the wall, cycle 4, day 25

Today, I hit a wall. What was once a pronouncement of my emotional stability, foresight and some apparent measure of self-care – “I will take a beak! I am going on vacation!” – is now a possibility that fills me with terror.

In the car with C this morning, on our way to the RE’s office for a what’s-next-if-I’m-not-pregnant appointment, I found myself asking C about adoption – leap frogging, without explanation, right over two more medicated IUI cycles and who-knows-what IVF. Soon, C was sputtering, admitting that he’s not yet ready to confront the possibility that the prospect of having a child might be put off by years and tangled up in bureaucracy and money we don’t have. And then, meeting with the RE, there was C, conceding that he also has a psychological block when it comes to IVF – he’s just not there yet. Which led him to casually suggest that hey, why not DO AS MANY CYCLES OF IUI AS POSSIBLE FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN. To which the RE kindly read my mind replied, THE LADY WILL HAVE NONE OF THAT PLEASE AND THANK YOU. And I, possibly, maybe, just barely, gave sweet C one of those half-smile-trying-to-look-unfazed looks like, don’t you think we could have discussed this earlier? Ahem.

Here’s the thing: we usually emerge from the RE’s office plan-in-hand. Despite the possibility that plan foretells – still not pregnant – having it in my possession is deceptively empowering. Because I’m a controlling maniac sort-of-Type-A person, I embrace structure and certainty – or at least as much as I can get in the world of unpredictable infertility.

And yet, despite my ostensible insight into my own needs, we didn’t make a decision today. We didn’t plan the next cycle. We told the nurse of our vacation plans and we vaguely considered the dear-god-spare-me number of days of birth control that could keep things at bay while we’re hiking and gallivanting with friends across California next month. But despite my best intentions; despite my stoic affirmations and belief that having said it out loud would make it easier to do, I sit here having neither chosen to barrel ahead nor having given in to taking a break. In fact, I feel rather paralyzed; incredulous that we are here. In our fourth medicated cycle. More than ten years after we first started dating. More than one year after we first started trying.

But here we are, and here I am, weighed down with apprehension and insecurity. I’m not exactly sure what I want. I couldn’t be happier that we’re getting away, seeing close friends who we adore, and spending time outside instead of handcuffed to a keyboard. But at the same time, I’m deeply aware of the possibility that another needs-to-be-timed-for-right-now IUI cycle could have me resenting this adventure. I don’t want that. But I also don’t want this feeling. This uneasy in between, the foreboding and anxiety that has me biting my cuticles to the quick. I may just crawl into a cocoon until my beta next Friday. Please excuse me.

boys will be boys? cycle 4, day 18

Until today, I hadn’t realized the kind of distance C had from this whole infertility bonanza. He’s been nothing but supportive, sweet and generally happy to endure/speak sarcastically of my, let’s say, ebbing moods – even when I have bluntly told him that I am having a very hard time liking him that I need some alone time. But C doesn’t have to get poked and prodded four times in six days; he doesn’t have Chinese hamster ovary injected into his gut; and he’s not ravenously eating for nine during “birth-control-week.”[1] Simply put: C is not the patient and it turns out, he didn’t quite know how to be.

This morning we went in for our first IUI[2], which means that after a romantic morning of must-ejaculate-into-this-small-plastic-cup-immediately, we headed over to the fertility clinic to drop off the sample, one hour in advance of the procedure. Because, holy shit how on earth are we running late C went up first while I parked. Then, as I was riding the elevator, a frantic text “What do I do? All the women are staring at me.”

When I met him in the clinic lobby, he looked like a deer in headlights. What was he supposed to sign/where was he supposed to go/what is the meaning of life/etc. The questions were coming fast and furious.

Now, it should be said – C has accompanied me to the clinic several times. He’s even given a sample once before, at the beginning of this whole mis-adventure. But never has he been the patient, per se. Now. C is one of the smartest people I know – doctor, builder of kayaks, maker of sarcastic quips. And so it was a surprise, and somewhat baffling, to see him so unhinged. So while I personally may have indulged ever-so-briefly in his panic-stricken-face, I wasn’t really so keen on the entire waiting room and nursing staff thinking that he was some sort of aloof proto-male who isn’t comfortable talking about reproduction, let alone dropping off his sperm in a brown paper lunch bag. Because: feminist! liberated man! Etc[3].

slow and, err, steady? cycle 4, day 14

Don’t despair – my tireless rants about working mothers are behind us, and now we can return to all-pelvis-all-the-time programming. So. Where were we?

Well, I’ve finished with my incessant sobbing for now and moved on to every other day wandings and blood draws, because we all know how funny those are. Here’s where we’re at:

Thursday, Day 10: wanding by the tech who seems uncomfortably excited about my ovaries and tells me as much with a very thick Boston accent, while I’m restrained in stirrups and her arm is halfway inside me. Buh-yuuu-ti-fuhl ovuhrees! Goohr-jus! A few follicles on the right, one on the left, none big enough to trigger ovulation.

Saturday, Day 12: welcome to your weekend, please proceed to the far-away-weekend-clinic-location whose waiting room does have better magazines. And, apparently, Jack Hanna on TV, which was compelling enough that as we left, C informed me that he is going to become a doctor for turtles. NOTED.

