Oh, sweet Succotash. Where are you?
So it didn't take this time. I knew it wouldn't, and I was actually okay yesterday when they told me. Now I get a month off of being poked and prodded and bloodlet, which, to be honest, is a relief. Now I wait for my period, and then track my ovulation, and then start estrogen priming for another try.
So many trite metaphors present themselves. A bite at the apple. A turn at bat. Whatever.
They're putting me back on the pills we used before. I'm curious if they will up the dosage of those pills, since we only got 3 or 4 follicles on that one. But that's better than the one we got with all the injectables. One, Succotash. What's wrong with us?
Maybe I've just run out.
Right now, my job is to manage my expectations. And, if we're honest, to begin moving to acceptance.
This process is not going to work.
The more I tell myself that now, the less shocking it will be when the doctor tells it to me however many months from now.
This process is not going to work.
And I'm going to be okay anyway.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Monday, November 27, 2017
Tired
My fatigue today is glacial. Maybe from walking so much with my college roommate yesterday, braving the hordes at the Michelangelo show and failing to triumph, so adjourning to David Hockney instead. Maybe it's the hormones sloshing around in my bloodstream. Maybe it's the cold, or the holidays. Maybe I'm just tired.
Today, in about an hour, I will arrive at the doctor's office for an artificial insemination, the consolation prize of this round of IVF. I didn't respond to the drugs. After several dark hours I re-checked Dr. Big Guns' profile on the fertility doctor site, and was heartened to remember that yes, I chose him for a reason, and yes, that reason was that he specializes in aging ovaries belonging to crones such as myself. I felt momentarily better.
The dog doesn't like it when L leaves before me. He's moping by the front door and hasn't asked to go out. But I should take him before I leave. Shouldn't I?
It's hard to let myself feel hope. It's wiser not to. But a certain amount of hope is necessary to power through the truly awful aspects of fertility treatment. So it glimmers there, under my fatigue, and I carry it around in my pocket as I get up from this desk and get underway with my day.
Today, in about an hour, I will arrive at the doctor's office for an artificial insemination, the consolation prize of this round of IVF. I didn't respond to the drugs. After several dark hours I re-checked Dr. Big Guns' profile on the fertility doctor site, and was heartened to remember that yes, I chose him for a reason, and yes, that reason was that he specializes in aging ovaries belonging to crones such as myself. I felt momentarily better.
The dog doesn't like it when L leaves before me. He's moping by the front door and hasn't asked to go out. But I should take him before I leave. Shouldn't I?
It's hard to let myself feel hope. It's wiser not to. But a certain amount of hope is necessary to power through the truly awful aspects of fertility treatment. So it glimmers there, under my fatigue, and I carry it around in my pocket as I get up from this desk and get underway with my day.
Monday, November 20, 2017
Going to Colombia
Dr. Big Guns seemed frustrated. I could tell it wasn't great when he was the one doing the ultrasound and not one of the attendings.
I have two follicles. One on each side. And a bunch of little follicles. Essentially, I am not responding to the stimulation hormones. It's a drag. It's exhausting.
The odds are good that I will be canceling this cycle and starting over with a different protocol in the new year.
So. Yeah.
At least I can go to Colombia now.
"They will treat you like a queen," the Colombian phlebotomist assured me as she drew what might be my last blood for awhile.
I have two follicles. One on each side. And a bunch of little follicles. Essentially, I am not responding to the stimulation hormones. It's a drag. It's exhausting.
The odds are good that I will be canceling this cycle and starting over with a different protocol in the new year.
So. Yeah.
At least I can go to Colombia now.
"They will treat you like a queen," the Colombian phlebotomist assured me as she drew what might be my last blood for awhile.
Friday, November 17, 2017
Pissed Off
These drugs, man. They are no joke.
My belly is now riddled with tiny pink pinpricks, and the pinker circles of small sterile bandages. As I roam the streets I suffer sloshes of emotion. I tear up outside a Christmas window display. I remember a slight from five years ago and become nearly blinded with rage. And then I want to sleep.
