Only 40...

Those were the words my “lady doctor” uttered as we discussed what will possibly be the next phase of my reproductive life. Or should I call it my non-reproductive, feminine, pre-menopausal existence? It’s still a very new concept. “Yes, you’re only 40...” was the precursor to an entire discussion about my options for curbing my currently challenging menstrual cycle that hits like a freight train every 21-25 days, bleeding everything AND my freaking wallet. It requires every size tampon ever made, super plus to medium, and then I’ve obviously got to have the regular and overnight pads with all the wings. One time, I fucked up and bought the ones without wings and my usual monthly crime scene turned into a full on horror movie of epic proportions. I’m not sure exactly how many pairs of underwear I ruined in that hour, but best believe I have not made that mistake since.

See, for most women of my age this situation is much simpler. They go and get their prescription Mirena or Kileena (whatever sexy millennial name is out there for an IUD this week) popped in and POOF they get a drop or two of flow every now and then. These bitches (intended lovingly) can party it up at the pool 25/8 and purchase a pack of ultra thin pantyliners twice a year. They would very literally faint if they saw my CVS feminine product receipts. So what exactly is keeping me from a blissful and non-eventful cycle? Turns out, I have these lovely things called fibroids. And no, I’m not the only woman who has them - I know that, Karen. But I do have a whole... what phrase did the funny ultrasound tech use to describe them?... Oh, “a growing family” of them hunkering down, scratching and surviving, living their best lives, making themselves at home deep deeeep in the walls and other special places in my non-functional uterus.

See, the professionals like to remind you that your uterus is not functioning. In case I didn’t remember that I waited thirty-three years to have my first and only child and that in the last seven years, no other children have been born out of my same singular uterus. Yep, that was intentional. I’m not @oneanddoneregan by accident. It’s basically my brand! Can’t change it now, right? But in all seriousness, I just have no clear and present desire to be 42 or 45 or 48 yelling at some toddler in a grocery store and then carrying them out sideways leaving behind a cart full of groceries. Nope, I’m not the one. Happy to applaud and bask in awe at those of you who have done and are doing it. Currently saluting you with one hand while clutching a small fanny pack full of feminine products in the other.

Speaking of those many and varied feminine aids, I’ve been on a quest for about a year now to lighten and shorten my own monthly flow. My lady doctor is awesome. He spends the time to talk through my issues and options and listens to my concerns. No complaint there whatsoever. Shout out to Dr. Harouny from Novant Health. At this point I’ve been through not one, but two, ultrasounds to determine whether an endometrial ablation or even a standard IUD would be possible. For those of you that appreciate detailed facts and standard definitions, an endometrial ablation is an outpatient medical procedure that is used to remove or destroy the endometrial lining of the uterus in women who have heavy menstrual bleeding. Oh and don’t forget... endometrial ablation should never be performed on women who wish to have children. Because, again, I’m not doing that anymore, my uterus is empty and non-functional, I am barely a woman. Sorry for the dramatics, folks, but that’s just how it feels.

Identifying candidacy for the ablation requires an ultrasound. Remember those? The procedure that’s so exciting and anticipatory when we actually have a fetus growing inside us that we cannot wait to meet, and when that’s no longer the case is one of the most awkward ordeals that a woman can know. It felt like it took days rather than several minutes. While my comedienne ultrasound tech was just happily digging around in there typing various half-words into her screen, I was assuming general stirrup position and having an under-the-radar panic attack. After about 20 minutes, it was finally over. Same story...the fibroids are just slightly bigger now, so no IUD will fit right and the ablation won’t work. My remaining options are the band-aid of birth control pills (back to that nightmare of my late teens and 20s) or...drum roll please... a fuuuucking hysterectomy.

Now, let me get you straight on the modern hysterectomy. I’ve had it explained to me twice now so I’m basically an expert. Outpatient operation with anesthesia... 10 day recovery period... they only take the uterus and Fallopian tubes (did you know that ovarian cancer starts in the tubes?)... they leave the ovaries so no early menopause and, TADA, no more periods. Those are the hot logical facts. Sounds simple enough, right? Except that I am not guided by my logical mind, like ever. The prospect of losing this particular part of my body, the part that gave me the most precious gift of my life, non-functional and useless as it may be, is fucking with my emotions in a major way. I mean come on, I JUST TURNED 40 IN JAN...U...ARY! Can mother effing Mother Nature seriously give me like five or ten minutes to adjust to that fact? My 39-year-old body is barely cold. And yes, Sharon, I realize I’m not the only person who is newly 40 and there are certainly women older than me that have experienced more and worse. However, there are a lot of ladies younger than I am with their whole reproductive lives ahead of them that need to be reading this shit for their own sanity.

