Dreams and False Alarms

Are you ready? Yes I'm ready.

I'm sorry that I've turned into one of those bloggers who broods around with blog posts rattling around in her head, instead of setting them free to rattle around on the internet.  Brooding does seem to capture what I am doing with my thoughts, and my feelings, I mean brooding in the more "sitting on one's eggs" rather than in the sense of being sad and grumpy.

Have you been following Mo and Will's report on their 1 day work up in Colorado?  I've been peeking at it through my fingers. For a moment when Mo first described her work up I felt an upwelling of my own wish to have a one day at the temple of last chances and miracle babies.  I thought, only for a moment, maybe I too have a constricted blood flow that hasn't been seen. And then, I stopped. I just stopped myself from walking down that road, and reminded myself that more data would only make me feel crazier, and that I was done with being crazy.  For me, the data is in.  I don't get pregnant, maybe if we'd known about the translocation earlier we could have moved to donor sperm and we'd already be dandling our little baby on our knee. Or not. Maybe there is something that goes on with my eggs that is beyond age.  Whatever it is, it's not knowable at this time. The "why" of this situation is not going to be answered.

Not having an answer, oddly enough, has really helped me to feel that I'm ready to move on to DE. If it can't be known, it can't be known, and I will only lose more precious years of my life to answering, what has become, a not too important question.

Am I sad that I won't see my family and my husband's family expressed in our child? Of course, but it's sadness, a relatively easy burden to carry compared to the rage, terror, helplessness and sense of annihilation that I carried with me for most of the time I've been trying to conceive a child.

And you know what? I'm excited! Really excited, about this next step. It's not a guarantee, but it's a damn sight better than what I've been working with for many years now.

Although this baby will start out it's life in a lab, this child will be conceived out of our love and passion , and it's going to be wonderful.

So bring on the beta on Monday, and set me free from the endometrian, I'm ready.

Long time no see

I'm pretty sure if I looked in my archives, I'd find that I've got quite a few posts that say some variation on "long time no see".  Sorry about the silence. Since I didn't post my negative last week, some people were still writing to wish me luck. Sorry for the confusion!  I was actually very busy, then it was my birthday on Thursday, and I was exhausted from all the busyness earlier in the week. Also, I was just in a bad place before then and I didn't even want to hear myself talk, ya know? 

So! Well! Where to start?

I don't have breast cancer, so that's good. 

I went for my paranoid mammogram on Monday, got a call on Tuesday from my OB saying they wanted to do a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound because of a suspicious mass in my left breast, so I promptly mobilized, and used my PPO insurance to get myself an appointment the next day at a one of the best hospitals around, and had my answer ( a simple cyst), just under 24 hours from when my doctor first called.  I did a remarkably good job of holding it together--every once in a while I would stray into "well it's so early, it will be a good prognosis, but that means no pregnancy, and who will let a woman who has had breast cancer adopt etc etc.", but I managed to not go there. Thank god I got seen so quickly!

*************************************

We picked a donor.  We were looking at 5 donors, all vaguely resembling me, all proven, but 3 were from my clinic, which saved us about 5K, so the choice was clear in some ways. The donor is the same age as one of my nieces, taller than me, but the same coloring, and well, I guess she seems nice. At some point I had very high ideals about who and what and where and how she should be (also known as trying to replicate myself in another person...), and then I just got to a place where I realized that she needed to be a good person, and she needed to be willing to meet the child when they were 18.  I was quite worried that I would have to compromise on that, if I ever wanted to get this party started, but she is willing to be contacted.

We do one more IUI, sometime in the next 5 days (today is cycle day 8), with endo.metrian for the luteal phase, and then if the beta is negative, then we commence with the DE cycle. Luckily, our cycles are already somewhat synchronized (she'll get hers the same week I do in Nov), so we might even have a transfer before Dec 31!

