Fertility-free Friday: The $70 Wedding Dress

This is a story of true love for my now-husband and what happened when it collided with a trip to my shopping kryptonite, TJ Maxx.

My "oopsie" dress

I'll set the scene.  My now-husband and I had been dating for 7 months.  He'd recently seen me at my worst, through a relatively quick bout of severe depression, but most of our dating life was contented cuddling by the fire and romantic dinners.  (And long walks on the beach.  We did meet on match.com, and you have to like long walks on the beach to put your profile up.)  I'll admit that our cuddling by the fire was actually sitting on a couch backed up to a faux fireplace in his apartment, where we watched 24 for hours.  And the romantic dinners were usually pasta cooked at home.  But we were madly in love.

We'd just flown out to spend some quality time with his parents, which was the first time I'd really spent any time with them.  They apparently approved, and I believe they nudged him to seal the deal.  Go, in-laws! :)

I *think* Now-Husband had brought up the topic of engagement rings before I made the fateful shopping trip.  He had casually broached the topic, being intentionally vague and noncommittal (ie, "If you were someday going to get an engagement ring, what would you hypothetically like?").  I had immediately started freaking out inside, in a good way, but outwardly I kept my cool and rationally talked about what I might like in a ring.  I'm a cool customer.

Soon after that, I saw an amazing wine-colored Vera Wang evening gown (not the wedding dress) at TJ Maxx.  I thought I was in the market for evening gowns for some reason, although for the record, it still has the price tag on it 6 years later.  It was, like the wedding-dress-to-be, $70, and I didn't buy it at first, but obsessed and even dreamed about it, so decided to go back for it.  The Vera Wang was still there and it was mine.  Score! 


The gateway dress.  It's not photogenic without a wearer, apparently.  Trust me, it's gorgeous.



The boobs don't actually look weird like they do here.

I'm not exactly a label hound, but...Vera Wang!  $70!

But wait.  There were now several wedding dresses on the fancy dress rack.  My TJ Maxx is quite the store, for sure, and probably better than yours.  You can really find some great items.  But I had never heard of or seen wedding dresses there, and have not seen or heard of them since.  My mind started reeling with the possibilities.

These dresses were gorgeous.  There were three in my size, some still in plastic wrapping and had probably never been tried on.  They weren't brands I'd heard of, but I wouldn't have known what a good wedding dress brand was, anyway.  They appeared to be really high quality.  I tried them on.

Nothing quite prepares you for trying on wedding dresses in TJ Maxx before you're even engaged.  You picture going to some bridal store with your sister and friends oohing and aahing over you.  Or getting your mother's dress out of storage and trying it on for her (for the record, I'd tried my mother's dress and was too busty for it).  I don't feel like I missed out on a necessary life experience, though...I've just got a different kind of story.  As I tried on the dresses, I was on an adrenaline high and two of the dresses looked quite stunning, if I do say so myself.  The one I was leaning toward was pretty low-cut, and I asked some random strangers in the fitting room if I was showing too much boob for a bride.  "No way, girl!  You gotta flaunt what you got!" 

And that was how strangers provided that final nudge for me to buy my $70 wedding dress.  I looked it up online afterward, and it was from an Australian designer who was no longer in business.  From a few gowns I found for sale online, I estimated my dress to have a retail price of at least $1000-$1500.  Yay me!

I got quite a few stares as I lugged the dress around TJ Maxx and rang it up.  Even the cashier thought I was a bit crazy; apparently she hadn't seen their wedding collection yet.  Or was just of the opinion that one should not purchase a wedding dress at TJ Maxx.  We stuffed the dress awkwardly into two large TJ Maxx bags, one on each end of the dress.  Of course, I bought the $70 wine Vera Wang, too.

When I got home, my roommate assured me I was out of my mind and told me I'd better not tell Now-Husband.  It would freak him out and make him feel pressured.  I thought about it for approximately one minute and because I can't keep a secret, called him and told him.

