5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
“Fuck you, 2008!”
“Yes, indeed.”
Glasses clink

Truer words have never been spoken at the turning of the year.

I sat with anticipation on the floor of our new basement room, watching the idiotic crap they pass off as entertainment on New Years Eve. The ball dropped so quickly. Everyone on TV was screaming and celebrating, while we sat in silence.

I feel so relieved that it’s over… that this aweful year is over. In a way the failed IVF just kind of underscored that nothing good would come of 2008, the closing stanza of a dreadful poem.

A fresh page has been started. New chances await.

I hope 2009 is better.

I think I was the only one at work today who did not write the wrong date down. Not once. Everyone else was still writing December, or remembering it’s the first month but putting the wrong year down. But me, every time I had to fill out a date I gleefully put down January 2009. I felt a bit smug as I did so, flipping a mental middle finger to the year past. Oh no, I will not be forgetting anytime soon. I have grabbed onto this new year with all my heart and I am not letting go. Customers sigh it all went so fast, and I just smile and nod. Yes, time does go faster every year, I would say. I didn’t tell them I was glad it’s over, glad that most of this year was a haze to me. I don’t tell them that it was the worst year of my life.

In contrast to the relief I feel at the new year I am struggling with so much sadness. My cycle’s failure is hitting me hard in a lot of ways. I would have been due on my birthday, and that was something special to me. It was something good to hold onto amid all this grief and fucked-up-ness. An IVF failure feels like a loss, too. A loss of hope. A loss of plans and what-could-have-beens.

It is not necessarily compounded by the loss of Devin, but is a separate entity to deal with. Instead of turning from grief to hope I now turn from grief to loss. Where are the good things? What is there to hold on to?

My faith in IVF has been badly shaken. I knew it wasn’t a sure thing, but I guess I figured that since it worked once already we would have better odds, that we would be able to improve on what we did before. But instead I saw that IVF is a wild stallion, and sometimes it does what it wants, when it wants, with no rationale. It is something we ride when the winds are right, with grace and good timing. We can fall at any time.

I thought the hard part would be fertilization. I was supremely confident, saving my reservation for that one moment. But instead I was thrown off early. So now what do I feel for next time, but fear? Fear that the same thing will happen. Fear that it will be worse.

And, overall, a fear that it will not work again. Nothing in life is guaranteed. And with my problems… there is much fear. It is very plausible that my doctor will, at some point in the future, review my file and tell me it’s simply not worth wasting more time waiting on my own eggs. The mere thought that Devin, my dear, sweet, lost Devin, could be my only biological child upsets me far more than the previous fear that I would never have any. He was here, he was right here. With my little fingers, and half my genes. Maybe he had my blue eyes – I will never know.

I see my friends have their second child, I see how much their babies look alike. Not the same, no… but similar. They have the same cheeks, or the same big eyes. Maybe my children will have the same delicate fingers. And I am desperate to see my next little one live and grow. To see my shadow child in their eyes. To see my Devin’s full sibling.

Devin will not be the end. He cannot be.

But there is just so much fear.

Today I spent all day sketching and drawing out plans for the house. I ended up taking a nap in the middle of the day, both because I was really tired and because I was really frustrated with how nothing was working together very nicely in my plans. It apparently helped, since in the evening I finally got things to click.

Architecture has always been a big love of mine. Some kids like dolls, some kids like cars. I liked books of floor plans. As a 10 year old I would sit there for hours going through books and planning out different houses. Over the years my vision has evolved. I couldn’t tell you exactly what I want, but there is a certain feel to things that I want. I know it when I see it.

So it was really exciting to see things materialize under my pencil, to feel that excitement of yes, this works! Not only does it fit most of my ideals, but I got it to fit within our constraints, too. I can see me one day walking into this master bedroom suite I designed. I can see it in my head. It’s practical and efficient without being “boring” and typical.

There are so many things we want to do with this house, I can scarcely imagine ever being done. My parents assure me that even after 30 years of improvements and remodelling it’s still not “done.” But I can feel things moving, I can see the big changes getting closer, and that just fills me with so much glee. With architecture being such a big interest of mine it has been so hard for me to live in this house. Yes, I have a house that we can afford, with a lovely yard. Yes, I’m very appreciative of that. But it is small. It was disgustingly dirty and outdated. Everything inside it was broken or malfunctioning. And to top it all of I knew this was our forever house. It’s the perfect lot in the perfect neighborhood. Upgrading this house is a lot more affordable than buying a new one. But boy did it kill me at times.

