The Childlessness Syndrome

I think I have it ... The Childlessness Syndrome.

My 35th birthday is coming up very soon, and my ovaries feel every tick of the clock. I'm approaching that invisible wall where once you're past it the risks involved in starting a family multiply and keep on multiplying every year. Gestational diabetes, multiple births, infertility, birth defects, chromosomal abnormalities, low birth weight/early births, high blood pressure issues ... the list goes on and on. I'm already facing infertility issues and a family history of premature births and early menopause. I so desperately wanted to have kids before I was 30 and beat the multiple clocks that are ticking away. Now that I'm fast approaching 35, the pressure is on, but there isn't really anything I can do about it.

The doctors have told me that I'm unlikely to get pregnant without help via either IU or IVF procedures, and my insurance only covers a small fraction of IU and nothing on IVF. The doctors also told me that even if one of these procedures works so that I do become pregnant, the chance of a full-term, live birth is very slim. Hearing that, logically and emotionally, I have to ask myself is it worth it? My mother miscarried two daughters, and my older brother only lived for 6 hours after he was born. I was her miracle baby who survived, but she still grieves for those three who didn't make it.

With the chances being so small, should I put myself and Steffie through that grueling and expensive process? I just don't know. I don't know. I know I would survive the disappointments and potential losses, but would we as a couple survive the emotional roller coaster? I would like to say absolutely yes, but I've seen so many couples torn apart by these sorts of things. My wife is the love of my life, and I won't sacrifice her and our relationship for the slimmest possibility of a biological child.

The thought that I may never be able to carry a child, to give birth to him or her when I've wanted it for so long fucking hurts. And if I'm being completely honest with myself, it doesn't raise my self esteem any either. I know intellectually and logically that it isn't my fault. I didn't do anything to cause these medical problems. I've been very careful about my reproductive health. I've never missed a yearly check-up. I was always particular about having safe sex to avoid disease, infections, etc. My weight could be better in order to potentially improve some hormone levels and general mobility, but otherwise I am in very good health. Still the thoughts creeps in from time to time that if I had started trying to have children earlier before my thyroid problems developed that maybe this could have been avoided, that starting birth control so early and trying that horrible depo shot maybe have permanently screwed up my hormone production/levels, that if I weren't broken, Steffie could have children of her own. Not having kids makes family functions awkward as hell, and my mother resents me not giving her grandchildren yet.  Logically I know there is nothing that I could have done that would change what is happening or isn't happening now. I know that it isn't my fault. But ... sometimes it's so very hard to remember that.

I've thought about surrogacy as an option. I've even had more than one friend make the offer to be our surrogate. I have mixed emotions about it. If my eggs were viable (the doctor says there is a good chance they aren't), then I would consider it further. If we were able to use biological material from both of us, I would definitely want to go with a surrogate that we don't know rather than a friend. As much as our friends tell us it wouldn't matter, that the child would be completely ours, I would worry that at some point it would turn into, why are you raising the child I carried this way or that way, etc. I don't want to lose a good friend over that, and I won't have someone else tell me how to care for my child. Sticky situations abound. Excluding the possibility of using my own eggs, I don't think I would do it. It would bother me if our child was biologically Steffie's but not mine. What if something were to happen down the road where we split? Then there is the argument that the child is more hers than mine, and child custody just gets ugly so quick without that extra layer of ownership. Maybe that is selfish of me, but it is how I feel.

I would rather at that point look at an adoption instead. And then comes a whole other set of potential problems. We are a lesbian couple who have pretty eclectic social and religious views. In a world that likes to make the adoption process doubly hard for anyone who doesn't fit into the one size fits all box of white, heterosexual, practicing Christian wholesomeness, I know adoption will not be an easy process for us. We both work full time, and we do not have a huge amount of money in savings after buying a new home this past year. I don't know what the requirements are now, but I know at one point adoption required one parent to be able to be off work for 6 months to a year to bond with and acclimate the child to his/her new family. I don't know if this is still the case, but if it is, neither of us can afford to be out of work that long.