I am still ambivalent about doing the IUI--still scared that even if I do get pregnant, and even if I don't miscarry, that my age puts me at so much risk for Downs and other genetic issues that it will be harder to feel excited than I would like. At this point I'd like a DE cycle for the price of an IUI. Shall I dream on?

******************

On Wed my mom called me to let me know that one of her dear friends had died in her sleep. For those of your just joining in the story now, my mom and her contemporaries are in their 80's, and so these losses may be piling up. 

Her name was Joan. She was at the hospital when I was born, and there for every significant milestone in my life until I was in my mid 20's when she and her husband moved about 4 hours away.  She was my buddy. She was a terrible cook, but ambitious--she introduced me to crème fraîche and many other delights. She was a snappy dresser, and always let me rummage around in her closet. I was allowed to try on her clothes, and model them--often combining things in new and different ways, which she always gave me credit for when she wore the outfit. In sixth grade I was going through a very awkward phase and took the worst school picture of my entire life (I am rather photogenic,and enjoy having my picture taken--drivers license pictures included).  She worked for a photographer, and that year had portraits taken of me, which she paid for. My Senior pictures, my wedding pictures, all of them paid for by her. 

She made me beautiful SARAH pillows when I was about 10, velvet, satin, corduroy.  I finally gave them to another little girl named Sarah, but right at this moment, I wish I had them back. She also took some of the most lovely baby pictures of me, did quite a lot of photography, and batik. She had a practical elegance that I can see so clearly in my own fashion choices--any type of herringbone, or nubby wool trouser strikes me as a Joan outfit. She was, I think, an artist stuck in a 50's housewifes life, and although she broke out and did do art in middle age, I wonder what her life would have been like had she known from the beginning that that was who she was.   But what I want to hold onto is that she didn't let it stop her, she did those things. Maybe I can too--maybe I can start holding my own art in a little higher esteem.

She was an early proponent of seat belts--I never wore one unless I was with her. She worked in the library, and I thought for a long time that being a library assistant was a glamorous job. Not because it looked glamorous, not because she always seemed so important--But because she had an air about her and she could find my favorite children's book, or let me know when it would come back. Very important to a girl obsessed with Mushy Eggs (out of print, but on it's way to me).

She would often start out a sentence with "Well Sar.." and then go on to tell me about something she was thinking about, something she'd seen or respond seriously to my thoughts or feelings.  She had lovely looping handwriting--somewhat like my own if I concentrate.  I recently unearthed a postcard she sent, which she made out of a picture she took of me, wishing me luck in my 'new adventure' (changing high schools), and teasing me about a teacher I'd clashed with who'd resigned.

The picture below is of the two of us, me probably wearing her kerchief--I recall being fascinated by them as a small child, and always asking for one.  She was probably asking for my opinion, and taking it seriously.

I love you Joan--thank you for ever little piece of you I carry inside of myself.  You live on in my heart, in my wardrobe, and in that special place where I know that I was loved, and adored and enjoyed from the moment you knew I was on the way. Rest in Peace, rest in peace.

 

 

 

A shot in the dark

We did an IUI this morning.  No ultrasound to check out the dimensions of my lining or my follicles, no trigger shots to give us the sense of 'perfect' timing, and no progesterone supplementation to screw with my mind and give me gas and sore boobs.

Like sex with one's husband, but so not.

I feel sort of...hopeful enough to go through with it, but not hopeful enough to worry about how the due date will inconvenience my hectic (hardly!) schedule in 9 months.

We're starting to seriously talk about DE, and when to do it. I want to do it sooner, Husband want's to do it later (me: start with cycle mid oct, him: start with cycle in Nov).  We'll probably do the latter--husband needs his time to get used to the idea, and of course, all this is dependent on the donor being available and agreeable to both of us. 

---------------------

Do you ever go through those phases that are just annoying? The kind where you feel it all freshly again; feelings you thought you'd mastered rear up again?  I think overall I'm doing better, but there are times when I look at Fa.ceboo.k and it feels like one more place where happy people show pictures of their children and talk about cheerfulness (not kidding on the last one, former cheerleader and cheerleading coach posted something about cheerfulness being infectious etc). I'm sure it is, but all I could think was "nice you can be so fucking happy all the time."  For a person who's been eating a lot of shit sandwiches for the last 3 years, I'm pretty happy, but ugh. Geeze. Yeesh.

