I Just Want This, Nothing More

Sometimes kids are very wise. This past weekend my son participated in his first Easter egg hunts. He caught on very quickly. The only thing he didn't really understand was the goal of collecting as many eggs as you can as fast as you can. He who gets the most wins. Instead, he'd find an egg, run to us with it in his outstretched little chubby hand, shake it, laughing, open it to see what was inside. Each egg he found was new, interesting, and enough for him. He could have picked up one and been perfectly happy to explore it. It was so very innocent and so very sweet. It saddens me to think that all too soon he will develop the "more, more, more" mentality.

It was a good lesson in being satisfied with what you have. It got me thinking about the morality of wanting another child so badly. Looking at my life from the perspective of most people, there is nothing to want. I have a wonderful, kind, well-employed husband, a beautiful, healthy son, the ability to stay home with him if I choose and the ability to work if I want to, a nice house in a nice neighborhood, food on the table, and so on. So why not just be content? I tell myself that if I am not happy now, another child isn't going to solve that. And I believe that to be true. It's not that I am not happy. I am so very grateful for the things I have. And if I never have another child, I will still be grateful. But I will also be somewhat empty. When we announced that we might not be able to have another, a well-meaning friend (whose wife was gigantically pregnant with their second) said, "Well, at least you have one." That's what I thought too before we had him. Please, just let me have one. (Be careful what you ask for.) The problem is that the desire is just as strong for the second, only in a different way. Before my son, I just wanted to be a mother. I wanted to share my life and home with a child. I had no idea what it would be like and I didn't care if the child was genetically mine. Now I know. Now I know how it feels to see and hear your baby's heartbeat for the first time, to feel those little kicks, to give birth, to nurse a baby. Those things mean so much to me. Obviously, there are ways for us to have a child without me being pregnant and I hope that if pregnancy is impossible, we can successfully pursue repeat parenthood in another way. But it will leave an empty place if my body can't participate again. I wish I could follow my son's lead and be perfectly content with this one, never needing another. But my son is the very one who is making that so hard.

Too Dumb To Conceive?

I know such a thing doesn't exist. I mean just look at some of the people who get pregnant... over and over and over and... But, I have made a colossal parenting mistake. I have done the dumbest thing imaginable. And I am wondering if that's why this cycle failed (yes it did, thanks for asking). I am wondering if God in his infinite wisdom is sitting up there saying, "Oh for the love of pete. How can you expect me to give you another one when you can't manage to learn the number one rule of parenting after EIGHTEEN MONTHS? Come on, give me something to work with here."

I have woken the child and it is now nearly midnight and I am not in bed because I have been battling him over going back to sleep for the past hour. Every night, I go check on him before going to bed. I stand over his crib, watch his chest rise and fall, notice how long he is now, look at the way his hair spills over his face, admire his small hands relaxed on his sheets. Partly it is my time to reflect on what a blessing he is, how unimaginably strong my love for him is, how grateful I am. And partly it is a superstitious ritual... if I make sure he's breathing before I go to bed, I guarantee that he will still be breathing when I wake up. Anyway, on this particular night as soon as I opened the door, his head popped up. I quickly retreated, but dared not close the door. No crying, all was well. Here's where the stupid comes in. I went back up AGAIN to try to grab some diapers that were on his floor so I could toss them in the wash (oh yes, I cloth diaper... you have idea the depth of my ubermom-ness). Stupid. Sleep more important than laundry. So I am inching in his door along the floor, hand on the diapers when he looks up again. I hastily retreat AGAIN, loudly banging into every solid surface on the way out. Still, no crying. And, oh my god, if I didn't attempt AGAIN. I decided I really needed to shut his door so that C doesn't wake him up when he goes to work in the morning, so I went back, pulled the door shut, discovered that it really needs WD40, and that was the end of my luck. He started crying. That was an hour and a half ago, and here I still sit. I managed to wiggle out of his room by lying a quilt on the floor with some pillows under it, jetting out the door while he wasn't looking, then admonishing "Lie down!" and "Shhh!" from the door so he thinks I am still there. Either that, or he's sitting in his crib rolling his eyes wondering how dumb I think he is.

