Infertility, Drugs and Tylenol
Well, today I am officially 15 weeks pregnant. It still does not seem real that I will have a baby in 25 short weeks, but I guess if all goes as planned, we will.
I feel pretty good except that I am still tired, can't breathe, have a stuffed nose pretty much all the time and look and feel like a whale, but besides all of that, I am sure this is a normal, healthy pregnancy. I am truly blessed.
Jim and I watch the show "Gulianna and Bill." On the show, the couple chronicles their struggle to have a baby. They have shown the pain and difficulty they have faced after suffering a miscarriage and now as they re-enter In Vitro Fertilization. You can see the pain and fear in both of their eyes as they think about the foreseeable future, perhaps without children.
I can't imagine.
It seems these days, on a weekly basis, I meet women who are having difficulty having a child. The other day as I sat at the library, six out of the eight women in the room were dealing with some sort of fertility issue. It is truly amazing to me. Fortunately, of those six, all of them currently have one child. So what happened?
Is it all of the drugs and medications? Is it age? Is it stress or fatigue? How on earth can one person (as my husband says...) "hang their robe on the bathroom door and get pregnant" and another try tirelessly for years without luck. I am very very close to one woman who spent thousands of dollars to have a baby of her own, only to have no luck. I know another woman who wants a child so bad, yet her husband will not join in her fight (and I know through my TBA practice that HE is the one who has the fertility problems).
It is sometimes difficult to have my swollen belly around these women that may or may not look at me and think "she doesn't realize how lucky she is"....because I didn't...until now. Now I get it. Now I understand that getting pregnant isn't something to take for granted any more. NOW there are reasons, now we have to worry, but why? Is this something new? Is this something that we have created? When did this war with our bodies start? Did women use to just not share their difficulties?
More and more women are finding themselves in a place of infertility. Is it all of these newfangled "NO PERIOD FOR 4 MONTHS!" drugs? Is it the "PLACE THIS THING INSIDE OF YOU TO NOT HAVE A BABY FOR 5 YEARS" contraception devices? Because if it is, these doctors aren't telling these women. I know a person that the doctor said "oh, well, I know you were on that drug, but I think this just happened on it's own." REALLY?! What if it didn't? They are surely not going to walk into a lawsuit and say "Hey, ya know that shot/drug/piece of plastic I prescribed...well, it made you infertile...sorry?!"
We as women need to be proactive and ask, Why? Walk away from the drugs, procedures and thing-a-ma-bobbers that we are putting in our bodies and question the doctors and drug companies. We need to ask ourselves "what CAN/COULD this do to my body, and can I live with the consequences, if they are bad?"
Granted, every woman that is having fertility issues has not taken or used something that could give her a problem, but I think that we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "How can I protect my body?" We need to stop accepting every FDA approved product as wonderful, convenient and safe, and remember that at one time thalidomide (a drug for pregnant woman which caused horrific birth defects that was actually prescribed for my mom, that my grandma said "DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THAT!") was legal and "safe." Thanks grandma!
If you are a woman struggling or know a woman struggling with these issues, I honestly feel for you. My heart aches for your pain and difficulty and I am in no way saying anything is your fault. What I am saying is that we, as woman, need to protect our bodies and our families from drugs, genetically modified foods, procedures, and ask ourselves if there isn't a better way outside of the invasive, drug-induced path our society is on.
Stop accepting what is given to us as "safe" and start to question what we are putting in our bodies. We need to question the food and drugs MORE than we question the governments plan on spending and taxes. The thing is, if you don't trust the government with your money, why are you so quick to trust them with the food and drugs you use? Why are those automatically OK?
We need to simplify and realize that not everything that we can buy over the counter, from a pharmacist and get from a doctor is automatically wonderful for us.
I won't so much as take a Tylenol while I am pregnant. Hey, perhaps years from now they will tell us that taking Tylenol while pregnant causes ADHD? Weirder things have happened.