And what did he do?  He laughed.  He told me what a great deal it was and he couldn't wait to see it, but of course he couldn't yet because it'd be bad luck.  We still weren't saying things like "when we get married" or even "when we get engaged," but I felt pretty safe after his reaction.  He told me recently that the dress purchase scored major points for me; I wasn't high maintenance and didn't have expensive tastes, I'd stuffed the dress in the back of my old Honda Civic, which itself always had scored points for being such a practical car.  (Side note:  I'm ready for a fancier car and I'm high maintenance in entirely different ways. :)  )

There are several morals to this story.

1. My TJ Maxx is life-altering.  If you come visit me, I will take you there and you'll come out with something wonderful.  It just might not be exactly what you'd been looking for.
2. If you don't have a significant other and want one, I have two words for you:  internet dating.
3. Dating rules are meant to be broken.  Live a little.  Sometimes you might think you have it all figured out and find the perfect sundress to be proposed to in, only to have the guy not propose (a story for another time; that guy is not my husband).  And then one day everything will click and the rules won't matter anymore.

My husband proposed a month after the dress purchase.  He jokes that the wedding dress was actually $140 because I've never worn the wine Vera Wang.  Someday, somewhere I will wear it.  Maybe for our sixth anniversary.

(This post was orginally planned for Manly Monday but ended up more of a Feminine Friday.  Also, in the interest of editorial disclosure, I edited the first sentence of this after I posted it because it was bugging me.)

A Blogger's Kindness and Bird Photos Part I

Last week was awful.  Missed work, urgent care, and weeping kind of awful.

However, my foul mood was intercepted by a blogger's thoughtful gift in the mail.  Justine at A Half Baked Life sent me a lovely and delicious care package of these cookies. 


Perfection in a cookie

I take cookie quality very seriously and do not make this assertion lightly:  these are some of the best cookies I've ever had.  They are possibly second only to my sister's chocolate chip cookies, and I would be disowned from my family if I claimed any cookies were better than those.  Justine's cookies have fruit, almonds, and the clincher, coconut.  Moist, soft, flavorful, substantial...they have it all.  You must try them.

After eating an embarrassing number of these this week (only three were frozen for later), I'm feeling a tad better.  A smidgen less pain and, perhaps more importantly, reminded of all the love and support I have.  Thank you, Justine!

As my husband and I enjoyed the last of the cookies this morning on our deck, we watched a bluebird mommy and daddy bring bugs to their babies in the birdhouse.

HYDRANGEA (and blue birdhouse)

Um, so perhaps I'm a little obsessed with my hydrangeas right now and didn't focus on the birdhouse.  But you can see it in the background.  We haven't seen the baby bluebirds yet, but from the sounds of their chirping, we have at least three.  I mean, the mommy and daddy bluebird have at least three.

Bluebirds have been nesting in that house for years, which perhaps explains our lack of excitement about them.  We've seen lots of their babies come and go and have become rather "been there, done that."  Yeah, miracle of life, bird reproduction, blah blah blah.  But nothing could have prepared us for the tiny baby cardinals my husband discovered this morning.


Four babies tucked away in the butterfly bush





Our little beauties

Amazing, right?  So ugly cute.

My mom and dad are headed up here for a visit, and I told them we have birds aplenty to show them to compensate for our lack of baby humans.  I estimate that we've had at least 20 baby birds hatch within a few feet of our house this spring.  Overcompensate much?  Lots of birdie Fertile Myrtles in these parts.  Coming in a Part II post is a Carolina wren mommy defending her nest.

Volunteer Petunias

My pride and joy

I'm a beginner gardener and had no idea what a "volunteer" plant was until a couple of years ago.  Perennials came back each year, annuals didn't, and that was that.  Until the petunias I planted as annuals came back the following year.

Apparently being lazy and leaving the dead (or dormant) petunias around, unkempt and dead-looking all winter, has its advantages.  The seeds sprouted by the old plants can stick around over the winter and become beautiful petunias in the spring.  These are called volunteers, as I understand it, because they aren't guaranteed to come back as new plants but do anyway.

Tell me these aren't the most beautiful flowers you've ever seen.

Flowers around my mailbox

I adore them.  I regularly stand and stare at them; I am totally the weirdo gardening lady. But what's not to love with these plants?  They're beautiful.  They're hardy. I deadhead them sometimes and give them some water in the scorching summers, but mostly I leave them to shine on their own. 

