Spinning on that dizzy edge

A few weekends ago I helped host a baby shower for one of my sisters-in-law, who is having an unexpected but cherished first kid. This afternoon I packed up a bunch of baby stuff lingering in our basement to give to her next week.

Tonight we got the news that another sis-in-law, who married into the family last summer and has been trying ever since, is now 8 weeks along.

Right now I'm having a glass of wine and waiting for the Emperor's bed time, reminding myself that I have an amazing son and I am Very Happy for my in-laws. So Very Happy.

It's day 35 of this cycle, when the longest gap between periods I've had in years without direct medical interference is 36. There's been no spotting, no red at all. Yet two pregnancy tests have stated that I'm not pregnant. If that's the case, can my period freaking start already? This waiting game has me vacillating between wild hope and frustration. If I'm gonna bleed, then BLEED.

As long as I'm airing frustrations, oh aging meat sack of mine, I do not appreciate at all that with my efforts to exercise, I have gone from symptoms of plantar fascitis to Achilles tendinitis. I'm not marathoning, for crying out loud; I'm just trying to get in my 10,000 steps a day.

NO LOVE,

Me

We met with Dr. Asshat this afternoon for our scheduled followup. I may have to back off his epithet to Dr. Adequate, because he didn't keep us waiting for more than a few minutes, and he actually took the time to read my file beforehand and show some sympathy for what happened.

The news isn't good. The lab marked all three retrieved eggs as PQ (poor quality), with the likelihood to only get worse. The doc estimates our chances of conceiving at this point between 1 and 5%. He basically pleaded with me not to try IVF again with my eggs.

My insurance will cover only one more round of IVF. The doc thinks our chances could be as high as 60% with a donor egg, but we don't know how much extra it will cost for donated eggs. I am so conflicted right now that I can barely think straight.

The dishes, laundry, and all other responsible adulting can fuck right the hell off tonight. I'm going to curl up for a bit with some wine and Seanan McGuire's "Chimes at Midnight" (to catch up before I dive into her latest). Tomorrow me might be able to cope better with handling anything else.

It's official - we are on the clock for the next phase. Tonight were the final shots (for a couple of days, at least) to flip my ovaries from "Not Yet" to "Now now now!", and tomorrow my MiL is coming to stay with the Emperor while we overnight a couple of hours away. The eggstraction will be Monday morning, oh-so-early, and then depending on the fertilization results, we'll go in Thursday or Saturday for the implantation.

Now is the nervous time of waiting and patience, with so many points of potential trouble. I'm hoping for at least 8 good eggs for maximum chances, and at least half of those to fertilize and grow into healthy blobs. What comes of that step gets implanted. Theoretically we could have more than 3, in which case we'd freeze them, but that didn't happen in the previous rounds. After that is the dreaded two week wait, with the pregnancy test scheduled for the day after I get back from Vividcon. I am so glad to have that to distract me, even if it means I won't be drinking.

Even with a positive pregnancy test, I'm still not totally in the clear; I won't be breathing easy until the end of the first trimester.

Body, we can do this!

The clinic visit went fine; the sonogram showed no cysts, and the nurse took the time to go over all my medications (3 prescriptions covering 4 injections a day) and questions. Then we signed what seemed like a mortgage's worth of consent forms. The one involving frozen embryos was quite the involved example of multiple worst case scenarios.

Before that, though...I really fucked up as a human being. I sent someone an email to congratulate them on some great news, and somehow so badly mangled a suggestion (coming from an event where I wished I'd chosen differently) that I horribly offended and upset them. I wish I could take it all back and just cut myself off with the congrats. When I have outbreaks of social anxiety, I worry over everything I say and post. Times like this are exactly the reason why.

If (when) I ever show my ass and grossly offend you, please know that I don't do it out of maliciousness. Sometimes I err on the side of not shutting up in time, and for that I'm really sorry. You are by no means responsible for instructing me when I'm wrong, but I sure would appreciate it if you did.

I'm staying up just late enough to outlast the jackass who's setting off fireworks so the dog doesn't completely lose it, and then I'm taking my overwrought ass to bed.

Once I finished the two frenzied projects at work, some brain space and energy was recovered for other things.

I put the fence back up around the garden and planted a ton of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, beans, Brussel sprouts, and cabbage. They were all still there the past couple of mornings, so the fence appears to be doing its job. I've got a few more things to plant, veggies and purely ornamental flowers, but first my hands need to dial back on the soreness from wielding the bulb planter (my favorite tool for getting those veggie 4- and 6-packs in the ground) for hours on end.

I'm chipping away at the horrendous backlog in my email accounts. Yikes, there's some old stuff in there!

Now that the new washing machine is installed, we are doing laundry like it's going out of style. (The former one was out of commission so long it feels like some of the loads left in limbo actually did go out of style.) The replacement microwave is scheduled for delivery on Friday, so we will hopefully be all caught up with broken appliances. (House, can we please go awhile before something else finds it necessary to break? Kthnxbye.)