So, I’m pretty much as ambivalent about what to do with my uterus as I am about closing out this piece. I can choose to grab my reproductive reality by the...tubes, I guess as it were... have the procedure and fully embrace life on the other side of 40. Or, I can keep holding onto my feminine youth by a very thin and ever-shredding thread really for no other reason than some warped sense of nostalgia? Emotional principle?? While the decision seems easy, it’s tougher than I ever imagined. It's like letting go of a piece of yourself that means more to you than you thought it did. Turns out Chicago was right (again, because it also is really fucking hard to say I'm sorry sometimes)...you don’t know what you got until it’s (almost) gone.

What would you do if you were me? Comments are always appreciated!

Stay sane and hold onto your uterus as long as it feels practical to do so,

-Regan

WhyTH Am I Still Doing This?

I know, I know. Another long overdue post...sigh... As I sit here in the lobby of a VA Hilton Garden Inn basking in (fake) candlelight - we can't risk burning this fine institution down with legit flames, y'all - and my $7 red blend, it's been quite a work day. And since I don't see any couches or licensed professionals with notebooks, blogging will serve as tonight's therapy.  

Dallas, my sweet and demandingly snugglesome, suddenly rambunctious, super talkative and suggestively Elaine-style dancing (don't ask), child is five years old. WOW - I have NO idea how or when that happened. The reason I say this is not because I don't remember every crazed, rage engendering three-year-old tantrum (like that one when it was just he and I at the grocery store and I had to leave all of the perishable goods in the cart and drag him kicking and screaming to the car, give him a "stern talking to" and drag him back into the store, relocate the abandoned cart and finish ticking off the grocery list while he sobbed loudly...still recovering from that one, obvi) or back to the infant days when I never slept because of the stupid crib alarm that was supposed to save him from SIDS but actually only went off when he was basking in perfect slumber and, in fact, STILL BREATHING JUST FINE. No, no. Not those reasons.

I think the actual reason that I can't believe how far we've come is because I find myself still doing things that make me think to myself, "Why in the hell am I still doing this?" That said, this post really serves as an ode, if you will, to all of the helicopter, overprotective, and just plain old verge of psychotic activities that maybe... no, most definitely... made sense at one time in my child's development, but may or may not make any damn sense to continue doing any longer. How did I get here, you may be wondering? What broke the straw? Um, BECAUSE PEOPLE BE LOOKING AT ME LIKE I'M STRAIGHT CRAZY. And as a generally self-aware person, that gives me pause. That's why.

So yeah, awhile back I started making a list of these WTF activities and moments on my phone. Technology really is a gift. So, let's run it through. But please know... Just because I list all of these things that I should probably stop doing in my own blog post doesn't mean for one second that I'm going to stop doing them. I have kept this boy alive all this time by being my crazy, overly cautious self. Best I can do is promise to think about it. Make some concessions. Calm down a little. She says as her neck twitches ever so slightly...

Cutting up his food into miniscule pieces

So, my personal research has concluded that most parents stop doing this once their child stops sitting in a high chair. Now, I'm not saying that you normal people out there are giving your children crisply sharpened steak knives and a NY strip at age three and saying "Go for it" but you know what I mean. My level of crazy: If dinner is spaghetti and meatballs, I still cut back and forth through his spaghetti so that it measures approximately one-inch pieces. Next level: We were at a friend's house last weekend and the kids had those little peelable oranges. In addition to telling him to bite the wedges in half to eat them and the firm warning "Don't eat them whole!", I kept going upstairs where the kids were playing to make sure he hadn't choked on an orange wedge. Like probably 5 or 6 times. Oh yeah, I'm certifiable. Half of my mind is like - Reg, you're totally good. Your kid will NEVER choke on an orange and that's good parenting. The other half is looking around at the other parents who are clearly sane and it says to me, Reg, you are a f%@$ing lunatic. He's fine. Stop buggin'. That first, psychotically helicopter side always wins, though! What's funny is that there was a point where I never questioned my own logic. Until that day when I spent ten hangry, pre-dinner minutes painstakingly cutting up food into tiny pieces and then watched Dallas take the equivalent of four bites at once on his fork and be fine. He didn't choke. Yeah, that made me feel kind of stupid.