My belly is now riddled with tiny pink pinpricks, and the pinker circles of small sterile bandages. As I roam the streets I suffer sloshes of emotion. I tear up outside a Christmas window display. I remember a slight from five years ago and become nearly blinded with rage. And then I want to sleep.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
The Bone Collector
Dear Succotash,
When I first lived on my own in New York City, I lived in Washington Heights. I'm sure by the time you roll around Washington Heights will be all solid rock crystal condos, but in 2000, when I lived there, it was largely Dominican, and really quite poor. I also was rather poor, which is why I could afford my own apartment there. Other women my age bunked in together in respectable downtown apartments of five or six, or else their parents paid their freight, but I lived uptown, and I lived alone.
I'm something of a loner, imaginary baby. I wonder if you will be too.
Anyway. I made very little money, and I was trying to save as much of it as I could. So I oftentimes stayed at home and ordered in from Box Office Pizza.
Box Office Pizza was a pizza and VHS delivery service. Genius. You'd get the menu, and it would come with a list of movies. So I'd pore over it, and I'd call up, and I'd be like "Hey, can I get a pineapple and onion and also have you got the copy of Reality Bites?"
"Nope. That one's out."
"Okay. What about The Sixth Sense?"
"I think that one got stolen."
"All right. Ummm. Scream?"
"Nope. Sorry."
Then I would sigh heavily and say "Okay, I guess I'll take the Bone Collector again."
I don't know how many times I watched The Bone Collector. Certainly more than three. But this was before I had internet at home, and before I could afford cable TV. The pickings were slim.
Now, of course, my life looks very different. I am nearly twice the age now that I was then. My apartment is bigger, and nicer, and has real furniture in it and a couple of paintings and shit. And tonight, for the first time, I am undergoing a rite of passage common to many forty year old women who have achieved a certain amount of success in their career. I am learning how to give myself hormone injections ahead of IVF.
So imagine my delight to discover that HBO, to which I can now afford to subscribe, and which is now streaming on demand through the ether like magic, is showing The Bone Collector.
I settle back in my den in a respectable neighborhood of Midtown, two new tiny band-aids on my tummy, glass of wine in hand. Twenty years older, fifteen pounds heavier, wiser and with a better haircut. I point my Roku remote and I smile quietly to myself.
When I first lived on my own in New York City, I lived in Washington Heights. I'm sure by the time you roll around Washington Heights will be all solid rock crystal condos, but in 2000, when I lived there, it was largely Dominican, and really quite poor. I also was rather poor, which is why I could afford my own apartment there. Other women my age bunked in together in respectable downtown apartments of five or six, or else their parents paid their freight, but I lived uptown, and I lived alone.
I'm something of a loner, imaginary baby. I wonder if you will be too.
Anyway. I made very little money, and I was trying to save as much of it as I could. So I oftentimes stayed at home and ordered in from Box Office Pizza.
Box Office Pizza was a pizza and VHS delivery service. Genius. You'd get the menu, and it would come with a list of movies. So I'd pore over it, and I'd call up, and I'd be like "Hey, can I get a pineapple and onion and also have you got the copy of Reality Bites?"
"Nope. That one's out."
"Okay. What about The Sixth Sense?"
"I think that one got stolen."
"All right. Ummm. Scream?"
"Nope. Sorry."
Then I would sigh heavily and say "Okay, I guess I'll take the Bone Collector again."
I don't know how many times I watched The Bone Collector. Certainly more than three. But this was before I had internet at home, and before I could afford cable TV. The pickings were slim.
Now, of course, my life looks very different. I am nearly twice the age now that I was then. My apartment is bigger, and nicer, and has real furniture in it and a couple of paintings and shit. And tonight, for the first time, I am undergoing a rite of passage common to many forty year old women who have achieved a certain amount of success in their career. I am learning how to give myself hormone injections ahead of IVF.
