Gimme a Break; or, Return to the Beginning

It's funny how my perspective can change so completely in such a short time. Four months ago, I was diligently tracking my ovulation and body signs and anxiously hoping to time sex in exactly the right way to ensure the pregnancy that absolutely had to be around the corner.

Now, neither Lawyer Guy nor I believe we'll be able to get pregnant again without medical intervention. As he put it, "If we're not getting pregnant with help, how are we supposed to get pregnant without it?" So we're facing the prospect of a brief return to unassisted conception with something less than confidence and very little hope.

We didn't have an easy time deciding to take a break for the month of December. A large part of my heart wanted to barrel forward regardless of any possible impediments or scheduling complications. But Dr. W. didn't want to do an IUI with a frozen sample, because she said they are less successful. She advocated trying to squeeze in an insemination the morning of LG's flight to Vegas. But knowing the unpredictability of my body's ovulation schedule--even on Clomid--I foresaw a stressful week of sweaty palms and racing pulse at every monitoring appointment as I hoped even more than usual for progress.

Given that this is our last chance at getting pregnant without injections, we want to give it the best shot possible. So I'm reuniting with Pissy the CBEFM for a month, and then we'll tackle our last Clomid+IUI in January. Taking a month off will also give us the benefit of a later ovulation than I would have had on medication, so if my some divine miracle we manage to get pregnant this cycle and not miscarry, our due date will be a week or so later, which will make attending my sister's wedding next August more likely.

The Sloper household tends to struggle when there are difficult decisions to be made, so these have not been an easy couple of days. LG was worried that I will resent him for going on this Vegas trip and pushing our plans back, which I assured him I won't. He kept trying to get me to tell him whether I thought he should back out of the trip or not, and I refused to do that. I want him to have a nice weekend after dealing with so much stress the last several months. I also want to do everything possible to have a baby. So I just told him to do what felt right and I'd support him in it.

(And now that he booked his trip I'm having my typical horrible premonitions of plane crashes and disaster, but I'll just have to deal with that).

I guess if we have to go on a break, December's not a bad month to do it in. I've got masses of grading to finish over the next three weeks, and Christmas shopping and present wrapping, and cookie baking, and carol singing, and cocoa-drinking, and then Christmas with my family. I'm promising myself that this is the last year I will spend in limbo like this, so I should make the most of the time with LG while I have it.

Wait No More; or, Right Place, Right Time

Some days, you find yourself in exactly the right place at the right time to hear what you need to hear.

This morning, I was 15 dpiui with no sign of AF. I'd been expecting to start spotting every day since Friday, but despite the delay I wasn't feeling optimistic about this cycle. If my boobs felt dense and hard (and very, very pregnant-like) with last month's beta of 12.5, I knew that my utterly normal-feeling chest didn't suggest anything promising. But still, as each day slowly ticked by, a little spark of hope grew brighter and brighter. My period was late, really officially late, and I hoped as hard as I could that this meant something, even as I told myself and suspected it didn't.

Then, shortly before I left for church, I saw it: the faintest sign of discoloration on my toilet paper. The confirmation that Clomid had indeed given me a longer luteal phase, but that a healthy pregnancy still eluded me.

I jumped in the shower trying unsuccessfully to keep from crying. Over ninety million sperm were injected right into my uterus and they still couldn't match up with an egg. What possible chance could anything short of IVF have of working for us? I felt so tired and worn out and sick of trying and so hopeless. But I got myself dressed and dragged myself to church, anyway.

The priest's homily was about patience and about the tension he identified between living with longing and living with the understanding that we cannot control whether or not we achieve what we long for. The Gospel reading was about waiting for God's time and trusting in his love for us.

I'd been making bargains with God all week. "Just let me get through tonight without spotting," I prayed on Friday as Lawyer Guy and I arrived at his brother and sister-in-law's house, "and I promise that I won't complain when I get my period tomorrow." Even as I said it, I knew I was a liar. And of course, making it through the family even without my period wasn't enough.

But sitting in church, I realized that the priest was right. I do have faith that I will be a mother one day, despite all evidence to the contrary. And I want to live in a place of patience and peace amidst all this terrible, overwhelming longing.

We're going to pick out and decorate our tree tonight. Yesterday LG and I booked a trip to the Bahamas over New Year's Eve. I've got two weeks left of the semester and Christmas to look forward to and operas to attend. I'm going to survive this. One day, this struggle will be over, and I'm going to do my best to find a place of peace in my heart until we get there.

Thank You Loss and Infertility

...for showing me that my husband and the immense love we have for each other means more than anything, even having a baby.

...for helping me see that a family of two is as strong and intimate and important as one of three or four or five or more.

...for making my marriage into a partnership and a true team.

