 2005, I lost 92 lbs. That was just 21 weeks. After talking with my doctor and the program and then consulting my fertility specialist, we decided that doing the diet and trying to get pregnant was right for us. I didn't give myself a goal of a certain amount of weight lost. I gave myself the goal of getting pregnant. I had never felt better. My cycle, being irregular as it was, didn't help matters in the getting pregnant part. I lost weight quickly. Everyone was in agreement that that would help our efforts to conceive and would help give the baby and I a healthier pregnancy. At this same time we started Clomid cycles.
In all of the weight loss, walking, drinking shakes, and frequent trips (one hour one way) to the doctor and weight loss meetings, I became distraught with my job at Wal-Mart. Things there were just not going as well as they could have been. Sure, I rocked at my job. Sure, the managers and workers loved me. But, it was terribly stressful from day to day and just not nearly as fulfilling as working with real people (not just the $$$ signs that Wal-Mart forces you to work with). I also found out that Wal-Mart had shorted me about $1 per hour from the very beginning and they were not willing to pay back-pay. I was upset with Wal-Mart, upset with my manager, upset with the store manager, upset with the way things were being run. I loved my department. I loved the other employees if for nothing more than they were a knowing ear to listen to all of my frequent complaints about Wal-Mart's strange philosophy that the more jobs you give a person the less time they should need to complete those jobs. At the same time, the one employee that I had finally gotten in my department (and trained diligently whether she liked it or not) had been recruited to become a manager in a different department and I would be on a waiting list to get another employee as they were hired and trained (at least a one month process). One night, on my way from Wal-Mart to my weight loss class, I called my Riverfront supervisor and discussed my possible increase in hours. I gave my two weeks at Wal-Mart the next day. By the end of June I was working for Riverfront full time doing just what I wanted to be doing: working with the people (job coach, community integration) and paperwork. I was super happy. The 45 minute one way drive to work was no more. The forced one hour lunch was no more. The stress and hate for my job was no more. Now I had time for me, for my walks, for my husband, for my life. Now I was happy.
Warning: Contains details about cycles, medications, and ahm relations.
The first dosing of Clomid worked for us. I ovulated and could have gotten pregnant during that cycles, but I didn't. I had taken sooo many negative pregnancy tests (when my friend had showed up later than expected) and I was so convinced and excited that this would be my first positive one. When it wasn't, I kind of went into a stupor. Was this for me? Did I really want to continue doing this? I was sick of the diet and was sick of not having what I needed in my personal life. It wasn't for lack of practice, I assure you. But, as some would say, it just wasn't meant to be.
The second dosing of Clomid stayed the same, but this time I didn't ovulate, at least not at first. Four days after when I should have ovulated, I finally did. The doctor told me that we should be prepared to move to the next level of intrusiveness when it came to fertility if this cycle didn't work. I am too private a person for that. That would have involved finding out if I were ovulating and then getting a hotel room and then getting tested after visiting said hotel room. I was not impressed.
August 6th, 2005:
6:30am My dad arrived at our apartment to give us a check to purchase my car from me.
8:00am Fundi and I visited a house that we had wanted to look at but that looked way too small.
9:00am We left the house, got in the truck, decided that we needed to make an offer, left the truck, and made a verbal offer to the realtor for the asking price.
10:15am We bought a Chevy Impala from a car dealership over an hour away.
11:00am We ate at Olive Garden.
12:00pm We showed up at my cousin's wedding and got dressed in the bathroom at the church.
1:00pm My cousin got married and we attended his reception that evening
A little over a week later, we found out that we were pregnant. I swear I was nesting before I knew that we were expecting. I knew that I couldn't bring a baby home to that tiny little apartment with the slippery flight of stairs just to get in the door. We were elated. I went off the diet the same day that I found out--and obviously started gaining back all that weight I had worked so hard to lose. All is well though, I have what I needed for sooo long: our family.