Dreams and False Alarms

In mah belly

10 units of lupron in mah belly. Yeehaw!

Full steam ahead

Whew.

Or maybe not...

The cyst isn't hormonally active, but my FSH is elevated to 11. Possible because of being older than the hills, ovarianly speaking, or my ovary injury last cycle might be causing it to be higher.  Ugh.  We are flummoxed. the doctor left it up to us whether or not to start the cycle. He doesn't think either are a problem, but he said if it isn't successful, then we might feel that the cyst was to blame. We're waiting for a call back, and then maybe we'll decide.

I'm feeling angry and whiney. I put my whole month on hold for this cycle, and now I may need to postpone, and it pisses me off. Ugh.

More later.

And were off!

Period started yesterday afternoon, first sono under my belt, waiting for the starting flag from the doctor!

I did have one cyst, but it is 14mm (about the size of the tip of a not too meaty ring finger), it's pretty unlikely that will derail us, so I'm just going to get all my needles out and get ready for the 10 days of stims!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm actually feeling pretty excited.

Anybody elses' doctor having their husband (or fresh donor) getting tested for anemia? 

It seems like poor design that IVF coincides with one's cycle

Of course, I know it has to, but c'mon. When you are doing a natural micro flare protocol as I am, I get to have the joys of PMS, amplified by stress, in addition to spending a HUGE amount of money on drugs, and looking down the barrel at my last paid-for IVF.  Given the amount of tears I had this morning while listening to NPR, I'm thinking AF is comin' round the mountain.  The Gonal F and ovidril are in the fridge and the menopur is in the guest room. I ain't posting a picture--I'm too jaded for all that.

I picked up my lupron yesterday, and then I had a hard time at work (someone throwing around the idea of egg donation b/c she's in a financial crisis, and it just got me all triggered) and then some more hard stuff, etc. However, most of it was in my head. As it usually is. I saw the Envy monster coming, and noticed how I started to self shred, and realized that I needed a good cry. Luckily my husband was able to hear me say that the envy had gotten me triggered, and even teased me in a very sweet way, and then I say on the (closed) toilet and had a good cry while he showered and talked about his feelings going into this IVF, and listened to me pour out a bit of grief. So we are getting the hang of this thing...yeesh.

I'm doing thanksgiving, and I"m sure I'm grateful for something, but at the moment, it feels like a slog.

More later.

Misery would really like some company (or not, I can't decide)

So, you will note that I am a pretty positive blogger. I usually stick to sad or happy, but rarely the snarky posts taht garner many readers, but are also kind of controversial.

For the record, I have been allowing myself more snarky feelings lately. I'll tell ya, it ain't easy, and it doesn't keep all the wolves from the door, but it is a nice change of pace.

I would like to say, in a totally immature and obnoxious way: No one else get's pregnant before me. Hear that? Like this person did.  Yeesh. I actually blew a raspberry at my computer screen. Jezzeus! Clearly the key to reproductive success is becoming a Redbook blogger.  I guess I haven't tried that, but I think my late entry into the blogosphere, and my relative lack of snark, has left me without a chance at that magic bullet. I swear, again, really not intending to make sense: What the FUCK!  I hate it that I've done every thing everyone else has done and still I'm here on the fucking sidelines. Yes. It hurts, and it's not fair. And blah blah blah life isn't fair, but for once I am taking the low road and saying "I'd like a serving of fairness, and make it snappy sister!"

It is probably about 7 days from cycle day one, and there fore 8 days from cycle day two, the magical lupron injection start date.  I am back in the running, I may even be fodder for someone else's raspberries and jealousy (from my fingertips to God's ears, oh wait, I'm an atheist, I knew this would complicate things...), but right now You Are All Having My Baby, and I want it back. See, I told you there was plenty of crazy in here to go around.

So this is where I am stuck. I really don't want anyone one I love to know this pain first hand, I don't even really want people I don't know to experience this first hand, but it is very lonely to be the 1 out of 4 women who experience infertility. Truly, of the women I am close to, I am her. Shitty. Ok, I have one friend who went through IVF, but she's a friend of a friend, who didn't become a friend until I started down this road, so that doesn't count (but she is awesome, and if I could put her in my pocket and carry her everywhere, I'd probably be a lot happier). 

So, you, go get pregnant. Really, I do want you too. My husband will steal me a baby if that is what it comes to. Watch out mothers of high order multiples, its gonna be Raising Arizona time around here if I don't get my baby soon!**

**Okay, okay. Not really. A girls gotta have her outlets, eh?

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you feel like a can of mixed nuts.

Let me just start by saying, I am kinda nuts, but also, not as 'nuts' as I need to be sometimes.  If I were more nuts in someways, I think I'd feel better, not so bottled up.

Our dear friends, who I wrote about here, are pregnant. After about 2 months of trying, sperm met egg, egg invited sperm in, cell division party progressed, and then it went on a trip down the tubes and implanted. For you infertiles out there, this is how it works for other people. No sono, no shots, no surgery, no speculum with a full bladder, no catheter in your cervix.  Go figure.  The process actually works for some people.

