The insurance coordinator called today to let me know that the referral was NOT in the system as of this morning. So I called the PCP’s office to make sure they got it and submitted it. They got my message, and planned to do it “sometime tomorrow.” Okay, I placed the call on Tuesday… you’re going to get it done on Thursday. THAT IS NOT 24 HOURS (like your message promises). I attempted to impress upon this (twit) that it is very very important that it be done immediately. She just kept saying, “Sure! Tomorrow!” OMFG I wanted to shake her. I think I got her to agree to do it tomorrow morning, after me attempting to explain the urgency of the situation (she totally did not get it), but I will be calling tomorrow morning to make sure. If it’s not done I may be taking a leave of absence from work to drive down to the doctor’s office and yell at someone. I am SO frustrated. Another day delayed.

I have explained everything to the insurance coordinator (who tried putting the pre-auth on file with insurance so it’d be ready when the referral came through, but it was sent back so she needs to wait). She’s very sweet and very understanding.

If this gets filed tomorrow (which it had better be, or I am going to have a complete FIT) it gives a week, Thursday to Thursday, so I can order the meds Thursday and have them arrive Friday. A week. This is still doable. I’m not ready to throw my hands in the air yet… but I’m really freaking out. I am angry because I am scared.

But the lupron did arrive as promised, so I had my first injection tonight. It was almost anti-climactic. I remember my first IVF cycle, when I read the instructions five times, wrote notes, studied diagrams, had to draw up the medicine three times before I got it right. This time it was bam-bam-bam, done. My fingers are practiced at needles. And, as before, I barely felt it. The lupron is easy.

So I am just following the plan until things either work out or fall apart. I won’t know for another week, basically. It’s a matter of holding my breath and waiting. And possibly calling to yell at some receptionist… we shall see.

Deep breaths. I somehow have to concentrate through work tomorrow. And I have a feeling this is only the tip of the iceburg on that matter.

Doctor’s office says referral was put through this morning. Now I wait until 11:30 when the clinic checks to see if it’s there. Fingers crossed…

On my way to work I called the insurance coordinator to let her know that the doctor’s office said the referral was in. And she said… she just checked, it was! She was submitting the pre-authorization right away. So it’s done. One week to spare. I’m so mixed about it. I want to be relieved, because it’s done and a week is enough time (I think)… but there’s that part of me that says a week is NOT enough time and we’re screwed. This is going to be a crap weekend, isn’t it.

I did manage to shelve most of it while I was at work, and did a respectable job of it, but by the time I got home I was exhausted both physically and emotionally, and this led to a nice big meltdown. The sobbing into a pillow kind of meltdown. Triggered because… something horrible happened? Bad news? Huge looming deadlines? No. My husband ate the leftovers. I was planning to eat them for dinner, and I came home and found that he had eaten them first. I lasted about two hours. Made myself some food, watched some TV, did my injection and daily pill-popping… and then I completely. Melted. Down.

Den at first attempted to comfort me, thinking something aweful must have happened to a friend or something. But then, then somewhere between “Ate my dinner!” and “STILL didn’t *hiccup* fold the *sob* LAUNDRY!!” he kind of lost me and ended up standing there very perplexed.

It all boils down to me being tired and very stressed out. Shortly after throwing out all those complaints at my husband it became pretty obvious to me, too. I feel very emotional – maybe the birth control pills are adding to the mix. It’s hard to sort out.

But the one odd thing that occurred to me after the fact was that this emotional breakdown today never, at any point, hit on the “my baby is dead” sorrow. It simply wasn’t a part of it. For 8 and a half months, every time I get upset – about anything – it ended with me sobbing with grief. Today was… just a meltdown. Frustration. Exhaustion. But no grief.

Time moves forward.

I have lost more weight. I don’t make a regular habit of it anymore, since I don’t expect the number to change, but the other morning I stepped on the scale… and nearly fell off as the digital display flashed 134 at me. Umm… whoa. The last time I weighed as low as 135 was the beginning of February 2006 (less than two months later I had passed 140, and it never went back down). I still think 135 is more than I ought to be if I were “fit” – but I’m not, and I’m pretty damn psyched to be here.

