We have three embryos on ice.  To me it feels like the equivelant to falling down into a comfy recliner with a good book.  I’m at ease knowing that there’s one more chance perhaps even two if this is a bust.  I’m thankful.  I’m hopeful.  *big sigh of relief*

So, I missed this place.  It just wasn’t the same over at The Next Chapter.  However, you can find a whole bunch of information over there about my donor egg IVF cycle.  The reason I moved there was for privacy.  However, it didn’t quite work.  So, if I’m going to be out there, I might as well be comfortable in my surroundings.  Right?  It feels like coming home.  Now all I need is warm cup of tea, a blanket to snuggle with, and some good news.

I feel so weird lately.  Not weird in the obsessively boob poking hoping for any kind of symptom sort of way.  I feel more like the I’m relieved that this is happening, and whatever will be will be and I can’t do a damn thing about it so why obsess about it even knowing that I will not matter what sort of way.  Did my run-on sentence make any sense?  No?  It didn’t to me either.  I guess all I can say to sum it up, “I’ve got two embryos in me.  It’s weird.  I want this more than anything.  I’m terrified it won’t work, but hopeful that it will.”  So, there you have it.

In a great effort to ignore all that I’m feeling, I’m headed out to buy curtains for my home that is still littered with moving boxes.  Perhaps soon enough I will have some before and afters of the place to showcase our efforts.  Back to waiting for information about those darn embryos and if there were any to freeze!

I have moved my blog.  You can email me, and I will tell you where it is.

armsforanangel@yahoo.com

If each petal on a flower were a dream, hope, or belief of how my life would go, then I have lost many.  Some were just a part of growing up, and others the result of the cards my life has dealt me.  This journey has me sitting and plucking petals.  Making sweet love to my husband and creating a child together…using an ovulation induction medication to create new life…being inseminated at my doctor’s office to procreate…and most recently braving the waters of IVF.  All petals that made their way to the base of the flower. 

While I still believe that the flower remains fragrant and beautiful, it’s missing some of what it used to have.  That’s me right now.  I guess I just need to know where to buy some M.iracle G.row, right?

The words of two kept dancing through my sleepless mind last night, “But you have Lucky.  He’s beautiful and he calls you mom.”  So true.  Yet, he is not a magical healer.  He doesn’t erase the fact that I, at the ripe old age of 28, have to look in the mirror and know that I am barren.  I am sterile.  I cannot create life.  That’s a very large pill to swallow.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate my circumstance with Lucky beyond measure.  I’m thankful for him every day.  This is more of an image readjustmant of myself.  It feels final.  Concrete.  Odd.  This doesn’t mean it is the end of our journey.  No.  This is just a huge blow personally.

What gets me by right now is having amazing family and friends.  My mother fielded all my phone calls yesterday, and called those who needed to know.  My husband and I sat cross legged on the floor of the bedroom, and I said, “It’s just a bit weird knowing that this will be your biological child, but not technically mine.  It’s not bad at all.  It’s just different.”  To which he sweetly responded, “We could use a sperm donor.  I don’t care.”  It made me smile, because I knew he was serious.  I love that man.  It’s moments like these that seperate the boys from the men.  Of course we wouldn’t use a sperm donor when his gametes work just fine.  It was a beautiful offer though.

So, now I have this need to make my house beautiful.  I didn’t think I would be moving back into it.  However, now there is no need for more space.  Another child is far off on our calendar (think a year, due to waiting lists.)  I’m trying to not view it as going back with our tails between our legs.  I keep telling myself this is good, because then the market will pick up!  I have the burning desire to make the place special.  To reinvent it.  Perhaps this runs deeper.  I’m not sure.

Today is a uniquely busy day.  Often I feel as if I am straddling and invisible line between two worlds.  I have a part of me in the adoption world and another in the world of assisted reproductive technology.  Neither has come to a full resolution.  We work whole hearted towards completing our son’s adoption, and yet nearly a year has gone by.  We also work tirelessly through infertility treatments.  It’s such a strange experience, and I often wish I knew of somebody who was or is in a similar situation.

Furthering the difference is that we are adopting through the f.oster c.are system.  Add another layer of difference is that we got a perfectly healthy newborn.  So, this often leaves me in such a strange place.  I believe I’ve dedicated myself to making this odd place my own little niche…my home…my reality.

Today I will fill out more forms to take another step towards completing our son’s adoption, go and get a quote for his first birthday cake, and get blood drawn and a follicle scan.  Everything is exciting all the way around.  The magnitude of everything going on has not hit me.  I guess I’m just floating through this experience and trying to take everything in.  My little boy is turning one in eleven days, but every day I live in fear that they will knock on my door to take him away.  My tummy feels like somebody took a Louisville Slugger to it, as Bravelle and Menopur have caused my skin to be super sensitive and quite sore.  Yet, I am lucky enough to hold my son for one more day and be given the opportunity to attempt to create him a little brother or sister.  So, I have no room for complaints.

