The Sweet Spot

Well, it’s CD12, try #4. Hope has bloomed again because how can it not? Another precipice of waiting – this is where the sweet spot is.

There are good things, here in this moment:

• I got a really new, fabulous haircut. I have been rocking a modification of the same cut for a while now and feeling more like a soccer mom than I ever want to. I switched hairdressers (I have a lot of guilt about this) to La’s crazy alcoholic-but-super-creative hairdresser and got the femmpadour (femme + pompadour) that I have been longing for. Now its time to banish the glitter and get some color. Why is this so awesome? Because feeling like a stylish, hip, urban queer makes me feel like myself, and anything that pulls me out of the mustmakebabynow vacuum is a good thing.
• I had the most awesome acupuncture appointment last Thursday! My coworker is in school for a degree in TCM and she recommended I go to the school clinic, which is inexpensive. Although I love the acupuncture clinic where I go, its a community space and they only do points in hands, feet and head and don’t do other treatments. At the school, I had  a crew of 4 students who spent a long time asking me questions, then did acupuncture points in my hands, feet, head and abdomen, and did a moxabustion treatment which is crazy and so great! The gist is that they use a mugwort herbal mix and light it on fire on acupoints! But it doesn’t hurt and it increases warmth and flow of chi. This was also on my belly. Finally, I got two big paper envelopes of herbs to make tea with. I have been drinking the pre-ovulation tea since then and I would swear my BBT temps have upticked just a little (which is good since mine are usually on the lower end throughout my cycle) So.excited.to.go.back!
• I talked with my friend/pastor (she was my friend and classmate before we started a church together, or, I early adopted her church rather) and got some good spiritual perspective. Which OMFG I needed really badly.
• We have decided to do a variation of the “Sperm Meets Egg” plan which we are lucky enough to be able to try because BFF is fucking amazing. I’ve adapted it because it assumes ovulation on day 14, and I usually O later than that (on day 17-20) So instead of started every other day inseminations on day 8, we started on day 11. This means last night was our first insem of this cycle. Crazy!
• I am using the advanced CBE OPK which I am a little wary of (its super new and has very few reviews, but those that I’ve read say it flashes ‘high’ fertility for DAYS and then doesn’t register the ‘peak’ at all) and we got a flashing smiley face today (‘high’ but not ‘peak’ fertility) – so that’s a nice reinforcement of the plan. I am, of course, triple checking because peeing on things is just what I do now.
• Tomorrow night (and into wednesday in the wee hours) La and I will, along with some friends, be among the first folks in Colorado to get a civil union! We are doing an insemination before we head out to wait in line, and I really like the idea that if this cycle works, it could very well be on that day. That’s the nice thing about so many chances and not knowing which one, exactly, will take.
• Spring is here (at least until Tuesday night when we will get another  snow storm) and La and I spent all day in the yard, cleaning out the shed, planting trees, and getting things ready for chicken coops and garden beds. I have the influx of freckles and pinkish sunburn to prove it!

One more wave of hope . . .

Lemonade

The things that are keeping me hopeful right now:

• A  totally unremarkable perfectly uneventful cycle last month. Downside of uneventful= not pregnant; upside of uneventful = a 32 day cycle, ovulation clearly happening on day 17, a 14 day luteal phase. In short, typical and healthy and not at all confounding.
• Bleeding again, because it means the waiting to wait has started and who doesn’t feel hopeful at the beginning?
• BFF will have insurance through his employer beginning on May 15, which should be right about the time we find out if try #4 worked. If it doesn’t, we will be able to get the swim team tested for speed and agility without paying out the crapper for it.
• I started knitting a blanket for my nephew-to-be. I haven’t knitted anything for over a year but decided this is definitely a good reason to start again. I got some nice babysoft yarn and a pattern that is complex enough to keep me engaged but within my skill set enough to be able to interact while knitting. I forget how medicinal knitting can be for my anxiety.

BFF took La and I out for dinner on Monday, and it was exactly what I needed. That dude is so good at cheering me up. Its also comforting to know that it bums him out too, that he is invested in and cares about the outcome and its impact on us. I drank a big glass of a much fancier than usual (for me) wine and tried to put my bad attitude behind me.