Pre-washing new clothes

Remember the days of Dreft? And then when you finally wised up and stopped buying separate detergent for baby clothes, so Tide Free or whatever you could afford between $1000/month childcare, a mortgage, car payments, gas, the light bill and food? And when I would go to Target or Old Navy and come back with all of those super cute outfits, I would take them off the hangers, take off all of the tags and pop them right into the hamper to be washed. You know, so all that "new clothes" essence didn't irritate his delicate and precious young, babyfied skin. YEAH, SO I JUST STOPPED DOING THIS LAST WEEK. I KNOW! I am like the sucker of all moms. What broke me? A school play. Dallas was cast as a tree or a goat, can't remember, in Three Billy Goats Gruff and he needed to wear a certain color shirt or shorts, can't remember that either, that he didn't have. It's all very foggy... Kohl's had a sale. End of the day, we threw the stuff on him, he acted out his part and guess what??? He did NOT break out in a deadly "new clothes rash". He really just went on living his life. Who knew??? Oh, you guys did. Well, thanks for telling me. See what I did there?

Baths

OK, hold your disgust. I will continue to keep Dallas on the right side of personal hygiene. What I'm referring to here is baths vs. showers. Bit of a story here. Back in late May we took a little mini family vacation to Myrtle Beach. It was awesome! The real crowning jewel, though, was getting Dallas out of his comfort zone and watching him willingly adjust to new things that at home, he had always rejected outright. Our hotel room was sans bathtub, but had a really cool walk-in shower. So, of course I panicked. My mind said, "Dallas is never going to take a shower. This is never going to work. He's going to fight this and freak out and this is going to suck." You know, that super positive, normal reaction that any well-adjusted parent would have. Thankfully, enter Daddy, stage left. Ever the salesman, Jason effortlessly sells D on the cool merits of shower life. Within literally two minutes of getting in, Dallas says "I looooove showers. I'm going to take showers all the time." We got back home and he couldn't wait to start taking showers! And guess what? Showers are WAY shorter! And there's not eighty-seven gallons of water all over the bathroom floor and all over me! Or a gaggle of toys to clean up! Of course, there's the slight issue of getting him to take a shower in his own bathroom rather than ours, but hey, nothing is perfect.

Using regular plates and getting his own water

Don't act like you didn't go to Target or IKEA and buy those plastic, BPA-free toddler plates, with or without the dividers, like as soon as your boo boo started eating solid foods. And remember how you couldn't wait to cut their food up in little bite size pieces and watch them try different things on those little blue, green, yellow, orange, hot pink and purple plates and bowls? Well, if this feels like a stretch to remember... If you're thinking back really hard to those days right now and your child is 6 and under, let me remind you BECAUSE UP UNTIL LAST MONTH DALLAS WAS STILL EATING OFF OF THOSE. At some point like last month it was dinner time and all those plates must have been dirty, so Jason thought "outside of the box" and decided to feed Dallas dinner on a regular a$$ plate like we adults eat on. Some genius $hit, apparently. So now, he eats on the same size plates as other regular-size humans. I should have known this grown-up plate thing was possible when one day he asked me for a cup, went to the refrigerator and got himself a cup of water. I almost cried nostalgic tears of joy. Obama was right... everyday these kids are taking one more step away from us. I'm not crying, that's you.

This paradox of simultaneously teaching our children to grow up and be self-sufficient while wearing our rose-colored glasses of their limitations is a hell of a drug. I swear that I want Dallas to be fearless and take risks, yet I toss and turn at night thinking of all of the things that frighten me as his mother. I literally couldn't sleep one night last week because he was going on a field trip to the splash park and I was imagining kids holding him under the water and him not being able to break free. DERANGED, I know. You want next level? I was thinking of driving to the splash park in my car and, you know, just keeping watch like a parking lot creeper to make sure that didn't happen...or that if it did, I would be there to rescue my baby bean. DERANGED SQUARED. But hey, the bus broke down and they didn't get to go. The role of "mom truly heartbroken that her son didn't get to attend the splash park fieldtrip" was played by Regan Love-Campbell that day. My performance was stellar.

Am I as alone as I think I am in this? What things are you still doing that reading this has brought to light? I'm sure I have more examples of pure mom insanity, but I needed to keep at least a small shred of my dignity in tact. Not sure I succeeded.

Stay sane and test those limits!

-Regan