As you can imagine my reaction to this news was pretty mixed. In one part of myself I am so happy for them; so happy that they are not in this hell of infertility. And in another part of myself, I am so envious that it is scary. I think that envy, that kind of jealousy that has an ugly edge to it, is one of the hardest emotions for me to deal with. It is sort of a cliché that infertiles are bitter and envious, and say awful destructive things about people who get pregnant. But not me.  I've indulged in the odd bitter outpouring of why me, but to really feel the ugly envy towards people I love, who have achieved something I wanted so badly for myself, and who will be such wonderful parents, and have been such wonderful friends to us, was pretty much intolerable. Of course, being the pillar of mental health that I am, instead of just feeling envious I attacked myself, my eggs, my effort, my fitness to be a mother and on and on. My husband, who is the soul of patience (even when he shouldn't be), finally snapped and couldn't take it any more.  He was tired of this implosion that happens every time someone gets pregnant instead of me, and get the f&*k over it. He did retract that last part.  Ugh. 

Again, my wonderful therapist gave words to some of my crazy thoughts, and it was such a huge relief to just admit these ugly feelings, and not take that energy and smack myself around with it.  To say I'm over beating myself up about infertility, goes too far, but at least I have something else to wrap my head around.

We didn't even try this month. both of us were emotionally a bit fragile after the maelstrom of the week, and then Sat am both of us suffered a sacroiliac joint pain extravaganza--husband can't sit, and certainly can't do the baby lambada.  So for the first time in 2 years, there is truly no chance I'm gonna get pregnant. I feel mixed about this as well. On one hand, to not even try feels very sad, but on the other, it is a relief. I know my period will come either on thanksgiving or the day after, and the IVF extravaganza will begin. 

In general, I'm working a lot more than I have been for the last year and a half, so my posting is suffering. But mostly, I've  been trying to live the not infertile part of my life a little more fully lately, and that is important too. I hope you'll stick around, even if the posts are a little sparse for a while. Remember, December is IVF #3, so posting of mundane but important details will resume at that time.

Scabs

Saturday night my husband and I were both suffering from his having worked for 6 out of 6 of the last weekends, and wanted to go out for a nice dinner where we could look at each other, not just sit on the couch and look at the TV. We were seated next to a couple who looked normal from the back, but from the front, the guy had a really odd bulge in his jacket. Lo and behold, it was a baby in a sling, under his jacket. I was bracing, but I wasn't sure for what. It isn't always wrenching to see a baby or a pregnant woman, but sometimes it is, and those 'sometimes' don't always fit into neat categories. So we all ordered dinner, and when there were little sounds from inside the jacket, the dad would get up and walk outside and jiggle the baby for a little while and come back in. The mom was eating her dinner--clearly, this was the plan. The whole time the dad was soothing the baby, it was hidden from view. Finally the mom finished her dinner and it was the dad's turn to eat. The baby had gotten wiggly and mewley (not a crier at that point), and so the dad handed him to the mom. He was probably 2 months old. A little bigger than a new born, but not as fleshy as a 3 month old. I ate my dinner and watched as the mom snuggled the little baby, kissed his fuzzy little head and moved him around to keep him comfy. I really kept it together. Near the end of their meal, we interacted with them a little bit, complemented them on their baby (I must have said something, but mostly I remember my husband talking to them). As they were getting up to leave the father asked us if we had kids. Ugh. Clench. My husband smiled blandly and said "We're working on it." and got a little advice about taking your baby out in public. As soon as they left. Tears filled my eyes,and I tried not to cry. One of the ways that infertility manifests is that you no longer think about babies, or actively admire them, or even imagine your own or play the name game. It's like a scab on a wound that never quite heals. As long as the scab is in place there is no oxygen getting to the wound, and aside from tightness and tenderness, the wound is covered. But then there are times when the scab get's knocked off, and the wound opens up, and you remember what it is that hurts. So back to those tears. They just started falling of their own accord. It wasn't a noisy sob fest, but I was really crying. My husband took my hand and just held it while I cried. He said "We'll get you pregnant, by hook or by crook." Which was so sweet, and something we say to one another in the hard times. The 'crook' changes from time to time.

So what was I crying for? I was crying for so many things. For my little Sparky, who would have been around 26 weeks gestation by now, for all of times the scab stayed intact and I didn't feel how bad it felt to have empty arms, and for the fact that the dream of a baby seems so far off. The little fuzzy head, and the sweet little face feels like a mirage. I really miss the part of myself who could conjure up my dream baby, and feel their little head in the crook of my neck, the fuzzy baby head all ready for head kisses. Infertility is a thief. It not only robs you of your children, but being able to dream freely of your children, and that gets to be a hard spot in your soul. That little baby saturday night opened up the box of dreams, and I still feel a bit raw where those scabs let loose.

