Dreams and False Alarms

Wedged between a rock and hard place

It has been sort of rough around here for a few days.  I am fully aware that it is an anniversary reaction, but that doesn't mean I'm any less impacted.

One year ago, our little Sparky was already gone, but we didn't know it. On July 3rd we went for our 8 week ultrasound, and his heart had stopped beating.  The silence was the loudest sound I've ever heard.

This morning I dreamed that a mother called her doctor and said "I think my baby is dead".  I thought, in the dream, "A mother knows when her baby is dead. I didn't know Sparky was dead." In dream logic, I managed to demote myself on the basis of something completely ridiculous. When I woke up my husband said "Are we going to light a candle for Sparky today?' and I lost it, and just cried and cried. I think I've been trying not to cry, or trying to find the right time to cry since Sunday. Silly huh--all this stored up sadness.

I really thought  we would have a baby by now. I know that now we know why, the translocation, but argh. It doesn't change that yet another year has passed with no progress on the real live baby front, and I'm getting just exhausted from pushing the boulder uphill. That isn't to say that we don't need this time to sort through the donor sperm stuff, but still.

This August will mark 3 years since we started TTC.

On Saturday it occurred to me that I've lost all the weight I gained since the miscarriage, but I'm still lugging around the weight I gained between when we started TTC and the miscarriage. It isn't a huge amount (5 to 8 pounds), but somehow it just feels like more than I can deal with to get it off, but alas, it needs to come off. I know that I don't need to be hard on myself, but it just feels like one more thing I can't get myself together to do.

I'm really behind in one aspect of my job, and it makes me feel really stressed to not do it, and really stressed to do it. Ugh.

Also, tomorrow is one month from when my Sweet Zoe died.  Maybe the dream was about her too--maybe I'm still beating myself up for not knowing she was dying, not checking on her more (during the whole 4 hours I slept that night...)

A very close friend is angry with me, but she won't return my calls or emails, so I can't even work it out with her. So I miss her, and I need her, but I can't get to her. 

I went for a day three blood draw (FSH and E2) yesterday--that was nerve-wracking too. I'm hoping that the DHEA is holding down the FSH, but if it isn't , we need to move on to IVF/DS but quick. Ugh. 

What is going well:

My husband is awesome

We are probably going to Hawaii for 10 days or two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August

Spogblogger has a sky high second Beta

Kami's frozen embryo made it transfer

We have 4 vials of frozen sperm

My remaining kitties are healthy and pesky

My friends twin babies are healthy and gaining weight, and I get to be "Auntie Sarah"

I ordered 2 sundresses from Kohl's that I'm excited about

Because of the Pilates work I've been doing, the chubb rubb between my thighs is diminished

I got my haircut yesterday

Dinner is in fridge

I'm going to the dentist tomorrow for my cleaning, and because of my excellent dental hygiene (Floss!) I will get positive feedback on my gums

I'm going to buy myself yet another beautiful variety of Peony

Excellent tomatoes from the produce market

Practically a day of grace entry there at the end!

"How is your mother?" "She has a bladder infection!"

Hi. I just, well, I just have had hard time figuring out what to say, but the lovely Kami opened up a neat little can of worms, and I feel like I can blog about this subject without wandering too far over in to my husbands emotional territory.

As many of you know, Kami used a known egg donor for her cycle with her daughter LB.  The donor lives nearby, and Kami has been trying to work out what kind of relationship makes sense between LB and the Donor.  Now, if the sperm donation works out, we won't have that exact issue (willing to be known to the child at age 18, but unknown to us), but the issue we do have is where does the donor fit in?  How do we make him an accessible fantasy (i.e. allows the child space enough to think about him), without inserting him into our family in a way that diminishes my husband, who will be the 'real' father in every sense of the word. 

Ultimately, I am the biggest problem in all of this. The donor, he's off living his life, at most wondering what it's going to be like if any of those kids actually contact him, our child/children will be pretty involved with us and hopefully able to integrate the reality of their genetic and social father's, and my husband, well I just have a lot of faith in him, lets leave it at that.  But me, I'm a blabber mouth.  If someone says "Where does she/he get those gorgeous eyes/eyelashes/curls/basketball skills" (sports prowess is something husband and I totally can't claim) I fear I'll say something like "Well, we don't' know what the donor looks like, but ..."  I have a tendency to always tell the truth. Like in the title of the post, this is what I actually said to some random acquaintance of my mothers. That was the actual truth, my mother had a bladder infection, that's how she was. Now I can dissemble appropriately as an adult but I am afraid that I'll insert the donor in at times where he really doesn't fit, or it doesn't make sense, and I'll hurt my husband and my child/ren.