::

I don’t think I’m going to do the allergy shots. I’d probably do them, if nothing else were at stake, but I keep thinking about the pregnancy. Is right before I get pregnant a good time to start that sort of thing? Do I really want to be trying to fit more weekly appointments into my already jam-packed schedule? Plus from the sounds of it anti-allergy medication is safe during pregnancy, and between that and modifying my environment I’m doing fine. I will say that the one thing that really makes me want to do the shots is the knowledge that if I decide to do them at a later time – say a year or two from now – I’d have to do that horrific allergy test again… and that is not something I want to do.

::

Two days left of my birth control pills. I am so nervous about all of this. If my period takes too long to come we’ll miss the clinic’s cut-off start date. If my period come too early insurance might not be approved yet. I’m trying not to think too hard about it, and I’ve been staring at the calendars for IVF#1 and IVF#2… both times my period took 5 days to show. So that’s what I am banking on. This timeline is making me emotionally nauseated. I have spotted on and off this cycle on the pill and every time it happens I start panicking thinking that AF is coming and everything’s going to hell. (I am VERY careful to not miss or be late with any pills. Yes, my body has done that in the past – though not with an IVF cycle. It’s sensitive to the hormones.)

::

I have been getting hellacious foot cramps lately. I’m pretty sure it’s because of the heels I’m wearing to work, so I’m taking care to rotate shoes – some flats, some short heels, sometimes my cute big heels that look so great). My feet do not hurt during the day at all – I even spend most of my day sitting. But after I get home, kick off my shoes, eat dinner and curl up on the couch or in bed, that’s when it hits me. This evening Den was rubbing my foot trying to get it to loosen up and I was whimpering in pain like I was doing during labor. It HURT. A hot water foot bath seems to be the only thing that really gets it to really go away at that point – I can get them to ease up by standing and flexing and rubbing and pressing, but as soon as I let up it hits again. Not so fun.

::

One very unpleasant side-effect of cycling in the winter (that I was not really prepared for): icing my stomach for shots? EFFING COLD. We keep our house at 65 to start with, and my blood runs cold anyways. So for the few minutes I spend sitting with my shirt lifted, ice pack pressed to my belly, my teeth are chattering. I’m starting to think just doing it without the ice would be better.

I think I need to start taking an iron suppliment. I know last time I was told that my iron levels were low at the start of pregnancy, and I bet they’re low again. I wonder if that’s part of the reason I’m always so damn cold.

Here’s the part I can’t understand: Why do miracles happen to everyone else, but not us? I know that’s not a fair representation, but it feels like it some days. Most days. This whole journey has been one big clusterfuck, and the little things that went right are pretty much overshadowed by the things that went very wrong. If I were a religious person I would really be screwed up, wondering what the hell I did to deserve this.

I just don’t understand why we have to fight so hard, with so many setbacks, for something that comes so easy to most. I thought I’d put in my time, you know? I thought we’d struggled and succeeded. And then we lost Devin. And still I thought, well maybe next time we’ll get a free pass, we’ll get pregnant on our own, be one of those stories. But no. Not for us.

The good news: 3 alchoholic bevereges (and one large meal) later, I’m still not sick. Hmmm, is this progress? My body is finally getting accustomed to alchohol just in time to get pregnant again? That wouldn’t surprize me at all.

The bad news: Well, there is no bad news. I’m drunk, yay! …. And really need some sleep. Preferably lots of it.

Completing renovations on our house (if any of our renovations could be said to be complete – I do not believe that is ever possible) is a hard thing for me, because I see it all through three lenses: how it is now, how it should have been, and how it hopefully will be in the future. Our basement project was started in expectation of Devin, the men working away as my due date drew closer and I, large and pregant, would saunter in to survey and worry that it would not be done in time.

It wasn’t, of course. It was behind schedule and Devin died a month before we expected him to arrive. And then it all stopped. It sat, untouched, for months, and then they would work on it for a day or two with long breaks in between. The urgency was gone. The reason for it was gone. But still they worked to finish what they started, in hopes – maybe even expectation – of it being used as intended someday.