And on the other hand, I want to have an easier, happier life, like other people do (cheerfulness weirdo not withstanding), and today I can't feel like I'm a part of that life; not to say they (amorphous they don't wnt me, they do!) but it just feel as if it hurts too much to know how easy (some)things are for others.

I think that resemblance talk just kills me.  I love it for a moment, and it's so true in many cases, but it just hurts to know our children will resemble us in many ways, but not physically, and as little as that will matter in the long run, it is a loss. 

One odd thing is that I can't seem to find an egg donor who resembles me. In many ways that's fine, it is less important to me than it was before, but it's just odd.  I sort of look like Ellen DeGeneres (big smile), Cate Blanchette (long face, sharp nose), Kate Winslet (Similar eyes, and holy crap we have the same boobs) and a little Princess Diana thrown in. Where the heck are all the egg donors who look a little bit like any of those people? All the women seem to have round faces and little eyes. Ok, that is an exaggeration, but really, what is up with DE and round faces around here?

Clearly, I'm all over the place, taking shots in the dark in many ways.  To sum up: IUI, feeling jealous, wanting to know why egg donors are roundy faced.

Meeting with Dr Calm tomorrow to discuss Donor Egg process. Oy.

In which I compare failing at IVF to The Chicken Ranch

Hi.

Sorry about just dropping out like that. I'm not sure of what to say, of how much I even want to know about what I'm feeling and thinking at this point. This could turn out to be a long post, or a short post...

I am crushed.  Yes, partially by the negative--even though I was ambivalent and scared of a positive, it would have also have been wonderful. I literally feel crushed.  I think that the weight of what I've been doing for the last three years, and in the case of IVF, for the last year and half, finally came down on me.  I think that my way of coping was to repress how hard it was (not completely, but enough), and to keep my eyes on the prize.  As negative and as anxious as I was, I really believed that IVF could help us, and my faith was renewed when we found out about the translocation--maybe I really did have the same chance as a lot of other nearly 39 year olds.  This last cycle seems to indicate that my eggs are kaput.  Whatever it is that they need to have produce a healthy embryo/baby is just not there. Maybe in 20 years they'll know what that is, but for right now, it's unknowable.  In some ways that is a relief--to have a knowable problem, and to not be able to solve it would be a different kind of hard.

Another way that this has all crashed down on me is financially.  At the beginning of the cycle I kept having the idea that infertility treatment is like the Chicken Ranch, a movie that those of you who took Women's Studies classes in the '90's can probably remember. The scene that has always stuck with me was the girl Mandy who at one point in the movie, after a particularly lucrative session, is talking about how great it is to be a prostitute, and then later when she's pissed off the madam or the owner is forced to the an 'around the world' for the cost of a lesser act.  She is crying, she is raging, she is humiliated, she is ultimately fired for her outburst.  I think that scene has stuck with me all these years because it so clearly illustrated how when you are doing something hard, with the idea that you will get something good at the end (money in her case, a baby in mine), the humiliation, the hardships, the endurance that it takes to just get through the damn thing is tied to the end result. When you don't get it, the reality of what you've just put yourself though comes crashing down on you like a ton of bricks. In the past there was always the next cycle, the next idea, the next last thing. And now it is over, and it is sad, a relief, a huge loss, and more than I can even articulate.

I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.  If the DE/DS cycle doesn't work, we will be broke and still without a child.  I realize that may sound like catastrophizing, but just because we came out on the wrong side of the odds this time, doesn't guarantee we won't again.  Someone has to make up that 40% who don't get a baby with DE--I really fucking hope that isn't us for once.

It is getting pretty hard to keep taking money out of the savings account and telling ourselves that it is going to get us anything--pretty soon there won't be anything to take out...ugh.

