Delayed Gratification

E. has been saving his money to buy a Nintendo Switch. He only decided a couple of months ago that this was his savings goal, but lack of spending opportunities over the past year (because, pandemic) meant that he once he made this decision, he already had a good chunk of the money he needed. He gets a weekly allowance ($4 = $2 in his ‘spend’ jar, $1 in ‘invest’, and $1 in ‘donate’) and some birthday/Christmas money from relatives. He also earned royalties from the novel he wrote in the spring lockdown, self-published, and sold to his relatives. I’ve told him that I won’t pay him for doing most chores around the house (I don’t want to establish a precedent of paying him now to do something that when he’s older I’ll be expecting him to do as part of his contributions to the household). But I did pay him when he made a spreadsheet for me cataloguing all the styles and sizes of hand-me-down footwear in our basement waiting for P., and he also earned some money helping me sort and record all the canned goods in the basement (left over from last spring’s ‘what if there are food shortages’ worries) and the contents of our big freezer. He’s saved me a lot of time, and these are both very much one-off tasks, so I feel paying him is the right thing to do.

Last night he determined that he now has enough money to buy the Switch (with a whole 70 cents left over!). He’s already decided not to buy the Switch until closer to his birthday, because he thinks it will be too hard to have it without any games. He’s going to write a letter to his relatives asking for money to buy games and explaining why that’s what he most wants for his birthday, and I’ll scan it and send it via email.

Last night he also had a phone conversation with his Grannie – he called to thank her for the book she’d sent him (#18 of the Dragon Masters series- they’re much too easy for him now, but he still enjoys them and it’s become a tradition that Mum sends him the newest one as soon as it’s released. This means that P. will have access to the whole set in a couple of years!). During the conversation he happened to tell her about all the holds on that particular book at the library, and how glad he was he didn’t have to wait. He also commented that there are currently over 200 holds on the latest Wings of Fire (which also came out this week). E’s had a hold placed for six months, but he doesn’t know where he is on the list yet because the library doesn’t have its copies entered into the system. He’s predicting he’s #152, I’ve guessed #56, and P., wildly optimistic, has chosen #2.

Because I know my mother very well, I was not at all surprised to find a message from her on my phone after they’d hung up and E. had gone off to bed. She had the latest Wings of Fire book in her online cart, but it was only available in hardcover. Should she still buy it?

I said no.

Partly it was because I think if you’re going to collect the whole series, you should try to get them all to match.

But mostly it was because I’d already asked E. a couple of times whether he wanted me to order that book and he could pay me back out of his ‘spend’ jar. He always thought about the question carefully, but every time his answer was the same: he wanted to save the money for the Switch.

My mum can afford to surprise him with books, and I know that gift giving is one of her love languages (even though it is most decidedly NOT one of mine). I respect and appreciate that she checks with me beforehand, that she’s always willing to take suggestions, and that she never buys my kids crap that I’ll hate (example: she only buys clothing from stores that we know fit my kids well, she always pays attention to what I say they need, and she never buys stuff with problematic messaging [‘I’m a princess’ or the like]). I also know that she adores my kids and the separation from them during the pandemic is breaking her heart (our separation from my mum has now been longer than in the first lockdown, since we were at least able to bubble with her for part of the summer). So I felt like an asshole for putting my foot down and not letting Grannie come to the rescue, but I also felt that this was a really important lesson E. was learning. You have to make choices in life. You can’t get everything you want, all at the same time. When he finally gets the Switch, when his library hold finally comes in, he’ll appreciate how hard he’s worked, and how long he’s waited for both.

E. said last night, once we’d tallied all his money and determined that he had, indeed, reached his goal, that once he had his March allowance, he was planning on using some of his ‘spend’ money to buy Robux (the currency in Roblox that lets players buy game passes and new skins and cooler pets (?) and to be honest, I don’t really know what else or how it works, but he’s excited about the possibilities). He’s known for ages that he would have to use his own money to buy Robux, and he’s also known that he had lots of money in his ‘spend’ jar, but he wasn’t willing to use it on Robux if he was still short of what he needed to get the Switch. Now that he’s reached his goal, he’s happy to blow some of his money on something that he clearly sees as both frivolous but fun.

I’m thinking he’s probably worked out this delayed gratification thing already.

