The Eternal Guest Room

I recently dropped off the face of the internet, but I’m still here. My business has been crazy busy for these past few weeks and we went on our Fall trip last weekend and I haven’t caught up yet. I’m also terribly behind in my blog reading and commenting, but I’m going to try to start making a small dent in that.

Of course, as always, our trip interfered with an anticipated IUI, so we pushed the Fourth and Final IUI to next month (hopefully – I’ll believe it when it actually happens).

That’s about it for now.

Today is a lonely day.

No surgery!

I’m so relieved.

They used a bunch of words I didn’t know, but basically I have a thickened area of my lining that shouldn’t cause any problems and doesn’t need to be surgically removed.

I’d forgotten how awkward/uncomfortable the saline sonogram was, but at least it’s behind me now.

Now we just wait.

Thank you everyone for your comments and support. My saline sonogram is Monday morning and I should find out what’s going on then. D will be coming with me, fortunately. I was alone during my last one so I’m glad I’ll have him in the room with me this time to be there and ask questions.

In the meantime I’m trying to keep myself busy and consider all the possibilities but not dwell on them too much. We’re about to change insurance plans and that’s stressing me out on top of everything else, but at least this time I know what problems to prepare for and I’ll be much more on top of any issues that arise. Last time, it took us 6 months to convince the insurance company that, yes, we were covered, and yes, you need to pay our thousands of dollars of bills.

My acupuncturist gave me some herbs that are supposed to get rid of the cysts, and I’m supposed to put a castor pack on my stomach every night for a few weeks. The herbs taste disgusting and the castor pack is messy. I get frustrated about all the different things I continually have to do and go through. I just want to be normal like “everyone else.” It’s hard sometimes to accept that I’m apparently not.

It’s been a rough week but we’re going to Austin this weekend so that should be a good distraction.

I’ll have more news on Monday. I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

I’ll let you know.

I went in for my baseline sonogram this morning so we could see if we’d be able to start the final IUI process, but I have a bunch of cysts left over from my multitudes of follies from last month.

Yay! Lucky me!

I also have a mass that looks suspiciously like a polyp, so I’ll be having a saline sonogram next week to check that out. If it’s another large polyp, there could be another surgery in my near future.

Hooray! Two of the same surgery in one year, how wonderful!

I want to bang my head against a wall. Repeatedly.

I hate today.

For most of my life I never particularly felt the need to have a child. Yet I always just assumed I would grow up and have kids. It’s a weird thing to explain, especially now, especially after all we’ve been through.

The irony just kills me – when we started trying for kids, I used to say that if it turned out we had problems or for whatever reason couldn’t have kids, that would be okay. I would never even entertain the thought of doing fertility treatments. I even specifically said that I would never pursue any form of treatment. I just didn’t think I wanted it that badly. I thought I would ok with just the two of us, always, and never need a third.

But as time went on and it didn’t happen I started to realize that I no longer just expected a child  – I longed for one, desperately. Not just any child but my own child, our child, someone who was the two of us put together. The expectation turned into a yearning that I had never known possible, and it blindsided me and took my breath away.

Sometimes I close my eyes and picture it so clearly. I can see myself in the back room, as a nursery, holding my own baby, with the sun streaming in so perfectly as it does in the late afternoon. It’s peaceful and serene and comforting and it feels so right in my heart.

I don’t know why I keep going back to that picture, but when I do, my heart aches in a way I never thought possible.

I can talk about moving on and think rationally about the possibility of it never happening, but I know that it will not be an easy thing to move away from.

Some people will say it’s selfish, to continue down this path, and at one point I might have agreed with them. But that’s the thing – unless you’re someone who has decided to adopt before trying to have your own child, you have no room to judge. You started in the same place because you wanted the same thing. It’s just so basic.

It seems so simple and maybe that’s why I want it so much.

I went back and read what I posted yesterday and realized that it could be taken the wrong way; we’re not giving up, just trying to move forward with our lives after being at a standstill for such a long time.

We have one more IUI – hopefully coming up in a few weeks, but after last time, who knows – and then if that fails, we meet with the doctor to discuss what comes next.

As I’ve said before, we’re both open to IVF, and that may be in our not-so-distant future. But in the meantime, life goes on.

I’m afraid to do another IUI. I’m afraid it will fail again.

Everything was perfect last time. There was no “oh well the numbers weren’t that great” or “I think the timing may have been off.” There was no reason for it not to work, except that it’s a crapshoot. Everything could be perfect and still not be successful, while crack addicts on birth control with one drunken night can still conceive.

We’ve tried just about everything. With the last IUI we tried Hope and Positive Thinking. We talked as if it had worked, hoping that would help make it work. It didn’t. In the past we’ve taken the “cautiously optimistic” route with the same outcome.

We saved and set aside money specifically for the past IUIs but did not for the next one (an accidental oversight, albeit a big one). I’m watching our savings account drain away.

People say “it’s not about the money” and “don’t think about how much it costs, it’ll be worth it in the end” but how can we not think about the cost? I’m afraid to sit down and add it up but I’m pretty sure we’ve come close to spending $10,000 all together (including surgeries) with no baby to show for it. I have these panicky fears sometimes – how are we supposed to afford raising a kid when we spent all our money just to have one? I tell myself that it’ll work out, that people make it work with less income and less financial stability, but it weighs me down sometimes.

At this point it just feels like we’re throwing money down the drain.

I tell myself that it’s a matter of time – fertile people sometimes take months to get pregnant, that’s just the way it is when “normal” people only have about a 20% chance every month. But I have this nagging fear that it will all be for nothing.

I was ready for the last IUI, but I’m on the fence about whether I’m ready for the next one yet. The pain and disappointment of the last failure are still so vivid. When it failed I was completely emotionally drained, and I haven’t filled back up to normal yet.

I guess I’m mainly just afraid to put so much hope, emotion, time, energy, and money into something that I can’t see really happening right now.