Well you guys gave me a lot of excitement when you told me that most insurance in MA covers 6 cycles of IVF *per live birth*. Here I’ve been running on the assumption that I had 6 total per lifetime, and we’ve done 5 retrievals so far. Another whole 6 cycles is crazy! That actually guarantees us another child when we decide to push forward (as much as there is any guarantee from these things, but given my track record I should be able to have a sticky pregnancy after 2 or 3 cycles).

However I ran across another glitch in the plan. I was planning on buying my own insurance, since I’m not working and Den has only the options that the military offers him (none of them include IVF, I diligently check every year). I had hoped that I could get insurance through the non-profit I was working for, but they can only offer insurance to full time employees; I was part time, and they can’t afford to hire me full time. I ended up dropping the few hours a week I was working, as trying to either coordinate with Den to watch Kate so I could go in for 5 hours or taking her in with me was more stress than the few hours of pay were worth.

Individual insurance is expensive, but we’ve been saving to pay for a year. I checked out options that I know include IVF – BCBS of MA, which is actually who I was insured through when I had a job. Their rates are doable, everything looked good. Except at the end they mentioned something about requiring prior medical records. And now I’m freaking out just a little. If they consider infertility a pre-existing condition they could simply deny me, especially since I already have insurance available through my husband (which is also BSBS, but federal). If I were an insurance company weighing cost/benefit I’d look at all my IVF cycles and realize this girl is probably going to cost me a lot of money.

I know there are new laws going into effect about pre-existing conditions, but I don’t know what that encompasses or when they go into effect.

If that’s the case we’re pretty much screwed. We can afford to do a FET with our remaining frozen embryo out of pocket, but after that… Last time I got a job to get the insurance coverage, but now that I have Kate I’m not willing to do that.

Den just keeps saying, “We’ll figure it out when we get there.” I hate it when he says that.

::

Now that Kate’s teeth aren’t bothering her for the moment she’s back to her happy, active, and funny self. She was hilarious all weekend, Den and I were laughing so hard!

She just figured out that she can put objects inside other objects. One of the toys we have really encouraged her with that concept: it’s a gumball machine. I got it for free when I bought her push-walker, it looked interesting enough. She’s always loved hitting the lever so the balls can roll out the bottom, but I always had to sit there putting them back in. Last week I noticed her reaching up with a ball clenched in her hand and dropping it haphazardly into the top. She pushed the lever, retrieved, the ball, and did it again. It’s kind of silly how excited I got when I saw her do that. Well since then she’s been experimenting, dropping balls, blocks, socks and the remote control in the gumball machine. The others don’t work so well. She is also now dropping things into laundry baskets and waste baskets, so we’re going to have to be careful… we’re going to start losing more objects than we already do.

Her balance and stability or her feet have improved tremendously, though she still does walk kind of monkey-like with her arms up most of the time. But she’s getting faster; I daresay she’s almost running (well, a toddler-run). One day I was down on the floor and I banged my hands on the floor and said, “Rawr!” and she walked away from me giggling. Now it’s her favorite game, she’ll walk over to me trying to tempt me into chasing her. She now puts her hands in the air and runs away, shrieking and laughing as I stomp after her. Her laughter is the best sound in the world.

This weekend she has been loud. She likes to experiment with her voice, sure, and she babbles often, but it was like she combined the two this weekend by babbling really really loudly all the time. Just a lot of gibberish, but all kinds of sounds. Still no words yet, but I feel like she’s getting close to making that mental leap.

I’ve always been big into cuddling, and it’s become a major point of reconnection for Kate and I. She’ll be playing with her toys while I sit on the floor watching a show on the TV and she’ll walk over to me, climb onto my lap, and lay her head on my chest. I kiss her cheeks and rub her back and give her snuggles and then she wiggles down to go play with toys again. I love it.

From the outside it sounds so boring when parents are excited about these minor details that their children have done. Identified colors. Drew a picture. Said a word. What’s the big deal? But when it’s your own kid and you’ve seen them turn from a tiny helpless creature to a crazy, able-bodied human being with thought processes and a mind of their own it’s just… amazing. It’s so crazy watching their brains learn all of these new things, becoming little people.