So imagine my delight to discover that HBO, to which I can now afford to subscribe, and which is now streaming on demand through the ether like magic, is showing The Bone Collector.
I settle back in my den in a respectable neighborhood of Midtown, two new tiny band-aids on my tummy, glass of wine in hand. Twenty years older, fifteen pounds heavier, wiser and with a better haircut. I point my Roku remote and I smile quietly to myself.
Friday, October 27, 2017
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Dear Succotash
Dear Succotash,
For my first IUI, I was cynical. "You should have a positive attitude," the nurse practitioner said as she prepared the pipette. My feet were in stirrups. There's no inane landscape poster on the ceiling over the stirrup tables, because they get us in and out so fast.
"It's not about positive," I said. "It's just that I understand math."
The odds of IUIs working in women my age are slim indeed, so I was managing my expectations. Turns out I wasn't the only cynical one - by the time I returned from spending the summer writing another book and sailing and not getting pregnant on my own, she had left the practice and I had a new nurse practitioner to call.
I love the ambiguity of "Rodriq left." Did she quit? Get fired? Die? Who's to say. Regardless, now it's Katie I talk to.
For my second IUI, I decided to be relentlessly positive. I felt good. I took my vitamins every day. I stopped drinking. As I lay on the table with my feet in the stirrups, I put in ear buds and listened to Groove is in the Heart. It's dancable. It's happy. It reminded me of being young, and learning I could be beautiful. I listened to it all day.
We're going to groove to Horton Hears a Who.
That's a line in that song. And that's when I starting thinking of you as my Succotash Wish.
For my third IUI, I intended to turn right around and do it all again. But I had cysts. Which explained some of the vague pains I'd been feeling, in the faint hope that it was you, digging a microscopic not-yet-fingernail into my flesh and trying to hold on. It wasn't, but that's okay. We canceled the IUI and I decided to dive in. Why not dive in?
So here we go.
Yesterday your would be father and I went to what I thought of as shots class. They showed a wavery video from around 1993, with a clean-cut white man in a wedding ring mixing ampules of hormones and then injecting them in the haunch of his negligee-wearing wife. Some of the needles are small, but the second wave of them are pretty large. Large enough that I'm going to make your father do them.
The nurse went over at length details about billing. Billing first, then shots. "I've done all this," I wrote in a margin to your father. I am type A. I called the specialty pharmacy already. I have our authorization numbers ready. I have a list of all that's covered. I am prepared. I am also turning into my mother.
In a cubicle after shots class we are given our calendar by Katie, who disinvolves herself when your father and I come to loggerheads about whether or not I can go to the wedding in Colombia in December.
"There's no way," your father said.
"We don't know if we'll get any embryos at all. If we don't, I'm going to Colombia."
Katie smiled, a fake smile, a smile that says This is none of my business.
I got home and entered all our coming schedule of medications and scans into a new, separate calendar. I called it Succatsh Project.
You are my project.
The timing is such that I'll be trying to turn around a novel revision in the next two weeks, and hanging it over - my other baby, one of a few now - to my agent to sell, one hopes, given that I haven't had an income to speak of in a couple of years. Then, while that baby wends its way through its own panel of tests, I will start injecting myself. I will start the You Project.
If all goes according to plan, exactly one month from today I will have my eggs retrieved, and you will be mixed up in a petri dish and closely watched. Your first standardized test.
If you pass, I will cancel my plane ticket to Colombia and you will be sown, like real succotash, perhaps a couple of you, we'll see. Then you'll have to sort it out for yourself. I will promise to make my vitamins and the scary shots - the big ones - and keep you warm and try, as best I can, to remain positive. To bathe you in the water and sunlight of my hope. But it will be up to you, my unknown mishmash of carrots and lima beans. My Succotash Wish.
For my first IUI, I was cynical. "You should have a positive attitude," the nurse practitioner said as she prepared the pipette. My feet were in stirrups. There's no inane landscape poster on the ceiling over the stirrup tables, because they get us in and out so fast.