But I’m still making him wait for the book!

Make Good Behaviour Easy

At the start of 2018, I made a number of resolutions/goals, which met with mixed success (more on that soon, I hope). But I’ve realized that I never wrote about what turned out to be my most successful resolution: to stop buying tea (or hot chocolate, etc., I’m not a coffee drinker) if it would come in a disposable cup.

I can’t now remember what prompted me to make the resolution; I certainly wasn’t in a daily habit of purchasing hot beverages, but I must have been buying them frequently enough for me to get fed up with the waste.

What made (I think) this resolution such a success was that it didn’t actually forbid the problematic behaviour. There was nothing stopping me from buying tea or hot chocolate- I just had to remember to bring my travel mug with me. And if I didn’t want to spend the money, I could consciously choose not to bring the mug with me.

It was incredibly effective.

The year wasn’t perfect, but I think I can say with confidence that I bought a hot beverage in a container that would have to be put in the garbage once it was empty less than five times. Definitely less than ten. And almost every occasion was when someone else was doing the buying and I forgot to say ‘no’ when asked if I’d like something.

Even on a memorable Wednesday late last semester, when I was tired and ill and freezing cold, when I wanted some tea so badly, I didn’t buy it. I didn’t have my mug with me, and by then the habit was firmly entrenched.

So this year I’ve decided to up the ante. I developed a very bad habit of buying my lunch last semester, which had ballooned by the end of the semester into buying lunch nearly every workday, plus frequent snacks. Last semester was incredibly chaotic, but this was a ball I didn’t need to be dropping in such spectacular fashion.

I knew an outright ban on buying food was unlikely to work, because I don’t respond well to prohibitions. Instead, I expanded the resolution from last year.

In 2019, my goal is to be litter-free when I’m at work.

It’s not that I can’t buy food…I just have to work out the logistics to make sure I’m not using any of the disposable packaging that would normally come with it. If I want to buy a burrito bowl when I’m on campus (a burrito bowl which I was in the habit of buying at least once a week, if not more often, last semester), I have to bring my own bowl and cutlery with me (I have yet to determine whether the staff will be happy to accommodate my BYOB approach).

My impetus for this change is largely financial. I’ve been crunching our budget numbers to find areas where we can cut back and ‘food and dining’ is clearly the low-hanging fruit. When I ran the numbers comparing our average monthly spend on ‘groceries’ versus ‘food and dining’ (which includes groceries, but also alcohol, restaurants and coffee shops, and the money Q. and I spend on food while at work (which have their own categories in my system)), I found that we were spending, on average, close to $500 a month on ‘food and dining’ that couldn’t be classified as actual groceries.

Yikes.

There are obvious environmental benefits to my decision and likely health ones as well (I gained weight last semester and I’m certain my reliance on purchased food played a role), but my strong aversion to wasting money is the key. The advantage to the financial aspect is it’s so easy to track my progress. I know what the average monthly spend on ‘Turia’s Snacks’ in 2018 was, and I’m looking forward to seeing that number plummet in 2019.

I’m allowing myself one Lara bar wrapper a day (I buy them in bulk when they’re on sale for less than $1 each, and I’ve come to rely on them for a late afternoon snack) and I’m not expecting perfection on the weekend if I’m out with my family. But my hope is that changing how I approach food for myself will also change the larger patterns in our household. I took the kids on two major expeditions in the second week of the holidays and both days I built enough time into our schedule to allow me to pack a lunch and snacks for the three of us. Since we have memberships at both locations, the total cost of our days out was minimal: $6 in public transit fares for myself in one case (the kids are free) and $8 for parking in the other.

There are costs that comes with this change, of course. There was an initial financial outlay to purchase an appropriate lunch container. Q. and the kids picked out a green yumbox for me as a Christmas present. I don’t think it’s what I would have picked for myself, but I’m making it work along with the tupperware containers and reusable sandwich and snack bags we already had in the house. I still need to buy travel cutlery. Making it extremely difficult for me to purchase food while at work increases my emotional labour around food. I have to plan ahead and make sure appropriate lunch things are on the menu and purchased at the grocery store. It also increases the time I spend on food. I have to plan ahead and make my lunch and pack my snacks. But these are small costs that will become invisible as I settle into the new habit, and the time I spend making my lunch in the evenings is probably cancelled out by the time I save not standing in line the next day.

