The double edged sword

Today is not a good day. It's not a particularly bad day, but it aint great. I hate waiting, and while being on day three of the Lupron isn't exactly waiting, it doesn't feel like I'm going anywhere, either. I have been filled today with a sadness and longing, just an ache to have a baby here with nowhere to put it. My blog reader is full of posts of pregnant bloggers and those whose cycles who are underway, or those in the 2ww. All I can think of is why, why, why would I want to put myself through this again? Why couldn't I just let it be.

It is a double edge sword. I want another baby, and this renewed insurance is my chance to make that happen. I have tried all my life to live so I will have as few regrets as possible. When I was rethinking my life's plan, back when we still didn't want kids, I came to the conclusion that parents don't regret having children, but that I would most certainly regret NOT having them. Right now, I feel most certainly that I would love another child, and doing IVF is the only chance to make that happen. If I don't take this chance that's being given me, I'm sure I would regret it.

But the other edge of the sword is pain. Trying to conceive just makes me think of having a baby more than when I was just living day to day. It means joining in the race again, but this time I am over 40, the flea bitten nag that should have been put out to pasture. Everyone around me seems to be the age I was when I got pregnant the first time (34) or even younger than that. They are getting pregnant like crazy. Once this would have made me feel hopeful and positive, but now I just feel left behind...again. I spent years being left behind and being lapped by other people by the time I had my kids, why would I want to do this to myself? Especially now that my chances of success are so much slimmer than before. And my TTC history is so baffling in its total lack of consistency. Years of not getting pregnant, over a year benched from a fibroid, getting pregnant, miscarrying, having twins, not getting pregnant, chemical pregnancy... There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It's such a mixed bag. And yet, my treatment and protocol never changes.

Two sides. On one there is pain, sadness, and hope. On the other, pain, sorrow, and regret. But only one side has the chance, no matter how slim, of another baby. Which edge would you choose?

It's all spirk.

Yesterday: We set up the twins' bunk beds for the very first time. The minimum age recommended for bunk beds is 6, and they'll be there at the end of November. I can't believe it! And to really put me over the top weepy, DA lost his first tooth while running around outside. We took pictures and everything. Hubby got the privilege of sneaking the money from the tooth fairy under his pillow.

The twins invented a new word to join the handful of other twinwords they've created. This one is 'spirk'. My geeky husband says it's the name of Captain Kirk and Spock's love child. The meaning appears to be a sound made while burping and/or an adjective of some sort. When my husband and I say it, they break out into uncontrollable fits of laughter, so it may also be a curse word or something disgusting.

Today: I bought Lupr.on and needles from a pharmacy in Maine that my clinic uses for all its fertility medications. It cost me $22.18. The balance of the meds I'll need will set me back an additional $235. The pharmacist informed me that I had saved over four thousand dollars! Four thousand dollars for medications. It boggles the mind. And they probably only cost 100 dollars to produce total. I am alternately grateful that I have insurance, totally stunned by the cost, and unbelievably guilt at how many people have to pay that amount out of pocket. Spirk!

Tomorrow: I get to wake up at some ungodly hour to get my blood drawn at the nearest Que.st labs, about a 30 minute drive away, to make sure I've ovulated. If I have, I get to start shooting up this evening. Yeeehaaa. Or maybe I should say SPIRK!!!*


*I was informed by NB that spirk is indeed the correct spelling. I would go with sperk myself, but what do I know?

Back on the IVF pony

My clinic called yesterday to let me know the results of the doctor pow wow. They feel that I responded so well last time (50 something follicles, with 22 eggs retrieved, pregnancy and live birth) that they don't foresee a need to change my protocol. On day 21 of my cycle they will have me do blood work to make sure I've ovulated and then I can start the Lupron that day. They also need my husband to have blood tested. So, just like that we are off to the races! Day 21 of my cycle is next Wed, so I have until then to talk with the financial office and make sure that we are all paid up and we are good to go. Trying is better than not trying, having it work is better than it not working, but you can't get it to work if you don't get to try. Here we go!!!

Boston and beyond

Saturday and Sunday were wonderful. Dh and I got into Boston in time to grab some lunch. We did the touristy thing and went on a Duck tour before checking into our hotel. We've gone on one every time we've gone to Boston, so it is kind of turning into a joke for us. Next time, my husband says, no Duck tour. *

The hotel room was beautiful. It was a suite, actually, with a lovely living room like space and kitchenette, and separate bedroom. It was on the 35th floor so we had an amazing view of the Charles river from both rooms. The cars looked like ants from up there. We "hung out"** in the hotel for a while and then D took a nap while I familiarized myself with the room service menu and wrestled with the phone to set a wake up call. Both the alarm and the wake up call went off at 6, and after freshening up we set out to grab a bite of dinner and to walk to the theater district to see the Blue Man Group perform at the Charles theater. The performance was amazing, and the walk back to the hotel was romantic. It was a beautiful night and all around us were people having a good time. We toyed with the idea of grabbing a drink at one of the bars on the street, but we were exhausted so we headed back and crashed like rocks.