***********************

While I am grateful for what we do have (each other, our kitties, some version of healthy, a good job (husband) and a job that I love, I can't help but feel all that we don't have at the moment, and the dwindling resources we have to get a child. If we were to stop all this pregnancy stuff, and move to adoption, the cost would be about the same as a DE cycle, and the wait would be 2 to 3 years.  I know that county adoptions move faster, but not always as fast as people think.  It could still be 2 to 3 years.

I feel very isolated--not because people don't care, but because it feels so impossible to explain how profoundly and utterly lost I feel at the moment. And I don't want to hear that it isn't the cards I'm dealt, but how I play them. I want to hear "This hand sucks, and that's all there is to say."  It isn't that I don't want to feel hopeful at some point, but right now this is just fucking awful, and there isn't a silver lining.

I know that eventually I will feel better, but I think at this point I am really feeling the damage this has done to me. And I think that is reasonable. It has kicked my ass, and no amount of endurance has changed the fact that no matter how much we spent, or how hard I tried, or how good I was, or how stoic I was in the face of failure after failure, this didn't work, and it's not going to work, and it was harder than most people can ever imagine. I have been through some very very hard times in my life, but the difference was that I could do something to change them. I could leave my ex-husband, I could go to college, I could go to therapy, I could find a better man. I can't do anything about this. This is what it is. It is just over, broken, fucked, unfixable.  No child, no matter how they come to us, will change the facts of the last 3 years.  They may soften the blow, fill us with more joy than we can imagine, but this is immutable.

This is the end of an era. This is the end of IVF. This is the end of the idea that I can be helped. This is the end of feeling like every penny is worth spending if it gets us our child.

*********************

Compared to most people, I don't have a lot of pregnant friends and baby showers to contend with.  But a friend and his wife are having a baby in November, and their shower is in a month.  I looked at their registry and thought "You two are missing so many really important things, and have way too many of the 'hyped but useless' stuff on here."  I felt so...annoyed. Here I am, having collected and observed, and thought through all this stuff for YEARS, and I'm still on the fucking sidelines.  In the end I bought them two things that I know have been lifesavers for my friend with twins, and left it at that. They'll figure it out, and I don't have to do a thing.  But ya know, it just killed me to do it again, to buy a gift I'd like to have for myself, to have for my child. And here I am again on the sidelines.  In this case, it was pretty painful, probably because of where I am (duh), but also because I feel so invisible. With my friend who has twins I don't feel invisible, and that makes it so much easier to really get in and enjoy the babies. With most people though, I'm just invisible. Of course I don't have to be but, what do you say? "I'm so happy for you, but I just got a negative pregnancy test for a cycle that cost 12K and buying you a baby gift is pretty much going to rip a little more of my heart up." No, I don't say that. I buy the gift, Husband and I lean on each other for support, and leave as early as possible.

Argh, I'm rambling.

We went to a bbq on labor day, all of the people there have kids. We didn't know 2 of the couples at all. The host and another couple were more of known quantity.  Somehow the subject of 'snowflake babies' came up, and embryology, IVF and all sorts of other things were just being mangled. Husband and I both just sat there dumbstruck. I knew that If I said something it would come out somewhere between a strangled cry and bitchy, and I just couldn't do it. The host is a dear, and she has been nothing but a true friend through this whole awful ordeal, but it struck me just how hard it is to be in 'mixed company'--I have limited myself so much to people who are in the know, that I've forgotten how hard it is to be with regular people who don't have to know the intricacies of embryology, or cryopreservation or the difference between IVF and insemination. 

When the hell with this stuff just be a bad memory?  I'm exhausted.

IVF: It's all fun and games until someone spends their life savings and doesn't get a baby

I had a few days of hope that maybe this cycle had worked, but on Tuesday, that started to shift.