For example, we were at our friends house, the ones who had the identical twin girls (who, by the way, are darling and currently learning that Auntie Sarah will run and jump to put your pacifier in the moment it falls out, whether or not it is strictly necessary!) and they were talking about some aspect of their daughters and how they resemble or don't resemble one or the other parents. I was enjoying it, but then out of my mouth pops some silly worry I have about the donor.  And my husband's face takes on that kind of hurt look that probably only I register, and then I feel like an ass.

In one book I read about donor gamete parenting it said that the most painful aspect of many parents experience was resemblance talk--hearing others freely engage in it, and knowing that they could, but only up to a point. I think that I must have been feeling invisible, or left out, my usual trigger for blurting out something inappropriate. That isn't to say they shouldn't do it in front of us--it is fun, and I enjoy playing "pin the nose on the parent" as much has the next gal, but I think that if I'm not aware of when it hits that "invisible" button within me, I'm going to bring the donor in at inappropriate times. Right now, the person that hurts most is my husband, but in the future, the person it's going to hurt and confuse the most is our child, and that is not a good thing, ya know?

I am afraid of my big fat mouth. I am not an out of control impulsive wreck (any more!), but whenever I feel that kernel of impulsivity starting to gain strength, I get good and freaked out. I just don't want to screw this up. And by this I mean my child, or my marriage.

Two things happened this weekend that have really had a huge impact on me and my thinking and feeling. One was a segment on This American Life featuring Lennard Davis who, after his father died was told that his father was not his genetic father. He goes though all sorts of stuff, and finally confirms that his father is not his genetic father. The two things that stood out for me was that he wished he could talk to his parents (both were dead), and that they had told him themselves, as well as feeling compassion for what his father must have went through.  When Ira Glass asked him how he imagines that would be he said something like "Well, we'd probably end up all fighting with each other, and then go eat some terrible food my mom made."  Even writing that, chokes me up, and here is why.  Here is a man who always felt on the outside, who couldn't make sense of how he was related to his father, and when given a 'pass' on having to claim him as his 'real' father, he feels gratitude, and compassion, and longs for the days when they could do their family thing of fighting with each other, and eating bad cooking. He doesn't go into the fantasy of another father, he goes into a fantasy about being with his father--with his family and the four of them doing their thing.

The other thing that had a big impact was reading on a parenting board the story of woman who was told by her mother right after her fathers death when she was 18 "Don't worry, he wasn't your real father". She said she wanted to scream "Of course he's my real father!" and then she went on to list all the ways he was her father in a way that no sperm donor could ever be. 

I feel such outrage for this woman. Her own mother tries to comfort her in her grief by saying "this man who loved and nurtured you is not worth grieving over because you don't share a genetic connection." How utterly ridiculous, and hurtful and on and on. 

So where does that leave me? On the corner of Walk and Don't Walk. In one way I am raring to go. Ready to get this damn show on the road, and on the other, I'm worried. I'm worried that I'm going to screw this up in some way.

Resemblance talk, identification with a parent, it's all a part of how one belongs in a family.  I know it can be overdone. It often solidified the alliance between my father and myself, and excluded my mother from the group.  Hmmm. Maybe that is what I'm worried about too. Must make a note to talk to therapist about that one! Anyway, back to my stream of consciousness: Ultimately my husband and children are going to share traits, interests, little habits of living that bear linking. Ferchissakes we make identifications with the body styles and personalities of our cats! So will it be ok? Can I say "Yeesh, little boy blue is just as grumpy when he wakes up as you are!" Or do I have to hold that back because it isn't technically 'where' he gets it? But human traits are shared across the species. That is why we end up with friends and partners!  We can identify with them in some way. Can we play with this resemblance talk even if it isn't technically completely accurate? I know that literally we can, but can we?

Elaboration on "Wow" and "Clunk"

Thank so much to everyone who responded. In retrospect, it wasn't a very well thought out post, and it was more of a reaction to needing to share that such an odd thing had happened, but I hadn't reflected on it much (duh.)

Upon reflection I want to say this:

I believe strongly that every child deserves to be welcomed wholeheartedly into their family. Whether that is biological/genetic/surrogate, which ever, the key to me is being welcoming.  In the process of going through infertility I have had to work up to welcoming each potential child (IUI, IVF, DE, DS, DE/DS [still working on those last two]), and their origins, and the realities that their origins would impose upon them. This has been both painful and growth producing, and yet grief has been with us every step of the way. And yet, when we have grieved and prepared a place in our hearts and minds for each of these potential babies, we have felt joyful at the prospect of them. 