It’s been less than two weeks under the new system, so it’s early days yet, but I’ve successfully navigated two of our Terrible Tuesdays (where I’m out of the house for 15 hours) without buying food. It helps that it’s winter so I can safely leave my dinner in the trunk of my car until I’m ready for it. I’ve definitely noticed the impulse to buy food, especially when I’m bored or triggered by being near the places where I habitually purchased food last semester. But, thus far, I’ve been able to resist, and I know those impulses will weaken and vanish as I rewrite the patterns of my behaviour.

Too Busy

I missed my 30 posts in 30 days goal by three posts. I got pretty close, and I even had ideas for two posts that would be quick and easy but still have some substance, but the last two days of the month were so crazy blog posts were never going to happen.

Tuesday I got home from teaching around 9:45 p.m. and went straight to bed. P. slept through from 7 (or thereabouts) to some time after 6 for the second night in a row. I nursed her and she went down again. She woke up on Wednesday morning one minute before our nanny arrived at 8:20.

Amazing, no?

Well, no. It turns out P. was sleeping like mad to try to fight off the HFM she’d picked up from Spud, as when I got home on Wednesday there was a note from our nanny that she thought P. was getting a yeast infection because she had a few spots in her diaper area.

It wasn’t a yeast infection.

P. woke up covered in spots on Thursday morning (after being up five or six times that night). She was only up twice last night and is covered in more spots today. Some of them seem to be crusting and drying already so I’m hopeful she’ll fight it off quickly. She is eating well and is mostly cheerful for everyone else (and is a total mess when I’m around). E. is still healthy, thank goodness. Q. and I are both sick but I think we just have end of semester colds. Q. had a sore throat one day and I’ve had a super runny nose but no fevers and no spots to report for either of us.

So Wednesday I dropped E. at school and then got straight into the car to drive to meet my mother so we could house hunt. We were supposed to be on a fact finding mission- trying to narrow down what Mum really wants.

We did that admirably as Mum ended up putting in a successful offer on a townhouse!

It worked out so well- we were in the complex to look at another place (which had just come back on the market after a conditional sale had fallen through) and her agent said that this one had just come onto the market the day before and was significantly less expensive. She felt we should go and compare. The less expensive one was also MUCH MUCH nicer inside. The basement hadn’t been as finished but the main two floors were beautiful- Mum could just move in and not even have to paint.

The funny thing is that the day before, when the agent had sent through the listing for the one that wasn’t as nice, I’d looked at the pictures and thought, “Gee, I can really see Mum living there.”

Then we went to see three condos, the last of which was empty, so we stood in it for a while and discussed. Ultimately Mum really didn’t want to move to a condo. She hadn’t liked the downtown. She really wanted some outdoor space. She needed a townhouse. And she really liked the nice one.

Mum and I went for lunch (where we independently decided to order the exact same thing) and labmonkey looked up transit routes for us while the real estate agent went back to her office and emailed us other examples of townhouses in that complex that had sold in the last few months. It was clear the nice one was massively under priced and that the complex itself was in a great location.

It was also clear that the middle units had a different layout from the end units so we decided we needed to see the other layout (there was a third unit in the complex that was also back on the market after a conditional sale had collapsed due to financing).

Here is the part I am most proud of: while we were waiting for the agent to call us back to tell us whether we could go and see the third unit, we were also trying to figure out whether I should cut and run because I had to leave basically right then to have any chance of avoiding the traffic.

I was considering doing it so I wouldn’t miss three bedtimes in a row (even though Q. was totally fine with that happening). I was super tired. I hadn’t finished my seminar paper yet.

And then Mum started to crumple too. “You bail and I’ll bail and we can get back before dinner and we’ll just tell the agent we don’t want to see that other place,” she said.

I pushed right back and told her she had to see that other place because if she didn’t see it she wouldn’t be in a position to put an offer in on the nice place and it was going to sell that day because there were already offers on it. And then our agent called and we could get in to see the third unit in half an hour and I decided to stay because I knew if I didn’t stay Mum wouldn’t be able to make any decisions- she was getting overwhelmed and frazzled.

