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?

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.

This is Fucking Bullshit

And I hate it.

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.

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.

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.

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.