Thursday 30 January 2014

The Parenting Test

Last April, my cat A was diagnosed with diabetes. His care required me to check his glucose levels and administer his insulin shots twice daily. Amazingly, he did quite well with all his injections, but he gave me a hard time when I tried to get him on the scale for his weekly weigh-ins. I had purchased a baby/pet scale from Amazon.com (the first purchase where using the item for a baby was an afterthought) but he was so non-cooperative that I ended up holding him while I stepped on my scale. Within a few weeks, we had settled into a routine and at his first three month check up, his fructosamine level (kitty A1C) showed his glucose was under excellent control. Then one day, I came home from the gym and thought he had a glazed look in his eyes. I checked his blood sugar and it was 35, which is critically low in humans. I fed him a bunch of cat treats and an hour later it was up to 72. I contacted the vet, who noted that his diabetes may have gone into remission, but she warned it could return. Six months later his weight is stable and he is still euglycemic!

As I was starting our IUI treatments at the time when A was diagnosed, I viewed it as a type of parenting test. (Those of you who have children can just burst out laughing now) As an only child, I'm inherently selfish with my time. When I lived alone prior to getting married, I loved having the freedom to come and go as I pleased. As long as I filled A's food and water bowls when I left the house in the morning, it didn't matter when I returned (although I received a very judgmental look when I once came home the next morning). Fortunately, I married a fellow only child who also values his independence and I still have a lot of latitude with my free time; I just have update him with a text message. Caring for A's diabetes required me to adjust my schedule around his twice daily insulin injections and gave me a slight representation on how I would have to arrange my daily routine based on someone else's needs. (Even if you don't have kids, feel free to laugh...)

At times it feels that there are certain expectations for when you are in a pre-children state. A few years ago, I went to England to speak at a conference. Husband stayed behind as we were in the process of closing on our house. During my visit, I met up with three friends, all had two kids and one was pregnant with her third. They were too keen to live vicariously through me. "You had better be hungover..." the pregnant one threatened as she picked me up from the train station. Oh, I could oblige their need for details. I spent the previous night in London with two of my old hockey teammates who were still single. We went to a wine bar, I flirted with an Irish banker and scored an accidentally on purpose breast graze. We walked home from a chip shop at 5 in the morning, and for reasons that I cannot remember, I was barefoot. As it had been so long since any of them had been out for an evening, they were enthralled. When we were still deciding if we wanted to pursue having kids, my cousin's husband encouraged us to have a final adventure as a couple before taking the plunge. It ended up being our trip to Hawaii where we purchased a time share so we could return with our child for family vacations.

As I now know that if we had started trying to procreate years ago, we may have been able to conceive spontaneously,  and who knows maybe that pregnancy might have stuck. Perhaps, I could have a toddler running around our house right now. Is it a bad thing that I see an upside to the birth canal not travelled? I can't help to wonder how our life would be different if we had a baby earlier. We may not have acquired our time share or renovated our kitchen, but I'm not too bothered by the tangible possessions. I think about the experiences we may have missed in this alternative universe. I may not have started swimming, Husband may not progressed through the ranks of collegiate field hockey umpiring and we both may not have discovered cross-fit. Maybe having a baby at a younger age would have strained our relationship rather than having it strengthened by our infertility and RPL experience. Then again, maybe I'm also wondering what we'll do for an encore if we're still childless.

11 comments:

  1. I always equated my dogs with kids (or at least a precursor) so I won't laugh. I hope you get to have both the experiences AND the kid!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I totally consider my dogs as practice to having kids. We've had to leave parties early because they'd been cooped up too long and even schedule our vacations around them!

    Also, I always feel grateful that we didn't have success when we first started trying because our relationship is so much stronger now and we were able to do many things we wouldn't have had the chance to do otherwise.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Like Erin, I feel my relationship was strengthened by this challenged. And I think about the things we enjoyed (like Korea and China) that we would not have been able to if we would have gotten pregnant when we started trying. And, even now 21 weeks pregnant, I still wonder what our life will be like if, god forbid, something goes wrong and these are not our take home babies. We also talked a lot about what our life would be like without kids. For me, as crazy as it sounds, I would go into politics. I think having these thoughts is normal for us planners!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't even make fun of you...I used to have a diabetic cat too! Pre-marriage, of course, since M is allergic. It was such a game changer. If I wanted to go away for a weekend, I couldn't just put down an extra big bowl of food and water, I had to find a cat sitter and train them to give needles. Luckily as long as my cat was distracted with his face in a food bowl, I probably could have amputated a limb if I'd wanted to.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have a dog that is...challenging. When we first got her she had terrible separation anxiety and we couldn't leave her alone. We had to plan things around when doggy daycare was open or go to places we could take her. We often had to take her out to pee in the middle of the night so we weren't getting a lot of sleep. It was bad and we were sure that a kid would be easier. Now that I have kids, I still stand by that. I can't leave the kids alone either, but at least I can take them to restaurants and the grocery store. They wake up in the middle of the night, but at least I don't have to walk down the block to change a diaper. Pets that have special needs can indeed prep you for kids.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We've never had any pets because my husband thinks we're too busy and gone too much. I'm not sure if that's going to change if we have kids--I really hope it doesn't. I like our life and I'm very thankful we've had this time "just us" with no children.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Fur babes do a great job testing our parenting skills. ;) I'm so glad to rad you've experienced some really rewarding things during your pre-baby married life.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love how thoughtfully you write. I wonder about that too. Years ago, I'm certain I could have conceived because I can recall my awareness of ovulation in my 20's. It's as I've said before. Sometimes, infertility is a result of a litany of decisions, which layer upon layer, bring us to this point in time.

    ReplyDelete
  9. My husband likes to joke (or complain) that having so many siblings has made me greedy - if I take a bite of his sandwich, only half is left, he claims.

    There is one alternate universe I'd like to live in. The one in which my babies stayed inside long enough to make it. Otherwise, I am quite happy with our life and our experiences together. H has more regrets on this, I think, perhaps because I wanted kids long before he was ready for that. But given our issues, even if we had started earlier, who knows if that would have worked... I prefer not to dwell on those what-ifs, although they're bound to come up every now and then. Hoping you find a way to conquer infertility and have a baby to keep you busy for the next couple of years!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I also like to equate having pets to having children. We have a dog (pre-marriage, I was a cat only household for the reasons you state) which comes with a lot time for feeding, walking, pooping. Sometimes I just want to lay on the couch and that dog wants to go play ball, and I feel so guilty. Yeah, I like to think that'll be what it's like to have children.

    ReplyDelete
  11. We've never had pets, but coaching softball the last 20 years has been our practice! At least with tee wage girls, which has got to be the toughest - oh the drama! Lol. It's good to look back and see all the things you have now, that you maybe wouldn't have if your had a child sooner. There's still lots to be grateful for, just hard to remember sometimes.

    ReplyDelete