First of all, thank you so very very much for your words of comfort and support. It is appreciated more than I can say.

I took a large chunk of the weekend to mope and feel sorry for myself and to cancel social engagements where I would have to make meaningless small talk with people I didn’t know very well. And then on Sunday I decided that enough was enough, and Q. and I took the whole day off (a rarity for us at this stage in the semester) and had a simply wonderful day, just the two of us.

And I am ok. Today in one of my classes we were watching a film where someone unexpectedly turned out to be infertile, and it didn’t bother me, other than a momentary flicker of annoyance where I realized where the dialogue was heading.

I’m ok with the result. I’m ok with the end of this cycle. I know that Q. and I did everything we possibly could to make it work. My thyroid was balanced. My uterus looked great. We had two great embryos, a smooth transfer, a relaxed tww filled with every medication my f/s thought might be of assistance.

I honestly believe that we just ended up on the wrong side of the odds this time around. And I have to believe that in December things can be different.

I think it helps the way I compartmentalize infertility and trying to get pregnant. When I am cycling, it dominates my life to such an extent that a negative, or a low beta seems like the end of the world (as overly dramatic as that sounds). But how can it not? I’ve just spent two weeks obsessing over everything, sticking needles into all parts of my anatomy, changing my diet, my exercise patterns, my habits, all in an effort to make it work. So when it doesn’t, it’s awful.

But when I’m not cycling, I can remember all the good bits about the life that Q. and I currently have. And the loss doesn’t seem so great, so overwhelming. I can file it back into a list of life’s disappointments, and then just keep on moving.

So for November, I get a break from the insanity in my head, and I can be me again, without medications.

And in December, hopefully, hopefully, we’ll end up on the right side of the odds.

It boggles my mind that I can have had two days to prepare for this news, can be expecting this news, can have practised how to respond to said news (i.e., do NOT cry on the phone with the lovely nurse who has to make these calls and listen to sad women weep all day), and yet I still feel like someone has ripped my heart out and ran over it multiple times. With a tank.

Beta was negative.

I am just SO tired of being broken. Of wondering when this is going to work. Of wondering if I’m doing something wrong.

This is so much worse than a bfn.

Well, if you’d asked me this morning, I’d have said there couldn’t possibly be a worse answer than a negative from my beta.

Turns out I was wrong.

My beta came back at 3. So I’m in low beta limbo (= hell) for the next two days until I can go back in on Friday and confirm the inevitable: that whatever started to happen in my uterus is happening no longer.

Because, really, I’m at 17 days past ovulation (14dp3dt). If anything viable was happening, there’s no way it would only be registering at 3.

Hugely, hugely frustrated right now. And terribly sad.

There isn’t all that much to report at chez Turia. Wednesday is beta day, and it’s a lot closer than it used to be, which is good. At the moment, I’m expecting a bfn, but I can’t tell if I really think it’s a bfn, or if I’m just telling myself that’s what I think it is in a futile effort to guard against despair if that turns out to be the case. I think I’m driving Q. nuts. I keep telling him I don’t think I’m pregnant, and he keeps telling me, “But you’ve never been pregnant before, so how are you supposed to know what it feels like?” Damn that man and his sensible attitude.

One of the drugs has been giving me pretty bad nausea (I think it’s the progesterone) whenever my stomach gets empty.  I have a hideous amount of bloat and a deeply disgruntled digestive system, but that would be the met.formin/progesterone dynamite duo. Nothing else is conclusive.

I was all set to write a post with advice to myself on pio shots because, frankly, Q. and I have been absolutely rocking at them, and then last night something went horribly wrong. I have no idea what we did differently- it was the usual area, I warmed up the oil in the syringe for a good length of time (this is KEY for anyone who might have to suffer through them in the future- it makes it much easier to press the plunger, and much less painful/icky for you), Q. was his usual stellar self (Also KEY- jab with confidence and purpose, and don’t take your time pulling the needle out). But for some reason, it really really hurt. And that got me freaking out about what if I am pregnant, and I have another eight weeks of this. Gah.