When I got the call yesterday, I had the sense that I was not prepared for this child. I hadn't prepared a place in my heart and mind for this child, and that was the bottom line. If we were in the process of preparing for adoption, and this opportunity had come up, I think we would have jumped at it. Who wouldn't want a sweet baby boy? I certainly do.

There are families all around, and even people my friend knows who have been preparing a place for a child through adoption, and to my mind, that is where this child will be welcomed. If we had said yes, it would have been with trepidation, and misgivings, and without really knowing if we were ready to welcome him.

Attachment is so complex, I won't try to parse it all out here, but as I said a few posts ago, there is no baby without a mother, and I was not prepared to be his mother. He was not my baby in my mind. He deserves that--a mother ready to imagine him, to know him, and to love him with all her heart and mind.

Well, that was a suprise

I got a text from a close friend today saying she wanted to talk to me, we agreed on a time, and then when I called, she didn't answer. No biggie. I figured she just wanted to do some girl talk, and we'd connect over the weekend. Fast forward about an hour, and she calls me back. She says "I have some news, but are you sitting down." Now, she's had a hysterectomy and her husband has had a vasectomy, so I knew she wasn't going to tell me she was pregnant. I thought maybe one of our mutual friends had died or something. Nope. Her mom who is a social worker on in a small community had a client who wanted to put up her third  child for adoption.

Clunk.

That was the feeling I had inside of myself. Not a clunk of happiness or even of dread, but just a clunk.

I talked to her for the remainder of my ride home, and got some facts (boy, 1 month old, no drug or alcohol exposure, length of time mother had been thinking of putting him up for adoption, where he was now [foster care]).  In my gut I knew that this wasn't...right for us, and not right now, but geeze. No one had ever offered me such a clear chance at a baby before, and I felt a bit giddy and whirly.

I came in and presented the idea to husband,and he was, as I was, sure that this was not where we were.

It showed me that I'm (and we're) not ready to move on from having a chance at a genetic child, or at the least a gestated/biological child. Wow. Weird.

Better late than never

Hi.

Sorry about that.

I'm not even sure I have a post in me at the moment.

Last Monday our sweet 10 year old kitty died. She had a heart condition, and had beaten the odds for survival, but it seems that finally her extremely enlarged heart could no longer keep up, and she probably died of a heart attack. Rather rare for cats, but all of our efforts to prolong her life worked, and she didn't die of a blood clot, which is a really awful way to go.

We are heartbroken.  We cried for hours, kissed her sweet furry cheeks, looked at every bit of her sweet little body (only 7lbs full grown), and in our own sweet time took her to the vet to be cremated.

It was an inauspicious day. It was very close to the date we found out I was pregnant with Sparky last year, and in light of the translocation issues, it sharpened that loss for both of us. 

There are so many things to say about how this has opened both of us to understanding more about using donor gametes, as well as how it intersects with the loss of Sparky, our only mutually genetic child, but because these are things that are between us, and in many ways originating in my husband and his losses, it isn't my place to write about his feelings and his experience, and to write about mine would betray his privacy.

We are in a moratorium about TTC. He asked for some time to just let this stuff marinate and percolate (we have tentatively agreed that the reality of my aging eggs means through August is fair), but there is a chance we might be ready to take some action in July--low tech, maybe even a home insemination. Even though it is unlikely to work, it would go so ways to restoring our sense of privacy, and agency. It is wonderful to have all this technology available, but it does seem to escalate the worry, and suppress the excitement. Or maybe that is just me. I could do that on a fixed horse race (i.e. the horse could fall and break it's leg!).

But, I must admit, I am feeling hopeful and excited. Not hopeful just that maybe my eggs will work with donor sperm, that is in there, but excited about the possibility that something will happen, my eggs, donor eggs--just something.  In many ways I am finally feeling what many people feel at the beginning of the process of TTC. I was so anxious and fatalistic I pretty much killed it for both of us. Oy. So, here I am, on the eve of our three year anniversary of TTC, finally feeling like I wish I could have in August 2006.  Better late than never?

Go give her some Love

Hey Ya'll, if you don't already read Eva at The Egg Drop Post, go give her some love. She got a negative on her IVF cycle yesterday, and it just plain sucks.

