Crazy Comes Early; or, How to Survive a Two-Week Wait

I think I am good at many things: writing, reading while walking along crowded sidewalks, singing, knitting, cooking, taking standardized tests, picking outfits for my dog, correctly punctuating compound-complex sentences, listening to people, hugging, and wearing short skirts. But there is also a long list of things I am terrible at: calculus, chemistry, running, athletics of all sorts, spelling, showing up places on time, planning and timing a meal, housekeeping, putting on a poker face, losing belly fat.

To this latter list, you can add meditation and relaxing.

I have never been able to relax on command. At the end of a yoga class, when I feel stretched out like a noodle, I still have to clench my fists in corpse pose because otherwise the palms of my hands and my fingers literally begin to itch, so strong is my compulsion to move them. In health classes as a kid I was never able to relax my mind enough to feel the crazy effects of the self-hypnosis videos we would occasionally watch.

Just now, in an effort to mitigate against the extreme anxiety of the two week wait, I listened to one of the Circle+Bloom relaxation CDs that a friend sent me when I started working with an RE. I couldn't even concentrate on the woman's voice. I lay here in an extremely comfortable chair with my eyes closed and as she told me to let my body sink deeper into a metaphorical hot bath, the soles of my feet started twitching and I had to press them together. My stomach rumbled. My eyes fluttered under my eye lids. My mind spun like a top.

I suck at this.

I am pretty much a ball of tightly wound twine at the best of times, and waiting for the results of a cycle only exacerbates it. This cycle is doubly hard because everything (with the exception of my minimal egg production) is going so damn well. Not only did Lawyer Guy produce a rock star sample for the IUI, but we had sex TWICE afterward that day. (I'm not at liberty to share what helped make this cycle so much better in that regard. Let's just say it was awesome). Last cycle we had fertilization for the first time in a year, which has raised the expectations for IUI way high. And some googling turned up various studies that all agree the greatest predictors of success in an IUI cycle are total motile sperm counts and timing, both of which were great for us.

And yet mentally, I add all this up together and it equals: BFN.

Over the past 20 months, I have had more "perfect" cycles than I can count-- or as close to perfect as my body can get. Well-timed sex, and lots of it, with clear ovulation. Over and over again, I would think, "This is it! This time is the time! Everything's going so great, it just *has* to work."

And over and over again, reality would sledgehammer me over the head at the end of my wait.

Strangely, I do believe Dr. Wonderful when she tells me that I will get pregnant and I won't be her patient for long. I do believe that a healthy pregnancy is in the cards for my future. Just not yet. Just never right now. Not this cycle, not this time.

I would really like to put down this emotional armor, this chain-mail of doubt and negativity and fear and refusal that I've been carrying around for over a year to deflect the blows of IF. It's tiring and weighs a ton.

Next cycle's the one when I'll start to feel positive. It's always next cycle.