So we'll start a new cycle immediately. Another frozen transfer. I fully expect the RE to recommend the same protocol, an idea with which I fully disagree. Four cycles of the exact same thing with the exact same results is my limit. We do something new, or I find someone new. Hopefully in the meantime I can gain some sense... I'm sure that's all it'll take. I mean, look at Jamie Lynn.

PUPO

It means "pregnant until proven otherwise." It means, to IVFers, that the embryos are in and until the blood pregnancy test there is a chance that you're pregnant. My natural inclination is to think of myself as NPUPO (not pregnant...). Go about my normal routine (you know, the fifths of whisky, the late night parties, the 2-pack-a-day habit, etc.) and try to completely forget the possibility. I mean, looking at this objectively, the things we have going against us are:

31 days of unopposed estrogen stimulation to get a decent lining
By "decent," I mean "horrible"
The possibility of uterine scarring remaining
Two lousy embryos that I am sure were still partially frozen
Me not taking it easy after the transfer AT ALL
3 frozen transfers under our belt, none successful

And here's what we have going for us:

Um... uh... um...

BUT, I am attempting to stay positive. Because the truth of the matter is that with infertility treatments there is no forgetting, there is no pretending that everything is normal and there is no way to protect your heart from the disappointment when it doesn't work. So you might as well enjoy the possibility while it still exists.

My husband has implored me to write something normal in my blog. He wants me to stop being so dreary and try to be more of a "dancing through fields of lilies while bluebirds sing on my shoulder" kind of gal. Huh. I thought I was funny. Guess not.

This past weekend, we made a trip to his family's farm. It is near the town we are moving to next month. We now have a house under contract and got to walk through it again. It's a new construction and is not done yet. But we are really excited about it. It's a 2-story in a neighborhood with a pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and hiking trails. It's on over an acre of land. It has an open floor plan, an awesome kitchen, custom cabinets, lots of built in storage, hardwood floors, faux paint finishes, a media room... It's cool. Right now I only have pics on my husband's cell phone, but next time I'll bring the camera and post some. (Was that normal enough?)

6 days until beta. Tick... tock... tick... tock...

At Least I Can Say My Endometrium is Skinny

It's been awhile. I haven't had much to say. As for the cliffhanger of the last post, did anyone expect me to really delay they cycle? Yes? Really? Well, no... wrong, wrong-o. I didn't. And since that was a whole month ago, I'm sure it'd be logical to expect some sort of announcement here. Nope. This has been the worst frozen embryo cycle in history, and we're not even to the meat of the cycle yet. I did scurry around getting this and that signed, talking to one lab, then the other, then the other, etc. until our embryos arrived safe and frozen here. Glad I was in such a big hurry because my first lining check resulted in a ridiculously tissue paper thin lining where no respectable embryo would attempt to snuggle in for nine month. Upped the estrogen, after another week we'd made minimal progress. At this point the doctor conceded to check my estrogen levels and lo and behold they weren't high enough. So we upped again and finally my lining was ready (and when I say ready I mean still entirely too thin for this to actually work, but thick enough that it did work once for someone, somewhere, so my doc feels justified in proceeding). Four weeks of estrogen and a lining other uteruses would point and laugh at and call "toothpick". Soooo... I have started progesterone in oil shots (PIO, to those of us in the know... PIA if you ask me). These are delightful little squirts of progesterone in olive oil right in the tushy muscle every night. Hopefully for 12 weeks. Walking not so good right now. And the little embryos are slated to be killed, I mean transferred on Friday. The nurses keep acting excited and hopeful. I feel kind of bad for them. I feel like I need to sit them down and say, "Look, it's good to have hope, but we need to be realistic here. I just don't want you to be too devastated when this doesn't work. There will be other tries." Honestly it surprises me somewhat when I hear their optimism because I keep forgetting that the point is to get pregnant. I feel like we're just cleaning out the freezer, so to speak, so that we can decide what to do next.

On a wholly unrelated and much happier note, we are a-moving. Hubs got a job in the same town as our alma mater. Said job promises better pay for better hours, so we're going. As of today we will have submitted an offer on a house that we fully expect the builder to laugh at, but it's worth a shot. Cross your fingers for us (and maybe your toes too just in case I might have the tiniest amount of hope for the aforementioned "thing").