It is amazing how fragile a positive attitude can be. I logically know that a good attitude is going to serve me so much better than being worried, anxious, and afraid, but keeping a good attitude has been a lot harder to do lately.

I had a pretty fan-freaking-tastic attitude for my early May transfer. I was staying positive, listening only to “happy” music, reading mostly light fare, (not listening to news or reading horrible stories of the awful things human beings do to each other), eating well, etc. etc. ect. I had two fresh donor eggs from a well-proven donor (6 for 8!), IVIg transfusion, lots of acupuncture, fresh off a bunch of massage work… But that didn’t work out.

I didn’t let that get me down though. We had 7 embryos left, we’d only done the IVIg/intralipids twice now… I was ready. But, no. My embryos still didn’t stick around.

I was a little worried, but we talked to the doctor. He was very calm and reassuring, discussed many of our protocols and why he has faith in them and said the best thing to do was to try new embryos. And a friend sent me a book about repeated IVF failures and immune treatments supporting this. Turns out the book explained in detail the treatments I was already doing! I was ready to get back in the running again.

But the time since then has been full of false starts and waiting. And I have been so hard-pressed to find a sense that I can do this pregnancy thing.

On Tuesday, I had a little breakthrough. My friend T posted in my IF & beyond group in the morning. It was a great pep talk about staying positive. Everyone responded with how important it is to be positive and how good they felt about being positive. Great. I knew that, but I still wasn’t feeling it.

I mean, I know!! I have good health (other than this unexplained IF), an amazing wife, my family is all within driving distance (with the exception of one brother) and I have 3 of 8 grandparents still living well, I have a lovely home. My job is more complicated right now, but I work long hours for little money in the hopes I can still be contributing to our household income when I am raising my own baby. Overall, what’s not to like? Plus I run a fitness class one night a week on skates with some of the most amazing women – and I get paid for it! And I get to work with an amazing woman who has become a dear friend while doing this. If I weren’t holding out for a baby, I’d be blissed out. So why am I struggling to find joy with such a full life?

So I went to yoga. Another blessing. My RE pays a yoga teacher to run a free weekly yoga class for women like me who are trying to get pregnant through the clinic.Yoga is always good. I got there on time for once and got to catch up with a friend who is doing her first IVF and patnering with an egg donor in the same cycle (!!) and I got up set up and relaxed before class. When the instructor came in, she tried something new – having us do call and response with a hindu chant she sometimes does. That was awesome and funny. I have some familiarity with some chants, and I think I was leading all of the responses… until she did a longer string. Dead silence, then laughter!!

Next, she tells us she is going to chant and we can listen. She does one of my favorites. The Mrityunjaya Mantra. One transliteration is this from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahamrityunjaya_Mantra: “oṁ tryambakaṁ yajāmahe sugandhiṁ puṣṭi-vardhanam ǀurvārukam-iva bandhanān mṛtyormukṣīya māmṛtāt” ǁ My favorite translation is this from http://greenmesg.org/mantras_slokas/sri_shiva-mahamrityunjaya_mantra.php:
“Om, We Worship the Three-Eyed One (Lord Shiva),
Who is Fragrant (Spiritual Essence) and Who Nourishes all beings.
May He severe our Bondage of Samsara (Worldly Life), like a Cucumber (severed from the bondage of its Creeper), …
… and thus Liberate us from the Fear of Death, by making us realize that we are never separated from our Immortal Nature.”

Here’s my favorite rendition so far (but there are many to crush on!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9SfijC54nI

I don’t know what it is about this chant, but it puts me completely at peace. Wikipedia says this about it: “Whereas the Gayatri Mantra is meant for purification and spiritual guidance, the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra is meant for healing rejuvenation and nurturance.” Yeah. That is exactly what I feel when I sing this or hear it.

Ok, so that was a great start to yoga and the rest sort of melted my stress away.

I had to do some things around the house before bed and wound up responding to T’s post in my group. I wanted to let her know the part that her post had played in my digging my way through some pretty complex feelings. It turned into a much longer response than I’d intended, probably because I had all the thoughts whirling around here aching to come out. I finally headed upstairs to bed.

My dear, sweet, loving, supportive spouse wondered what kept me milling around so late. I told her I was feeling better as we were crossing paths in our final preparations for the night. She asked me to tell her more when we got into bed. I got a sense that my peace was fragile and was hesitant to explain it to her, but I ignored my gut and tried to put it into words. Wow. Bad move. I lost it completely.

It took me a few days to complete this post (I started it two days ago now), but I feel like it is important to get all of this down. I don’t know if maybe it will help someone else struggling in a year or two to not feel so crazy. Or it might just be for me — to remember that peace is fragile and this process is complex, but that I can find my way out. Sometimes through just being willful, but that when brute force doesn’t work, sometimes it just takes time, patience, and self-love.

My Derby Lite skaters have been making strides that make me think of this process I’m going through in terms of skating. Some of them who have not derby skated before are starting to get their feet to move in the way that gets them to crossing over while skating. Sometimes is clumpy and awkward, but it is a step along the right path. And I let them know that there are many skills in derby where I have seen myself (and others) master a skill in practice, then come back to the next practice unable to get their body to do it again. But  reassure them that once they start to get it, their body will remember. And someday they will get to the place where they know they couldn’t always do that thing, but now it is like breathing. They won’t remember how it felt to NOT do that skill!

I too know that even if I lose a skill, a feeling, a sense of peace, or a sense of myself, I know in my bones that I can get back to that place with gentle practice.

I am pulling out lots of tools. My support group online. The blogs I am reading. My real-life friends who have walked this road, The ones who have not, but who love me, support me, and ask me not only how I am, but encourage me to talk about this process while they listen with compassion. My parents who each support me/us in different ways.  And my wife and I unreservedly LOVE our new therapist.

So, still working on my positive attitude, and heading in the right direction.