"It's not about positive," I said. "It's just that I understand math."
The odds of IUIs working in women my age are slim indeed, so I was managing my expectations. Turns out I wasn't the only cynical one - by the time I returned from spending the summer writing another book and sailing and not getting pregnant on my own, she had left the practice and I had a new nurse practitioner to call.
I love the ambiguity of "Rodriq left." Did she quit? Get fired? Die? Who's to say. Regardless, now it's Katie I talk to.
For my second IUI, I decided to be relentlessly positive. I felt good. I took my vitamins every day. I stopped drinking. As I lay on the table with my feet in the stirrups, I put in ear buds and listened to Groove is in the Heart. It's dancable. It's happy. It reminded me of being young, and learning I could be beautiful. I listened to it all day.
We're going to groove to Horton Hears a Who.
That's a line in that song. And that's when I starting thinking of you as my Succotash Wish.
For my third IUI, I intended to turn right around and do it all again. But I had cysts. Which explained some of the vague pains I'd been feeling, in the faint hope that it was you, digging a microscopic not-yet-fingernail into my flesh and trying to hold on. It wasn't, but that's okay. We canceled the IUI and I decided to dive in. Why not dive in?
So here we go.
Yesterday your would be father and I went to what I thought of as shots class. They showed a wavery video from around 1993, with a clean-cut white man in a wedding ring mixing ampules of hormones and then injecting them in the haunch of his negligee-wearing wife. Some of the needles are small, but the second wave of them are pretty large. Large enough that I'm going to make your father do them.
The nurse went over at length details about billing. Billing first, then shots. "I've done all this," I wrote in a margin to your father. I am type A. I called the specialty pharmacy already. I have our authorization numbers ready. I have a list of all that's covered. I am prepared. I am also turning into my mother.
In a cubicle after shots class we are given our calendar by Katie, who disinvolves herself when your father and I come to loggerheads about whether or not I can go to the wedding in Colombia in December.
"There's no way," your father said.
"We don't know if we'll get any embryos at all. If we don't, I'm going to Colombia."
Katie smiled, a fake smile, a smile that says This is none of my business.
I got home and entered all our coming schedule of medications and scans into a new, separate calendar. I called it Succatsh Project.
You are my project.
The timing is such that I'll be trying to turn around a novel revision in the next two weeks, and hanging it over - my other baby, one of a few now - to my agent to sell, one hopes, given that I haven't had an income to speak of in a couple of years. Then, while that baby wends its way through its own panel of tests, I will start injecting myself. I will start the You Project.
If all goes according to plan, exactly one month from today I will have my eggs retrieved, and you will be mixed up in a petri dish and closely watched. Your first standardized test.
If you pass, I will cancel my plane ticket to Colombia and you will be sown, like real succotash, perhaps a couple of you, we'll see. Then you'll have to sort it out for yourself. I will promise to make my vitamins and the scary shots - the big ones - and keep you warm and try, as best I can, to remain positive. To bathe you in the water and sunlight of my hope. But it will be up to you, my unknown mishmash of carrots and lima beans. My Succotash Wish.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Nope
Yesterday my last houseguest left. Now it's just L and the Ward and Puppy and me.
Late last night, as all three were asleep, I gave in to self-pity and spent some time weeping on the bathroom floor. The tiles were cool, and though I told myself I was crying because my cramps were bad, the truth is my cramps are always bad and there's nothing particularly special about it. The truth is, I was disappointed. And tired. And socially exhausted.
But mostly, disappointed.
Late last night, as all three were asleep, I gave in to self-pity and spent some time weeping on the bathroom floor. The tiles were cool, and though I told myself I was crying because my cramps were bad, the truth is my cramps are always bad and there's nothing particularly special about it. The truth is, I was disappointed. And tired. And socially exhausted.
But mostly, disappointed.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Late
I'm three days late.
I was due Friday. It's now Monday.
On Friday, I took a pee test. It was negative.
I took another one Saturday. It malfunctioned.
