Shock

I spent so much time worrying over our appointment today that now that it's over, and all is well, and everything looks wonderful, and there's a yolk sac and even a faint faint heartbeat (whaaaaat?), I now am unable to process how I feel.

Relief, certainly. Also, shock that this process actually seems to have worked. Also, anxiety over logistics.

When I am stressed I typically turn my mind immediately to logistics.

Right now, I am sitting in a ball on the sofa, numb.

Moments of excitement burst through, but they are too much to process, so when I feel them, I shut down again.

"I need to crate myself," I told L. Who, incidentally, started to cry at the end of the appointment.

"I know that," he said. "You know why?"

"Because you've lived with me for twenty years?" I guessed.

Probably.

Holy crap, Succotash.

In between all this storm of unimaginable emotion, I have time to wonder who you are. What kind of person might you be, stewing in there. Tenacious, in that you didn't let being graded only b/c quality stop you. I admire that. I like to think that you, like me, don't like being told the odds on things. That you might be the kind of person who says, who are you, to grade me, and think that means anything? You don't know. Just you wait and see.

Hurry Up and Wait

Six week scan is Thursday.

Today is Tuesday.

There is an eternity, yawning open between today and Thursday. I cannot entirely imagine how that Expanse of time, that chasm, can possibly be bridged. I know that some of the time will be filled tonight, as I go with a friend to a potentially important professional event. I will be distracted by nerves and networking and the foundation garment that I have to wear under my restrictive, but very flattering, cocktail dress. That's six hours, give or take.

I'll spend another seven or eight sleeping tonight.

Then maybe another seven or eight on top of that, sleeping Wednesday night.

But even so, even with all those hours accounted for, I struggle not to try to force Thursday to arrive sooner, simply as an act of will.

I read my body for clues that everything is all right. I have had no spotting. I have had pretty consistent nausea that seems to worsen later in the day. My breasts are starting to feel slightly sore. All of these are good signs. They point to good things.

But I won't be reassured until I'm told to be reassured, and probably - if I'm honest - not even then. Then I will just have another new benchmark over which to fret. New impossible chasms of time to cross on a ferry of my own fear.

I hope you're okay in there, Succotash. Feeling warm and safe. Growing. Drinking up those vitamins and chia seeds ad whatever else filters its way in there. I hope you aren't afraid. There's nothing for you to be afraid of. I'll be afraid for both of us, okay?

Worrying

Anxiety is the future stealing from the present, somebody told me not long ago, and even though he has a point, knowing that isn't quite enough to make me stop worrying today. I have no concrete reason for concern. Everything is the same. Mild cramping, which I am treating with rest. I ordered Chinese food. My appetite isn't great, as it hasn't been so far.

Maybe I'm worried because I've told a couple of people and I am worried about jinxing myself. That could be it, even though I am an intelligent, highly educated woman who by all rights out not believe in jinxes.

I would rather be at the library.

I would rather be deep in my work.

Instead, I'm on the couch, with a heating pad, simmering in sexual frustration and preoccupied with forces wholly and completely out of my control. I am in the present, fully, because my body is trapping me in it, and yet the present is being stolen from me by my fears about the future.

The mind can be a duplicitous thing. Or place in which to dwell.

Second Beta

"I have a couple of embarrassing questions."

"It's okay. I'm a nurse."

"Well, just one."

"Uh huh?"

"So. I know I'm not supposed to [drops voice] have sex. But can I [drops to whisper] orgasm?"

"You mean...."

"You know. Orgasm."

"Like, outside, not inside?"

"Yeah."

"Um. I don't see why not. But let me check with the more senior nurse."

"Great. Thanks. Cause I was all set to make myself feel better for this cycle failing by getting high and having sex with my husband, and then it was positive."

[Laughs]

I Wanted to See Them

Two lines.

That's really two lines, I'm seeing there, tonight, as my husband and I celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the night we met by retracing our steps on February 12-13, 1999.

"Poor Succotash," I said. "There's a lot of history here. He's getting in really late in the game."

"Yeah, she is," he said.

Shock

Succotash.....?

Is that you.....?

Beta Day

Yesterday was a big grief day. Big, big grief. "Big feelings," as an irritating self-actualized person I know would put it. There was weeping. There was lying in bed immobile. Outside, the sleet turned to rain, and it was cold inside my heart, too.

Today, the weather has broken. The sun came out. I walked the puppy over to get a coffee. I took my last PIO shot. I made the puppy is breakfast. I washed and dressed and went for my blood test. I went to the post office. I hoofed it over to First Avenue to drop off my full container of sharps. Then I hoofed it back to Fifth and stopped in to the small weird antique jewelry store that fixes my grandmother's watch for me and dropped off a ring to be sized. They said it would be ready at the end of the day.

Now I'm at the library.

The phone is ringing on silent next to me with the results of my beta.

I am about to be set free.

