And so it goes

Stark white.

Gah, I forgot how absolutely glaringly white a negative peestick is.  Just stares at you. 

Blank.

I haven't cried.  If anything, I feel angry.  Pissed.

Pissed that it costs so much money to get pregnant in our reality.
Pissed that I don't have control in my life in this area.
Pissed that my friends are going on without me-  having #2, and yet again I watch from the sidelines.
Pissed that I don't feel great about my body right now.  I feel like it has taken a beating.  I feel old and tired.
Pissed that I have to do the FET prep all over again.
Pissed that we only have one more chance. 
Pissed that we are that much closer to having to wrapping our head around the idea that this one in our arms may be the only one.

Well, wouldn't you know it-  that last sentence triggered the tears.  Deep breath.....

Two frozen embryos never sounded like enough.  But it was always enough to know that I had two chances.  And that second chance was just the extra cushion I needed so that I didn't yet have to consider life with only one child.  .....becuase I still had 2 chances.

But 1 more chance-  1 more frozen embryo-   puts me so close to having to face the fact that there may never be a sibling.  may never be another pregnancy.  may never get to experience giving birth again.  

So much closer to having to close this chapter.

And damn it, I'm not okay with that.

Tomorrow I will know...whether I want to or not.

I don't want to be in limbo anymore.  The not knowing it hard.

But I don't want to face the truth either.

Wish I could fast forward to tomorrow.  And if the answer is a Negative, I wish I could fast forward in time until it no longer hurts. 

I have POAS twice now.  I said I wasn't going to until Wednesday morning.  But I caved.  It was compulsive really-  I didn't even stop to think about it.

Monday afternoon, 7dp5dt, after an impromptu nap-  I got up, unwrapped an expired test from my drawer and peed. Didn't even think twice.  It was negative.  But i could handle it because I intentionally peed on an expired stick and it was afternoon pee, not morning pee.  So, it allowed me to keep hoping, while still getting my POAS stick fix.

Tuesday morning 8dp5dt,, with my addiction in full force, I peed on a brand new FRER with morning pee.

Sigh.  I think it is negative.  Although, it was very very reminiscent of two years ago with this episode of 8dp5dt.  Maybe there was an invisible line?  Maybe?  But so freakin' hard to tell.  I swear I was making it up, wishing it into a hallucination of a line.

Sigh, ...

My back hurts, my boobs feel full, I feel bloaty, and very very cranky.  Which I know well enough to know it means nothing-  it merely means I am a hormonal mess.  Which I am.  I just don't know WHICH hormones are causing the mess....the progesterone suppositories and estrogen patches, or pregnancy hormones.

Sigh....

I am afraid to find out tomorrow. 

I don't like this.

FET #1

I have bad memories from my 1st embryo transfer.  It was a fresh cycle.  I was overstimulated, bloated, in pain, and they couldn't get the cathether thingy thread through a tough angle in my cervix.  It seemed like it too a lifetime.

I was in pain.  I was terrified something was going to go wrong.  I covered my eyes and I wished for it to be over.

Sure there were glimmers of the amazing miracle in the works-  seeing the embryo on the screen- amazing.  My husband by my side, taking it all in in awe, the collective sigh the room took when the embryologist gave the all clear that the embryo was officially in me and not in the syringe- all amazing.

But it was rough.

Today's transfer was down right fun.  And mind boggling quick.

My appointment was at 3pm.  I was to arrive at 245pm.  I go there at 240pm and they had me back, bladder checked by u/s, talk with the embryologist, and legs in the stirrups by 255pm.  By 3pm, the embryo was in and it was done. 

The staff was excellent.  The embryologist answered all kinds of curiosity questions that I was too out of it to ask the first time.  She clearly loved her job.  The u/s tech was great.  My bladder was perfectly full (which no matter how much I drink i have NEVER in all my treatments been able to get my bladder sufficiently full).  The Dr. got the catheter to curve through my tough spot no problem (certainly having previously birthed a 7 pound baby vaginally helped him out).  and they added a heating pad to the table, which made it oh so much more comfortable then last time.

And I was in awe.  To see that embryo on the monitor, that embryo that was conceived in the same batch with the 24 pound wiggly toddler I know get to call my daughter-  it is just insane.

I am in awe.  In awe that a bundle of cells like that created her.  In awe that as I type this we have been given another chance to do it all again.

In awe.

Tonight as I type this, I feel calm.  I feel like I can handle whatever comes my way.  I feel grateful for the gift of those 15 minutes in the embryo transfer room-  to be in the presence of something as amazing as that embryo.  And even to be given the chance.  I feel like I can accept whatever is to come.

I hope.

My crystal ball

I have found it to be interesting how naturally I have gravatated back to my blog as we have moved into our FET journey.  I didn't plan to be away.  I didn't plan to come back to blogging.  It just happened. 

The longer I have been on this journey of TTC, infertility, reading blogs, and blogging, the more I have come to be aware of the fact that the blog world for me is my crystal ball.  I started reading blogs 5+ years ago.  I know this because some of the bloggers I stumbled across back then's first borns are 5 years old. 

We had barely started TTC back then.  Maybe we hadn't even actually started.  But we had no  idea the path of loss and reproductive medicine that would be our road.  But I found myself reading blogs-  blogs about infertility and loss.  Why?  I don't know.  I just don't know.   Sometimes the superstitious side of me thinks that by starting to follow IF/RPL blogs I caused my own destiny.  .....  I know that is silly, but ....

But I do think that in an unconscious or subconscious way blog reading was a way to seek control for me-  it was my way of trying to see into my own crystal ball and know how my story would go.  I read blogs to feel like I could figure out what my story would look like.   

Would our IUIs work...would I get pregnant with endometriosis....would we get pregnant with low morphology...would we get pregnant after 1 miscarriage....2 miscarriages....would we get pregnant with IVF....would we stay pregnant....would we birth a live baby.....

How would my story go.....

It was futile of course.  But it, at times, gave me what I needed to hang on.

If her  IUI worked, maybe mine would, if SHE got pregnant after multiple losses, then maybe I could, if SHE had a baby after years of infertility, than maybe, just maybe that is how my story would go.....

And then I had my baby.  She is here, really here, in my arms.  And my longing to know how my story would go subsided.  The longing was fulfilled in so many ways, and I stopped wondering.

This upcoming FET has triggered that wonder again.  Wondering how this part of the story will unfold, but it is far less intense than before.  More than anything, I am finding this blog space to be a place where i can talk out loud -  I can talk about estrogen patches, and vaginal u/s, and FET transfers.  Being back in the fray, I am remembering how there just isn't space in our public lives to discuss these things.  Staff lunches, family Easter dinner, playdates at the park-  there are very few real live people that know about this FET.  It just doesn't easily come up. 

So, I blog.  I write.  I ponder how this story will go.

Lining confirmed today to be nice and plush.  Estrogen is excellent.  Transfer is a Go! for Monday.

I am excited.  I am hopeful.  I am grateful for how easy a FET is compared to a fresh.  I am grateful that I feel good.  I am beyond grateful for my pudgy, happy, smart, strong-willed toddler that fights diaper changes and drapes her arms around my shoulders and presses her face into the crook of my neck when she is exhausted at the end of the day. 

I am a little scared how I will feel if we don't get pregnant.  Or if we get pregnant and miscarry.  I feel strong.  Centered.  Resilient.  ....right now.  But it has been a long time since I have been crushed by a BFN or by the red spotting that predicts the end.  I don't want to feel that again. I just don't.