So we saw the third unit and it was a total non-starter. It was clear the layout in the other two was much better even if the kitchen was a bit tucked away. We conferred with labmonkey (who had realized the transit was even better than she had originally thought). We agreed on an offer price (above the price of the not as nice one, but not by much). And then I did finally get in the car and drive home (which took over two hours but I knew it would). On the drive home I talked to labmonkey and my other sister, and to Q., and to the mum of E’s best school friend who was trying to organize summer camps (HOW can it be time to think about this??!!).

I got home just in time to nurse P. and put her in the crib. Then I got E. in bed, and ate a late dinner with Q. I was just clearing up the dishes when I learned from our agent that the offer had been successful and Mum had a new house!

We went to bed a bit after 10 and I could not get to sleep. I was excited and stressed about the new house and worried about P. and my paper. I saw the clock at 11:37 p.m. and then I fell asleep. P. had woken herself up and resettled a couple of times while I’d been trying to fall asleep so I suspected I was in for a rough night (which was true).

Thursday I was up early because P. woke up and needed to nurse again around 5:30 and then I didn’t get back to sleep because I started thinking about house stuff. I really hadn’t slept well- lots of tossing and turning when not getting up to deal with P. My cold was getting worse.

I took E. to school, came home, spent 90 minutes making the handout for my paper and 50 minutes finishing it (I needed to write a conclusion, streamline the introduction and generally edit in a few places). Then I nursed P. before her nap, showered, dressed in my good clothes, printed my paper and handout, paid our nanny, and jumped in the car. While in the car I ate an apple and a Lara bar.

It poured rain the whole time I drove (to another nearby city- I cannot believe some people do these kinds of commutes every day). While I drove I talked to Mum and labmonkey about financial stuff to do with the house. I’d left later than I wanted to but I got there exactly on time. I met with a grad student (I had a caffeinated tea because I was seriously flagging) for an hour, then had twenty minutes to look over my paper (during which time I also called my other sister to talk financials and read a worrying email about my father). Then I went to the departmental wine and cheese where I ate some cheese and drank 1/4 of a glass of wine. Then I gave my paper and spoke for 50 minutes and answered questions (not very many in the end, but I thought the paper went well).

By the end of the paper I was a wreck. I was light headed and shaky and I thought I was running a fever. But I think I was probably just hungry and tired because we then went out for dinner and I felt a lot better. I drove the other two people to the restaurant and they had to stand around while I pulled out a car seat (because I had cut things too fine in the morning to get it out before I left) and then cleaned up the sea of plantain chips and Cheerios I found lurking beneath it. We had a nice dinner out and then I got back in the car to drive home again.

I got home around 9:45. Q. was already in bed. The kids were asleep. I pottered around a little bit getting unpacked and organized until the adrenaline had worn off and then I crashed.

Today was supposed to be quiet as I’m home with P. and E. has no school but is out for most of the day on a special adventure with the nanny, but P. has been a wreck all day (still spotty, obviously not feeling well, and suffering from major Mummyitis) and I’ve been trying to organize the lawyers for the house purchase. So it’s been one of those days where I’ve felt like I’ve been rushing around like a maniac but not accomplishing very much.

Still. End of semester. It’s December. The crazy week is over.

I made it!

The Financial Cost of Infertility

My mother is going to be buying a new house in the near(ish) future, and for a number of reasons both labmonkey and I are going to be helping her buy it.

Working out our maximum budget has been a painful exercise. It’s been very hard to look at the properties online and see what would become affordable if we only had an extra $50k. The various “nice-to-haves” that my mother has mentioned would immediately become “easy-to-haves”.

It is hard not to dwell on what might have been. IF the septic system of the old house hadn’t been about to fail (a most unwelcome discovery from the house inspection). IF my stepfather had carried enough life insurance. IF financial mismanagement hadn’t proved to be the underlying theme of their retirement.

IF we only had a little bit more available to invest.

The inevitable effect of this has been a reassessment of our own financial situation.

Q. and I are debt-averse. We spend a lot of money on groceries because eating good food is important to us, and we spend a lot of money every couple of years visiting Q.’s family, but we live within our means and I wouldn’t describe us as careless.

By my best reckoning, we spent upwards of $30,000 of our own money at our fertility clinic. A little bit more than half trying to bring home E. and the rest on our failed efforts to give him a sibling (P. being our joyful and free surprise).

I want to preface what I’m going to write next with an acknowledgment of our privilege.