Slowly it comes together, looking more like a room than a basement. I sit on my new couch and watch TV and feel decidedly pleased at what we all have accomplished, turning cold concrete and empty beams into something comfortable and warm. But at the same time I look at it sadly. We chose carpet because it would be soft on Devin’s hands and knees. We bought a new couch because the old one was too dirty for Devin to play on. And the room itself, the project itself, was necessary so Devin could have the second bedroom as his own. It was all for him – I worried that he would be here and it would not, but instead it is here and he is gone.

Today my husband moved his computer and desk down to the new basement room. Our second bedroom, Devin’s bedroom, is being cleared out. At least while Den was still in there it felt like his room, not Devin’s. His stuff didn’t leave much space for thinking. But now that it is half-empty, and on its way to being cleared out completely, it is just empty space. We talk idley about using it as a library, but anything we do will just be until we can use it for our next child. It feels like this room is a physical manifestation of the limbo that we sit in. It is waiting, as are we.

Our basement room now:

We still have a corner fireplace to install (beside the couch), a couple ceiling tiles to put up and, when winter is over, a new window and door.

For contrast, this is the room right when they started (after a very thorough tossing of all the junk that was left there by previous owners), from the same views:

I get annoyed when I view my blog. I do like that quote I have up there, I do – but it should be a ticker there. On some forums I do have a ticker for Devin, but for whatever reason it doesn’t feel right to put it here. That spot is waiting for a pregnancy ticker.

::

The news from insurance today is: still pending. The woman even put me on hold to call the department that handles that type of pre-authorizations, but all they could or would tell her is that it was “pending” and someone is “working on it right now.” Which could mean anything from someone really is working on it right now and I’ll get an answer tomorrow, to it’s sitting in a cubby above someone’s desk and they’ll maybe look at it later.

My heart pounds every time I call the insurance line (and then sit through the million prompts, and listen to elevator music while I’m on hold). I really try not to think about how tight things are getting, but when I’m sitting on the line hoping for an answer it grips me.

On the good side of things today, my period did not arrive two days early. I’m spotting more heavily than before, which really made me fear the worst. I held my breath every time I went to the bathroom. But it’s just spotting, no flow yet, so I can breathe for another day. If she comes tomorrow I should be within the safe zone… assuming insurance comes through.

Thursday is a holiday, I doubt anyone is going to be working on pre-authorizations, which means they have to give me approval tomorrow or I’m up shit creek. There is nothing more I can do, and that terrifies me. I hate this being out of my control. I hate that filing the pre-auth was two days late – those two days may cost me this cycle, and how fucking angry would I be if that happened.

For now I’m really trying to just run on the assumption that it’s going to work out and I’ll be starting stims on friday. I think I kind of have to make that assumption, or it’s not going to be pretty.

I spend my time thinking about the house and how we can move things around and fix things up – what we can do long-term and short-term. That calms me down. It’s a nice distraction… and currently the vision is a hell of a lot more dependable than future babies.

Yesterday evening as we were going to bed I glanced at the clock. “It’s time for my injection, I guess,” I observed to my husband. “I feel like I shouldn’t even bother.”

Today on my lunch break I immediately called the insurance company. I sat on hold for half an hour, waiting to speak to someone. I practiced my deep breathing.

The guy who answered the phone put me on hold to find out the status of my authorization. He came back and said, “Ms. St. Jean, that authorization’s status is pending.” Frustrated tears welled up in my eyes. Tomorrow is a holiday, I need my meds Friday. “Well,” he said to me, “It can take up to 15 days for these things.”

I called the IVF insurance coordinator, maybe should could help. Her voice mail said she is out of the office from the 25th to the 28th. I hung up without leaving a message. I called and left a message for the nurses instead. My words were flat. “I don’t know what else to do,” I said, holding back tears as I paced in the small break room. I guess that’s it, said the voice in my head. That’s the end of it.