Meanwhile, behind door number 2: follicles growing ever so slowly, largest at 15 mm, still not big enough to trigger. Which is sad because if there’s one truth in this world it is that I long for my monthly injection of Chinese hamster ovary. Return on Monday. Third time’s the charm?

off to a very hot start, cycle 4, day 3

I woke up with a fever and thirty-six hours later I was suddenly on my fourth round of Clomid.

Or at least that’s how it feels. On Wednesday morning I woke up bright and early so that I could endure the indignity of a nurse-administered pregnancy (blood) test[1] when, hello-don’t-you-see-my-pockets-stuffed-full-of-tampons. Anyway, feeling a bit resentful woozy and what I would later realize was, what’s the word I’m looking for? feverish! I stumbled into the doctor's office in the pre-dawn hours, coughing all over anyone in my path. I dismissed the motherly words of the tech who told me I looked like hell said I looked like I “could use some sleep” and desperately tried to stop the exam room from spinning. Afterwards, thinking that maybe I should consider calling in sick, I went home, took my temperature and was sort of bewildered when it turned up at 102.

It was all downhill from there and the next 12-16 hours are a bit of daze. Having a fever basically makes me feel like I’m five years old and “adult fever” sounds like either a 60s throwback album or a sexually transmitted disease[2] offered at a discount through this service[3].

a questionable milestone, cycle 3, day 22

I did it. I made it past day 19. And here we are. The illusive day 22. Just 6 grueling days until the doctor-sanctioned blood work that will confirm that I am once and for all barren whether or not I’m with child.

My long time readers (har, har) may recall that it was on day 19, two cycles ago, that I squatted, dumbstruck, shouting expletives in a rest stop bathroom started a’bleedin’. It was early. Real early. Mathematically bonkers early. But it was all I needed to know: I wasn’t pregnant.

So here we are, nice and smug on day 22, still period-free and pretending like it means something when I know full well that it doesn’t. As anticipated, my eerie calm of last weekend has quickly evaporated, supplanted by a trembling, porous anxiety just beneath the surface: at any moment you could find out you’re not pregnant, which is why if you just avoid going to the bathroom, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.[1]

I guess it goes back to this – I still barely know how my body works and what I do know, I don’t trust. I didn’t ovulate for nine months and now I’m supposed to rely on one medically induced cycle in December to provide clues about this cycle’s possible success?[2] Thanksbutnothanks.

In any case, I met with the reproductive endocrinologist this afternoon and put the plan in place for the next round[3] – Clomid, Ovidrel, intrauterine insemination (IUI). Though I’m sure that my 8 regular readers in Qatar are old pros at IUI by now, for the uninitiated, here’s the deal: prevailing medical wisdom is that after three rounds of Clomid, your cervical mucus begins to become some kind of sperm-hostile-double-agent, making it more difficult to conceive. There isn’t good hard data but because it’s a plausible, if not scientifically demonstrable, theory and because my insurance won’t let me graduate to IVF without first stopping the train at the IUI station, we’re going to give it a go. Which means that in cycle four, instead of several days of post-Ovidrel romance, we’ll have one very early morning threesome (that’s me, C and one lucky infertility clinic tech. *regrettable mental image*.). On that morning, within 90 minutes of, ahem, C producing a sample, we’ll speed recklessly to the infertility clinic, wait an hour for magic science to do its thing[4] after which I get to lay back, relax, and have a mystery nurse shoot a syringe full of sperm (hopefully C’s) into my cervix.

an uneasy calm, cycle 3, day 17

There’s a certain calmness in this time – this in between time, after the doctor-mandated-sex but before the two-week-wait sets in, in earnest. The proverbial calm before the storm. Truthfully, I’ve never felt it before – not in the last two cycles and certainly not when I was trying unassisted, futile though it was.

But just yesterday, a kind of calm has settled over me. I want, with every fiber of my being, for this to be it – to be pregnant, to hold on to the gaggle of cells this time, to give birth to a healthy, gurgling babe. And at the same time, I feel almost liberated in my awareness and my (tacit, halting) acceptance that this very well might not be the one. That I could just as plausibly be again un-pregnant.

The last two rounds, the two-week-wait just felt like I was interminably holding my breath – I don’t think I exhaled until the blood work was in, and even then, only with great hesitation.  By contrast, today at least – and that’s to say nothing of tomorrow or the days ahead, during which I’m sure I will descend into the anxiety-ridden crevasse of usual – feels calm and accepting, a very unfamiliar peace. I’m not inventorying my stockpile of pregnancy tests or browsing through the designer nurseries on Apartment Therapy – or at least not as furiously. I know that I’ll be heartbroken if this cycle doesn’t work – it’s the one year mark of trying, it’s the last cycle of Clomid before we kick it up a notch and move to IUI, it’s one step closer to – on bad days – big conversations about how far we’ll take this, whether adoption is a possibility and all kinds of other overwhelming Big Questions.

But for today, I am – how, I’m not sure – calm.

(So that’s it. An entire post without a footnote, a strikethrough or a hyperlink – just me, getting kind of real, without sarcasm as my cover. But I’m not one for saccharine sentimentality. So let’s not make a habit of it.)