The Frag.min injections are ok- they sting at the injection site, so I have to jab myself before I think too much about it as I was starting to develop a complex last week. I don’t like the individual loaded syringes- I prefer the pen system- you can get a much better grip. 

Once again, my new normal astounds me. Ah well.

Hope you’re all hanging in there with me. These two weeks have been crawling by.

Everyone is so optimistic about this cycle. My forum is full of women who are CONVINCED that this is going to work. My family and friends (the ones who know what is going on) are POSITIVE that THIS IS IT (insert exclamation marks and huge smiles). Even Q., who is always optimistic, even immediately after discovering the current cycle has failed, has made a point of saying how I’m in much better shape than I was last time. (In the cubicle while waiting for the embryo transfer: “You were a total wreck by this stage last time”. Classic Q.)

Everyone is just SO DAMN POSITIVE about our chances that, to be honest, it’s kind of freaking me out a little. Because I don’t have that same sense of certainty. How can I? Look at our track record. We’ve had supposedly perfect cycles before, with no success. And yes, every time we’ve found a reason for why those cycles probably failed (TSH was out, or we still thought my eggs would actually fertilize naturally, poor innocent things that we were), but that doesn’t reassure me.

Because this time I know that things have lined up. Our embryos looked great. My lining looked great. My TSH was at a decent level. I am on so many medications I could probably start selling drugs on my front porch (last count: fifteen pills and two injections a day), so we’re counteracting any possible issues that we haven’t yet discovered. I have done nothing since Wednesday except lie around in bed with my cats and watch Q. cook me meals (although I was allowed out to go to the farmer’s market yesterday- ooh, an outing!).

If this cycle fails, I won’t have an excuse that we can apply retroactively.

If this cycle fails, I’ll worry that there is something else wrong with my body that we haven’t discovered yet.

I feel right now that, while I’m not exactly expecting this cycle to fail, I won’t be utterly surprised if it does. I think there’s a large part of me that decided after the IVF that this whole ttc thing wasn’t going to work out for us. I think I’ve just had too much bad news- I’ve lost any sense of expectation that it might work.

In some ways, that’s no bad thing. It’ll cushion the inevitable blow if the cycle does fail. And if we do get pregnant, I think  my current attitude will make the surprise all the sweeter.

But I do regret that I’ve lost that sense of hope and optimism I had in the beginning.

And at the same time I feel so blessed to have so many people who care enough to carry that hope and optimism for me when I can’t hold on to it myself. As my sister said when I was chatting with her a couple of days ago, “Well, I hope you’re not going to tell me not to get excited every time there’s a chance, because I’m going to. Even just the thought of you guys getting pregnant gets me excited.”

I need that when I can’t find it in myself. So thank you for posting and reading and caring and carrying hope in your hearts when there isn’t space for it in mine.

There’s no room at the inn. I’m currently gestating- pregnant until proven otherwise.

Both of our embies survived the thaw, so we still have two on ice. The transfer went as smoothly as can be. I’m at home, under strict orders from Q. to loll about and do absolutely nothing.

If he wasn’t having to jab a needle in my butt every single evening, life would be just about perfect. I am really not a fan of the pio shots. They don’t hurt going in, but Q. really has to work to force the oil out of the syringe, and that is always uncomfortable. Plus I can already feel residual soreness starting up, and it’s only been three days.

But I am not going to fret about it. Because we put two perfect embryos into my perfectly lined womb this afternoon, and I am going to think nothing but happy thoughts until two weeks from now, when hopefully we’ll get some very good news.

Feels a bit weird to be putting cycle days up there again. But it means we’re moving forward, which I like. I was a bit worried earlier in the week that I had miscalculated when to stop the bcps, but af turned up right on time in the end. So this morning I went back to the clinic for the first time since our WTF appointment in June.