And then there are the completely selfish lifestyle changes to consider when asking myself if I want to make the changes necessary to start a family. We are very socially involved with our friends and hobbies. We are part of multiple alternative lifestyle groups, we have very active gaming hobbies, and we keep strange hours. We hate being fully clothed at home. We have sex toys and latex clothing and adult oriented literature scattered liberally throughout our house. We have a dungeon and fetish closet. We host parties. We spend hours or days at a time playing tabletop games at three or four day conventions. We like to pick up and go whenever time and work allows. Neither of our families live close enough to us that we could look to them for an occasional babysitter so that we could still participate in those activities on a limited basis. Finding a babysitter for even something as small as a night out would be an interesting feat. It would be honestly a very big change that would have to happen if we choose to have children. Thinking about those parts of my life being greatly reduced or going away completely brings a whole other bag of mixed emotions.

So ... child or no child in my future? I don't know. Am I happy without a human child? Yes. I have my wife who loves me and who I love enormously. I have a puppy who is decidedly spoiled because of the very fact that we do not have humie babies. My life is full of social activities, friends, and family. I have a job that I really enjoy and a new house that we are working very hard to make into the welcoming home that we want it to be. My life isn't broken without children. I can be and am happy without kids. Maybe it is just time to decide that they aren't going to be part of my complete. That's just the way it is. Time will tell better than any hypothesizing I can do on my own now.

Maker Monday: Kitchen Witchery : Steffie's Make Me Feel Better Chicken Soup

When I am feeling under the weather, my beautiful, awesome, wonderful wife will make me her homemade chicken soup.. I call it her "Make Me Feel Better Chicken Soup" because it always does make me feel better. The bonus is that it is super tasty too and full of things that are good for you. There's definitely some magic in its delicious broth.

Here's the Recipe:

2 large or 4 small chicken breasts grilled or pan seared and cubed
96 oz chicken or turkey broth (2 of the family size 48oz cartons)
1 1/2 cups chopped baby carrots
3 small yellow potatoes cubbed
1 cup frozen green peas
1-2 cups frozen mixed cauliflower/broccoli
1-2 cups button mushrooms chopped
1 cup corn drained
1 bundle diced green onions, sliced thin
3 cups tri-color rotini noodles or egg noodles
Spices and Herbs (to taste): 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp parsley, 1 tsp rosemary finely minced, 1/2 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp basil, 1tsp smoked paprika, 1 tsp cayenne, 1 tsp black or white pepper, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp chicken bouillon, 2 tbs lime juice.

Mix chicken, chicken broth, and all vegetables other than potatoes together in large pot and bring to boil. While it is coming to a boil place potatoes and 1/4 cup water in microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 4 minutes on high. Add potatoes to pot.

Once mixture has come to a boil add in noodles and cook until tender. This is the time also to add in any herbs and spices that you would like.

Servings: 10-12

Maker Monday: Ode to the 1950s - Cheesy Surprise Hash Brown Casserole

 

Cheesy Surprise Hash Brown Casserole

Half a Bag of Ore-Ida Hash Browns, thawed (approximately 15 oz)

1 can cream of chicken soup (cream of mushroom works good too)

1 can cheese soup

1 can SPAM luncheon meat (the Bacon flavored one works the best)

1 small onion diced

½ cup sour cream

½ cup frozen peas

1 cup shredded cheese of your choice

2 cups crushed sour cream and onion chips

Spices to taste (salt, black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, Cheyenne pepper)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter or spray a 9x11 casserole dish and set aside.

In a mixing bowl combine thawed hash browns, cream of chicken soup, cheese soup, sour cream, shredded cheese, and frozen peas together folding gently until fully combined. Add spices now as well keeping in mind you may not want to add much salt at all because of the SPAM and canned ingredients sodium content. If you stir, it has a tendency to break up the hash browns too much, and then they become mushy.

Open and cut up the loaf of SPAM into small cubes. Dice the onion. Very lightly coat your skillet with olive oil (or if you prefer a bit more spicy chili oil works great.) Fry the onions and SPAM on medium heat, flipping two to three times until meat is crispy and onions are just starting to caramelize.

Drain excess grease and then mix in the SPAM and onions with the rest of your ingredients. Move mixture into your prepared casserole dish and spread out evenly. Cover the top with your crushed potato chips.

Maker Monday: Jalapeno Corn in Cream Sauce

 Everyone here at some point in time has been served the horrible, gloopy awfulness that is creamed corn out of a can. That is not what this recipe is. It will look, taste, and feel nothing like what you can get from your neighborhood grocery store shelf.  Please don't run screaming before giving it a look and hopefully a try.

