H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y T H E O D O R E

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.

Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows in a warrior’s hand.”
Psalm 127: 3 & 4

Our son will be two tomorrow, June 16. Two years ago we welcomed our miracle baby and now he is growing up, we have no baby anymore. We will not be celebrating his birthday in any public way, we will doing something private. We are not big on throwing him birthday parties, instead we try to invest in more tangible and meaningful things for him and that was one of the reasons why we made the effort to have him visit with his grandparents recently and believe me, the bonding I saw with his grandparents was better than any party you could have thrown him.

I have learnt so much about parenting in this short time. I have learnt what it really means to love unconditionally. To have to discipline our son because of something naughty he did and then watch him run into your arms a few minutes later with a special hug or kiss for you, totally forgetting the discipline he just received. I would imagine that, that is how it should be with our relationship with God as well. He disciplines us and wants us to run into his arms soon after when we need comfort.

Throughout our struggle with primary infertility, I have often heard mothers say that whenever their children hurt, they feel that hurt in the bottom of their stomach, some even hold on to the bottom of their stomachs and cry in pain. I always felt jealous of these moms because I was not sure I would ever be able to relate in this way to what they were feeling. Thank goodness I now totally understand and can relate, even though thankfully my son has not suffered any real hurt, only the occasional falls where he hit his head on the floor. Those do terrify me and I do feel the hurt in my stomach, especially that he cries so hard whenever he suffers one of those falls.

Last night we were watching the movie, ‘not easily broken’ by T.D. Jakes and the physiotherapist in the movie lost her son to a swimming accident. He won his race but he went too hard into the wall of the pool and seemed to have suffered a head injury and sadly died. This overwhelming sadness came over me and I suddenly pictured myself in the same position. Believe me, this was not my child and it was acting, but I felt the pain deep down in my stomach as if it was my child, it was frightening. I saw my husband turned on two occasions and looked at our son who was sleeping on the sofa beside us and I knew he was going through the same thing I was going through. What came to me forcefully was that this child was an only child and his mom was a single mom and so she is now all alone. I revisited the whole issue of having an only child and vowed again that there is no way I will settle with just one child, as long as I can do something about it.

I had no idea parenting was so challenging, but so worth it. Mind you I have heard stories and I have witnessed enough parenting going on around me, but you never know the extent of something until you experience it yourself. At times it has me wondering if this is probably why God seem to not have wanted to give me children, the fact that I might not be able to co-op with it. Trust me with a child as active and daring as ours, you would be wondering too, ‘what did I get myself in.’ The thing is, the minute I start having those thoughts, he does something so sweet, so cute that those thoughts immediately disappear and I start thanking God for him all over again. While visiting with family recently, one of my brother-in-laws said to me that I deserved a medal for parenting, after seeing the amount of energy that our son has and how you constantly have to have an eye on him in case he hurts himself or someone else. I was able to respond to him in the most practical way, that I came into this experience with an open mind. Of course we all would like to think that we will have the calmest and easy to control children, but what a quiet and dull world that would be. Can you imagine it? Quite frankly, I prefer the noise, to me its a sign of life and good health.

What can I say, parenting has taught me unconditional love, unselfishness, patience, “to cry a little, live a little and let my poor heart break just a little, for that’s the glory of, that’s the story of love.” These are the words of a song I heard sang once and I have remembered them since. Parenting has also taught me trust in a new way, because when our efforts to be the parents we ought to be to our son seem insufficient, we can only move onward through faith in God, that everything will turn out well.

One of the vows I have made is to ensure that our son enjoy and live in the moment of his childhood as much as possible, so that when he is older, he does not come up missing anything.

To all of you struggling with infertility, my prayer is that one day you will be able to write a post on your blog site such as this, but you have to hold on to hope. You have to picture it happening for you. You cannot afford to lose heart or hope or else you lose everything.

Until next time, keep clinging to this hope.

Our son's first haircut

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.
Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows in a warrior’s hand.”
Psalm 127: 3 & 4

Today’s post will be on a lighter subject. No infertility and its many causes and certainly no miscarriages. After all, who likes to talk about things like these all of the time. A light moment can be so welcoming when everything else seem to be going awry. I do trust my infertile readers won’t think that I am insensitive for writing this post as we are still in the honeymoon stage of parenting.

One Saturday morning, about two weeks ago, we had just had breakfast and felt we had the energy to take on our son to cut his finger nails, even though he was not sleeping. You must have remembered me mentioning that he does not allow us to cut his nails unless he is sleeping. After all, they were looking like he was being raised by wolves. Turns out he does not really want us to do anything to him, this includes brushing his teeth, combing his hair, changing his diapers, he always put up a fight. Cutting his fingernails started out promising but we soon realized that even though it was the two of us against him, we were still no match for him. (I wonder what they are putting in the children’s formulae these days, they are so strong). We managed to get to the third finger nail and when we could not go on, a bright idea struck me, why not try to cut his hair instead, which along with the long finger nails, did appear as if he was truly being grown in the wild. My husband often said he looked like the cartoon character of John Lithgow in the movie, ‘The Incredibles,’ who has ‘spikey’ hair.

I must say some days, I like the wild hair on him but other days, it is just simply difficult to deal with. This attempt started out promising also, as my husband managed to get the excess hair off rather quickly and the haircut began taking shape soon after. Things quickly got ugly however, as he started to cry as if we were abusing him. He also began sweating profusely and soon he had hair all over his face, in his mouth, in his eyes and was on his back on the ground. We accepted defeat, at least for the moment, gave him a bath and he went to sleep.