A few things had changed. There was a new u/s tech. One of the doctors is pregnant (due in December!). But mostly it was all the same. It was really busy, but I’d timed things quite well, so I got in after the main rush.

FETs are so much easier than stim cycles. I have to go back in next Friday, and then we pick a day for the transfer based on my lining, and I go in for the transfer. That’s it. Three visits total. Ridiculous.

My f/s was happy to see me. He’d forgotten that we’d had an entire meeting where I told him I wouldn’t be back in until October, but that’s not unusual for him. He had a new optimistic story for  me (he always has one). This latest one involves a patient whose IVF failed so she and her husband gave up (they had three snowbabies leftover). ELEVEN YEARS later she changes her mind, they come back in, and she ends up with twins. He said he was glad I didn’t wait eleven years to come back in. Then he commented on how I hit “the big 3-0″ over the summer. Thanks. Trust me, I’m very aware of how old I am.

While I was waiting I got to have a really good look at my chart (which, I had to admit, is now seriously thick. Anyone looking at it could tell I’ve been at that clinic for a while). It was so interesting, as it had all the reports from the IVF. I could look at all the reports for every egg and how they progressed. The interesting thing is that my IVF embie (the only one that fertilized without ICSI) is the worst quality of the lot. It suggests that there really is something going on with my eggs that makes it difficult for the swimmers to do their job.

Of the four on ice, there are two nine cell grade 1 embies frozen together. Those are the two we’ll thaw first. Then there’s a 10 cell grade 1 embie and an eight cell grade 2 embie (the IVF one) frozen separately. Their grade 2 means it’s showing 0-10% fragmentation. So it’s still a very good embie, just not quite as awesome as the other three.

Pretty decent odds, I reckon. All we can do is try. I’m officially out of “training for a half marathon” mode and into “trying to get pregnant” mode, so I’m cutting way back on the running (not that I’ve been since the race). I might turn my legs over this weekend and just do 5 or 6k, but I won’t push myself.

Of course, this mode comes with a whole load of pills. I’ve had to start up the met.formin and the as.pirin to go with the syn.throid and prenatal vitamin that I took all through the summer. Plus we’re now adding estr.ace three times a day, and pred.nisone once a day (anyone have any experience with this? Apparently it’s a steroid, so it might give me a bit more energy, but I’m not supposed to get any other side effects.)

Post-transfer we’re adding in Frag.ment (another blood thinner), which is an injectable, and he also wants to switch from the progest.erone suppositories to the pio shots. I am not so thrilled about this. Neither is Q, since he’s the one who’ll have to stick me. I think I’m going to be bruise central given all the blood thinners!

Anyone have any experience with progeste.rone in oil shots and want to tell me it’s no big deal? Please?

I also saw my endocrinologist today, who was less curt and rude than usual (bonus!). So I’ve had blood drawn by two different labs to check my TSH. I think it’s fine- I feel great, and I’m starting to recognize symptoms when it’s out of whack. But still, it’s a relief to know that it’ll have been checked before we defrost any snowbabies.

So that’s where I’m at. Super glad to be getting things moving, and, despite it all, feeling surprisingly optimistic.

First up, I’d just like to say thanks for the comments on my last couple of posts. You always wonder when you take a big break from blogging whether anyone will stick around to see if you ever reemerge, so it was very nice to see some old friends and some new faces. I’m still pretty bad about commenting on your posts, but I will try to improve now that the start of the year has settled down into some form of routine.

The race went well. I didn’t quite crack the time I was hoping for, but I got very close, and I knocked 25 minutes off the time I did last year, so I really can’t complain. Mind you, it’s not exactly a fair comparison, since last year I had several points during training where we were cycling and I had to stop running for two weeks or more. Taking the summer off from treatments let me concentrate on my running, which I really needed.

