patience
Patience is a virtue. Power of action is as well. You just have to know when to use one or the other. I consider myself a very patient person in many ways. There are some occasions when I’m not patient though; instead I make sure the change take place at once. Or at least as fast as it can be done. I’m talking about changing jobs, changing continents, changing hair color and changing men. Other than that I do believe I’m considered to be a very levelheaded and calm person.
Disclaimer: if you do not like to read about “female stuff”, quit reading now.
Some things you can’t rush though. There is nothing you can do to speed up the process. I’m talking about children. When Iceman and I decided that we are open to have kids, I had in my mind that this would take place at once. So the morning after, I ran off to the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test. I was devastated when I read that you can take the test no sooner than after the first day of your expected period – maybe up to three days before, but that too was very uncertain. Well if you don’t get your period, you probably don’t need an expensive test to tell you – huh! Jeeeze what a stupid thing! And it turns out, the day you at the earliest can find out that you are indeed pregnant: you are considered to be four weeks into your pregnancy. Insane!
This bummed me out. I wanted to know at once. It didn’t make things easier that you can’t get pregnant every day of the month either. How people get pregnant by mistake when it’s so complicated is a mystery to me. Most of us do know how babies are made.
As with most female-only complaints/diseases, there hasn’t been an abundant of money spent on research on PMS and menstrual cramps. Since my cramps make me spend half a day trembling in cold sweat and pain on the bathroom floor, I have eaten birth control pills for years. I was told that that is the only thing that truly helps. And it does! However, the amount of estrogen in those is at much higher doses than that given to women at menopause, which are now being debated if it’s healthy or not. So for years I have been given myself unhealthy amount of estrogen?!
I decided to have a checkup to make sure I could indeed have children. The OBYGYN told me that she can’t see if I can have children or not, she can only tell me that everything looks normal. The full fertility investigation can be done at a private clinic until you are 41-42 years old. The Swedish free healthcare system doesn’t do the fertility investigations after the age of 37 and you have had to try actively for two years prior to that. Tried to get pregnant that is. The things they don’t tell you in school! Usually I’m upset that when you take accounting as your major, no one tells you that if you work with accounting, you will never be able to take a long Christmas/New Years vacation since that’s a normal year-end closing or at least a month-end closing time. And for some reason most national holidays are also so that you can’t enjoy the extra day off, due to month-end closing. But what I found out now was worse: you better fall in love with a suitable man looong before you turn 35 if you want children. Or you have to chance it big time! So many of my friends have not found a man they love and they are also over 35. Why didn’t anyone tell us?!
So here I was. 40+ and feeling very nervous knowing that there was nothing I could do to speed up the process, there was no place I could turn to help me clinically right this minute (even the private clinics require a long time of trying before getting their help). All I could do was to take care of myself, stay calm and wait. Patience is a virtue.
It turned out well.
Disclaimer: if you do not like to read about “female stuff”, quit reading now.
Some things you can’t rush though. There is nothing you can do to speed up the process. I’m talking about children. When Iceman and I decided that we are open to have kids, I had in my mind that this would take place at once. So the morning after, I ran off to the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test. I was devastated when I read that you can take the test no sooner than after the first day of your expected period – maybe up to three days before, but that too was very uncertain. Well if you don’t get your period, you probably don’t need an expensive test to tell you – huh! Jeeeze what a stupid thing! And it turns out, the day you at the earliest can find out that you are indeed pregnant: you are considered to be four weeks into your pregnancy. Insane!
This bummed me out. I wanted to know at once. It didn’t make things easier that you can’t get pregnant every day of the month either. How people get pregnant by mistake when it’s so complicated is a mystery to me. Most of us do know how babies are made.
As with most female-only complaints/diseases, there hasn’t been an abundant of money spent on research on PMS and menstrual cramps. Since my cramps make me spend half a day trembling in cold sweat and pain on the bathroom floor, I have eaten birth control pills for years. I was told that that is the only thing that truly helps. And it does! However, the amount of estrogen in those is at much higher doses than that given to women at menopause, which are now being debated if it’s healthy or not. So for years I have been given myself unhealthy amount of estrogen?!
I decided to have a checkup to make sure I could indeed have children. The OBYGYN told me that she can’t see if I can have children or not, she can only tell me that everything looks normal. The full fertility investigation can be done at a private clinic until you are 41-42 years old. The Swedish free healthcare system doesn’t do the fertility investigations after the age of 37 and you have had to try actively for two years prior to that. Tried to get pregnant that is. The things they don’t tell you in school! Usually I’m upset that when you take accounting as your major, no one tells you that if you work with accounting, you will never be able to take a long Christmas/New Years vacation since that’s a normal year-end closing or at least a month-end closing time. And for some reason most national holidays are also so that you can’t enjoy the extra day off, due to month-end closing. But what I found out now was worse: you better fall in love with a suitable man looong before you turn 35 if you want children. Or you have to chance it big time! So many of my friends have not found a man they love and they are also over 35. Why didn’t anyone tell us?!
So here I was. 40+ and feeling very nervous knowing that there was nothing I could do to speed up the process, there was no place I could turn to help me clinically right this minute (even the private clinics require a long time of trying before getting their help). All I could do was to take care of myself, stay calm and wait. Patience is a virtue.
It turned out well.
(the kids in the pic are my sister's)
posted by Åsa @ 6:41 AM
8 comments