We attended a nephew's graduation party this past weekend, navigating some awkward family drama and scoring some pleasant time with the in-laws.

My husband is turning 40 this Friday, and I at last managed to pry loose some opinions from him about what he wants.

I finally took a deep breath and scheduled an appointment with the Repro Med clinic tomorrow, saying that I wanted nothing to do with the doctor until absolutely necessary. I'm also prepared to shut down any concern trolling about my weight or my age. Wish me luck!

Well, that was an epically shitty morning.

( Sticks and stones would have been preferable, or When your IVF doctor is an asshole )

This week is so fucking fired.

My hopes to see my cousins, their families, and my aunt at her cabin over the 4th of July weekend like we all did last year got shot down. My backup plan to visit a couple of weeks later when my parents are going is looking less likely. Now I have to decide if driving seven hours each way and going for two days with my grumpy husband and ADHD kid makes sense, and if calling it off is worth disappointing my kid.

I'd still really like to see at least one of my cousins, so I thought hey, maybe we could stay with her and her husband and go to the Wisconsin State Fair! Then I find out that my other cousin is due with her fifth kid at the same time. Less than optimal, to say the least.

Hearing about my cousin's pregnancy just opens up the whole infertility snarl in my head again. Since my miscarriage, I've put on a bunch of weight that I'm hoping (and so far failing) to lose before we start trying again. The biological clock keeps ticking louder and louder, with increasing ominous tones of "Midnight is coming", which goes just great with the undercurrent of "this isn't fucking fair - she has four little girls already".

My husband quit his job several weeks ago, so we've been pulling together cost-cutting measures like refinancing. Today we found out the results of the house appraisal, which put the current value of our house at over 10% lower than five years ago, which is complete and utter bullshit. I am in shock and sick at the news; refinancing at this point is out of the question. Now I'm waiting to hear from the banker if we can get another appraisal that isn't completely jacked up, or if we can cancel the refinancing.

Because I'm not under enough stress, last night my brain decided to mash up all the anxiety floating around and present me with a doozy of a nightmare. It was a cross between "The Wicker Man" and "Rosemary's Baby", where I was on vacation in a rural area, surrounded by genial-seeming folk, only to find out that I was to be the sacrifice in their fertility festival, where they would tie me up, cut out my reproductive parts, and stew them up to be consumed by the women in the village to ensure their healthy fertility. Screaming at them about my current inability to have a baby made no impact. Really, brain? I didn't need that.

Step 1: drink tonight. Step 2: get to bed much earlier. Step 3: somehow fucking deal with all this.

Tomorrow we have an appointment at the IVF clinic for the embryo transfer. I dunno what the exact count will be, but probably somewhere around 2-3 embryos will make the perilous journey wombward.

Any good mojo/prayers/thoughts you have to spare early tomorrow morning would be greatly appreciated.

Dear Santa: I've been a really good girlawesome woman this year. May I please be pregnant for Christmas and keep it this time? Thank you!

WOWSERS. I hadn't realize that I'd been neglecting my reading page, until it took a SKIP=320 on DW to catch up on my gap week.

Hi! Happy imminent Thanksgiving to the USians, and a lovely late November to everyone!

I have been really distracted lately, for Reasons. I put so much work into Halloween and the Emperor's birthday that I went into utter slack mode afterward, with bonus time lost on The Fool and His Money (a game 10 years in the making that is fiendishly difficult and makes you feel really accomplished when you can solve a puzzle - if you like word games, this might be a good fit for you) and general surfing.

So with that and the rushing change of seasons (I do love winter, but the early setting of the sun is bumming me out, and the temperature change needs to stay away until I can dig up my parsley for overwintering), I am...adrift? Vaguely unsettled, or some such. I need to work on my Festivids entry (Have music, should vid), and cleaning my house has become my Sisyphean chore. I want to actually decorate for Christmas this year, seeing as I punted last year due to an excess of crap in my living room.

I won a free TV at work a couple of weeks back, and the next day our big TV (10 years old and still a fine model) died. The cause is speculated to be professional jealousy. Unfortunately, the new TV, while free, is neither big nor quality enough to truly replace the former one. So I delved deep into Consumer Reports and the current shopping frenzy going on, and emerged victorious with a floor model at a 50% discount. We are Pleased with the results. :D

Now I'm doing similar forays into the Black Friday sales, which feeds the obsessive research monster and bargain hunter in me.

I'm also half-way through the hormone treatment for our next IVF cycle. My belly is a string of bruises from the four daily shots. I am so glad that I'm not needle phobic. We are schedule to go in next week for the egg harvest and then the *fingers crossed* implantation. Any good thoughts/wishes/prayers/mojo you feel like sending my way would be greatly appreciated.

I hope you all are doing well! In the spirit of the season, I am very thankful to have you in my dwircle and flist. *HUGS*