Caffeine Compromises Fertility

It’s official. Well official enough for me. My dear friend who’s a naturopath rang me the other day with some research she’s been looking into. It seems that caffeine increases dopamine (no surprises there). The problem is in the way the dopamine interacts with estrogen. I can’t remember the explanation exactly but the gist of it was every little jolt of caffeine – that is the amount you get in a standard caffeinated soft drink – temporarily lowers your fertility. It recovers, but if you’re taking in caffeine every day you’re probably operating on a less fertile system than you could be. I seriously doubt if I can get any less fertile, but talking to her strengthened my resolve to get back on the wagon with the coffee. My intake was creeping up again, so now I’m trying to get excited about tea leaves. Low caffeine tea leaves. They’re called “Formosan” in case anyone’s interested. Naturally tannin free and low caffeine.

Contraceptive Blues

I feel like crap by the way. I’m kind of blaming being back on the pill. I don’t know if that’s true. My head hurts and I’d quite like to stay in bed. I keep trying to engage Big H in screwy, emotionally enmeshed conversations about what’s going wrong in our relationship. Nothing is. I just feel like crap and I can’t stand it so I dump it on him. He’s very sympathetic, but there’s a limit to how much misery anyone can take, and I don’t want to wear him out, because for all I know it could be down hill from here!

Which is why I’ve started seeing a therapist. We don’t really talk about IVF that much, so far. We’ve mostly talked about the fact that I cry when people are nice to me in supermarkets.

I’m still not talking to anyone about IVF really. It seems ungrateful but I just find the attempts at support by people who don’t get it to be so woefully inadequate that I end up feeling sorry for them. When I think about before this was happening to me, I know that no matter how sincerely I might have tried I could not have really got how this feels. I don’t even know how to describe it now, and it is happening to me.

Just to be clear; the extent to which I’m not talking about it goes to the fact that I haven’t told either of my parents we’re doing IVF. My brother is the only one who knows and he seems to find it pretty hard to talk about so we usually don’t. My naturopath friend is the only person who’s really up to date. I don’t know how that compares to other people? Do you think I’m making a mistake?

Yes, I’m aware it’s clear that the relationships in my family are clearly not very emotionally open. Which is why I’m protecting myself I guess. I figure if it works I won’t care what they think and if it doesn’t I’ll never have to face talking about it with people I don’t feel safe with. Not very psychologically mature of me but there it is.

Anyway I’m off to make an apple tea cake, with blueberries on top.

No sex please, I’m infertile.

I’ll get to the sex bit in a minute, but I just wanted to clarify something about that last post. It probably came across as a little trite to anyone who suffers from depression. The whole “deciding to be happy” thing is just my way of trying to get some relief from the melancholy I seem to get drawn into most days. I’m experimenting with how much I can influence it, because it seems to me that to some degree at least, I can. Sometimes. I’m not can’t-get-out-of-bed/ can’t-stop-crying/ suicidal thoughts depressed at the moment, and I wouldn’t dream of telling someone who was, to “decide to be happy”. It’s just something I’m trying out this week. Next week it might be eating cake every day. Oh yeah, I already do that…

This week’s cake is a lemon slice. I won’t be doing that again in a hurry. Not that it was bad – in fact it was deliciously zesty – but  I need a cake I can eat in emotional-vacuum-filling quantities. Having attempted that with the lemon slice today I have broken out in a tingling cold sweat across my top lip, and my eyes are watering. This is not my idea of comfort food.

The sex bit

As for day four on Lucrin – still nothing to report.  But while we’re on the subject of hormones, I will once more gently pose the question; AM I EVER GOING TO WANT TO HAVE SEX AGAIN, EVER?! I just feel like I’m switched off. I like the idea, but I just can’t follow through. Is it the three months straight on active OCP’s? Is the Lucrin making it worse? Am I a robot? Or is my infertility now so deeply comprehensive that I will never have any kind of even vaguely sexual or reproductively oriented urge again?

Maybe I’m more depressed than I thought.

Of course, having started the Lucrin on Thursday, I stopped the OCP on Saturday, which means I’m supposed to get a period. Which is great because I always feel like having sex when I’ve got my period…(not). I think I can, as of the last two minutes feel a bit of a cramp coming on. Then again, the lemon slice OD may have consequences that are yet to be revealed. Also, in hindsight, the leftovers I ate for lunch were probably older than I wanted to admit while I was inhaling them, so I think I’ll reserve judgment for the moment.

Either way, I suspect I may be on the crest of a hormonal wave.