I'll write a post soon, I'm sure I can figure out how to translate the emotional morass we are in over her into something intellegble. But not today!

Am I Jonah or the Whale?

I had one shitty weekend. Good lord. I haven't felt that bad in months, maybe even a year.

I actually thought I was doing better (because, ya know,I'd made a list of everything I needed to do...as if that was full mental health!), but yesterday at therapy, I turned into a self lacerating disaster area.

I have this image of my therapist standing on the deck of a boat with a deep sea fishing pole, her feet planted against the rail, trying to reel me back in.

She said to me, a number of times "What did you swallow whole?" We tried out various ideas, but none of them reeled me back in.  As I left, I remembered that I'd read this post on Friday at Peter's cross station . Go ahead, read it, and then look through the comments, and find the one by Sara (not me).  The comments on this were awesome, and really spoke for me, and yet I was deeply impacted by this post.  I think this is what I swallowed whole.  Even though I had enough self awareness to read the comments, and respond off line to the author and to Sara, who I felt really captured a lot of what I wanted to say, there was still a huge piece of me that took in Shannon's criticism of ART and applied her judgment about entitlement and classism to myself.  It was as if she referred to some ART bloggers who are not cognizant of the choices they are making for others (their children), and because she didn't single me out and say "Everyone but Sarah at Dreams and False alarms is a jerk", I swallowed her judgment whole.  In some ways, I think this is because I am conflicted about our next steps (donor sperm, donor sperm/donor egg), and in another it is probably because I feel so overwhelmed by my needs, and my husband's needs, and to have a chance at gestating a child ourselves, and I worry that this  will somehow hurt our future children.

I have this unrealistic unconscious/and not so unconscious directive for myself as a parent that I have to anticipate anything that could potentially hurt my children and make sure it doesn't happen.  What I think hit me this weekend is that we are out of 'perfect' options.

Bad scenario number 1: My husband's sperm is unlikely to ever combine with my or anyone else's eggs and make a human.  

Bad situation number 2 : My eggs are not too likely to make much better use of donor sperm than they did of translocated sperm.  

Bad situation number 3: Donor sperm and Donor eggs--a child created solely for our convenience (uh, not sure that is the right word), and to meet my need of being pregnant. And to be fair, to provide some sort of biological and gestational continuity for the child themselves.

Bad situation number 4: We adopt a child through conventional private adoption, or through our county system, or internationally.  The myriad losses for a child in this option range from the complications of open adoption to the complete loss of any hope of knowing their genetic/first family.

It just seemed too much. And then Shannon's opinion that using ART is an act of entitlement...it just hit too many nerves, and caught too many of my triggers. 

So, is she wrong? Yes, and no. There are people who just don't think. But I am not one of them. I think so much, that I often  wonder if I should even try to have children because no matter how I go about it someone is hurt, and to hurt anyone in my quest to have a family is pretty unbearable. I think this was where I was really stuck over the last few days.  I couldn't see my way forward.

I remember about 15 years ago I heard a report on NPR about the Amazon Rainforest tribes being a hot new market for A.von.  I was appalled, at both the tentacles of capitalism, and the potential for millions of little bottles of A.von products to pile up and pollute the Amazon.  I mentioned this to a friend, and she too was appalled. We talked about in front of her boss, who was a really lovely woman, but had a totally different mindset about the world. She said "Oh! how nice for them! Now they can have all that good stuff too."  She didn't think about things in the same way that we did, but was she necissarily wrong? Or entitled, on behalf of amazon tribal women to 'ski.n so so.ft"  Somehow this story about A.von in the rain forest reminds me that I am not the kind of person who doesn't think about the effects of my actions. If anything, I over think my effects on my children.  

So, I'm going to try to stay in the game, and not take things so personally.  She is entitled to her opinions, and she made her choices because of who she is, and what makes sense to her.  I need to reserve the right to do the same, I need to reserve it for myself, and not feel implicitly judged because she has a strong opinion.  Oy.

Stop the world and let me off...I'm tired of going round and round

From the title, you probably assume that this post is going to be about when to stop banging my head against this particular wall. And it might be, but this song has been going through my head for the last few hours, so I decided to unload this particular earwig on a post and see if it would cease and desist.

And yet, it seems meaningful.

