Coming off the happy pills!

I had my second-to-last counselling session yesterday and my counsellor gave me the okay around coming off the happy pills! Yay - I'm looking forward to being chemical-free again. However it's going to take six weeks to wean me off the anti-depressants. I've been on them for five months and my counsellor wants me to take them for another two weeks and then to start slowly weaning myself off them over a four week period:
Week One: Take one pill one day, take half a pill the next day, one pill the next day...
Week Two: Take half a pill every day for a week
Week Three: Take half a pill every second day
Week Four: Take half a pill every three days til end of week/packet finished

So around April 6th I will be off those babies! I'm so pleased. It hasn't being so bad taking anti-depressants but I am ready to come off them. I feel like I have made some major break-throughs around SIF.

As part of my counselling homework I had to share my insights of late which are quite huge, I think:

I realise my old mechanism of withdrawing from others is no longer relevant. I am reaching out and connecting more with those around me. I am trying to see my pain as something I can share appropriately with others.

I spent quite a lot of time within my SIF journey focusing on the child I didn't have. Now my time and energy goes into the child I do have.

Pain/hard times are part of life and sometimes it takes a while to work through things. SIF was a big thing for me to go through and now I think I've got it in perspective eg: there are other little everyday things to deal with; my depression wasn't completely to do with SIF.

SIF was one ot the worst things I have been through but I've survived and I'm okay. I'm stronger and focusing on positives in my life such as my art. There is a flip-side to "bad times".

I don't resent MOTs and bumps as much as I once did - I used to be eaten up with envy. Facing others who have what I'd hoped for isn't so painful now. I am able to be around pregnant women and MOTS a bit more.

My affirmation of late is: I will be okay. I'm not sure what's going on with my body right now and I'm trying not to obsess (too much!) about maybe being pregnant. I no longer trust my body or mind. I have to kind of just see it all as a bit of an experiment. This cycle was perhaps the first time I have ovulated in a long time so you never know...

I'm still on the fence around seeing the infertility specialist. My counsellor didn't give advice on whether I should go or not but did say to take it with a grain of salt if I choose to. I feel so much at peace knowing I get to choose - I don't have to go and I don't feel desperate to go. I believe now if I am meant to get pregnant (now my cycles seem to be back on track), I will regardless on whether I see the specialist or not. I am not sure I want to know where my FSH levels are for example. If this appointment had come up six months ago I may have been more interested in going as back then it looked as though I was going through early menopause. It would have been useful for my herbal treatments to have some blood results to work with. But now I'm not sure how relevant it is to have all that information.

I now accept that I don't know what's up with me and my hormones. For so long it was sooooo important to me that I knew what the f**k was up with my god-dammed body! But the information I have received over the last two years or so has mainly been incorrect! Specialists have attempted to explain what was going on but no-one figured it out or was on the right track. My current herbalist is right on track with it all as she looked at my hormonal state in a holistic sense - not just from a SIF perspective. My counsellor has also encouraged me to look at the bigger picture. My hormones are more settled now than they were at the beginning of 2007 and I cannot predict what's going to happen next.

I am excited about the future as who knows what, how, and when God is going to orchestrate things. I no longer dread possible disappointment like I once did. I am not consumed by the Am I, Aren't I pregnant? line of thinking. Sure I have gone there a bit lately but I can't do anything about the outcome can I so I may as well let go of it and carry on, trusting that God has it all sorted out.