Sunday we relaxed and enjoyed the hotel room. We ordered in room service for breakfast, which was absolutely delicious, and with the view we had it was better than eating at any restaurant. Then we checked out and headed to the T to Bean Hill to see a house museum there and to grab lunch before heading home.

The museum was amazing. I enjoyed talking to the tour guide and just soaking up the beautiful architecture and furnishings. It was getting on 2 when the tour wrapped up, and we were starving. We were also missing the kids. We had called them that morning, and we had intended to be home by 4, but it was looking like we wouldn't be home until much later. We walked a couple of blocks and found an Irish pub. After enjoying some good Irish food and Guinness, and watching the Patriots getting smacked around by the Bills, we headed back.

It took us forever to get out of the parking garage, they only had one lane open for incoming and outgoing cars. We didn't get home until 5:45 or so and I have never been so happy to be home. :)

But.... After a few days of being home a post-vacation malaise has settled in. The beginning of Fall makes me feel like I should be DOING something. More than just cleaning the house and helping the boys with their homework, at any rate. . I have done several cycles during the fall months, including the first one where the transfer date was the day after our anniversary. Many of the bloggers I follow are pregnant now or have recently done a transfer, leaving me with the melancholy feeling that I'm standing in an empty train station with nowhere to go and no ticket to get there. On top of that the tour of the historic house museum has left me with an ache for my old job, any museum job really. But I know the chances of getting another job that pays anything is extremely slim. I can volunteer my time, but I will have to find something else to do that will pay me money, and that will most likely mean going back to school. But for what??

All of this melancholy and twitchiness under the skin with nowhere for it to go.

* A duck tour is a tour of the city in a DUCK boat. They were originally military transport vehicles, they can drive on land and go in the water so they make great tourist traps.

** made the beast with two backs

Waiting...

D's EEG came back 'normal' yesterday. Now we wait for the cardiologist appointment in October. He seems totally healthy, and active as always. Other than making sure he is eating well, which we do anyway, of course, and watching him like a hawk I'm not sure what I can do to make sure he doesn't pass out again. Thankfully he doesn't have a seizure disorder (most likely), because that is a terrible thing for a child to face, and the anti seizure medications are brutal. I jump every time the phone rings because I think it is the school calling. And for some reason, the phone is ringing all the time and I usually never get calls...the local paper trying to sell a subscription, some construction company that keeps calling my husband because some guy out there with the same name does plumbing contract work. I never had problems with my blood pressure before, even when pregnant with the twins, but I'm pretty sure if I had a cuff handy it would be spiking by now.

In other news, my husband and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary on Wednesday. I use the term celebrated loosely because hubby spent the day fixing the brakes on the van. That night we cooked up some seafood and ate in the kitchen with the lights turned down low to stir up some romance. This Saturday we are going to stay in a swanky hotel in Boston using up my husband's points that he earned by sleeping in not-so-swanky hotels in Virginia while on travel. More than three months of sleeping apart, with me being the single parent and hubby missing me and the kids dreadfully, has bought us one night of wedded bliss. It will be the first time I've slept apart from all of the kids in over 6 years. (I slept away from the boys for 3 nights while in the hospital having AK). This is going to be an adventure. Thankfully, my mom will be watching the kids, and besides being an awesome Mom and teacher, like all teachers she is trained in CPR and first aid. But still, the worry will be coming with us. Hopefully we can put it down for a little while.

As for the baby making front, I called the clinic last week. It took a couple of days for the nurse on the IVF team to get back to me. I knew they would be swamped. She told me that it had been a long time since they worked up a protocol for me, so the whole team was going to have to meet next Tuesday, and she would be getting back to me after that to tell me what the next move would be. The whole team??? That's a lot of people just sitting around and talking about my ovaries and ute. Hopefully I can get on board the IVF train before it shuts down for the December/January holiday season. We all know how this stuff works. You wait, and wait, go through testing and then BANG you're stimming and retrieving in the blink of an eye. I'm looking forward to this chance.

If everything comes crashing down and I don't make it to transfer, or when I'm crazy during the 2ww, please remind me how much I wanted this chance, won't you?

Parenting gets scary

I am scared. I am normally a pretty unflappable parent. I worked in pre school, I was an RA in college. I've seen some hairy stuff. I was calm and collected when D nearly cut the tip of his finger clear off. It takes a lot more than a sudden fever or hacking cough to send me running to the emergency room...but this time I am worried.