...for revealing to me the incredible sympathy, compassion, and kindness in the hearts of "strangers" all over the country.

...for encouraging me to reach out to people I see suffering around me.

...for convincing me that I am strong enough, brave enough, and determined enough to not only be a mother, but to be a great mother.

....for curing me (almost) of my materialistic fantasies and focusing my dreams where they should be: on the baby I want to love and care for, not the clothes to dress it in or the crib to put it in or the stroller to wheel it around in.

...for forcing me to smile through tears, search for rainbows in storm clouds, and write lists like this one on the off-chance that they might be true.

Post-Thanksgiving Premonitions; or, 11 dpiui

This may be one of those post-every-day kind of weeks. I've just got a lot on my mind, I guess. Right now I could use some bloggie advice.

As the title says, I'm 11 dpiui. And I'm quite sure it didn't work. My boobs don't feel pregnant, which are the only indicators I ever have. My skin is also very, "Ha ha, your period is coming." Everything else is perfectly consistent with getting my period, and after going through this 17 times now, I've gotten pretty good at figuring out when that's going to happen.

Since I would rather whittle my peestick into a shank and plunge it directly into my heart than see one line on a pregnancy test, I won't be testing until AF misses her train. Which usually means not testing at all.

So here's my dilemma. Normally, I start spotting about 14 days after my LH surge and get full flow the following day (I was never positive whether I ovulated the day after or two days after my LH surge, so I counted from the first peak day, which seemed less equivocal). Because of the chemical pregnancy last month, I don't know if being on Clomid will change my luteal phase at all, but as I'm not taking progesterone or any other suppositories, I have to assume it won't. Thus I project that I'll begin spotting on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Now, thanks to Lawyer Guy's parents' divorce, we spend every day-after Thanksgiving at his father's house having a second Thanksgiving dinner (this year, if you count Fakesgiving, it will be the third) with LG's father and stepmother and the infamous BIL/SIL clan. Long-time readers may recall that at this event last year (only about a week after my d&c) I broke down crying and ran from the table, which action was greeted with rather deafening silence. Not the best communicators, that side of the family.

Anyway, this year the event is not going to be at FIL's house. I'll give you three guesses where it was moved. Are you thinking? Thinking really hard? If you guessed BIL's house you are right on the money! Apparently having two small children makes it extremely difficult to take a half-hour trip across the Tappan Zee Bridge on a holiday weekend, and everything has to revolve around making their schedule easier (Sorry, my bitter is showing. Excuse me while I pull down my skirt a little).

LG and I were anxious and upset when we find out the event was moving there. As he puts it, "It automatically goes from a family event on neutral territory to one that is about them and their kids." We thought about telling his father how uncomfortable we are and asking him to switch it back. We thought about doing a lot of things. But we couldn't think of a way to address this issue that didn't sound petty and like we just didn't want to go to their house. Or a way that wasn't basically forcing his father to choose between the desires of his two sons, a position in which he is not very comfortable. We also thought about not going and then decided it would cause too much fuss not to go.

Compounding all this, we learned on Sunday at our lunch in the suburbs that the family has chosen this event as their Channukah gift exchange day, because everyone's schedules are so full in December.

Yes, we found this out on Sunday. Five days before we're supposed to exchange gifts on Friday. And no one would have told us if I hadn't innocently wondered when we'd all be getting together for the gift-giving. Scrambling ensued, and I picked up a bunch of gifts and ordered others online. We now have gifts for all the adults, but the nieces' gifts won't arrive until next week at the earliest.

So to sum up: a post-Thanksgiving dinner at the home of our least supportive relatives where we will be exchanging gifts we didn't have time to procure on the day I'm due to confirm that this most recent IUI failed.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to start spotting in the middle of dinner. How will I possibly handle the devastation around everyone? We'll have to leave and it will cause such a scene. I suspect that if I start spotting earlier in the day, I'll just want to hunker down and be alone to lick my wounds and start the moving-on process. Lawyer Guy said he'd go to the dinner by himself, but I hate when he has to do that. I hate being the sad, fragile basket-case who can't handle ordinary human interactions. And I hate being left alone at home when everyone else is together.

I just wish I didn't have to think about any of this. I wish I were stronger and better able to push forward through uncomfortable situations. I wish LG didn't feel like he had no choice in whether to go or not and I wish that I felt confident everyone would understand our situation--yet I don't want to tell people exactly what is going on. I don't even want BIL and SIL to know we're seeing an RE!

I've got a few days to figure this out, and I'll be tp-scanning (and smelling, which is usually my earliest sign of impending-AF, as disgusting as that may sound) like mad. I'm giving myself permission not to decide what to do until Friday and to just say screw it to everyone's reactions. But a strong part of me still feels like the right thing to do is go and if I stay home I'll be weak and giving in to bad, selfish impulses.