To recap the reasons I had hope:

A compacting embryo on day three

Pink spotting on day 5 and 6

Tender breasts that couldn't tolerate an underwire

Zinging cramps that I remembered from my pregnancy with Sparky

On Tuesday I had the distinct feeling that things were shifting and not in a positive way. My breasts felt less tender, and seemed to be deflating. I told myself that it was probably my imagination. But on Wednesday, I had the distinct dropping progesterone feeling of feeling weepy about everything, and the breasts were clearly smaller and not sore. Last night I didn't even need to wear my sleep bra.  I'm going commando right now, and not a tender spot in sight.

Of course there is nothing to do but wait until Sunday, take the pills, do the shots, but in my body, it feels like it is over. Please don't encourage me. I just don't want any encouragement.  This is the pattern my 3 early pregnancies had the first year we were trying. If I wasn't on the progesterone, I'd probably be bleeding by now.

*****************************

I am ambivalent about this. On the one hand I am extremely sad, and exhausted by this whole process, and on another, I'm sort of well, not exactly relieved, but something like relieved. When I did think I was pregnant I found myself feeling ambivalent about how I would feel about a positive result. In one way it would be wonderful, but in another, it would be excruciating.  I have lost faith in my eggs, and their performance with the donor sperm was the final nail in that coffin.  Using my eggs feels like putting broken embryos into my body to die--not to live. To be pregnant this cycle, with my day three embryo (since only one of 5 was of any quality) would be terrifying. If I were to make it all the way to the second trimester, I would feel that I had to get an amnio because until I got those results I wouldn't be able to feel confident that the baby was healthy. 

For the last 3 years it mattered to me that my eggs could be proven to be strong, healthy, and good. They felt like an extension of my own strength, health and goodness. For most of my life I've been consumed by my own fears and feelings of defectiveness, but at this point I feel that I am strong, healthy and good, but my eggs aren't. I am ready to let go of my eggs, and ready to let go of this phase of my life.

And this is where the title comes in: If money were no object, I'd be doing DE/DS cycle by November at the latest. But financially, it makes more sense to do 3 IUI's with my eggs and donor sperm and to see if one of them works. Why? We've never tried that--all our data comes from translocated sperm and IVF, and maybe I'm one of those people who's eggs don't develop well with extra gondrapins.  Also, a monitored IUI costs 1K, a donor egg cycle costs 25K. If we get lucky, and one of my eggs decides to be a superstar, we'll have saved 25K. 

The worst part of this is that I don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it at all, but I will.  I will be vigilant, and responsible. I'll go to acupuncture, and pee on sticks every morning, and I'll refrain from taking all my favorite meds for 2 weeks (flex.eril, amb.ian, suda.fed).  In the long run I know it would be easier for our child if they had at least one genetic link, but really, I just don't want to do it. I don't want to use my old tired eggs. I don't want to go through this any more. AT ALL.  I will do this, but don't ask me to be hopeful, or to like it, or to believe in it.

I feel grumpy and cornered. I am cornered by logic and reason, and good sense, but in terms of what I want, I don't want this. It has gotten to the point that I don't want a child who shares a genetic link with me--I want this to be over.  Yet, money doesn't grow on trees, and there isn't more money coming from where the last chunk came from, so we can't just do what feels right, we have to do what is right all around. ARGH.

Just laying around hoping for the best

Thank you so so much to everyone that has commented over the last 24 hours. I usually respond individually, but I don't have a laptop, so I'm posting from my phone, which is tedious.

I'm at a loss for tv at the moment--I'm all caught up on on show I rented, and the other (in treatment) is too nerve wracking. Husband will go out later and stock me up on the good stuff.

Even though this cycle is merely in the middle, I am thinking ahead to the "what if's". Our plan has been to move on to donor egg and donor sperm, which is doable. But there are moments when I say to myself "is this really me? Is this really my life? Am I really faced with these choices? These losses?" The feeling I have when I ask these questions is disbelief. I'm not angry, or feeling persecuted (which I've felt quite a lot of), but shocked and suprised at the burden my family will carry. Even if we were to adopt, there would be this disjuncture. There will be times when things are seamless, and other times when the stitches we used to piece our family together will be undeniable.