My wife and I recently went to a cooking class hosted by Cooks of Crocus Hill in Stillwater, MN (campuses also located in Eagan and St. Paul, MN). We went to their Dinner Club Series: Texas Steak interactive class/dinner. It was a lot of fun. If you are local and ever have a chance to attend one of their participation cooking seminars, please do! Thanks again to our friend Jenn for giving us a Crocus Hill gift certificate as a wedding present. Otherwise we would have never known anything about them. We followed that up with Grilled Spice-Rubbed Skirt Steak topped with Tomatillo and Serrano Chile Sauce, Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes, and Jalapeno Corn in Cream Sauce. As a finishing dessert course, we had Roasted Apple Bread Pudding topped with a Bourbon Caramel Sauce.

The whole meal was fantastic! We liked it so much we used all of the tomatillos we picked from our garden to make our own chile sauce to can, and we have also made the corn dish as well with a few tweaks to bump it up a notch for our spice level. I will include the corn recipe here, and I will be linking the other recipes to this post within the next day or so. Please check back if you are interested in those.

 

Jalapeno Corn in Cream Sauce

4 ears fresh sweet corn

2 tablespoons salted butter

1 teaspoon sugar

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely minced

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon ground cheyenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika

Apply course ground salt and black pepper to taste

1 to 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (optional)

Cut corn kernels off the ears and place kernels in mixing bowl (should yield about 2 cups of corn). Set aside.

In a large saucepan, melt two tablespoons salted butter over medium heat. Add the sugar and minced jalapeno and saute to soften. 

Add the reserved corn and cover with the heavy cream. Add in cheyenne pepper and paprika and stir thoroughly. Cook until corn is tender, but not soft (think al dente pasta). Cream will reduce slightly and the mixture will thicken. Finish with salt and black pepper. Depending on how much butter taste you enjoy with your corn, you may want to add 1 to 2 more tablespoons of unsalted butter at this point.

Maker Monday: Steffie's "No Ricotta Zesty Lasagna" Recipe

 

1 24 oz container of cottage cheese
1 bag shredded mozzarella cheese
1 bag pizza blend shredded cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb hot Italian sausage
1/2 medium sized onion diced
1 jar Newman's Own Sockarooni spaghetti sauce
1 jar Classico Organic Tomato, Herbs, and Spices spaghetti sauce
1 box lasagna noodles
Spices & Herbs (italian blend herbs, red pepper flakes, seasoned salt, Garlic Garlic, cheyenne pepper)




Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat water in large pot until boiling. Added a teaspoon salt along with 12-15 lasagna noodles (12 if you want fewer layers and 15 if you want more). Follow directions on box for cooking, but remember to stop a bit short of done because they will continue to cook in the oven. It is best to drain right away and pour in cold water over the noodles to stop  cooking and keep noodles from sticking together until time to layer ingredients.

Mix onion, beef, and sausage in a skillet and brown. Add full jar of Sockarooni and half of the Classico THS sauce to skillet and let simmer. Add in spices and herbs to taste.

In medium sized mixing bowl, mix half a container (12 oz) cottage cheese with Parmesan cheese and two eggs. Stir until thoroughly blended and set aside.

In a 9x11 oven safe pan, begin layering your ingredients. First layer should be meat sauce to prevent noodles from sticking. The sequence goes as follows: red sauce, noodles (3 or 4 across depending on your preference), cottage cheese mixture, noodles, red sauce and cheese, noodles and so on until your layers near the top. The top layer should be meat sauce topped with a layer of shredded cheese. Sprinkle on additional herbs and spices as desired.

Cook for 30 - 40 minutes until cheese on top is lightly browned.

Some other ideas for ingredients to include would be spicy pepperoni, switching out half of the beef for turkey, and swapping out sauces for whichever sauces you and your family like best.

Maker Monday: Three Sisters' Stew Recipe

 

 

This recipe is inspired by the traditional Native American "Three Sisters Stew / Soup." This stew came about naturally based on the three sisters companion growing techniques used by the eastern tribes such as the Iroquois and Cherokee. They often planted corn, pole beans, and squash together because they are mutually beneficial to each other. Click here for more info on how they benefit each other and reading material on other companion growing methods. They would have used what is readily available for the season, so given the current season, I chose to use late season corn, acorn squash and rutabaga, and kidney beans. If it were mid-summer, I would have used instead yellow summer squash and zucchini squash, fresh summer corn, and green beans.