Such a long post to say essentially so little. If you managed to slog through the tedium, I'd love to hear your advice or thoughts.

Saturday and Sunday; or, Reversals of Fortune

Sometimes there's so much to say, I can't find the heart to sit down and write about it. Last weekend was that kind of weekend. We had dinner with friends on Saturday night in the neighborhood and then met for lunch with my BIL and SIL and nieces on Sunday at their country club.

I was dreading the family visit all weekend. My mother-in-law had called the day before and told me that she had lunch with J (the BIL) that Saturday and that he had asked if "there were any babies yet" for Sloper and LG. My MIL responded by telling him he needs to speak with us to learn about how things are going, and he said, "They didn't have another miscarriage, did they?" in a worried one of voice. Again she told him to talk to us about what's going on, but that we're "struggling."

My MIL brought this story to me like it was some amazing evidence of how deeply my BIL and SIL care about us. "See?" she said. "He's thinking about you. I know they want you to have kids."

Yeah, I kind of figured that already. Obviously they want their kids to have cousins, and LG and I are the only way they're getting any. And they're not evil. I know they don't wish us ill.

But hearing that he made what basically amounted to small-talk chit-chat at lunch about our problems (over a year later!) isn't evidence of some extreme compassion and sympathy. I'm not angry that she told me this, but it also doesn't change that I think their reaction to our situation has royally sucked. It doesn't change the fact that I think they are incapable of having real, human connection with us on this point, or that they don't put their own events, needs, and desires over our incredibly deep sorrow. As I said to my MIL, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this information." Go out of my way to inform them and make them comfortable with this? Um, no.

So I was not feeling super charitable about this lunch visit and was wondering why we were making the effort to head out to Suburblandia and see them. And yet, it was fine. I held the 8-month-old niece, who is very sweet and smiley, and I saw that she has the blue eyes neither of her parents do (eyes like mine) and managed only a twinge of sadness. Our three-year-old niece was sweet and funny and very cuddly once she got over some initial shyness. LG and his brother disappeared to another part of the club for a while (a sports bar, it turned out, where they could watch some football) and I thought that maybe J was going to bring up the last year and ask how things were going. But he didn't. And LG thought that maybe S (my SIL) was asking me how things have been. But she wasn't.

Still, for all my dread of these situations, I'm very good at getting in and getting out with minimal fuss and distress. And if I wasn't my usual bright and sparkly self, if I was a little more quiet and subdued than usual, I don't think it was extreme enough for anyone but me to notice.

So Sunday was alright, despite my worries. But Saturday...

We had dinner with, among others, our Queens friends and their one-year-old son. These are the friends whose son was born the day we had our first bad ultrasound with the m&m. They are the friends who miscarried their first pregnancy almost exactly two years before we did, then tried to conceive for over a year before finally hitting the jackpot with an IUI. We are very close to them, and while we don't talk about IF and loss frequently, there's a current of understanding that flows through all our interactions and helps make things comfortable.

I noticed at dinner that Queens Wife wasn't drinking, and my radar went up. But Queens Husband was, so I thought that perhaps they designated a "Sober Sister" (as it were) to watch their little boy and drive home.

But as we peeled off from the rest of our party and walked them to their car a few blocks away, they confirmed my suspicions. They were twelve-weeks pregnant, unexpectedly but quite happily. They were due in June, just like her first pregnancy and mine.

I didn't feel that sharp spike of jealousy in the gut the way I usually do. We hugged them both and asked some questions and told them how happy we were. And in that moment, I truly was. Something raw and pointy lay underneath that happiness, but I pushed it far down. Lawyer Guy and I left them at their car and walked home to our apartment, and the night was very crisp and clear, and we both talked of other things and knew we were thinking the same thing, and it felt good to be together, whatever the circumstances.

I didn't let myself think much more about our friends' pregnancy the rest of the weekend. And then Monday morning, Queens Husband texted LG. They just had their NT scan. The results were not good--the baby's skull didn't form right. They had to terminate.

We both cried for them and ordered a basket of food to be delivered to their house and texted and e-mailed and offered to help them with anything they needed. She had the procedure yesterday and tomorrow they leave for Thanksgiving in New England.

As much as I may have felt jealous and a little sad when they told me their pregnancy news, I am devastated that this is the result. It seems so unfair--that they've had to undergo two very different but equally traumatizing losses, and even their beautiful, hard-won son doesn't make up for that. I find myself wondering why this kind of suffering has to be concentrated on the same people over and over again. Why can't it be one miscarriage per customer, no exceptions, and no more than one for everybody? Why can't it be lost pregnancy or IF, never both? I know the world doesn't work that way, and I'm sure people with ordinary, loss-free fertility would be horrified to think I'm "wishing miscarriages" and problems on them. But wouldn't life be easier to navigate if we could all share this burden?