On Tuesday husband finally got freaked out about using donor sperm. It was sort of a relief. I was feeling like the biggest freak on the planet for all the crazy, painful thoughts I've had about egg donation, and he seemed to be sailing through just fine. So on Tuesday he said that he needed to reserve the right to not be ok with doing an DS IUI this month. That made sense to me, but also made me quite anxious.  As you can imagine, checking for an LH surge every morning, and anticipating a soul searching discussion in the midst of flying out the door for an ultrasound and perhaps a trigger shot was pretty anxiety provoking.  On Thursday I said "How about if we just don't do it this month."  And I saw all the muscles relax in his body.  I had the sense that he wanted to say he wasn't ready, but felt conflicted about it, and wanting to please me he was holding out the hope that when presented with the real option he'd be able to do it. He wants to feel, going into any type of cycle (IUI or IVF) that if we got a positive, he'd be more happy than sad.  That makes sense to me, and for our possible children, I want that too.  I felt a sense of relief for about 12 hours, and then the sadness set in.

This is a temporary move, and I'm pretty confident that we'll do the IUI next month, and then possibly our real last IVF with my eggs and donor sperm in July, but I think that any month that passes with no possibility of getting pregnant makes me sad. 

Additionally, my friend, who is pregnant with identical twins will probably deliver in the next few days. She is getting excited, and part of me is excited as well, but another part of me is feeling really sad. Sad about being on the outside once again. Sad about not knowing what the next step will bring; sad about having so many new decisions to make, when 2 months ago, it seemed that the path was clear--rock strewn, but clear. Sad about the reality that even if the IUI works, or the next IVF works, that my husband and I will be grieving in the midst of happiness. So maybe that is the meaning of wanting to "get off."  Ugh. I'm just really feeling the sadness of this situation. It wouldn't be  solved by doing an IUI, it wouldn't' be solved by doing and IVF or starting the adoption process. It just stands alone right now.

In other baby news, I just became an aunt again.  My brother, who is 55 (I think), and his girlfriend/fiancée just had a baby last night, a little girl.  I want to be unabashedly happy for him. Heck I'd settle for not seething with jealousy, but I don't feel any of these things. I just feel sad and left out. 

I don't want to be this sad sack. I don't want to be this jealous hag. And yet I am.

I feel so badly for my husband. I wish I could go through this for him--I wish that all of the grieving I've done over the last 6 months could magically be transferred to him, and he wouldn't have to wade through this. But he does. And it kills me that we both have to wade through so much on our way parenthood. No matter how we build our family, there is grief involved, and that is a fact. If we'd started from a different point, or had different needs, this story might be different, but it it isn't. This is our process, and some days it blows.

I'm going to try to paint the doors in our hallway, and get some sense of forward movement that doesn't involve my reproductive tract.

What to say, what to say?

Forgive me blogosphere, it has been 4 days since my last post.

I, uh, well...hmm. There is so much going through my head and through my heart, it is a little tough to decide where to start.

Let's start where I left off last week:

To recap: on Wednesday I picked up the cryo tank of sperm from the sperm bank.  I had imagined them giving me the tank, but it was actually sealed with double tape into a big box, so my whimsical ideas for photographing it with a baby bonnet on it's cap were quashed. Also, it turned out I was pretty nervous about the whole thing. Husband and I had all sorts of conversations about what kind of apparatus to secure it with in the car--one doesn't want to let liquid nitrogen just bounce around.  In the end, the box fit behind my passenger seat, and I wedged a towel between the box and seat to keep the box perfectly upright and snug.  It had a 5 day charge, but I dreamed that it had defrosted overnight, and I went out to find the tank beaded with condensation.  So I hopped in my car at 8 in the morning to shuttle it out the clinic (about 30 minutes away through rush hour traffic!). I had no idea where the lab was in the clinic, only husband has been there to drop off his specimens. It was all very efficient and business like. When they took the vials out to show me I was surprised at how small they were, and then a huge wave of sadness broke over me. I was so focused on the logistics and not screwing up that the reality of what I had been carrying around in my car for 18 hours hadn't really sunk in. But when I looked at those little vials I felt another level of loss rise up and it surprised me. When I told Husband, he got it, and gave me a hug. What a man.

One of the most complicated things about this process of using donor sperm, is that there is a part of me that feels wildly hopeful, probably for the first time in 3 years (yes, I managed to get so freaked out during the early TTC, that I practically ruined the fun), and another part of me that feels resigned to it not working, and yet another part of me that feels guilty for having this chance. I suppose it is survivors guilt setting in. 