I’m ready for days that move past the procreation stage of my life.  I’m ready to play with my children in the pool, watch them kick a soccer ball around the yard, and have big popsicle grins.  Yet, I still desperately try to cling to every minute with Lucky.  It’s like grasping for a single grain of sand.  Time is tricky like that.  It truly holds the trump card.

So, that’s just my thoughts from a rainy Monday morning.

Every once in a while you get to experience something that you just know is big.  It’s the kind of thing that you know is important, something you won’t soon forget.  That’s where I am now.  I know how big this experience is.  In-vitro is something that many women never get the chance to do.  My body almost robbed me of this opportunity.  Yet, despite it all, here I am.

Even though this experience is so large, I’m surprisingly zen about it.  I’m not sure where that comes from.  I’ve somehow managed to come to terms that these are the cards I’ve been dealt.  I can complain about them or do what I would normally do during any card game, play them the best I can.  Upon arriving at the baseline scan, Nurse Favorite asked me how I was doing.  “Great!” I responded with more optimism and sincerity than even I expected.  She asked if I was nervous about this process.  When I told her that I truly wasn’t, she told me I was the only one cycling that isn’t.  Interesting.  Why am I so strangely calm?  I have no clue.

So, I’m not sure what to say as of late.  Tomorrow I start stimming.  It will certainly be interesting to mix the meds, uncomfortable to inject myself more than once, but humbling to watch what can be done when science and biology combine.  I guess I’m just in awe of how technical, involved, emotional, and exciting this all is.

Well, off to catch some shut eye.

I grew more and more nervous as eight o’clock approached.  You see, tonight was the very first injection of my very first IVF cycle.  I had resolved that I needed to give myself the first one.  There’s nothing remarkable about the needle that delivers the medication.  It’s small, goes in easy, and my belly provides ample cushion.

What strikes me is that while there was no confetti, bells, or fanfare, there was still that air of excitement surrounding the event.  You see there was more being injected into me than just medication.  I was also sending hope, excitement, and the belief that this very well could be the answer to our predicament too.  That’s a tall order for one small vial and one little needle.  Many of our dreams are being placed in its abilities.  That is the promise that comes with the idea of in-vitro.

So today was one small step in the marathon of what is to come.  It might not have been fancy, but heck, all we’re looking for is effective.  So, tonight I can go to bed knowing that I just did something I never thought I would be able to do.  That in and of itself is a small victory.

On another note, thank you to Rick and Jess for coming over for lunch today!  It was wonderful seeing you and Princess Phoebe.  I will also pat my back for learning how to use a smoker today!  Go me!  I made some kickin’ smoked ribs.  Yep, I’ve got some skills.

Looking back on yesterday, almost makes me laugh.  Almost.  Upon reflection, I truly believe that the two workers just didn’t want to do more work than they have to.  It’s easy to manipulate a woman by threatening her child.  I don’t believe it was person with them, but more business.  We don’t want to work harder than we have to, and so we’ll make her do what we want her to do.  I find it highly unprofessional, but nothing that they have done so far has been.

We’ve decided there’s no way in hell we’re moving back into our house.  Our neighbor will put one of her trash cans at the end of our driveway on garbage day.  We’ll head to the house daily for a while.  Some lights will be put on timers.  We’ll make this work.  I can play their game, and well.  I just find it ridiculous that I have to.

To me it has always felt that social services didn’t feel we were the right clientele to adopt through them.  They made us feel as if we should have been doing a private adoption, since in their opinion we can afford to do so.  We have been made to feel as if we were working the system.  Truth be told that I’m the one who feels worked over.  Every time I turn in a mileage form or request a benefit that Lucky is rightfully entitled to, they look at me disapprovingly.  Hey, if I had my way the little guy would be on my insurance and this adoption would have been final already.

Yesterday was a power trip for the workers.  They  made a huge deal out of something that wasn’t.  They could have just nicely asked, and I most likely would have easily complied.  However, they were nasty, rude, condescending, and just plain out of line.

I’m glad that they’ve told me we aren’t eligible for any more infants, because it makes it much easier to tell them to stick it when everything is final.  Ok, I actually would never tell them to stick it.  I’m too nice, but I am just evil enough to file an official grievance and have the state crawl right up their ass.  It will be sweet revenge to know that they will be crawling through mounds of paperwork.  Rotten I know.