The original petunias I planted were white but the volunteers are pink; I'm told that flowers revert to pink in the wild.  I'd very carefully picked out white flowers for this bed; pink was not part of the plan.  After we got this house, I looked at tons of landscaping books and had grand plans of color-coordinating foliage and flowers.  I'd have a bed with cool colors, maybe another with reds and yellows, but certainly nothing clashy.  After I came to terms with my lazy gardening approach, I realized that getting abundant flowers of any color is a victory, so the potentially clashy petunias will be left alone.

I'll sign off with a few more photos from my garden this spring.  Maybe my color scheme is pink and pinker.  

Azaleas planted by the builder

Camellias.  I planted three of these last year after they'd bloomed and hadn't
known how pretty the flowers would be.  Love them!

Walking Infertility Encyclopedia

I told my uber-fertile sister-in-law about how I'm taking testosterone to thin my lining for next week's procedure.  Although I'd also recently told her we were in a holding pattern of procedures that were not treatments, she said, "OOH!  It sounds like they'll be putting something like sperm up there!!"  Actually, soon-to-be mother of five, you'd hope to thicken your lining for that.  Not that she should know that, but why do I have to be a repository of all things reproductive endocrinology-related?  I forget that not everyone thinks about their FSH and AMA levels on a daily basis and yet they still manage to make babies.

Although I'm not on a quest to educate people about the female reproductive system, I keep getting the awkward opportunity to educate young guys about it, and not in a sexy "Here's an anatomy lesson, you young stud" kind of way.  Yesterday, the cashier at Whole Foods asked me what the B6 in my cart was for.  I muttered that I didn't know but he didn't look satisfied with that, so I said, "It's for...woman stuff.  Wouldn't be relevant to you!"  <awkward laugh>

Another time, I got frustrated (read:  extremely hormonal) when I couldn't find the basal body thermometers in the drugstore.  What if I missed taking my temperature the next day??  The horror.  The pharmacy employee, a guy in his early 20's, could not figure out why I'd want anything other than a fever thermometer.  I unsuccessfully tried to describe it using scientific terms until finally I blurted out, "YOU KNOW, FOR WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO GET PREGNANT."  After thereby broadcasting my status to the nearby aisles, he finally understood and directed me to the ovulation/pregnancy test section.  (Well, duh.  Should have guessed.)

In other hormonal crazies news, I think testosterone is making me rage-y.  In the span of 10 minutes the other night, I managed to pick about 10 fights with my husband.  He looked like he didn't know what had happened.  Is this what it's like to be a man, to have this much testosterone coursing through your veins 24/7?  Thanks, but no thanks.  I'm also starving all the time and craving baked goods. The weight will come off after I stop taking testosterone, right?  The other main symptom I've noticed is that I'm having vivid dreams.  Last night, I had a nightmare that I had forgotten to fast before my procedure, which is a legitimate concern.  Eating breakfast right after I wake up is hardwired into my DNA. 

While my uterus is plodding along through various hormone treatments and procedures, the rest of my life is moving quickly.  I'm about to turn 35.  Where did the past year(s) go?  How did I become advanced maternal age?  We started trying when I was 32.

This week has moving crazy fast, too.  In a rare display of Detour family decisiveness, we bought a used Camry after only researching it for a few weeks.  Although it's is not the minivan we'd dreamed of having by this point, it's pretty great.   I have a strict "No Baby, No Minivan" policy, so we'll have to figure out some other way to transport lumber back from Home Depot.

You know the individually wrapped chocolates that have short sayings in the wrappers?  Sometimes the saying makes me feel optimistic.  Other times, it makes me very, very angry.  The wrapper I just opened says, "Feed your sense of anticipation."  Enter testosterone-boosted ANGER.  Oh yeah, chocolate wrapper?  I've been feeding my sense of anticipation for having a baby my whole life.  Tired of being on the anticipating side of things, ok? 

My Baby

I've led my bloggie friends to believe that we're trying for our first take-home baby, but that's not entirely true.  Meet our first, Baby Dog.  Her name has been changed to maintain anonymity.

"But I'm not cold."


