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.