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I feel pretty good except that I am still tired, can't breathe, have a stuffed nose pretty much all the time and look and feel like a whale, but besides all of that, I am sure this is a normal, healthy pregnancy. I am truly blessed.
Jim and I watch the show "Gulianna and Bill." On the show, the couple chronicles their struggle to have a baby. They have shown the pain and difficulty they have faced after suffering a miscarriage and now as they re-enter In Vitro Fertilization. You can see the pain and fear in both of their eyes as they think about the foreseeable future, perhaps without children.
I can't imagine.
It seems these days, on a weekly basis, I meet women who are having difficulty having a child. The other day as I sat at the library, six out of the eight women in the room were dealing with some sort of fertility issue. It is truly amazing to me. Fortunately, of those six, all of them currently have one child. So what happened?
Is it all of the drugs and medications? Is it age? Is it stress or fatigue? How on earth can one person (as my husband says...) "hang their robe on the bathroom door and get pregnant" and another try tirelessly for years without luck. I am very very close to one woman who spent thousands of dollars to have a baby of her own, only to have no luck. I know another woman who wants a child so bad, yet her husband will not join in her fight (and I know through my TBA practice that HE is the one who has the fertility problems).
It is sometimes difficult to have my swollen belly around these women that may or may not look at me and think "she doesn't realize how lucky she is"....because I didn't...until now. Now I get it. Now I understand that getting pregnant isn't something to take for granted any more. NOW there are reasons, now we have to worry, but why? Is this something new? Is this something that we have created? When did this war with our bodies start? Did women use to just not share their difficulties?
More and more women are finding themselves in a place of infertility. Is it all of these newfangled "NO PERIOD FOR 4 MONTHS!" drugs? Is it the "PLACE THIS THING INSIDE OF YOU TO NOT HAVE A BABY FOR 5 YEARS" contraception devices? Because if it is, these doctors aren't telling these women. I know a person that the doctor said "oh, well, I know you were on that drug, but I think this just happened on it's own." REALLY?! What if it didn't? They are surely not going to walk into a lawsuit and say "Hey, ya know that shot/drug/piece of plastic I prescribed...well, it made you infertile...sorry?!"
We as women need to be proactive and ask, Why? Walk away from the drugs, procedures and thing-a-ma-bobbers that we are putting in our bodies and question the doctors and drug companies. We need to ask ourselves "what CAN/COULD this do to my body, and can I live with the consequences, if they are bad?"
Granted, every woman that is having fertility issues has not taken or used something that could give her a problem, but I think that we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "How can I protect my body?" We need to stop accepting every FDA approved product as wonderful, convenient and safe, and remember that at one time thalidomide (a drug for pregnant woman which caused horrific birth defects that was actually prescribed for my mom, that my grandma said "DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THAT!") was legal and "safe." Thanks grandma!
If you are a woman struggling or know a woman struggling with these issues, I honestly feel for you. My heart aches for your pain and difficulty and I am in no way saying anything is your fault. What I am saying is that we, as woman, need to protect our bodies and our families from drugs, genetically modified foods, procedures, and ask ourselves if there isn't a better way outside of the invasive, drug-induced path our society is on.
Stop accepting what is given to us as "safe" and start to question what we are putting in our bodies. We need to question the food and drugs MORE than we question the governments plan on spending and taxes. The thing is, if you don't trust the government with your money, why are you so quick to trust them with the food and drugs you use? Why are those automatically OK?
We need to simplify and realize that not everything that we can buy over the counter, from a pharmacist and get from a doctor is automatically wonderful for us.
I won't so much as take a Tylenol while I am pregnant. Hey, perhaps years from now they will tell us that taking Tylenol while pregnant causes ADHD? Weirder things have happened.
Like what you read today? Post it to your Facebook page so everyone can read it! Click below to share!
Amen! Well said once again. Love reading your blog when I get a minute to do so! Tammy D
ReplyDeleteThanks Tammy! Hope all is well, I was just thinking about you yesterday!!
ReplyDeleteLove