She's actually not a baby anymore but is a full-grown, elderly doggie.  I've had her since she was one.  She didn't have any puppy energy left in her at age one and was already kinda lazy and crotchety.  She's always completely lacked in any athletic abilities and will only run if she thinks she is in imminent danger.  Or if she thinks she's going to be fed.  She thinks playing fetch is a complete waste of time.  She also has the most intense, loving gaze that looks right into your soul.

My husband entered the picture when Baby Dog was middle-aged.  She was pretty set in her ways by then but decided pretty quickly that he was ok.  One incident early on when we were dating convinced her that he was The One.  We had guests over and accidentally left some food out on the coffee table when we went to another room.  Suddenly realizing our mistake, I leaped up to find her licking the cutting board clean.  She'd eaten a pound of cheese.  Amazingly, she seemed to feel great afterward and suffered no ill effects. 

****

My husband and I bought a new camera recently.  Our old one broke sometime after our honeymoon in 2007.  In the early days after it broke, I decreed that we couldn't buy a new camera until we had a baby.  You know, good old-fashioned bribery to get my husband on the trying to conceive train earlier.  Eventually our babyless state had zero to do with lack of trying and everything to do with legitimate medical problems, so I decided to stop punishing him with a cameraless existence.

Baby Dog has been the subject of more photos with our new camera than any other person or dog.  In a fit of unexploited maternal energy last weekend, I decided it would be hilarious to photograph her surrounded by hand-me-down baby paraphernalia that's collecting dust in our closets.  It was.

The worst part of the photo shoot for Baby Dog was when I tried to hold her.  She gets mad when her 2-foot bubble of personal space isn't respected.  She looks adorable in a baby hat but has very little tolerance for cuddling, being rocked to sleep, or being burped.



Burping



Sifting through the sadly unused baby clothes was the hardest part of the photo shoot on my end.  I did it for the sake of a few funny photos—you know, fine art.  When the clothes are sitting in our closets along with car seats and strollers, I can try to forget they're there.  Opening the vacuum-sealed bags and smelling their baby-ness (how do they retain that baby scent from years ago when my niece and nephew were little?) reminds me that my only baby smells like a dog and not baby shampoo.  For now, Baby Dog will have to be the sometimes unwilling recipient of all of my maternal impulses.

Looks like my letrozole cycle is getting moved up!  As you know, that never happens.  Cycles are always pushed back and never moved up.  Apparently muscle twitches are not a common side effect of taking estrogen, contrary to what Dr. Google told me, and my doctor instructed me to stop taking it and the progesterone right away.  She thinks I've been on the hormones long enough and can wait for a period, meaning I'll probably get to start letrozole a little earlier than initially planned.  Every little bit helps, right?

This Is Your Life

Do you sometimes get the feeling this can't possibly be your life? That at some point you'll pinch yourself, wake up, and be free of pain from infertility or loss? This sadness and yearning wasn't part of The Plan, the rough timeline of how you expected your life to turn out. It certainly wasn't part of my plan, which included easily popping out at least one kid before age 30.

I started babysitting in middle school. I was the neighborhood babysitter, the one parents trusted with their colicky newborns and large broods. Some of the kids were so special to me that I was a little jealous of their parents. How amazing would it be to parent this child and be around them 24/7?

I never doubted I would have children of my own. When I was 28, everything seemed to be in place to realize that dream. I was engaged to a nice man who wanted to start trying to get pregnant right after the wedding. We fantasized about which features our mixed-race children would inherit. To my great disbelief, our relationship fell apart 6 months before the wedding. I cried to my sister that looking at her children filled me with fear that I wouldn't get married and have children. They reminded me of everything I might not be able to have.

I met my husband a quick 2 months later and we were married within a year and a half. I gushed to my friends that my husband was the first man I'd ever dated. The rest were boys. From a non-romantic standpoint, I was thrilled to be back on track with The Plan.

Unlike my ex-fiance, my husband wasn't on board with trying to get pregnant immediately. He wanted to take a couple of years to enjoy life as a twosome. I suspect that after 36 years of going it solo, he needed some time to get used to one major life change before making another.

When we first got married, we were renting a spacious apartment that happens to be only a mile from my current infertility clinic. I would drive by the clinic's prominent sign on my way to work and think about the women who were patients there. What were their lives like? How did they deal with one of the toughest problems I could imagine? Thoughts would sneak in telling me I could be one of those women in a couple of years. It seemed too awful to contemplate.

