when I knew I would be trying to start a blog, I wanted to get some of the initial feelings down, even before I figured out how to set it all up. I’m computer-illiterate and knew it could take a while..so this was written at the “start” of this current cycle.
IVF…take five. I had my baseline appointment yesterday. For possibly the first time ever, I cracked a little bit when talking to my doctor. I asked him to give some Great Reassuring Words about this upcoming cycle (He did not really live up to the challenge. My doctor is not really a “Feelings” doctor. He gets in there, does his thing, and then closes up shop. Frankly, I usually don’t mind that method. I don’t really want a motherly-type of doctor when my own mothering destiny is in question. I’m sure this topic will come up again in a future entry titled “Why I am Sexist: My Thoughts on Why Reproductive Endocrinologists Should be Men.”)
Once I headed home, I broke down in the car. I’ve been “artifically” working for Baby Two for a year now, and all I have to show for it are some outstanding medical bills. Also have the ultrasound of the baby boys still–can’t bring myself to look at it, but can’t bring myself to throw it away, either. I should be quite pregnant right now, complaining happily of indigestion and feet stuck in my ribs and feeling little baby hiccups. Crap. I stopped off at the pharmacy before going home to fill my prescription for the greatest irony known to an infertile, The Pill. Will start that on the 10th and then finish on the 31st. Hopefully enough time to shrink the inevitable cyst and keep the high FSH in check though hoping that the wheatgrass I chug nightly will assist in that too.
This cycle has a lot riding on it. I am so afraid it will be the last my heart can take. I want to be so strong and keep going and going until it works again, but these days my heart is so much weaker than my head. And this is IT until 2010 when we will have to find some new insurance. So it is my last chance for a baby before P turns three. And he is not even TWO yet! I will say though, that infertility has taught me to never say never. But the reality of it all is still scary.
Another twist of infertile irony–my dear sister in law will be undergoing IVF at the exactsamefriggintime. A sweet fate, or a hell for one of us? We’ll know for sure in six weeks’ time. I can’t imagine anything harder than going through something with someone…at the same time…and one (her) finding out it was a success and one (me) finding out it was a failure. She is not only my sister in law, but a best friend–and we have already shared some of our fears et al about this. We’ve decided to lean on each other, but also to realize when to back away. Because while we are both going through this together, we are also going through this alone. She is so strong–she believes The Universe can’t hate us both so much that it would cause something bad to come of this–me, I still harbor some bitterness towards The Universe when it comes to my fertility. So I pray she is right. One day at a time. And while there is a hell of a lot riding on this for me, this is her first foray into The Big Guns of Reproductive Medicine. So it is overwhelming and huge and scary for her too.
My husband had some deeply reassuring words for me about she and I going through this together–”There’s a fifty percent chance you both have the same outcome, and a fifty percent chance you have different outcomes.” Them there are such Words of Comfort, no?
So here goes. I once again put my (tested) faith in God, in medicine, in my body…and hope that this time it works.
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Seems like any time I try to get pregnant when one of my SILs is pregnant, I have a miscarriage. I should probably learn something from that. And, since I’m not great friends with my SILs (there are 4 of them, and they are all quite a bit younger than I am), it stings more.
I hope that you and your SIL can have calm happy pregnancies together.
August 21st, 2009
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