I have no tests left. Til Wednesday, when a new kit arrives via Amazon, though it will probably be moot by then, as I explained to my friend J, feeling certain that nothing will bring my period on faster today than if I go to the trouble to order more tests.
Those puppies are expensive. How much have I spent on sticks to urinate on alone, in the past four years? Probably a few hundred dollars.
I feel vaguely ill-at-ease and crampy. This could, according to the internet, mean almost anything. It could as easily mean yes as it could mean my period is imminent. Which it probably is. Right?
But even so. Three days late.
A calendar review confirms this is the latest I have been this year. In January I was two days late. There was day of, the next day, and then the day after that it came. This time I'm day of, Saturday, Sunday, and now it's Monday.
What do I want the answer to be, is the question. Hard to know. Hard to decide in the midst of so much uncertainty. Hard not to examine and over-analyze.
I was due Friday. It's now Monday.
On Friday, I took a pee test. It was negative.
I took another one Saturday. It malfunctioned.
I have no tests left. Til Wednesday, when a new kit arrives via Amazon, though it will probably be moot by then, as I explained to my friend J, feeling certain that nothing will bring my period on faster today than if I go to the trouble to order more tests.
Those puppies are expensive. How much have I spent on sticks to urinate on alone, in the past four years? Probably a few hundred dollars.
I feel vaguely ill-at-ease and crampy. This could, according to the internet, mean almost anything. It could as easily mean yes as it could mean my period is imminent. Which it probably is. Right?
But even so. Three days late.
A calendar review confirms this is the latest I have been this year. In January I was two days late. There was day of, the next day, and then the day after that it came. This time I'm day of, Saturday, Sunday, and now it's Monday.
What do I want the answer to be, is the question. Hard to know. Hard to decide in the midst of so much uncertainty. Hard not to examine and over-analyze.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Symptoms
What I have:
Sore breasts
Indigestion
Mild cramping, intermittent
Mild bloating, same
One day late period
One negative pregnancy test, taken day of expected period (yesterday morning)
Mild nausea, intermittent
Anxiety (duh, near constant)
Late night heart burn
A flat tire on the car
Fifty thousand words of new novel
What I don't have:
Any idea what the deal is
A book deal
Kids
Now what?
Sore breasts
Indigestion
Mild cramping, intermittent
Mild bloating, same
One day late period
One negative pregnancy test, taken day of expected period (yesterday morning)
Mild nausea, intermittent
Anxiety (duh, near constant)
Late night heart burn
A flat tire on the car
Fifty thousand words of new novel
What I don't have:
Any idea what the deal is
A book deal
Kids
Now what?
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
The Ten Thousandth Facebook Baby Announcement
Not that I'm not happy for my friends. I love my friends. My friends are great and wonderful people. But I mean, God damn. Starting when we were all 30, 31, it was babies babies babies, now it's kids kids kids, a few teenagers teenagers teenagers, still more babies babies babies. It's great, but it's also hard. The boat has left, and it feels sometimes like no one cares that I'm not on it.
I haven't told many people about us trying, or my being diagnosed as unexplained, or our undergoing IF treatments. A select few. Partly because I'm very private about health stuff, partly because I was ambivalent for the first half of my thirties, right when everyone was in peak baby-having fever. I tell myself that it will be fine if I'm childfree at the end of the line. And it will be fine. But part of me will also be really, really sad. Every month is the same - I track, I time everything, I take vitamins, I wait. Then, nothing. Ever. I have never had a positive pregnancy test. Ever. It's a metronome of disappointment, and it never stops.
Most of the friends I have told about IF don't inquire how it's going, don't ask how I (we) are doing, or what we're doing. They just smile thinly and say "good luck." They've got babies and kids, all of them. I think I make them uncomfortable. Or they just don't know what to say, so they say nothing.
I understand it.
But I feel very, very alone.
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Sunday, May 21, 2017
My boobs are killing me
And I can't tell if this is indigestion or cramps or the creature from "Alien" rooting around in my midsection.