Even if it’s just lines on paper, it helps to see what’s possible. Just like planning for the baby that we will someday have… I can’t just focus on what I don’t have, I need to constantly remind me of what will come in the future. It gives me hope, and a desire to keep moving forward. At least with the house I can do something to make it happen.

Exhausted.

It seems I haven’t left myself enough time to write much lately. I have been very busy with my work, and I’m not getting good sleep. But a good part of my lack of free time is because of my obsession with the house plans. Oh yes, it is a full blown obsession. I come home full of ideas and sit down to sketch them before I even get food. I’m half hoping this goes away… and half not, since it’s giving me something to do and think about other than the IVF/baby stuff.

The doctor let me know what he wants to do this next time: all hMG (Menopur), no FSH (Follistim). They’re starting me on 3 vials (225iu) of Menopur a day, and having me come in after 3 days to see how it’s going. I have to say I am really nervous about changing things in a big way like that. But of course my friends point out that this could be the change that makes a difference. I just really hate gambling.

The estimate for things is to start Lupron on the 14th, with retrieval and transfer in the first week of February.

I’ve been on the pill since I started my period, but Friday and Saturday I missed taking them. I’ve been spotting pretty heavily ever since, and it seems to not be getting lighter. I’m getting really frustrated and irritated by it – this was supposed to be my month without wearing pads. The nurse said that spotting after missing some is normal and to just keep taking my pills, but I’m seriously considering stopping the pills for a withdrawal bleed and starting again…. which would push everything back a couple weeks, but that doesn’t really bother me. I’m giving it another day to see what happens. I really do not feel like having 3 solid weeks of this half-assed bleeding. Screw that. (And no, this is not at all unusual for me. When I was on the pill as contraception it would happen every time I miss more than a day. But I don’t know when my body will stop bleeding because every time it happened I would just do another AF and start again.)

I’m having a very hard time being at all excited about this cycle. I guess it’s hard to be upbeat when you’ve just been punched in the gut. I just have no idea what to expect from this and I feel extremely guarded.

If this cycle gets another negative I think I’ll be taking a cycle or two off just to rant and rave and be angry. I’ll need some time to mentally prepare myself for another try.

So it’s looking like my cycle will not go as planned… I missed two pills friday and saturday. You wouln’t think that would be a huge problem, I got right back on track after that. But no, not my body. It spotted a little bit for two days, got a little heavier yesterday, and it’s getting to the point where I can call it a light flow.

I just left a message for the nurses asking if I can stop the pills to get a period and re-start the cycle. This is just not working. I don’t even mind pushing my cycle back a couple weeks. I think I’m a little relieved for a short breather.

So we shall see what they have to say.

The nurse left it up to me. Stop taking pills and get a period to re-start the IVF clock – if I want to. Of course there is last-minute panic floating around in my head and my heart.

But I go back to one thing: when I made that call and told them I wanted to get a period and start again I felt relieved. It’s probably all just weirdness in my head, but there is something that is telling me that this is the right thing to do, for my body and my mind. It’s only a 2 week delay, and right now that doesn’t feel like that long. Maybe my brain needs more time to adjust. Maybe my heart just isn’t happy with the timing of this whole thing. Maybe I know that my body just needs to hit the reset button. I don’t know. Probably pieces of everything all jumbled up together.

::

I have been behind on everything lately, and feeling really bad about it. I am a member of several forums, and during some of my boring weekends I read a lot of blogs and added them to my blog list. And now of course I have gotten several jobs for my freelancing, add that to my two part-time jobs, and I have no time! So yesterday I had to really re-think my spare time and cut back significantly. I am sorry I cannot visit everyone who visits here, know that I try.

I thought about how I am stretching myself so thin – I was speed-reading many blogs and forums without posting much. I thought to myself, is that what I want? No. What I want is to build meaningful relationships. That cannot be done with drivebys. So I have decided to try to actually keep up with my friends, even if that means I can pop over to less people. I want to make new friends, not just random aquaintances. You know?