Ingredients

10-12 cups of chicken broth
1 1/2 lb chicken
1 medium size rutabaga peeled and cubed
1 small acorn squash peeled and cubed
2 medium size red potatoes cubed
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1/2 small onion diced
2 cups sliced button mushrooms
2 cups broccoli lightly chopped
1 cup fresh corn
2 can dark kidney beans drained and rinsed
Juice from 1 medium size lime
1 jalapeno diced (remove seeds and pith before dicing) 
1/2 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground cheyenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika
1 tablespoon Italian spice blend
Salt and black pepper to taste

** During summer months, rutabaga and acorn squash can be substituted with yellow squash and zucchini squash. Sweet potato would also be another late summer to early fall option as well. For a little more richness to the broth, you can add a bit of milk as well.**


Set aside broccoli, chicken, salt, and black pepper. Combine all other ingredients and cook on medium heat, covered. While that begins to cook, brown chicken and then chop into bite-size pieces. When root vegetables are about half way cooked, add the chicken and broccoli to soup. Continue to cook until vegetables are tender. Salt and black pepper to taste.

Servings: 8-10

The Lie of Growing Up

When it comes to our relationships with our parents, do we ever really get to grow up?

I’m adult woman. I've spent almost as much of my life on my own as I did in my parents' home. Why does the thought of being in the house with my mother for six days create such a violently negative reaction? Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother. I would do anything for her. But … we rarely see eye-to-eye on anything.

Our relationship has been comparable to a destructive force of nature since I was old enough to refuse to wear the endless supply of frilly dresses she bought me. I was six years old. Things have only gone downhill since then. We didn't agree on what I wore, what toys I played with, or what activities I wanted to participate in. As I grew older she agreed even less with what I wore, she detested the people I chose as friends, and let’s not even start on how she felt about the few people I dated who were brave enough to come over to my house for a visit. Now … it’s pretty much the same, but she has more to dislike. Now she can add not linking where I live, what I do for a living, and the fact that I do not visit often enough.

I only visit my parents once a year for Christmas, and I’m a ball of nerves leading up to every visit. I should have ulcers for the hours of worry that goes into each holiday “vacation.” I purposefully limit our trips to three days plus travel just to reduce the time for conflict. You see I say reduce time and not reduce the chance of conflict. I know it’s going to happen at some point during the visit, but with only three days, it doesn't happen as frequently.

I think a lot of our continued conflict boils down to the fact that I've changed and she hasn't.

I spent the first twenty something years of my life being peacekeeper in our household. I took the verbal abuse that was dished out, and I held my tongue. My mother is like a hurricane. Once she gets going, there’s no stopping her until she’s done. Growing up, I dealt with that by making myself as unnoticeable as possible with the theory that if she doesn't notice me, she won’t start yelling at me for something. If she wasn't able to pick the fight then she didn't have the opportunity to push my buttons and engage me. Engaging in those fights only left me frustrated and hurt and crying.

I grew up, I moved a little farther away with each relocation, and in so doing slowly distanced myself from the chaos. At this point in my life, I’m just not willing to take the abuse and stay quiet. I don’t sit by meekly. I give as good as I get, but I like to be sneaky about it. I know if she starts an argument and I take the bait, it’s only going to end badly for me. She always wins in those situations. But if I never engage, I take that away from her. Nothing makes her angrier than someone walking away from her attempt at starting a fight. I hang up the phone, and I don’t answer the return calls. I delete the emails and Facebook posts. I disengage before anything can start.

I’m her only child, and I've decided if she wants to keep me in the loop she has to respect my right to make my own decisions even if she doesn't agree with them. I've made good choices and bad choices, but ultimately, I’m the one that has to live with the consequences. I refuse to be controlled and manipulated. I've made calculated decisions in my life to try to alleviate that constant strain, and I've been pretty successful at it overall.

And, yet, here I am feeling my stomach tighten into knots at the thought of being in the house with her for six days. No wife with me to put my mother on good behavior. No car of my own to use as a quick escape route. No support network to act as a buffer between what I know to be true and what I’m sure I will hear her say at some point during my stay. No alcohol or sex to take my mind off of things. 

It’s not a situation I want to put myself in, but I need to be there for more important reasons. It’s something I have to do. I'm not a teenager any longer pushing boundaries and establishing independence. That battle has already been fought. I grew up. An adult child and her mother at some point have to be able to set it all aside and be the friends they couldn't be during the growing period, right? And so I have to tell myself the lie that everything will be different this time. To quote one of my favorite movies and pieces of literature, "I like the pretty lies."