I helped customers the next three hours. I kept my phone close by – on vibrate so no one else would notice, but hopefully I would be able to take a break and catch it. In between customers I just sat and stared blankly at the wall. Maybe the universe is just telling me that I’m not meant to have children. This is just too much. And yeah, happy fucking Thanksgiving.

At around 3pm I returned to my seat after filing some paperwork and checked my phone, as had become habit. There was a message. I cursed to myself – it figures, it rung in the 60 seconds I was 10 feet away. I hastily excused myself to my co-workers and ran into the back to listen to my message. I didn’t even notice if there were customers waiting.

“Hi Natalie!” the nurse greeted me perkily on the voicemail. “I called your insurance and spoke with so-and-so from Authorizations and she’s approved one cycle. She gave me the authorization number. So you should be all set to order your medications. Friday’s really busy, so why don’t you come in Saturday morning for your baseline if that works for you?”

Did your breath just catch too? I clutched the phone and danced around and called Den to blurt out, “I’m approved for one cycle!!” Then I had to quickly run back to my desk and pretend nothing strange had just happened.

The nurse did say that they haven’t figured out if ICSI is approved yet, but my first thought was “Who cares??” They have two weeks to figure that one out. And if they don’t it’s not the end of the world – I’m not entirely convinced ICSI is needed anyways (but it’s an aweful nice safety net when you only have one good embryo).

I feel really quite… exhausted. Den was a little perplexed when I arrived home with a very short attitude about me. “But it’s good news!” he said. “It’s happy! Yay!” And, it is. Trust me, it is, I’m relieved and happy and so many things. But… I think I’ve been kicked too many times. I’m a bit bruised. I’m a bit pissed off at having just been through the wringer for all of this. And I’m not feeling all that trusting that this is going to work out still. I’m peering around corners wondering what else is coming for me.

But as of now my baseline is set for Saturday morning, and I’ll start stims that evening. My period is just getting started now, so as far as timing goes it’s about perfect.

By the skin of my teeth, people. By the skin of my teeth.

Thanksgiving for me doesn’t really mean much. It was always my least favorite holiday and not really looked forward to (being a very picky eater is a big detriment on big family holidays, just to let you know), so I never had any images of Devin on his first Thanksgiving or what we would be doing or where we would be. So for that I was thankful, that made it an easy enough day. The hardest part, for me, was that I kept thinking back to last thanksgiving: that was the day that SIL announced she was pregnant, the first day that she and I were publically pregnant together. I remember exactly what shirt I was wearing that day.

For me, it is not BabyH herself that makes things difficult. I love her to pieces, I love being the special aunt and getting big smiles from her. I love how she fits in my arms and how she stands on my lap. But what I don’t like is watching other people fawn over her. Obviously it’s going to happen, especially at holidays where there is a gathering of family. I generally just wander off when it starts getting to me. I am happy that for the meal yesterday there were only 6 of us adults. There wasn’t much fawning.

All in all I say the holiday passed as good as could be expected. I really enjoyed having a day off work – what a novelty!! A whole day off in the middle of the week. Too awesome. (What was not awesome was my dog not writing in her calendar that it was a holiday. 6:00am pee runs in the freezing cold when I could be sleeping in is just so WRONG.)

I do not expect Christmas to pass by so easily. I am already very torn over it all… a part of me is so thrilled to see Christmas lights out on peoples’ houses, but at the same time I find myself quickly changing the channels when Christmas music comes on. Maybe because it’s not yet December. I want to be happy and joyful, but I don’t know if I can do that this year. So I guess I’m just trying to postpone finding out how bad it will be. I’ll happily live in ignorance for now, and deal with the big hurdle later.

I finally got my christmas present (a working version, that is): my blackberry arrived! I spent a good chunk of yesterday playing with it. I love it to death. I am very happy with my choice to get the Curve over the Pearl… I adore the full keyboard and will never go back. This was definitely worth upgrading for. I spent some time this evening making mobile web versions of some little web pages of mine so I can check things quickly and easily from my blackberry without wading through crap. It’s certainly a very different way of viewing web sites!