Although we all understand that tries 1-3 could have been ‘unsuccessful’ for about a million reasons that are out of our control, we have decided to switch a few things up this time. Namely, we are going to do inseminations in the morning and evening, although we still need to figure out timing so we don’t over tax the team. I’m also upping my OPK game (which is substantial already):I stopped in walmart yesterday (not a place I’m accustomed to shopping but as they are the *only* pharmacy in the area that carries the specific kind of insulin we have to give our dog, I do have to stop by a few times a year to get his prescription) to pick up insulin and syringes for Ed and took a spin around the pharmacy. I actually was considering looking for one of the First Response fertility kits (which I have mixed feelings about, but thought might be interesting anyway) and ended up finding these CBE “advanced” ovulation kits, which supposedly identify 4 days of fertility – 2 high and 2 peak. Because of my inherent distrust of anything I don’t know, I will plan to continue testing with my usual wondfos as well, but I feel like I owe these a shot, and since they are so new that there aren’t any reviews yet, I feel like I’m doing my part for the great TTC experiment. You can never pee on too many sticks, right? right.

Off the cliff

We jumped off the precipice and landed in disappointment. In other words, another startlingly blank window on the pregnancy test – one solid pink line and white white white.

I have been a real mess this ‘wait.’ I’ve chalked it up to how hard life has been on all the other fronts. The huge grant that was sucking all of my time (which is done now, by the way), La’s events that were sucking all of her time and energy, being sick and not being able to actually take care of myself, the on-off shitty spring snowstorms . . .

But I also wonder if I knew. Last Wednesday I was miserable, yesterday we went shopping for baby gifts for two of the new wee ones to join us eathside and I lost in right in front of the fucking pampers at Target – not my style. No matter what symptoms I seemed to have – an ‘implantation dip,’ super high temps, sore boobs, copious cervical fluid – I never felt any real hope that I was pregnant emerge.

So, onward we go! No Christmas baby, maybe we will have a little capricorn. Or not. Who knows? Any tips for staying hopeful when precedent doesn’t give you much reason to be? I know three tries is nothing in the grand scheme of things, and I do think I believe that in the long run I’ll get pregnant . . .its the day to day mess that feels harder to handle.

On the upside, I worked about as gazillion more hours than I should have in the last few weeks and am still fighting a nasty chest cold and the only thing I *have* to finish is my budget for next year, so I’m taking the day off to watch shitty TV and take naps with the dogs. Sometimes getting to indulge your pity party for a very limited while is really, really nice.

Thanks so much for the many, many kind comments over the last few posts. Its really awesome to have all y’all out there. You have no idea how much your comments mean, and how much I truly enjoy living vicariously through your pregnancies/babies. La is getting sick of me saying, “so and so, my blog friend, . . . ”

heart!

al

Looking down.

The night before we take a pregnancy test is the most conflicted I ever feel in this process. The waves of hope and misery, doubt and possibility wash over me in a sickening torrent. It’s a precipice I simultaneously want to jump from immediately and stand on the edge of forever.

Bon chance.

Transmissions from the Field

Fertility Friend and I agree that today I am 6DPO. Other than a horrific stomach-something-or-other that made yesterday a comedy of painful errors and the beginning of a cold passed along to me by my dear wife, I am feeling very good. I mean, of course I am. Even supposing a little cluster of constantly expanding cells IS somewhere in my fallopian tube/urterus, it hasn’t implanted or started causing chaos yet.

My good friend had her baby on Saturday – another big gayby welcome to Marlow! The pictures that have already showed up prove what I always thought, that my friends are going to be totally smitten, absolutely brilliant parents. And the wave of babies keeps crashing in! (Another welcome to Baby E over at The Falco Project who looks like a chubby little doll!)

So Marlow is here, and I just got a dropbox file of photos of my BFFs baby, and despite the spring snowstorm that Colorado sprung on us, it is decidedly the time of the year when things start springing to life.

And here I am sad and sobby. Not jealous this time, just weepy over what I hope will be but am terrified will not. This wait has been harder than the last few, just emotionally draining. I am not nearly as obsessed with tracking every gas bubble and tummy rumble, but I am acutely aware of the deep feeling of longing. Of the heart-soreness of wanting something and simply not having the control to make it happen. Desire is such a difficult part of being human. Hope is not always roses and sunshine; sometimes you only feel the edges where it starts to bleed into grief, where desire meets despair and makes you one hell of a volatile cocktail.

I am grateful for this space, for the people who read this and maybe understand and maybe even say something kind. There aren’t so many people who know what we are doing, and those who do are tired of hearing about the details. I don’t begrudge them that; we’ve been talking about it so long. Besides, anonymous public feelings are the most satisfying, right?