One thing I'm suprised at is that the question on "why" now holds so little interest for me. I don't particularly care to worry about what is wrong with my eggs (if there is anything wrong with them aside from age). I used to fell plauged by this question, but now it is not as important to me.

While I dearly hope that I'm pregnant, if I'm not, I'm getting ready for what, and who(m?) comes next.

Ouchie oochie

Because of an oversight on my doctors part, I had to have a new saline sono done for this cycle. Of course, I had to have it while I was on my period, so it was VERY uncomfortable. Right up the with the HSG if you ask me.  However, all is good under the hood, so I'll start Gonal F and Menop.ur tomorrow!

We prepaid for ICSI, just in case the sperm isn't as swishy as it ought to be. Dr W said that she would order a very low threshold for ICSI. It is good to have her taking care of the fact that this is our last chance with my eggs, and any missteps are unrecoverable. Of course, rescue ICSI works, but who needs that stress?

I'm having little waves of dread, and excitement, and I've decided to go with "6th time's the charm?"  It feels pithy and funny, and that feels just right.

Here's hoping for smooth sailing.

Next Stop: IVFlandia

Okay, negative on the Beta front.  Husband and I are disappointed, but not surprised.  I talked to Dr. Calm, and she said I need to get a saline sonogram in the early part of the cycle. Hopefully it will be unremarkable, and we can proceed.

Now we just need AF to show up, and we can get the party started.

How shall I title this cycle?

IVF 6: Last chance in Egg-ville

IVF 6: Holy Crap, 6 IVF's?

IVF 6: Win one for the Gipper?

IVF 6: Operation Get the damn baby already

IVF 6: Your suggestion here

Help me out ladies!

Cod Liver Oil and Stawberries: To POAS, or not to POAS

That is the question.  For those of you who don't know what POAS means, it means: Pee On A Stick. It is short hand for taking a home pregnancy test (HPT).  A lot of women in the infertility world are big POASer's.  Not me. In fact when I got pregnant last May, I didn't take an HPT until after my 3rd beta!

Why?

Well, that is something I've been pondering, especially when I wake up at 4am, needing to pee, with a 14lb cat sitting on me, hoping for an early breakfast.  On Thursday morning I woke up, in the aforementioned scenario, and turned it over in my head a few times. Thursday was 11 days after the trigger shot (10,000 units of HCG, which is what the pregnancy test measures, so if you test before that you can get a false positive), so it would be the first day I could legitimately do a test.  But I just couldn't do it. I thought, well, it is also sort of early, so why not wait until tomorrow. Friday morning, 4am, same tussle, but shorter in duration. I decided again not to POAS.  Saturday morning, 4 fricken am and a 14lb cat on my chest, I turned it over one more time and decided to wait. Why?

Others start testing as soon as they can, some will even test on an OPK, just to get somewhere. From my more than 5 years of blog reading it seems to me that people who POAS, and they are in the majority, want to know, and/or they want to know before they go for the blood test.  Me on the other hand, I don't want to know.  Weird, eh?  I can't really say why I started out the whole journey this way, but at this point, in this cycle, I know that is is because I want to savor the possibility that it worked. Perhaps in the past I wanted to stave off the possibility that it didn't work.  In this cycle I'm enjoying imaging that the cramping I'm feeling isn't the result of the progesterone suppositories, but is implantation cramping. I'm enjoying the waves of nausea (uh, sort of) and the heartburn as potentially a pregnancy symptom. Tomorrow I'll get an blood test, and it will tell me definitively if I'm pregnant or not, and if I'm not, the IVF will start within a few days. And if I am, well, we all know that that is a whole waiting game within itself.

Aside from the cramping and the heartburn and nausea, I'm still not experiencing any breast changes, so I'm thinking it is very unlikely that I'll be pregnant tomorrow. But if the last 6 months has taught me anything, it has taught me to savor my hope and joy, and if I start POASing now, it will be like taking cod liver oil with stawberries, ya know?