I’ve got the usual start of the school year cold- if there are any other teachers/educators out there, I’m sure they know what I mean. I tried SO hard this year to avoid it- I was nuts about hand washing, drinking fluids, getting enough rest, etc.- but in the end my body simply couldn’t cope with suddenly being exposed to the new germs of thousands of people. It’s not all that surprising, really, although it does make me worry a bit about what will happen if the H1.N1 fl.u turns out to be a problem this winter. Universities are ideal places for that sort of thing to spread.

The good news is that I haven’t lost my voice yet, which is an improvement over the start of year cold I’ve had for the last four years or so.  Knock wood that continues!

In ttc news, I finished the bcps two nights ago, so I’m now officially waiting for AF to turn up (hopefully on Thursday for ideal timings) so we can get this cycle started. It’s weird- I spent all summer trying NOT to think about things, and now that we’re gearing back up, I’m really impatient. If I’m not going to be on a break, I’d like to just get going with it all. Well, in truth, I’d like to fast forward through the whole treatments issue and just get to the point in time when I’m actually pregnant, but wouldn’t we all.

In the meantime, I am buried under schoolwork, so it isn’t as though I’ve got a lot of time to sit around and fret about things. And fretting doesn’t have a place in my new perspective. (At least, that’s what I keep telling myself…)

Q. and I went past our clinic on the weekend while searching for a delicious and enormous breakfast after my race (I literally didn’t say a word to him after the food arrived- I just kept eating). And my heart didn’t start racing. I didn’t feel my anxiety levels skyrocket. I didn’t look to see who was going in and out of the building. I just noted that we’d be back there in a week or so, and then went back to thoughts about breakfast.

I’m in the right space. I’m ready.

Yesterday morning I hopped on the scale, and my wedding weight was staring back at me. It’s my happy weight- the weight where I feel full of confidence. It’s taken me all summer, but the ten pounds that the past two years of treatments and emotional eating have stacked on are gone.

And this time, this time, I swear I am not gaining them back unless I am growing a baby!

I know ten pounds isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of weightloss, but my thyroid and my PCOS make losing any weight a struggle, so I really did have to work at this. And I think a lot of fat has been converted into muscle, so I feel like the loss is more than the scale shows.

I feel lighter. It goes well with my new, lighter headspace and my rejection of emotional baggage.

I feel well.

I just need to hold onto that feeling when the merry-go-round starts up again in a couple of weeks.

I’m running the same half-marathon I ran last year. I’ve trained more consistently this summer (not having two sets of twws has helped considerably). I am fit. I am fast. The times of my runs actually startle me.

Physically, I think I have it in me to do a very good time. It’s the mental strength I wonder about. I don’t run to music- I run with Q. But he hurt his ankle a couple of weeks ago, and it still isn’t clear whether he’ll be right to run in the race with me. I’ve been doing my long runs on my own for the last little while, and discovering a new core of mental toughness that I didn’t think I had.

So we’ll see. I’m still undecided as to whether I should go out at a pace to hit this possible super time, or whether I should be a bit conservative at the start to assess how I feel. I’ve got a 10k race pace run the week before, so I’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I’m reveling in the fact that I got a whole summer to run whenever and wherever I wanted- no doctors telling me not to.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I’m surprised by what I see. It’s amazing how your body will respond when you’re a) allowed to exercise, b) no longer on huge quantities of drugs and c) no longer indulging in far too much emotional eating.

I feel like me again. And I need to find a way to hang on to that when I’m in the middle of treatments. Because I’m sick of the yo-yo.

—

Today I booked our tickets home for Thanksgiving, and it made me stop and think. Two Thanksgivings ago, Q. and I were on the train back to our apartment in our big city, all still new to us. Our overhead lights weren’t working, so we couldn’t read. We spent the whole ride talking instead. That’s when we decided to have a baby.

Two years ago.

It’s absurd.

But that’s my new reality. And it doesn’t bother me the way it used to.

—

Does anyone else find it impossibly weird to have to take birth control pills leading up to a cycle? I laugh every time I pop out a pill.