Like losing a parent--it happens at different (more or less tragic) times for different people, but if you live long enough, your parents will die. I think we have tremendous sympathy for those whose parents die because of this sense that it will be us facing the same thing one day. But reproductive troubles aren't like that, so they're easier to dismiss or ignore. It's horrible to wish they were more universal, and yet I do. Hey, I'm surviving them, so Ms. Fertile Franny can too.

I'm rambling now because there's no real ending point to this. Lost pregnancies suck. Infertility sucks. Lack of sympathy sucks. Having to trudge on when you just want to scream sucks.

This all sucks.

Hamster Brain; or, 7 dpiui

I know from past experience that there's no way to know the State of the Uterus at only 7 dpo/iui. I know that having negative, down hunches about a cycle isn't a good predictor of whether or not it succeeded. Nothing is a good predictor of that, which predictably sucks.

But still-- I'm a little constie, so maybe that means something! Except, I've been that way in plenty of failed 2wws. I'm not very hungry at all, so clearly nothing is going on. But I wasn't all that hungry last cycle either. (And I was barely pregnancy last cycle, so again, not such a good sign).

I don't think I'm pregnant. I wish I were so, so, so much, but I just don't feel like I am. However, I know that things can change quickly and I can't really be sure until 13dpo. If my boobs start hurting then, it worked. If I start spotting, it didn't.

Despite the squeaky little hamster wheel spinning and spinning, I have been able to distract myself from dwelling on this fairly well so far. I had a movie date with some friends last night that was a lot of fun and a great way to occupy my mind. I've got shittons of student papers to grade this weekend, more dinner plans with LG and friends tonight, and Thanksgiving and all its preparations to focus on next week.

And then, right after Thanksgiving, I'll know. And it will hurt a lot, I can already tell. If we can't get pregnant with a perfect IUI, I'll pretty much give up on anything short of IVF working for us at all. But Christmas is right around the corner and long nights in front of our fireplace with hot cocoa and a twinkling tree will go far toward restoring my joyfulness, even if there's no baby in the manger yet.

I hope you are all having weekends that make you happy and sane.

Time Keeps on Ticking: or, 4 dpiui

This going to be a bit of a random hodgepodge post, since nothing much is going on other than my slow, steady descent into irreparable madness. Every three seconds, I think to myself, "I have to be pregnant. I can't be pregnant. I must be pregnant. It's impossible that I'm pregnant."

And on and on and on.

In the meantime, Lawyer Guy accompanied me to the opera last night (more like, was dragged by me, but who's counting). It was the Met's recent production of Carmen, and I loved it. I spent most of the rest of my non-teaching time googling every bit of news that came out about William and Kate's engagement. A fun distraction from testing out my ute goggles.

* * *

Based on the two data points I now have to go on, I know that I won't have much of an idea if AF is coming or if something else is until 13 dpiui. Both positive test cycles I was positive I was going to get my period right up until that day. I keep trying to remind myself that there's just no way to know yet and that I should try to enjoy myself right now, because the tension only increases the closer to D-Day I get.

Oh, right, and I should start spotting the day after Thanksgiving, which I'm spending with LG's family this year. Awesome.

* * *

What else is there to say as I try to kill time? I'm leaning toward skipping treatments in December, but not because of my sister's wedding. After last month's chemical pregnancy I was determined to plow forward no matter what, and felt really good about that decision. But then LG received that most dreaded (to wives) of husbandly invitations: A Vegas Bachelor Party. And it's scheduled for the exactly the weekend we'd have to be on call for an IUI.

If I begged and pleaded and insisted, Lawyer Guy would refuse the invite. But I know how much he wants to go. Many of his friends have moved from the NY metro area and now have kids, so he doesn't see much of them. He confessed recently that he's been feeling kind of lonely--he's one of the only non-dads left in his circle and everyone's too busy to do the kind of socializing they used to. I know it will mean so much to him to be able to have some relaxed time with them all. And I think he would appreciate a break from having to jizz in a cup, too.

There's still the option to freeze the sperm and do the insemination while he's gone, but that doesn't appeal to me for a lot of reasons. So it's likely that December will consist of fruitless (but fun?) au natural attempts and we'll be back on the treatment horse in January.

* * *

Tick, tock, tick, tock. For now we just keep waiting. Though not as long as Kate Middleton waited for her proposal. I'll take her as my inspiration and dub myself Waity Slopie, invest in a series of figure-hugging colorful frocks, and head to a polo match. That should help pass the time.