So I’m sorry. Sorry to those that I have not been keeping up with lately, and sorry to those whom I will be unable to really get to know while I am so busy. But know that I think of all of you, and truly appreciate all of you. Even if you don’t post much at all. I understand. I really do.

::

Still moving ahead with house plans, though now that the general ideas are sketched out I have moved on to trying to budget for these things. Not as easy as one would hope, especially given that many of these projects involve things like plumbing. What I know about plumbing extends slightly past the knowledge that they use pipes for things. That makes it very difficult to estimate costs. So I am currently trying to get in contact with some people we have used in the past to just give us a rough estimate of how much we’re looking at so I know how much we need to save, and thus when we’ll be doing these things.

There are a lot of projects in the wings for this house, and thankfully some of them are not connected. The addition is the biggest thing, obviously – and is also probably the last one on the list, depending. The rest of the list consists of: replacing and moving the front door to the breezeway, which also needs to have the walls replaced; relocating the staircase-from-hell so that it no longer is an injury waiting to happen; adding a bathroom and laundry room to the unfinished half of the basement; and of course renovating the kitchen with new cabinets, countertop, and moving everything around. By the time we are done this house will be completley unrecognizable. Which is precisely what I wanted.

I still have no clue how we’re going to pay for all of this, but my freelancing work will come in handy, for sure. I would really love to not have to finance all of it! At least, with us doing most of the work ourselves, we save ourselves a ton of money. If only we weren’t so lazy we’d have more done after… how many years of living here?

Plans. I’ve got plans. I just hope we can actually follow through.

Failure doesn’t just bring disappointment and sadness. It brings anger. I can feel it seething again in my head. The hope and possibility during the cycle really had helped damp it down… but it is back.

I have to be careful at work. Mostly I’m just quiet. I recognize the anger for what it is: bitterness, jealousy. I overhear coworkers talking to others about new babies, about pregnancy, and I just feel this nauseous pit in my stomach. It’s what I don’t have. How dare other people go on with their lives? How dare they have happy pregnancies and happy little babies, and never stumble?

Once in a while I’ll smile at a child – a genuine smile, forgetting my own life for a brief moment. But most of the time I try to just ignore them and do my work. I am not rude – at least, I hope not. I just politely speak with the adult and do what I am being paid to do.

I just want to be happy again. That is not to say I am not happy now – I am happy curled up with my husband watching a movie; I am happy watching my dog try to kill a toy in her inherently hilarious way. But it’s not the same kind of happy, is it. It’s not the kind that fills you up from the inside, that makes you glow. The kind that doesn’t leave you.

IVF will work, at some point… but who knows when. Time moves forward quickly, and I lose track. Yesterday I mentioned how last summer I got lost on foot in a neighboring city, finally calling my husband to come rescue me from wandering the streets. But then I realized, no, it was the summer I got pregnant. That was two summers ago. Last summer I was mourning. Last summer I can’t even remember.

And I can’t. I know in August I was hired by the bank, and I can remember training and creating this new life that I am now living. But before then? I don’t remember much. I worked a little. I slept a lot. I scrapbooked and wrote and cried. The whole chunk of the year, from March to August, is just a hazy mass. I feel like I missed a year of my life. 2008 will always be the year that wasn’t.

I always think about time: time to my next cycle, time to my next possible due date, time since Devin, time since we started. I’m obsessed with time. We have one more cycle before Devin’s birthday, since it will be a year past. A year of nothing, a year between pregnancies. And if this one doesn’t work the next cycle will probably be a February due date. Of 2010. Nearly 2 years since Devin was born. 2 years! That’s the spacing we wanted between living children. The spacing that would have been perfect, had Devin been born alive. But he wasn’t.

I think about me, how I’ll be 27 at least when the next child is born. Not old, by any stretch… but it’s certainly not what I imagined. I was 23 when we started, hoping for a baby born before I turned 24. I was so young, so naive. It would have been so different.

I can’t get away from the tree of life, the path that time takes. When we lost Devin I – like many others after a loss – would sit and trace back time. Was that the decision that led to the end? Was that? All these little, seemingly insignificant choices I made along the way. All the little twists and turns that life throws at you. So now I sit looking in the opposite direction, looking at what could be. That’s what infertility is, in a way. Every month, staring at several paths and wondering which one you’re going to go down this time. Will it be a pregancy or no? Will it be miscarriage or no? Twins or singleton? Girl or boy? Infinite possibilities.