Its so hard to feel like this isn’t fair. Its not fair! This has been my rallying cry for as long as I can remember – to my parents, to the world. Its not fair. And its not. This isn’t, and so many other things aren’t either. I’m really good at coming up with strategies to make the world more fair. But there isn’t a damn thing to make this one more fair. It just is. Some people get pregnant right away, without trying. Sometimes people we judge as not ‘good parents’ get pregnant easily. Sometimes people who are so good are never able to have a baby. And sometimes the good people have babies and the bad ones don’t. Its far more complicated than we would like to admit, but its never, ever just ‘fair.’ No matter who you are this, like so much in life, just really isn’t fair.

Thank you all for letting me feel my feelings . . .and for reading about them, too. One week down, one more to go.

 

1DPO. I guess.

I’m not willing to make proclamations on anything related to my junk anymore, but signs are pointing to ovulation yesterday (a + OPK on Monday, eggwhite cervical fluid M-W and a temp rise today) so I’m gonna go ahead and call it.

Its been a helluva week and honestly, making babies has been the last thing on my mind (ok, not the LAST but much further down on the list than usual)

After quite a bit of back and forth, it was determined that my agency would take on writing a rather huge and pretty competitive government grant on behalf of the local department of education. This is great in a lot of ways, because we would be contracted to do a lot of the work and the bulk are things we already do well. I also don’t really trust the person who would otherwise be writing the grant, and I am a firm believer in the adage ‘if you want it done right, do it yourself.’

So, I’m doing it myself.

I am not a grant writer, although I have written them before and the task frequently falls to me because of how small our organization is and because I enjoy writing and do it well. But this one is some serious shiz. And maybe if I didn’t have a bunch of other stuff to do, an emotionally melted down graduate student in my office crying about her research project, and a bunch of colleagues from other places constantly sending me their opinions, I would feel awesome about it. Because this is the package deal I’ve been handed, I am feeling decidedly stressed the fuck out. This morning my computer crashed and I thought I was going to lose my shit. But I didn’t.

Its gonna be ok. And, in some ways, I’m grateful for the distraction. It would be nice if it were a little more calm a distraction though.

In 10 days, La and I will have been gay married* for a whole year! Because she is producing a show the night before, and I have a concert to perform the day of, we won’t be doing anything too fancy – we did get a smokin’ deal on a fancy hotel room and have a gift card for the restaurant in the place where we had our big gay love extravaganza event. Assuming my math is correct, we could also conceivably take a home pregnancy test that day, but I don’t know if something that loaded would be the best way to celebrate.

So, on to lucky wait number three we go!

Charmed

My approach to tracking this go around has been a bit more hands off, by obsessive lesbian type A standards, anyway. Previously, I had been very nervous about ensuring that I gave BFF and La good lead time and peed on multiple OPKs a day from very early on and was military style about the BBT.

After the Great 60 Day Cycle of 2013, and the surprise ovulation it dealt, I decided it was time to chill out a little. Obviously, there’s no letting go entirely of the uterine watch, but I told La that I could provide a window of time and from there, I could give daily updates. I decided no inseminating until the OPK looked good.

I started peeing on sticks last week – a new batch of wondfo’s + the CBE’s since I finally exhausted the initial order of 100 wondfo OPKs. The new wonfo’s had suspiciously new seeming packaging and I was distrustful simply by dint of their unfamiliarity. Whereas my prior batch had given me a second line no matter what prior to O, these new ones had virtually no test line at all, even yesterday when I got a big glop of eggwhite cervical fluid. I was getting nervous and beginning to second guess myself. I even thought . . .maybe we will inseminate just in case . . .

But like an affirmation from the great pee stick god, today I got positives on both the CBE and the wondfo. Shocking, really, since last night there was barely a whisper of a test line, and today it was clearly as dark as the control. And so . . .the egg white fluid + independently verified OPKs + my very obviously increased sex drive (only an occasional ‘sign’ of ovulation for me, unfortunately) means we are on to try #3 tonight! No joke!

Today is my Dad’s birthday . . .so that’s kind of awesome. Its the day after Easter, smack dab in the middle of a patch of gorgeous spring weather, my friend’s baby shower was this saturday, two weeks from yesterday will be our first big gay wedding anniversary, and I feel the most calm that I have since we started this. I hope these are all auspicious signs.

I believe in the magic of threes, too. I also said many months before we started that it would be try three. This means virtually nothing in the ‘real world’ but absolutely everything for hope. So, here goes . . . .