Q. and I were very lucky.

Q.’s benefits covered all of our medications (which cost easily the same again).

We didn’t have to go into debt to pay for treatments.

We didn’t have to remortgage our house.

We had to make sacrifices, yes, and choices, certainly, but we were able to afford what we needed to do.

On the surface, we navigated our way through those stormy years without any real sign of financial strain, and we certainly weren’t cast into financial hardship because of IVF.

Still.

I read a lot of financial blogs (I often think I should have been a financial planner if I hadn’t been an academic) and one of the things financial blogs, especially ones who champion frugality, spend a lot of time writing about is the power of compound interest.

It’s the latte factor argument: If you spend $ a day on lattes (or shoes or lunches out), five days a week, forty weeks a year, that equals $$$$ per year. If you cut out that expense and instead invested that money every year in a low-fee index fund then thirty years later you would have $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The argument is always about priorities. Does the chicken burrito bowl (my personal weakness) bring you enough joy to be worth its price tag? What are you giving up in return?

A part of me can’t help crunching our own numbers.

$30,000 is a not insignificant amount of money. It left our bank account in various amounts over a number of years, but the end result is the same as if we’d been spending it every day on coffee.

The power of compound interest reminds me that it wasn’t just $30,000 either.

It was $30,000 plus all the gains it made on the stock exchange.

Or it was $30,000 plus all the interest it saved us on our mortgage.

The financial argument breaks down, of course, when you look at the result of what that money was spent on.

My children are not a latte factor.

They’re worth it.

Of course they are worth it.

But we had to spend money where most couples don’t in order to be able to build our family.

And we will never recover the lost opportunity costs of the money we spent to bring them home.

Microblog Mondays: Deep Clean

Two weeks ago I hired people to come in and deep clean my house.

It was an act of desperation: we’d just been away and we were about to have visitors who were on their first (and likely last) trip to Canada. I wanted to leave them with a good impression of our life here, as I’m a bit sensitive to the fact that most of Q’s family think we’re nuts for living where we do.

I wanted a super clean house but didn’t have time to scrub baseboards, so I threw (a not insubstantial amount of) money at the problem until it went away.

They came in, and they cleaned, and afterwards, I felt…disappointed.

The house was cleaner, definitely, but I didn’t walk in the door and be amazed by the change.

I suppose that’s a good thing, as it means that Q. and I generally clean our house pretty thoroughly. The only two places where we did notice a huge difference were the windows and the kitchen (not coincidentally, those were the two areas that prompted the deep clean in the first place as they were driving me crazy but I just didn’t have time to get to them).

Basically if I can find time once a month to really scrub down the kitchen and we clean our windows even a couple of times a year, I can see no reason to ever hire someone else to clean our house again.

I’m not sure I’m pleased I’ve made that realization.

Do you have a house cleaner, or do you sometimes get someone in for a deep clean? If you clean your house yourself, how do you fit in the extra chores above and beyond the usual laundry, vacuuming, bathrooms?

This post is part of #MicroblogMondays. To read the inaugural post and find out how you can participate, click here.

Decisions

I had a hysteroscopy on Good Friday.

I’d met with the new f/s on Wednesday. Among other things he said he’d like to take a look at my uterus to make sure there was nothing amiss.

No scarring from the D&C.

He happened to have a free spot on Friday, and then he was going to be away for a week, and Q. wasn’t teaching on Friday like he normally would be, so I figured it made sense.

I didn’t realize until I was actually there in the IVF suite that they use the same drugs as they do during egg retrievals.

(Note to readers: if debating between going home accompanied by your husband and son on public transit and going home accompanied by your husband and son in a Zipcar, rent the car. I still feel a bit queasy remembering it, but we got home without any vomiting.)

But it was all easy. They got me settled in the room (thigh stirrups now- much more comfortable- and new chairs in the recovery areas too), I had a chat with the nurses, they started my drugs, and I don’t remember anything else until I was in the recovery room and it was almost time for Q. and E. to come and get me.

The new doctor (it is hard for me to say MY new doctor, because I feel like that suggests a relationship I’m not sure we yet have) came back to tell me the results.

“It all went really well,” he said, smiling. “Everything looks perfect. So just let me know whenever you’re ready to start.”