*crawls out from under her rock, brushes off dust, and stares up, blinking at the sunlight*

I’m back.

First up, a confession. I LOVE September. I love the crispness in the air that comes at the end of the month, and the long, languid, golden twilights that come before in the Indian summer. I love the first blush of bronze and russet on the trees. I love that it is the start of a new year for me. Logically, I know that the calendar turns over in January. But my life is tied to the waxing and waning of the school year. Case in point: since I first started kindergarten, there has been exactly ONE September where I wasn’t in school, either as a student, as a teacher, or both. (And since that September I was in a country where the school year didn’t start for several months, and when said school year did start, I was back at school as a teacher and uni as a student, I guess you could say that I’ve never missed a school year since I was five.)

I am a third generation teacher on one side of my family. I’m back at school now because I’ve decided to take the plunge and try to teach at university rather than high school (which I did for several years). You get called something different then: lecturer, professor, course director.

If you’re doing your job right, says I, you’re still a teacher. And our universities would better serve their undergraduates if more profs would remember (or understand) that.

I still get excited about school supplies, even if the only supplies I can now rationalize buying are notebooks and overpriced language textbooks, rather than the giant 60-pack of coloured pencils that was always the ultimate score when I was a kid. (I really like stationery. When I finish a big task, I tend to reward myself by buying journals and pens and paper.)

I got a back to school hair cut this week. And, if I do say so myself, it is rocking. I even walked on the wild side (for me, anyway) and had my eyebrows waxed. A couple of days ago I dressed up for something with Q., and styled my new rocking hair and checked myself out in the mirror and thought, “Damn, I’m hot!” (more later as to why thinking I’m hot is so important to me right now).

I am just bubbling over with excitement and anticipation about this year. I’ve shifted programs; in the grand scheme of things it won’t make that much of a difference, but it’s enough to make it feel like a truly fresh start. I’m teaching in a new course. I’m starting German.

I have realized in the last couple of days or so that I am completely, utterly, overwhelmingly happy with my life. Not just content- happy. To the point that I walk around with a grin on my face, just because.

Can we all tell that the break we took this summer was good for me?

Q. and I took a vacation earlier this month. A real vacation- two weeks, him and me and a cottage on a river. It was the first vacation we’ve had since we got married two years ago that didn’t involve familial obligations. We sat around and talked. We swam. We canoed. We cooked spectacular dinners. We read and read and read (I think I burned through about twelve books in the two week period). We played Scrabble as the dusk fell around us on the screened in porch and watched the stars come out. We noticed each other, in a way that we were starting to put aside in our daily life. I remembered again why I adore him, and realized that my love for him could grow, in the face of complacency and comfort and the status quo. We are a great team.

And then I came back and people started commenting on how relaxed I looked. How good the vacation had been for me. How refreshed I must feel.

The comments kept coming. And that started to make me think about how I must have looked before we went away. Because I knew how I had felt: exhausted; drained; stressed; drawn; wound up; irritable; anxious. Q. and I were both having trouble sleeping. I felt like my thyroid meds were out, like I couldn’t quite escape the feeling that there was something really important that I was supposed to be doing RIGHT NOW.  I felt coiled, like a spring, or a jack-in-the-box. (On vacation? We slept like babies. I felt the anxiety, the tension, the unease drain out of me. I felt purged of poison, new again.)

And so I draw a line this September, as I stare down the barrel of another academic year that will no doubt be hectic and stressful, that will send me careening from one task to the next until I’m spat out, dazed and disoriented in April, when I can mark exams, write my two comprehensive exams, and then stumble into summer.

I choose otherwise.

This year, I choose NOT to take on the mindless, endless anxiety that I pack on my shoulders. I will only worry about things that MATTER, and things that I can change. I will stop fretting about the future. I will try to calm the madness.