Today is Sunday.
I pee on the stick on Thursday.
Four days to go.
And I can't tell which I want it to be.
Today is Sunday.
I pee on the stick on Thursday.
Four days to go.
And I can't tell which I want it to be.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Okay, You
Listen up, imaginary baby. I through fooling around. Okay?
You know what I've done? I've gone back on meds for my weird brain thing that might stand in your way. Done. Dealt with. I have been imaged in a way that required my whole insides to be washed out with iodine, which stings. Done. Dealt with. I have just completed a cycle of meds that in addition to making me feel like I'm wrapped in a thick layer of cotton wool, are also meant to kick my body into gear and increase the odds of you. Tomorrow morning I will go, coffee in hand, to be probed in a way I would have found horrifying a mere five years ago, but which now seems routine. They will tell me how the meds are working. Then, a few days later, I will Have a Procedure.
I'm holding up my end, kid. What's your excuse?
Get out here and start pulling your weight. GET A JOB, IMAGINARY BABY.
I've had just about enough of this foolishness from you.
You know what I've done? I've gone back on meds for my weird brain thing that might stand in your way. Done. Dealt with. I have been imaged in a way that required my whole insides to be washed out with iodine, which stings. Done. Dealt with. I have just completed a cycle of meds that in addition to making me feel like I'm wrapped in a thick layer of cotton wool, are also meant to kick my body into gear and increase the odds of you. Tomorrow morning I will go, coffee in hand, to be probed in a way I would have found horrifying a mere five years ago, but which now seems routine. They will tell me how the meds are working. Then, a few days later, I will Have a Procedure.
I'm holding up my end, kid. What's your excuse?
Get out here and start pulling your weight. GET A JOB, IMAGINARY BABY.
I've had just about enough of this foolishness from you.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
No More Fooling Around
Okay, imaginary baby. I've had enough. Enough, I say.
First off, my disappointment at last month's non-event, coupled with the fact that I am actually turning forty in two months, has given me new resolve.
I've done all the research. I've poked around. I've talked to insurance companies. And I've made an appointment, in one month's time, with a doctor who I am going to refer to from her on out as the Big Guns.
I'm getting medieval on your ass, imaginary baby. And by medieval, I mean twenty-first century, because this is going to be some seriously sci fi shit, right here. There's going to be shots and medications and more transvaginal ultra sounds than a Republican can shake a stick at. Total strangers are going to take very close looks at my most secret depths. There will be imaging. There will be so many blood tests I might wind up with track marks. All for you, my little imaginary friend, all for you.
Or if nothing else, all for my own peace of mind around your nonexistence. Because there's a good chance that none of this science fiction magic will work. That I will undergo it all, and I will hit my insurance coverage limit before anything works. Or that I will undergo it all, and they'll say, oh well, your eggs are terrible, want to use a donor? And I will say no.
Because if I'm going to have a baby who isn't mine, I feel like it would be better - morally, mentally, physically - to find one of the zillions of already extant young people who are not related to me, and who are living in less than ideal conditions, and in need of a home with mentally stable and financially solvent people. Also, being pregnant is horrifying.
Sorry, imaginary baby, but it totally is, Should you ever actually exist, I already dread the day of having to explain to you how all this stuff works, because the first thing to know is, it's disgusting and disturbing.
So. You just sit tight, right now. I mean, if you want to beat me to the punch and start appearing in time for me to cancel the appointment with Big Guns, by all means, be my guest. But I'm guessing you're not going to do that. And that's okay.
What we're after, in this new phase, is certainty. I need it, I've decided. I need either a certain yes - panic! we can't afford it! the new apartment is too small! - or a certain no. With a certain no, I can stop thinking about it. I can stop worrying about it.
I can stop updating this unread blog.
First off, my disappointment at last month's non-event, coupled with the fact that I am actually turning forty in two months, has given me new resolve.