Pregnancy training wheels

Why must bad things happen? Ugh. Mo and Will, and Sprogblogger. Just utterly heartbreaking.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Why pregnancy training wheels? Well, we did our first home insemination on the 2nd of August, and it feels to me like I am practicing 'being pregnant'. Or maybe, practicing being 'normal' about the idea of being pregnant.  I was only a little bit of a wreck leading up to the LH surge, which happened nicely on Day 11, meaning a day 12 ovulation, which for a day 10 ovulator like me, is practically just like a 'normal' lady.  I tried out testing in the afternoon, but it was a big fat fail.  I was trying it out under the assumption that if I was doing a home insemination, I'd want to try to have a better idea of which 24 to 36 hours to aim for, but me and the afternoon testing were not a match. So, bright and early on August 1, I finagled myself an ultrasound and found that I had an egg on each ovary, both mature, and a lining over 7, which for me is like a lining of 8 for a regular lady. I decided to do the the trigger shot, and I absolutely know I ovulated between 10 and 12 Sunday. The pain was unmistakable.  Next day I started the endo.metrian. Much better than the greasy ones I did last year, but they do make for a runnier than usual undercarriage. Ahem.

I am so glad that we did a home insemination. It was like a pregnancy would be a bonus, but the real process has been being able to practice how it would feel to be pregnant, using donor sperm. And I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised at how it feels. I'm also surprised at how little I think about it being DS. I have found myself day dreaming about our future baby, and remembering about 3/4 of the way through that we used the DS.  Ahh. What a relief. I was worried I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it.

Overall, I'm thinking that I'm not pregnant. I am definitely having the progesterone side effects of slowed digestion (raging heartburn and nausea after lunch and until bedtime), but no breast changes. However, I'm not feeling too freaked out by this. Actually I'm not feeling freaked out at all.  I think that is why I said "pregnancy training wheels". It feels to me as if I am practicing what it would feel like to be pregnant, emotionally. And I must say, I wish I'd felt this way 3 years ago. Yeesh. So many years lost to anxiety, without even an appetizer of excitement and joy.  As bad as I feel about this for myself, I feel even worse about this for Husband.  He was normal and excited 3 years ago, and I was a wreck.  Better late than never?

++++++++++++++++++

What does the future hold? Well, in the immediate term, it holds a pregnancy test on the 16th, though I may just POAS for the heck of it, and an IVF as soon as my period shows up during the week of the 17th.  We decided to push ahead and do the IVF in August, and then if it doesn't work, we'll be ready to move on.  Moving on may mean a few IUI's, or it may be donor eggs, or it may mean IUI's while we search for the right donor.

++++++++++++++++++++

About donor eggs, well, oddly enough, I'm back to cruising around DE sites and looking at Donors. Why? Well, I'd like to be ready if the IVF doesn't work (or it works and I miscarry, way to be positive, eh?), and I'm the type of person who likes to be emotionally prepared. One of the disadvantages of my emotional style is that I'm not all that good at repressing, even when it might make me feel a bit better, but the good part is, I'm usually ready to do what it is I'm doing because I've been processing it for so long before I get there! 

On Friday I logged in to my clinic's database and started looking at donors. I looked at one that I'd bypassed before and realized that she has eyes very similar to my husband's, but blue. She looked like my cousin's husband (but blond), and most oddly, what I thought our daughter would look most like.  Isn't that funny? I'm looking for my husband's characteristics in the egg donor, when I already looked for them in the sperm donor...But I've never seen a picture of him. I have the clinic's word that there is a resemblance, but still, I loves me some Husband, and his eyes are especially beautiful.

What surprised me the most was how excited I felt. And how sad I felt when I remembered that our IVF might work, and that we may not have a DS/DE baby at all. For me, that was such a reassuring and exciting moment. I'm ready. I'm ready for our baby, however she or he comes to us.

Bring it!