When he awoke, we fed him and made our second attempt, this time hoping that the bath and nap would have calmed him a bit. We tried to get it right this time by putting him in a high chair outside at the back of our house. The afternoon was so lovely with a gentle caribbean breeze blowing and birds flying all about and chirping happily in the trees. This was a brilliant idea we thought because he love the outdoors and the ‘birdies.’ We began the task again and soon he began protesting so my husband had to hurry to get it done before he was on the ground again. Not long afterwards we accepted our second defeat this time feeling very guilty because the haircut actually was looking worse than the first attempt.

The next day, he fell asleep in my arms. As I stared at how calm and defenseless he was sleeping, the idea struck me, why not finish the job when he is asleep (hmmm, the bible story of Sampson who had his hair cut by Delilah while he fell asleep in her lap comes to mind. The only difference is, Sampson lost his strength when his hair was cut, my son’s strength seemed to have increased).

Then and only then did we truly complete the task. We felt we could slap ourselves, why didn’t we think of this before? Cut his hair while he was asleep.

We certainly learnt our lesson and next time we will surely get it right. He looks so cute and boyish with his new haircut, we can’t stop staring at him we have taken so many pictures and will be sending some off to family members who cannot wait to see this new look. It was truly worth the war.

I trust you enjoyed the little time away from infertility.

Until next time, keep clinging to hope

Boxer or brief????

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.
Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows in a warrior’s hand.”
Psalm 127: 3 & 4

Infertility has largely been seen as a female problem and so less focus has been given to male infertility.

“Male infertility occurs as a result of hormone disorders, illness, reproductive anatomy trauma and obstruction, and sexual dysfunction can temporarily or permanently affect sperm and prevent conception. Some disorders become more difficult to treat the longer they persist without treatment.”

For more information on male infertility, please visit:-
http://www.urologychannel.com/maleinfertility/index.shtml

For many couple who are struggling with infertility, sometimes it is a male factor infertility or sometimes both because when we were struggling with primary infertility, apart from my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) condition, my husband was also diagnosed with sperm motility problems (The forward swimming motion of each sperm). This seem to have cleared up on its own because he was never treated. I guess his little guys realized that they had work to do and so they cleared up their act.

My reason for doing this post, apart from it being a reminder because many of you might know this information already, I was reading one of my fellow bloggers blog and I saw where she did a post advising that anti-depressants affects male fertility. I did see while researching that medication taken for high blood pressure and arthritis also affects male infertility.

Fom article
"study of 35 healthy men given paroxetine -- sold as Paxil or Seroxat by GlaxoSmithKline -- found that, on average, the proportion of sperm cells with fragmented DNA rose from 13.8 percent before treatment to 30.3 percent after just four weeks.Similar levels of sperm DNA damage have been linked to problems with embryo viability in couples trying to have children.
The research by Peter Schlegel and Cigdem Tanrikut of the Cornell Medical Center in New York was reported in New Scientist magazine and is due to be presented in November at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.A copy of the study abstract was made available to Reuters."The fertility potential of a substantial proportion of men on paroxetine may be adversely affected by these changes in sperm DNA integrity," the experts concluded.

The study adds to concerns voiced by the same doctors in 2006, after finding that two men had developed low counts of healthy sperm following treatment with two different selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).SSRIs like Paxil/Seroxat and Eli Lilly's Prozac, both of which are now available generically, are the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant.

Glaxo said it was reviewing the investigators' findings, since the study was not conducted by the company."These medicines remain an important option, in addition to counseling and lifestyle changes, for treatment of depression and this study should not be used to cause unnecessary concern for patients," a spokeswoman said."

Please follow the link to continue reading
http://infertility-fertility.blogspot.com/2009/04/antidepressents-ssris-hurt-sperm.

She also did a post advising that Vitamins C and E can help male infertility.

From article
"New research published in Cleveland Clinic's Urology News shows that abnormal amounts of free radicals, naturally occurring but sometimes dangerous molecules that can damage cells, may be responsible for infertility in some men. Vitamins C and E, which are called antioxidants, may have the power to neutralize sperm-busting free radicals......Looking at the sperm of men with unexplained infertility, Agarwal has found that levels of a certain type of free radical, which he calls reactive oxygen species, are especially high in these men.

While low levels of these free radicals are necessary for the production of normal sperm, levels that are too high have been linked to the destruction of sperm"

Please follow the link to continue reading
http://infertility-fertility.blogspot.com/2007/04/vitamins-c-and-e-for-mens-fertility.html

I have often heard it said that men should stop wearing briefs and wear boxers instead to decrease the heat that goes to the scrotum area because this heat can interfere with their fertility. In the same way, they should not stand in front of a microwave when it is in use, I guess this has to do with radiation. These seem to be myths for now as throughout my research I did not find any information to substantiate these claims.

I did find however that men who use laptops on their laps a whole lot could be interfering with their fertility also because of excess heat going to the scrotum.

From the article

"Balancing laptop computers on the lap raises the scrotum's temperature, say researchers including Yefim Sheynkin, MD, FACS, of the urology department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

About 15%-20% of couples that want to get pregnant aren't able to conceive. Many of those cases trace back to issues relating to the male. Gradually declining sperm production has been noted in recent decades, say the researchers.

Elevated scrotal temperatures have been linked to male infertility. Many factors can raise scrotal temperature, including hot baths, saunas, and tight jockey shorts.

Laptop computers may also belong on that list, say Sheynkin's team. They studied 29 healthy young men ages 21 to 35 for two, one-hour sessions in a climate-controlled room."

Please follow the link to continue reading:-

http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20041208/laptop-computers-may-affect-male-fertility

Hope this information helps if part of your struggles with infertility happens to be male factor infertility.

Until next time, keep clinging to hope