Here’s the thing: part of me, a significant part of me, was disappointed to hear that.

Because, if there had been something wrong, something that made him think we had to do more to make my uterus hospitable, if surgery had been mentioned, I would have been DONE.

Bang.

No discussion.

The line would be firm.

And we could move on.

***

There is a line from Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams that has refused to leave me.

It comes in the first essay, when she imagines a more honest monologue in the tape recorded notes of her doctor:

Patient wants everyone to understand it wasn’t a choice it would have been easier if it hadn’t been a choice.

And there we have it.

***

“There is no medical reason for you to stop,” Dr. B. told me during our meeting, when he read my chart carefully and listened to me carefully and thought about my case carefully and in no way resembled my previous doctor. No Jolly Santa unicorns and rainbows optimism. No emotional manipulation. Just cold truth and statistics.

35-40% chance of another IVF working.

20% chance of miscarriage if it did work.

Strong recommendation for PGS, although he understood my reluctance given my previous lack of success with FETs and my high embryo attrition rates.

Although he wavered, in the end he recommended a short protocol (unlike my two previous IVF cycles). He said he was tempted to just do what we did in the cycle that produced E., but he prefers the short protocol for women with PCOS. He would rather have a smaller number of eggs but a higher percent mature and fertilized.

“You were thirty when you did that cycle,” he said. “You can do anything with a thirty-year-old. With women in their mid-late thirties, we have to think about it a bit more.”

Translation: although they have told me this for years at that clinic, I am no longer young.

***
“If you decide to stop,” he said, “it will be for socio-cultural or financial reasons.”

Q.’s sister is getting married, down under, in January of next year.

We could go there for Christmas, all three of us, and escape at least part of next winter.

Or we could blow that money (and then some) on another round of IVF that probably won’t work anyway.

Our neighbours flooded our basement (long story).

We think what makes the most sense long-term is to give up on the carpet we installed down there before E. was born, get someone in to rip up the ceramic tiles underneath, and lay a new tile floor with nice tiles that we actually can stand to look at, and then put area rugs over top.

Or we could spend the money on another round of IVF that probably won’t work anyway.

We could save a good percentage of our annual income this year, even though I’m not working.

Or we could spend the money on another round of IVF that probably won’t work anyway.

If we stop, it’s not really for financial reasons.

We can do another round of IVF without going into debt. We can do PGS if we want to.

It feels like we can’t afford it, because it would seem so incredibly wasteful to flush that money down the toilet, but that’s not really the truth.

***

Yes, I’m getting older, and Q.’s getting older, and E.’s getting older, and we’d be looking at a five year age gap, and having a second (or, gods help us, twins) would completely destroy any semblance of a career I might try and build as I’d never recover from having this year off, and then being pregnant, and then home with a baby, and Q. and I have already agreed that if we have a second there’s no way we can juggle that baby between us like we did with E., so if someone’s at home with the baby, that’s me, so I will probably go insane because I wouldn’t want to put that baby in daycare during the first two years but boy do I ever suck at being a SAHM, BUT.

If it happened, we would muddle through.

We would adjust.

Our family would adjust.

I would find some way to balance children and career.

I have doubts and fears and reservations about the wisdom of bringing a second child into our family at this stage, but nothing that would take the choice away from me.

***

Patient wants everyone to understand it wasn’t a choice it would have been easier if it hadn’t been a choice.

Yes.

I wish with all my heart it wasn’t.

One thing leads to another (or does it)

I did two things yesterday that may or may not prove to be related.

I made a phone call to my clinic and left a message asking if I could switch my primary care provider from Dr. L. to Dr. B.

And I did our taxes.

We knew we were going to get a decent refund this year. Q. was on overload last year and they messed up the payments, so he ended up getting the extra pay in one lump in January 2014 and was taxed too much as a result. We had medical expenses. RRSP deductions. Tuition credit transfers. Daycare costs. Plus the new family tax credit, which we could take full advantage of given I had such a low income last year (that was the painful part of doing our taxes: realizing I made TEN percent of Q’s gross salary last year. Ouch. I need a job.).

The final number was very positive.

IF we decide to do it, one final IVF cycle is manageable. We won’t have to draw on long-term savings. And we won’t exhaust our short-term savings to the point that I’ll lose sleep over it.

So the door is open if we want to walk through.

