C and I have really been enjoying a lot of time together. Redecorating and rearranging our basement has made a huge improvement on the amount of quality time we spend together.
While he was at practice yesterday, I went to a performance of my dad and his wife's music school while they performed a song together. I was pleasantly surprised to see that several family members were able to make it, so it was a good time. Afterwards, I ran a few errands then went back to my dad's for dinner.
Yesterday evening, my younger cousin returned from a cruise of the Caribbean and announced that he and his girlfriend of 5+ years got engaged on the trip! Needless to say, we were all very excited. He is the only boy in the family and the youngest, so he is like a son to all the aunts and like a little brother to me.
I also cannot overstate how pleased I am that we have the opportunity to cycle again this month. Many REs require a month or two of suppression on BCPs, so I was really glad that we could jump right in. Aside from the scheduling difficulty of cycling during the school year, it is so nice to just quietly cycle alone without having to explain my whereabouts to a bunch of coworkers.
Things That are Bad Right Now
I haven't been feeling 100% pretty much all week. I am pretty much over the emotional blow of the BFN and I am just back to the default bumpy sadness of bring childless. I feel great a lot of the time, and not-so-great some of the time. Physically, however, I don't feel my best.
I started the "EZ" fertility diet recently and didn't feel much different. I fell off the wagon a bit this weekend, but I am hoping to get back on schedule this week. I think I need to be a bit stricter with myself, however, because the food I was eating (and allowed to eat) didn't feel all that healthy.
There are no restrictions on caffeine or diet sodas on the diet, though, so I have been back to that a bit. I have had caffeine-like headaches each day and I think the change in my eating has led to some weird blood sugar disruptions that have made me feel a little off.
This summer, however, has been lonely much like last summer. I consciously chose not to overplan for the summer leaving plenty of time for RE appointments, procedures and bedrest, but that means that the lulls are pretty lonely. Everyone in my life is working all day or busy with their children and families, so it feels really weird to be literally the only one left behind with nothing to do.
Obviously, when you spend this much time bored and alone, you can't help but fixate on what you should be doing. Sure, I should be going to the gym or working on more crafts or whatever, but every cell in my body tells me that I should be taking care of our baby. I should be running errands for baby, feeding baby, doing baby's laundry, taking baby to visit C, Mom and Dad at work, taking baby to visit other friends and their kids.
My friends basically break down into two groups and surprisingly, there really is no overlap: single friends from college who are still working diligently in academia and career and married friends from work with at least two kids.
Some of my friends from college are in relationships, but none of those relationships are more than a year old and no one is headed to the altar, for sure. They are writing dissertations and excavating archaeological sites and screenwriting web comedies and attending writing conferences and studying for the bar exam. They are living in bustling cities like NY and LA, working, networking, attending events and drinking expensive cocktails in the evening. I still feel incredibly close to these friends and, quite honestly, I don't really envy their lifestyle. I did the academic thing, too, attending graduate school in the city, going to Ivy League happy hours and writing massive narratives about social justice, but I did it right out of college. I did it right away because even then I knew that C and I wanted to start a life together, start a family together.
When I entered the working world, I made a whole new crop of friends and, at the risk of sounding like a total-ivory-tower-@sshole, they are much more conventional. They are also good friends that make for great company at work and always remember birthdays, but I find that I am the only one left without children. Not only do their lives revolve around their children, which I know mine also will, but they are really into talking about all of the parenting things to which I cannot relate. It's one thing to show me pictures of your daughter winning the regional gymnastic championship or telling me a funny story about your kid's new catch phrase, but conversations about the merits of Pampers over Huggies is just isolating. I can't tell you anything about diaper rash or stretch marks and I certainly have no complaints about being a mom other than the fact that I'm not one and wish I was. Frankly, I don't give a sh*t about the expiration dates on Gymboree coupons and I hope that I will be a much more interesting mom than that.
I have lots of friends and I am super close to my whole family, but most days, there is not a single person I could call just to hang out. For someone as hyper-social as I am, that's really lonely.
Things That are Just Ugly (and in this case, "ugly" means TMI...)
I mentioned already that I am not feeling quite up to my normal spectacular self lately, but I didn't mention the ol' AF. Because it's gross.
There have always been two things that I could count on with complete regularity - my mom calling at 4pm every weekday and 9am on Saturdays, and my period being on time and following the same short, light sequence of events. Very rarely are either of these patterns interrupted.
This has been the longest and heaviest period of my life. If this month's AF were extra heavy, I would chalk it up to the Estrace plumping up the lining, but I didn't take any Estrace this past month. If I had taken Clomid, I would expect the distinct... umm... coloring and... uhh... texture. But no, this month has been heavy for me, which, from what I understand from other women, is about normal or light for everyone else. It also hasn't taken its typical 12-14 hour pause on CD4 or CD5. We are now heading into CD7 and it is just nearly ending. That is really long for me, too.
Does this mean that my body actually knew something was up last month? Or did the stims and cramping just wreak havoc? I have no idea what any of this means, other than the fact that I'm not used to having cramps that interfere with my life. Luckily, it seems to be wrapping up.
~~~
As far as cycling goes, it practically feels like I'm not cycling at all aside from those PIO vials staring me down with their threatening presence. I'm only taking Estrace two times per day right now and tomorrow I will start taking them three times per day. I feel like there is so little to report considering how many meds were involved last month.
We won't know for another while whether or not our embies survive the thaw, so that's a post for another day. For now, I am just trying to stay hopeful, but not too hopeful. The IF optimist in my head keeps saying that a BFP this month would give us an absolutely ideal mid-May due date. The b*tch IF pessimist in my head, however, keeps reminding me that if this doesn't work, we are out of embies and out of money...
Let's see who wins.
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