I'd always had horribly painful periods and they seemed to be getting worse during those first years of marriage. I was somewhat aware of endometriosis and suspected I had it, but I had other things to worry about. Getting my doctorate, getting married, buying a house--big changes were going down.

The last year of waiting before we pulled the goalie was a long one. I felt like we'd never reach the next chapter, the one I'd looked forward to my whole life. We finally started trying in August of 2009 and I was giddy with excitement. During the first two week wait, I was absolutely, 100% convinced I was pregnant. The sharp twinges I was experiencing were my fallopian tubes cramping up as the zygote traveled to its resting spot. Despite the fact that I'd never heard of fallopian tubes cramping, I was certain mine were. The first period was devastating because I'd been so sure I was pregnant.

Luck came to us very early on when our fifth cycle resulted in a pregnancy. It all fell apart when we found out at 7 weeks that I would miscarry. After the miscarriage, the months of trying started adding up and eventually put us into the infertile camp.

No one thinks they'll become an infertility patient. I'm sure it's the same for other hardships. How did I end up here? How do I go on and cope with the way my life is turning out? Now that I'm the infertility patient I dreaded becoming, I have an answer that mostly works for me. It involves taking Prozac, making myself get up to take a shower in the morning, and finding support from friends. I still have plenty of moments when I think this can't possibly be my life, that it's not possible for me to be in my mid-thirties with no children. It's scary not knowing how this will turn out.

What keeps you going as you deal with infertility and/or loss? How successful have you been at throwing away your timeline of how you expected things to go?

Me 101

Since this is an infertility/loss blog, I'll dive right into where I am with the process. I'm 34 and subfertile. Been trying to get pregnant for over two years, with two miscarriages along the way. This will be our first baby. My amazing husband is 40.

We found out I was pregnant for the second time a few days after my husband's 40th birthday. He was so happy that it looked like things were turning a corner for us, and thought it was pretty special that it was happening at such a milestone birthday for him. I know he was excited for the first pregnancy, too, but this time was different. We'd been trying for an additional 1.5 years, a surgery (laparoscopy), lots of fertility tests, lots of fertility sex, and finally, a medication to promote ovulation (letrozole). I'm sure the extra time had given him space to settle into the whole baby concept.

After going through many cycles with no pregnancies, we knew we were very lucky to get pregnant our first cycle on letrozole. To only have to take a few pills and not do a more invasive treatment was a huge gift. There was a fetus this time, an actual baby on the ultrasound. Our first pregnancy had resulted in a blighted ovum, which was a big fake-out. It's like the sac is playing this cruel joke about growing something inside it--"I'll give you all of the pregnancy symptoms but there's nothing going on in here!" After finding out there was no heartbeat this time, I started sobbing while the doctors continued trying to find something on the ultrasound. There was a little part of me under the shock and devastation that was happy I could see a baby this time. My self-congratulations were short-lived. The ultrasound doctor said that this type of miscarriage is more worrisome than the last. Once there's a fetal pole, stuff is less apt to go wrong.

But it did. And I'm dealing. It's been one and a half months since my D&C and I'm ok. In some ways this one has been easier to deal with. In my less confident moments, I attribute all of the difference this time around to the Prozac I started taking several months ago. But I think it's also easier because I've changed. My psychiatrist said recently that she doesn't think I'm avoiding the grief from this miscarriage, which was my concern. She thinks I'm making healthy adaptations to the heightened level of stress in my life.

I guess. I do feel better prepared to handle what life throws at me these days. I feel stronger, more resilient. But I also feel battered. And cynical. Like this will never work and my biggest fear will be realized: I won't be a mom. I keep reminding myself that chances are good that we'll get there somehow, but the fear still lurks under all of the reassurances I channel its way.

I'm brand new to writing like this. I'm a medical writer by trade, which gives me just enough understanding of medicine to pepper my doctors with a million questions at every visit, but not enough actual medical knowledge to really know what's going on. I guess we all have to eventually just trust the doctors, but it's so difficult. Anyway, blogging and writing about myself in a creative capacity is entirely new to me.

What am I looking for with this blog? A place to be a little creative. To express my frustrations and joys. To find and give support. Thanks for reading!