My clinic called me back that same day. Dr. B. is happy to have us.

I booked a follow up appointment for the first of April.

I will make very clear to him what our stance is.

We are not committed to trying again.

We want someone to look at our chart and our history and give us an honest assessment of where we stand.

Dr. L. is too optimistic. He’s not interested in giving his patients statistics or hard answers. And after his emotionally manipulative tricks during our last meeting with him, I will never work with him again.

Dr. B. is different. I’ve watched him in the clinic. He runs on time. He doesn’t disappear at random intervals and throw his entire schedule into disarray. He has online reviews where people complain about his lack of bedside manner in that he didn’t pull punches and gave them hard truths that they didn’t want to hear.

I told the secretary we felt it was time for a fresh set of eyes.

If Dr. B. is willing to give us our sober second opinion, we’re willing to hear it.

We may not act on it. I’m still fluctuating wildly between desperately wanting to have a second child and being perfectly content with what I have already. I spend one night googling “five year age gap between children” which makes me want to have a second and the next googling “stopping at one child” which makes me want to just move on and be happy. The pendulum swings daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and I am no closer to recognizing which side it seems to be settling on.

But we’ll see what he has to say. And if he’s anything like Dr. L., we’re done. If he recommends to us that we go home and love the child that we do have and stop trying to have any more, we’re done. If he has a treatment plan and clear, specific reasons for why he thinks it might work, we’ll see.

The Big Fail

So. Here is the cold, unvarnished truth about why I am having so much trouble posting on here at the moment.

I feel like a failure on almost every level of my life right now, and I’ve been in such a dark space about it that I haven’t even wanted to type up the words to let them see the light of day. But my blog is my therapy. I don’t have a shrink (although I’m starting to feel like maybe I need one right now). Writing it out helps. So here goes.

1. I failed at having a second child.

2. And I’m failing at accepting this. I have spent the last couple of weeks seriously considering going back to the clinic for one more round of IVF (a Hail Mary pass if you like). With some ground rules: I want to change doctors (I’m done with mine) but stay at my clinic because I can’t handle the thought of moving and starting over. And I don’t want to freeze any late blooming Day 6 blasts. They make it to blast on Day 5, or we discard them.

I have been thinking seriously enough about this to be in contact with friends who have children with big age gaps (because we would be looking at an age gap of very close to 5 years) to get the good, the bad, and the ugly from them. I’m unbelievably conflicted, but there is a significant part of me that really really feels like I need a third IVF to be the deciding factor. One IVF worked. One didn’t. I’m caught in the balance and the uncertainty is eating away at me. Q. is happy to be done, but happy to try again if that’s what I really want. The big stumbling block for me is the money, because I don’t have a job and thus am extra conscious of our level of savings, but I’m starting to hit the point where I don’t actually care about flushing $10,000 down the toilet if it will mean I can walk away with some sense of peace.

3. I’m failing at being an academic. I have the most basic of revisions to do to my dissertation to be able to send it off to a press (well, I don’t think it will be ready, but my supervisor insists this is what I should do, so I bow to his experience) and I can’t bring myself to do them because every time I think about picking up my copy of the dissertation I burst into tears. And I mostly want to apply for a post-doc because that would make it easy to pick E. up from school every day for two years, and that’s not really a very good reason.

4. I’m failing at being a feminist, because it’s become terribly clear to me in the last month that my ongoing freak outs about not having a job are directly linked to the fact that I DO NOT VALUE the job I actually have at the moment- being a stay-at-home mother. Q. values this work. He tells me every.single.time I start worrying that I DO have a job, and a very important one.

But deep down it seems I don’t think it matters. And that’s sad.

5. I’m failing at getting a job. This is largely, I would think, because I can’t apply for 99% of the interesting jobs I see because I’m home full-time with E. (see above, number four). I have exactly five hours a week (if I am efficient at dropping E. off on time) where he’s not with me. Plus an hour of quiet time on the other days. This is not exactly conducive to finding and keeping paid work, but I am freaking out about it nonetheless.

Q. made two points to me on Friday (when all of this bottled-up anxiety finally came spilling out and I spent our Friday night “adult dinner” weeping helplessly at the table until Q. got enough red wine into me that I stopped). The first was: I only finished my PhD about six weeks ago. It might be premature to have expected to have it all sorted out at this point. The second point was: I can’t apply for a job for September now.