I've done all the research. I've poked around. I've talked to insurance companies. And I've made an appointment, in one month's time, with a doctor who I am going to refer to from her on out as the Big Guns.
I'm getting medieval on your ass, imaginary baby. And by medieval, I mean twenty-first century, because this is going to be some seriously sci fi shit, right here. There's going to be shots and medications and more transvaginal ultra sounds than a Republican can shake a stick at. Total strangers are going to take very close looks at my most secret depths. There will be imaging. There will be so many blood tests I might wind up with track marks. All for you, my little imaginary friend, all for you.
Or if nothing else, all for my own peace of mind around your nonexistence. Because there's a good chance that none of this science fiction magic will work. That I will undergo it all, and I will hit my insurance coverage limit before anything works. Or that I will undergo it all, and they'll say, oh well, your eggs are terrible, want to use a donor? And I will say no.
Because if I'm going to have a baby who isn't mine, I feel like it would be better - morally, mentally, physically - to find one of the zillions of already extant young people who are not related to me, and who are living in less than ideal conditions, and in need of a home with mentally stable and financially solvent people. Also, being pregnant is horrifying.
Sorry, imaginary baby, but it totally is, Should you ever actually exist, I already dread the day of having to explain to you how all this stuff works, because the first thing to know is, it's disgusting and disturbing.
So. You just sit tight, right now. I mean, if you want to beat me to the punch and start appearing in time for me to cancel the appointment with Big Guns, by all means, be my guest. But I'm guessing you're not going to do that. And that's okay.
What we're after, in this new phase, is certainty. I need it, I've decided. I need either a certain yes - panic! we can't afford it! the new apartment is too small! - or a certain no. With a certain no, I can stop thinking about it. I can stop worrying about it.
I can stop updating this unread blog.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
I had a dream
I'm starting to get superstitious. Or maybe I always was superstitious, and I've only lately started accepting it. I indulge in magical thinking. I reach out for talismans.
A couple of weeks ago, I spotted. Just once. And it came with twisting back pain. Those two things could mean most anything - that I'm 39 and in perimenopause, for instance, or that I slept wrong, or that I was working too hard at Christmas. Whatever. But I noticed the signs. I marked them down, to myself.
Christmas came and went, and I thought about it. I thought - I bet this is it. I posed for pictures with my family, thinking about one day saying to someone, see? You were there. We just didn't know it yet.
We went to Las Vegas. On the plane a baby sat in front of me, arms waving like a little anemone, and hours later, after we arrived at the house and I was going through my shoulder bag looking for tip money, I pulled out a pink rubber pacifier. Surprised, I laughed aloud. The baby had dropped it, and I'd carried it away. In the same moment that I knew it was just a coincidence, I also decided it was a sign. I resolved to keep it, if my suspicions were right. To wash it off. See? I imagined explaining to someone, later. Pointing to it in the bourgeois display cabinet where we keep silly things and curiosities. Know where I got that? Fate, that's where.
I decided to drink as much as I usually would on this vacation, because after all, I didn't officially know anything yet. And this would probably be my last chance. For how long. A year? Basically. Long enough, anyway. I smiled and cheersed with rum, and we took a picture around the table on New Year's Eve, all of dressed in our best and smiling big. My breasts look unusually lush in that picture. See? I imagined saying to someone, later. You can tell.
We went to Vegas instead of the tropics because one of us was planning to be pregnant then, and she was afraid of Zika. She wound up getting divorced instead. Wouldn't that be ironic, I thought to myself. I composed the email to her, in my mind. You're not going to believe this, but.... And then a picture of the stick.
So when my due date came and went, I wasn't surprised. Nervous, maybe. Wow, I thought, was I right? The signs are all there. I felt different. Moods different. Soreness different. Absent, in fact. Waiting.
Another day came and went. We flew home. I wore a tight new sweater dress, and poked at my soft belly when in the airplane bathroom, sinking my finger into my flesh, through the fat to the gentle give of muscles underneath. What's in there? I wondered to myself. I tallied months up on my fingers. Five months at Figawi - just showing. Good for one liners in the joke tent. Then arrival at the end of September, give or take. I wondered if there were a way to be in Marblehead for it. To be home. All summer, and then L would take fall off, and we could hunker down, and go back to New York organized and nearly conscious. Ready.