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I bought a new fertility monitor on Amazon, only $125! My old one lost the ability to detect the estrogen surge--and it wasn't a personal problem, my friend who is now 33 weeks pregnant with identical twins never got an LH surge with it--clearly the machine was wrong!  I get up every morning and remind myself "Second uri.ne of the day", since that is what they told me to do. Today is day 8,and I'm still in the low fertility sector. Hopefully the DHEA will deliver a nice day 13 or day 14 ovulation of a nice juicy egg.  I'm really curious to see what my lining is like with DHEA, but without all the stimming drugs. My feeling is that if I can't make a good egg on my own, and my lining is still slim, we really need to focus our energy on IVF and not dink around with IUI's. See! I almost have a decision tree forming!

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My friend who is 33 weeks pregnant with identical twins (just sex, not sub q shots involved) is in the hospital being monitored for pre-eclampsia. When she went for her OB appointment on Wed her blood pressure was high and she has some really impressive edema in her legs and feet. They gave her the blood pressure medicine which totally worked (WHEW!) but the steroid shots they gave for the twins lung development made her pancreas a little wonky (totally normal side effect), so she had to stay in the hospital for the weekend. They she was looking good on a lot of fronts, but that she had too many combined risk factors.  We spent the evening with her and husband last night, eating Korean take out, talking about politics, goofing around and having a pretty damn good time for hanging out in a cramped hospital room.

I must say that the crazed ideas I had about wanting twins are completely put to rest. One please. She works from home, has been monitored really closely, has a great diet (to deal with the gestational diabetes), and is still stuck in the hospital hoping her babies will cook for a minimum of another two weeks. It's just really sobering to realize how risky a twin pregnancy is. In her case, there was no avoiding it, the egg just went crazy dividing, but in my case, especially if we use donor eggs, I can avoid it. I know, and have spouted, all the reasons to go for twin pregnancy when you have limited time, limited resources, and have been trying to get pregnant for YEARS! However, it is damn scary. She and her husband are resourceful, and have each other, but it is just such a scary scary time for the 2 (4) of them. 

In good news, they are being monitored closely, the twins are close to 5lbs each, and she is responding well to all the treatments, so indications are that they will get to stay in the best incubator possible for a good long time (like until June 8, pretty please!)

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How many of you know of Ayelet Waldman?  She was quite a phenomenon a few years ago when her essay about loving her husband more than her children was published in the New York Times.  I remember reacting quite viscerally to it, but more as a child than as a mother. I think I was reacting out of my own sense of pain in terms of my wish to feel secure in my mother's love. However, that issue had nothing to do with my parent's devotion to one another, but rather with my mother's depression, which if you lost your youngest child at age 14 and had a baby on the way, I challenge you to not jump off a bridge. I'm just saying.  I'll take insecurity over dead mother any day. Anyhow, back to AW.  So over the years, like the 3 I've been battling infertility, I've often returned to the ideas she raises in that essay. I suppose you could say that because I don't have children, I'm not qualified to comment on this, but whatever. I pay my $8 a month so I can say whatever I want to say. Where was I?

I know that there is a malignant kind of loving between parents that excludes children, and that is not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about my love for my husband, and how it is so different, and so much richer than it was 3 years ago. I can say with a lot a certainty that if you'd asked me 3 years ago I would have thought that we were lucky to love each other so deeply. But now, and in someway I am not sure where we will put this little human we make. I love him so fiercely, so completely that it surprises me. And yet, I know that we will love our child(ren), and that the experience of that love will open parts of my heart that I don't even know exist. But his man, this man who is my soul mate, the one person who loves me, get's me and enjoys me in my multitude of flaws and faults won't be unseated by a child.  I think that 3 years ago, it may have been more of a struggle. I so needed a baby to heal my own wounds. I might have pushed him out of the way (although he would have fought me tooth and nail!), and now I'm confident I won't.

I think I'm going to be a 'bad' mother, but in the best sense of the word.

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Babies!

Last night as we left our friends hospital room two newborns were at the nurses station while their mother showered or something. My husband and I screeched to stop in front of their isoletes  They were so tiny and so perfect. Their little ears were a marvel.  I could have scooped one up and walked out with it and been ecstatic to have a baby. Don't worry, I 'm not contemplating baby stealing, but rather that I worry so much about "his/mine/ours", and I would have gladly scooped up a Vietnamese baby and walked out a the hospital a happy woman.

I thought to myself "If something works with this donors sperm, how could I not be completely taken with that baby?" Clearly, there are moments when I can stop thinking, start feeling, and imagine good things.

Gulp

Today I pick up the cryo canister of donor sperm. I have to keep it upright at all times. Gulp.

Shall I take a picture of it all seat belted into the back seat?

Wish me luck!