I don’t think it will be easy. I am a perfectionist and a control freak. I seem to have become a wired individual. I’m sure I didn’t used to be this anxious. I know a lot of it stems from my lack of control over my fertility- I keep reaching out and grabbing harder and harder onto the other aspects of my life. I try to make everything else perfect. I try to plan for the rest of my life to be perfect to avoid dealing with that one big failure.

I’ve known that this isn’t healthy for ages. I’m sure I’ve written about it already on here. But until I came back from the cottage, and I looked, really looked at myself in the mirror and saw the difference in the face that looked back at me, I was blind to the physical toll my obsession with perfection was causing.

It won’t be easy, but I’m determined to try. I have a good life, a great life even. And I need to start recognizing that, rather than constantly stressing about ways that I can make it better. I need to stop second guessing my decisions (I read The Paradox of Choice on vacation, and boy was it an eye-opener in places). I didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t used to live like this.

The big city that I live in has to shoulder some of the blame. Everyone is in a rush here. Everyone has that harried, ever so slightly frantic expression etched into their faces. You can’t see the stars. When we turn off the major highway and onto the smaller roads, and the landscape suddenly opens up into rolling pastures and stands of deciduous trees, or the rocky outcrops and pine forests of the north, Q. looks at me and says, “Welcome to Canada”. My sister spent the summer elsewhere, in a different place, with a different rhythm. She feels the tension embedded in this city too.

Q. and I won’t stay here forever. I can’t live here forever. But we’re here for now, and I need to find a way to protect myself, my inner heart, which is a child of open fields and dark forests, from the concrete and anger that spews through the city. The city has some of the blame. But I’ve had to take a hard look at myself as well.

There was another catalyst. The two weeks gave me the time to percolate through my ideas, and to gravitate towards change. They reminded me of how I can feel, how I used to feel. But the thing that really spurred me into all this introspection (which, frankly, might have felt more excessive if I hadn’t been able to do most of it while lounging in a hammock listening to red squirrels argue over their territorial limes) was something that I’d been dreading (and worrying about) for months.

I turned 30 while we were away.

This entire year has felt like a slow march towards inevitable doom. 30 was always my date. The date by which I wanted to have started having my kids. Even before I wanted kids, I knew that if I had them, I was starting early. No ticking of the biological clock for me. One kid at 29, one kid at 31, bang. Done and dusted.

Well, we all know how that turned out. But a funny thing happened over the summer. Once we made the decision to take a break, and it became clear that not only was I not going to have had a baby by the time I turned 30, but I was not even going to be pregnant, my agonies over the arrival of this day slowly faded. It ceased to frighten me. I gave up the dreams and expectations I’d harbored for years.

On the day itself, Q. and I went for an early swim. We made breakfast and read in our usual chairs on the porch. We drove into the nearby small town for a picnic lunch near the lake while we watched boats travel through the lock. We walked around the town and bought frozen yoghurt. We came home, had another swim, sat on the dock and watched the world go by while drinking the champagne that Q. had sneakily spirited up in his backpack. He cooked me dinner: wild salmon and wild rice and greens wrapped in foil and steamed on the barbecue. We ate brownies and blueberries and vanilla ice cream.

It was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. And I realized that getting older didn’t have the fear it had begun to hold for me anymore. Because I knew that getting older meant I’d experienced more. That I’d done more, seen more, loved more. I wasn’t afraid of aging if I got to do it with him, and if life held more moments of peace, just the two of us on the dock with our glasses of bubbly.

So I let it go. And I think that absence, that loss of the fear of the future, of the physical changes that I can see in myself, that’s what people could see in my face when I came back. And even though I can feel the pull of the city now, I let it wash over me. I seek out the green spaces. And I style my new hair and smile at myself in the mirror and believe, no matter how utterly cheesy it is, no matter how wonderful my twenties were, that the best is yet to come.

And when we go back to the clinic in October, when I start the birth control pills next week that will lead us back down a path that I have found so dark and so frightening over the last two years, I will hold on to the memory of the hammock, and the river, and the quiet joy that I can find in eating yoghurt with fresh fruit in the sunlight.