That night, I fell asleep. I dreamt. I dreamt about peeing on the stick, and watching it, and the stick said "yes." I was happy. I was excited. Is this really it? I wondered to myself. Can this be real? But it wasn't real, because I was dreaming. I woke up, unsure. Still dark, but getting light. The stick was a dream. But I had one. Should I take it.
I didn't want to. I knew it had all been a dream. If it's true, I reasoned, it will be true if I use the stick or not. Same as if it's not true. I went back to bed.
I woke up in deep, gnawing pain. All day, all last night, keeping me awake, and all today.
I still feel it.
More pain than I anticipated. But I guess that's been true of this entire process. Always more pain than anticipated.
A couple of weeks ago, I spotted. Just once. And it came with twisting back pain. Those two things could mean most anything - that I'm 39 and in perimenopause, for instance, or that I slept wrong, or that I was working too hard at Christmas. Whatever. But I noticed the signs. I marked them down, to myself.
Christmas came and went, and I thought about it. I thought - I bet this is it. I posed for pictures with my family, thinking about one day saying to someone, see? You were there. We just didn't know it yet.
We went to Las Vegas. On the plane a baby sat in front of me, arms waving like a little anemone, and hours later, after we arrived at the house and I was going through my shoulder bag looking for tip money, I pulled out a pink rubber pacifier. Surprised, I laughed aloud. The baby had dropped it, and I'd carried it away. In the same moment that I knew it was just a coincidence, I also decided it was a sign. I resolved to keep it, if my suspicions were right. To wash it off. See? I imagined explaining to someone, later. Pointing to it in the bourgeois display cabinet where we keep silly things and curiosities. Know where I got that? Fate, that's where.
I decided to drink as much as I usually would on this vacation, because after all, I didn't officially know anything yet. And this would probably be my last chance. For how long. A year? Basically. Long enough, anyway. I smiled and cheersed with rum, and we took a picture around the table on New Year's Eve, all of dressed in our best and smiling big. My breasts look unusually lush in that picture. See? I imagined saying to someone, later. You can tell.
We went to Vegas instead of the tropics because one of us was planning to be pregnant then, and she was afraid of Zika. She wound up getting divorced instead. Wouldn't that be ironic, I thought to myself. I composed the email to her, in my mind. You're not going to believe this, but.... And then a picture of the stick.
So when my due date came and went, I wasn't surprised. Nervous, maybe. Wow, I thought, was I right? The signs are all there. I felt different. Moods different. Soreness different. Absent, in fact. Waiting.
Another day came and went. We flew home. I wore a tight new sweater dress, and poked at my soft belly when in the airplane bathroom, sinking my finger into my flesh, through the fat to the gentle give of muscles underneath. What's in there? I wondered to myself. I tallied months up on my fingers. Five months at Figawi - just showing. Good for one liners in the joke tent. Then arrival at the end of September, give or take. I wondered if there were a way to be in Marblehead for it. To be home. All summer, and then L would take fall off, and we could hunker down, and go back to New York organized and nearly conscious. Ready.
That night, I fell asleep. I dreamt. I dreamt about peeing on the stick, and watching it, and the stick said "yes." I was happy. I was excited. Is this really it? I wondered to myself. Can this be real? But it wasn't real, because I was dreaming. I woke up, unsure. Still dark, but getting light. The stick was a dream. But I had one. Should I take it.
I didn't want to. I knew it had all been a dream. If it's true, I reasoned, it will be true if I use the stick or not. Same as if it's not true. I went back to bed.
I woke up in deep, gnawing pain. All day, all last night, keeping me awake, and all today.
I still feel it.
More pain than I anticipated. But I guess that's been true of this entire process. Always more pain than anticipated.
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