Now for something totally unrelated to infertility

Hi!  My name is Willow Tree (yeah, corny pseudonym, I admit it!) and I'll be your blogger for today.  I'm usually found trying to flex my writing muscles No weeping allowed as part of Geohde's Great Blog Cross-PollinationGeohde's great blog cross-pollination, Sarah and I have switched blogs for today, so get ready for a ~slight~ change of pace and topic :)  Here goes!

A few years ago, I had to stop reading Yann Martel's  after just a few chapters, The life of Pi  just to ask the Google and Wikipedia gods if the story was really pure fiction, or based on a true story, or what, because despite its (literally) fantastic and incredible premise, it was so compelling, with a voice that somehow rang so true, that I so wanted to believe that it was, in fact true. 

Nowadays, I tend to consume books mostly from my preferred genre: fantasy.  From George R. R. Martin to Jim Butcher, Isobelle Carmody to Lois MacMaster Bujold, and pretty much everyone in between.  But every once in a while, a random book on a library shelf calls out "Read me! Read me!", and that is how I ended up reading The Story of Forgetting. 

Told from the perspective of two very different characters - Abel, an elderly hunchback living in isolation and haunted by the ghosts of his brother and sister-in-law and the daughter that ran away from home never to be seen again; The Story of Forgetting and Seth, your typical gawky, angsty, nerdy, social outcast teen whose mother has just been placed in a nursing home after a diagnosis of a rare variant of early-onset Alzheimer's disease - the tale is presented not only via a third-person narrator reporting on the two characters, but also using stories about a fictitious place called Isadora, which seems to connect Seth and Abel somehow.

Included also is a wry narration of the development and spread of that variant of the disease, from the mutation of that one little gene, to how it happened to have spread to so many people in that one town in England, and how no thanks to a failed purging, the disease's carriers were instantly spread all around the world.  So well-written was this part that I, again, just had stop reading and check with my husband, who is in the medical field, to see just how much of it was fiction and how much fact. 

As a wannabe writer, I've started to pay some attention to things other than "just" the story when I read books.  I mentioned the two above because while their styles and content were quite different, they had this ring of truth that made them stand out from the crowd of books in my head. Forgetting also made a decent attempt at developing two main storylines that finally intersected at the very end. 

I say "decent" because there is a book out there that blew me away with its skillful juggling of three cris-crossing storylines, each taking place about 20 years apart from the other. 

I admit that perhaps one would need to be a fan of the darker genres in order to enjoy Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. It is, after all, a Dracula tale.  But my oh my, what a take on the tale!  The main narrative is from 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library.The historian "  The pages of the book" The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon and the word "Drakulya,". The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor."  Who wouldn't be curious?? 

Upon confronting her father, Paul agrees to tell her what it's all about, and thus the second storyline comes into play: Paul's experience in the 1950's relating to the disappearance of his mentor, Professor Rossi, and how he and Rossi's daughter follow leads to various countries in order to rescue him.  Meanwhile, back in 1972, Paul soon goes missing, and thus the 1972 narrative then turns to the search for Paul.  And while she searches, the enterprising girl also reads the yellowed letters she'd found that started it all, letters that provide the other storyline, that of Professor Rossi in the 1930's and his dangerous research into Dracula. 

Got all that?

Sounds complicated, yes, but the threads of these stories presented via flashbacks, conversations and letters are woven together so well, and combined with excellent settings and three-dimensional characters, such that even the slightly disappointing punchline couldn't spoil it for me.

So, how about y'all?  Read a particularly outstanding book lately?  And what made it outstanding to you?  I'm always looking for new and different authors, and would love to hear from you in the comments. 

Thanks for reading!
~willow~

p/s: This blog will now return to its regular programming.  In the meantime, please swing on by http://noweepingallowed.blogspot.com/ and say hi to Sarah, aight?  And thanks again, hope y'all liked what you read here today.  Bye!

Ecstatic--thats the only word for it

This isn't a particularly political blog,but I thought I'd take a moment to say that i am ecstatic that Barack Obama was elected.  I was such a wreck yesterday that I 'spoiled' two ballots by marking yes and no for one of the ballot mesures. I blame it on nerves and all that "Never leave a space blank on a scantron" training.

I am doing pretty well. I had a mini meltdown yesterday, wondering if I should be on the long lupron protocol, but then got a hold of myself. I also started the ball rolling on taking some action against my prior therapist, who acted in some unethical ways--it's been destroying me, and I have been protecting her against destruction's by taking it all on myself. Not cool.

I've been  cooking, with pleasure, for the first time in since we started this whole TTC megilla, and even if I don't lose any weight between now and December, I'm definitely eating better, and that is good.

Mostly I'm just overcome with emotion every time that I think that my child, however he or she comes to me, will grow up in a world, in a country, that finally lived up to it's promise and elected an African American president, and a man who is going to be such good a father to us with his calm steady way of being.

Oh! They'll be a guest blogger on Sunday--mixing it up!