In June, near the end of the school year, DA had a strange fainting episode. I am unsure of the exact details because I got three reports and they aren't in sync. Either he had just eaten snack or was going to eat snack when he became unresponsive. According to his aid, his eyes rolled up in his head and he didn't respond. According to the teacher, he responded immediately, then blanked out again. I don't know if he sat down, or hit the floor. He had either just come back from gym or had come back from gym a half hour ago. Either way, I thought that he had a fainting episode from lack of food and over heating. He looked like hell when I got into the classroom, and the nurse said that he was looking better than he had looked, which freaked me out a little. They sent him to the hospital by ambulance, and I couldn't ride with him because I had to get his twin who was waiting anxiously in his classroom to be picked up. (Thank heavens for the classroom aid, Mrs H, because she rode with him and held his hand.)

He recovered from the incident. Nothing at all was found to be wrong with him. Naturally, I followed up with his pediatrician who said he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary, but wanted an EEG done to rule out seizure activity. I hounded the doctor's office all summer, but I couldn't call the hospital myself to make an appt, it had to be done through the office. In any case, they still didn't have an appointment for me in September. Then my little boy had another fainting incident at school. It was exactly the same as the last time, except he didn't become unresponsive.

Now the doctor is singing a different tune. It was amazing how quickly they got him an appointment to get an EEG done. We saw a different doctor in the practice this time, and he told me that boys this age don't faint, that there is probably something else going on. And that something could be serious. It may be his brain, or it may be his heart, but he thinks it is unlikely that it was just not eating enough and being overheated. Now we wait. We wait for the results of the EEG...which may or may not have to redone because he did wiggle quite a bit. We wait for his cardiologist appointment, which isn't until the end of October. We wait, and we hope that nothing else will happen between now and October...or now and forever, which would be my first choice. We watch him like hawks, and ask him how he is feeling, and tell him to eat, but nothing short of an answer to why this is happening is going to make us feel any better. And you all know how bad I am at waiting.

The RULES

Someone needs to write a book. Because I'm stumped.

Fertile people need to understand infertile people. Infertile people, however, can say whatever they like. Infertile people can complain all they like, including complaining about people who are complaining. Parents, pregnant women, and fertiles in general SHALL NOT COMPLAIN, nor shall they explain why someone may need to complain, or stand up for themselves.

I'm a parent. I have a Facebo.ok account. I complain occasionally about parenting. I've complained on FB. Am I a bad person? Am I a bad parent? Am I somehow smacking my infertile self in the face?

The other day a very nice blogger that I know, Emily, posted a rant about a FB friend who through out a totally normal parenting complaint status. It seems normal to me because I am a parent, and the status seemed to be a normal one. Something along the lines of 'I'm trying to watch my favorite show, daughter is driving me crazy....blah blah blah. This is why FB truly sucks if you are a parent with infertile friends, because you really CAN'T POST ANYTHING.

Here's the thing, infertiles and fertiles alike. WE ARE KNOWN FOR WHAT WE DO, NOT WHAT WE FEEL AND THINK. I can post all day that my daughter is driving me crazy. She does. Today, just as an example, she wanted me to read her the most...horrible...book....ever. It is a Barbie book, she waaaaanted it because it was pink, and my husband bought it for her because she's daddy's little girl. A long time ago, I swore to myself that no matter what I was doing, if one of my children brought a book over I would stop and read it. And so far, I have kept this vow. I have read books to them while taking a crap on the toilet, I have taken food off the stove, I have let my food grow cold/warm/congealed and nasty. But this book....I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it. But I read it. Twice. But gods forbid that I put on FB as my status "My daughter is driving me crazy. If she brings that book to me one more time I'M GOING TO BURN IT I SWEAR TO GOD!!!.

We infertiles go through a lot of trouble getting fertiles to understand the difference between how hurt we may FEEL and how we actually ACT. We ACT happy for our friends when they are pregnant even as we FEEL sad, jealous, and crushed. We expect that people will try and understand the difference. But if you are a parent, forget it, DON'T COMPLAIN. It doesn't matter if I am with my daughter all day, being the best parent I can be, enjoying her company (nearly) every minute we are together. It doesn't matter that just being with her sometimes makes me cry because she just turned 3 and soon, too soon, she'll be off to school. It doesn't matter that seeing her throw herself into her daddy's arms when he comes home lights up the world with both of their happiness. If I complain on FB, all anyone will see, is that.

One thing is interesting, though. If I complain on FB, all my parenting friends get it. Does it hurt when you're told that you don't get something because you're not a parent? HELL YES. Is it true? Sadly, YES.

I'm tired of being told I can't complain. I get angry when I hear from infertiles that my fertile friends who are parents take parenting for granted. Or that my mother did, or my grandmother. I'm tired of hearing about how infertile people are hurting all the time, but I can't say, not once, how parenting can hurt just as much without being told that I'm 'Over the line'.

Over 65% of couples that come into an RE clinic seeing assisted reproduction will end up having a baby. That's a lot. Most parents out there aren't infertile, but most of us who are infertile who seek medical help will become parents. So please infertiles, cut your future parent selves some slack