Panic Attack

I woke up at 3:20 in the morning with a racing heartbeat and thoughts all over the place. Thinking about smells, and my body, and did it work, and did it not work, and what do I do, over and over and over again.

I finally had to take a slug of Nyquil to knock myself back into sleep.

This morning I feel shaky and anxious, and unclear what to do with myself, or about it, or even if there is anything to be done.

I guess I could go buy a test and take it and start the grieving process today instead of working. But what good is that?

What good is any of it.

And Now I Feel Nauseated

So that's great, and not fucking with my head at all.

Fuck It

I had thought I would take an early test, just to get it over with, but you know what? I know it didn't work.

I just know it. I know it in my entrails. I feel like my period is coming, and nothing else feels different, and my spidey smell went away almost immediately, and I just know for a fact that it didn't work. It just didn't work. Because why would it work? It's never worked before. It didn't work with four embryos, why the hell would it work with one? It wouldn't. It won't.

The good news is, my certainty means that I can happily anticipate not giving myself progesterone shots in my rear after Wednesday morning, I can stop putting progesterone suppositories inside my body Tuesday night, I can spend Wednesday afternoon stoned out of my gourd on the couch if I want to. I can exercise all I want, and I can have as much sex as I want or can stand. I can admire my flat stomach and my full breasts and take pleasure in my body and not worry about it changing, at least not for awhile, and I can go to the BVI for my birthday next month and race fucking yachts and drink rum if I so choose.

These are all superficial pleasures, I realize, but to be honest, they are pleasures that I know, and can understand, and would miss.

Is my certainty a ruse? Am I kidding myself? Am I pretending to already know the answer so that when I learn the answer for real, and the answer is no, I do not lose my fucking mind with grief? I mean, maybe. I have definitely been deep in the grief in the past. But I don't know that I felt this absolute negative certainty going into the end. Maybe I did, I don't know. I guess I could read back in this blog and see.

Today, right now, I am certain it did not work, and I believe myself to be okay with that. I just want it to be over, and soon it will be over.

Soon, this fucking nightmare will be over.

I hate this

My spidey smell is back.

Yesterday, I took myself out for a foot rub, thinking - I think rightly - that at this particular moment it is okay for me to focus on being calm and relaxed. While I was there another woman came in, causing a fuss, unpleaseable, but even more noticeable - at least to me - was that I could smell her breath from across the room. Over the evening I could smell other things too - winter coats on the subway. Pine-sol as a I passed an office building.

Now, I'm sitting in the den of our apartment, and I can smell the yellow roses in the living room.

I hate this, because no matter how much detachment I maintain, no matter how much realism, when something like this happens it means that hope is sneaking in. And I hate having hope sneak in. It's hope's fault if, on Wednesday, I am lying on the bathroom floor weeping and crying "My baby my baby my baby," which has happened before, after a negative beta, and so I can only assume that it could happen again. That's hope's fault. If I tell myself for an absolute fact that this process didn't work, that there is no hope, that I am doing this for certainty or closure and for no other reason, and if I truly believe it, then shouldn't I be protected from disappointment?

At least a little?

I wish I couldn't smell these roses.

In for a penny

One 5 cell, grade b/c embryo is now somewhere inside my darkest depths, swimming around, wondering - if a ball of cells can wonder -what has just happened to it.

I am on the sofa, about to slurp leftover ramen. I have also poured myself a glass of wine, on the logic that what I really need to do is be as relaxed as possible. This is why I did the transfer under sedation. No cramping. No stress.

Nooooooo stress.

No psych up music this time. Just total chilledness. A friend walked me home. And now I'm home. It's a sunny cheerful day. I have no evening plans. I might go get a foot rub in a couple of hours. That's my big idea. A foot rub. Maybe I'll even go to the bank.

Tomorrow, the cleaners come, and I have an eye appointment, and I will get my eyebrows done, and maybe my toes, because I want to be pretty and to care for myself in silly and small ways. Tomorrow night I will binge-watch Rick and Morty for the 50th time and eat cheese. These are the plans I have made for myself. I will do this between sticking myself with progesterone shots in the morning and progesterone suppositories in the evening. And I guess I should keep taking the doxycycline. Let's not forget that.

So. That's where we stand.

I have next to no faith in a positive outcome. I feel no hope. I feel no despair. Right now I feel even. Steady. Prepared.

That could all be an illusion, of course. But for right now, today, in this moment, that is where we stand.

Waiting

Either I transfer today, or I do not.

Either two have held on, or one has, or none have.

Either I transfer today, or in two days, or never.

It's a binary day, a friend said to me once in high school when I asked him how he was doing. Yes, or no. Zero, or one.

Two

Two eggs fertilized.

The numbers get worse. Time will out, and that's just how it goes.

If they hang on, I'll probably transfer them Tuesday. I'll be sedated this time, at my request, since it worked for a friend.

Anyway. That's where we stand.

Oof

Six follicles yields four eggs, of which three are mature. And a truly staggering level of pain.

A friend sent me fancy cheese, which I have been eating.

That is the best part.