And this is why I get scared. Why doing things like making a choice, a simple choice, can be so overwhelming. Take another pill, or stop? Yesterday, when forced to make that choice, I stared at all my medications, frozen for a second, wondering how this choice will change my path. It is not a matter of if, but how. In a way I am choosing my due date. October baby, or November? Maybe it wouldn’t matter either way. But maybe it will.

My life is a track of dominos. But I can never see how moving one will affect how they all fall.

On Saturday I thought for sure my period had started in full. I could feel it. I had just gotten off work and was driving to my other job and I just had this very bad feeling that I was going to be having an emergency very soon – I wasn’t wearing a very thick pad. I ended up pulling in to a Dunkin Donuts to use their restroom and to grab lunch.

I speedwalked to the bathrooms and tried the women’s door. Locked. Shit. So I stood by and waited. And waited. Finally I heard water running inside the little bathroom and then… nothing. Nothing. More nothing. I started envisioning what this could turn into: Woman freaks out in DD, screaming incoherently about emergencies and bathroom hogs. It was to the point where I could feel things going on down below and I was getting really really antsy – and still the effing door did not open. I could hear someone in there, too, so I knew it wasn’t locked by accident. I just wanted to bang on the door and yell, “EXCUSE me, there are other people on this planet! What the fuck is taking so long?!”

Finally I said, “Screw this!” and used the men’s bathroom. Whatever.

Sadly, however, it was not full on period… it just felt like it was. I really don’t know if I can or should classify this as a period. I’ve been spotting very heavy for over a week now. More than spotting, less than a full blown period.

At some point I may just need to make a decision about what I would consider CD1 and call to let the clinic know. Not that it really matters if I’m off by a few days, this is just another BCP cycle. All it affects is me and my precious little calendar.

This is a half-assed period, but I called the clinic to say, “Hey, I’m bleeding-like. Guess I’ll call Saturday the start of the slightly-heaver-than-spotting bleeding.”

I got a call back asking if I’d started the pills up yet, which I have not, an I explained the whole having to go off the pill to bleed more in order to stop bleeding sort of thing. Okay, no, I didn’t really explain it – it’s just confusing. But in any case, my last pill was Wednesday, so I start again tonight. It appears they are considering today, the first pill, as CD1. That’s confusing, too. I didn’t ask for an explanation from them – I figure we’re all evenly clueless.

In any case, a day or two won’t matter. It goes as thus:
January 12 (today!) – Start BCP
January 29 – Start Lupron
February 1 – Last BCP
February 6 – Expect AF, then go in for baseline and start stims
Retrieval and Transfer will be during the week of February 15-21
Beta will be somewhere right around March 4.

I’ll point out that Devin’s birthday is March 6. Goddamnit. Not this again. Bad news right before an important date is not my idea of a fun time.

I think I’ll be scheduling vacation for the end of March/beginning of April to go visit my parents. I just need something good to look forward to… something that I’m not gambling on. I just want to go home, sleep in my old bed, play with my dog and my brother’s pup, and forget about all this shit. I can’t wait.

I am obsessed with my house plans. Every spare minute that I have I am thinking about my future bathroom, or kitchen, or front door. I recognize this obsession, and accept it for what it is: a diversion.

Oh, sure, part of it is simply that I love doing this stuff. I have gone through many periods in my life when I became obsessed with sketching out floor plans and imagining what will go where. It’s an obsession that gives me headaches, but at the same time it’s very soothing to me.

But right now I know that a big part of what I am doing is avoiding. Every cycle I obsess about the dates, the plans, the everything. I spend a lot of time daydreaming about how it will end.

Not this time. I want nothing to do with it all. That’s not to say that I don’t have it all plotted out – I do. But I mapped out my next two months and then I put it away. Now I am planning the house, a skiing excursion, a trip to my parents. All things that are planned with the knowledge that a pregnancy is possible, but not dependent on it.

I just don’t want my heart to get broken again. I know damn well that my chances remain at around 50-50. Part of my brain says, last cycle failed, so that means this one should work! But I know statistics. I know that what happened before changes nothing. It’s still 50-50. And what do I do if this is the wrong 50 again?

So, as frustrating as house designing with a husband can be, it’s far better than the alternative.