I think some part of my brain is still thinking in terms of academia, where you apply for any jobs months and months in advance and then you sit around to see if anyone contacts you. And that’s not the case at all once you’re outside of the university. The plan is for me to get a job for September, when E. will be (if all goes well) in school from 9:oo to 3:00 (or something like that) and I will have enough spare hours to put something together.

I can’t get a September job now, but I seem convinced that I have to.

6. I’m failing at this whole “PhD transition into life outside of academia” because I have no fucking clue what I want to do or what I can do or what I’m really qualified to do other than teach, even though I’ve been reading books and blogs and articles on the subject for a month now. And that makes me feel like I’m failing at being an adult, because I’m 35 and I should have my shit together by now. Plus my two sisters really have their shit together. My youngest sister is making a great name for herself in her field and will be off doing exciting things in exotic destinations this summer. My middle sister is in the midst of contract negotiations for the holy grail of academia- a tenure-stream position at a serious research institution.

I am not jealous of their (very very hard-earned) successes. It’s more that their successes are making my own flounderings ever more apparent (at least to me). I am so badly at sea right now. I hate Skyping with anyone in the family because when they ask what is going on in my life, I don’t feel like I have anything to tell them. E. and I did some stuff? I read a bunch of job ads I can’t apply for? I felt bad about myself again?

Partly it is because it’s winter, and it is dark and grey and cold (although we finally have some snow to go with the cold which makes it fun to be outside with a three almost-four year old). And partly it’s because I’m not getting enough exercise in (despite signing up for a 10K in June to light a fire under my well-insulated butt) because, well, it’s dark and grey and cold and now snowy, and I don’t do well with that if I wasn’t super fit to begin with. I tried running during my five hours a week during the day when E. is at nursery school but freaked out because I didn’t think I was using that time properly.

But mostly it is because I am in a moment of transition and everything, practically everything, in my life is in upheaval right now. And I can look at the situation as an outsider and recognize that this is the case, and recognize that things will get better, and recognize that it is unrealistic insane to think that I would be able to fix all of this in a month or two. And I know that five years from now I probably will have a job that I’m enjoying, and we will have resolved the issue of our family size (one way or another), and I will have made my peace with leaving academia, or will have found a way to stay in it that works for our family.

Right now, though, right here, I’m hurting.

So I’m writing it all down and I’m going to hit publish. Not because I’m trolling for sympathy. Not because I think anyone reading this can fix things.

Writing it down is the first step towards controlling these feelings rather than having them control me.

And I need, badly, to feel like I am in control of something right now.

Waging an inner war

There is a pot of money sitting in our high-interest savings account.

On the spreadsheet where I keep track of things, it’s labelled as “short-term savings”.

It’s not our emergency fund.

It’s not the bit of money we were given by Q.’s mother earlier in the year (which is sitting in the HISA until we figure out what we are going to do with it).

It’s our miscellaneous money.

Here’s what we’ve been thinking of using it for:

• top up our TFSA, RRSP and RESP savings to make up some of the shortfall we’re now building because I’m not working
• put it towards a cottage vacation next year
• finish the landscaping in the side/back yard so it will actually be a space we want to use
• help offset the cost of demolishing our ridiculous shed and replacing it with a smaller option (a part of the side/back yard project that Q. thinks he can do himself)

All good things that would benefit the family we do have.

I will give you all one guess as to what I currently want to use it for.

***

I don’t know how to reconcile my heart and my head.

Logically I can appreciate that it makes no sense whatsoever to cycle again.

It would be, at the very least, financially irresponsible.

Q. and I are not financially irresponsible people.

But my inner voice just won’t let it go.

It argues that when it comes to long-protocol fresh IVF cycles where we transfer two blastocysts, we have a decent strike rate.

Four blasts transferred.

Three implanted.

Two turned into embryos.

Admittedly, we’re not doing so well with the final outcome as only one of the four ever became a baby that we brought home, but that’s not to say that the next cycle wouldn’t be successful.

Or so my inner voice argues.

I have no idea how to shut her up.

***

There is only one positive coming out of this entire experience.

For once in my life, I am not eating my feelings.

It’s like my body has finally realized that no amount of chocolate cake is going to make this better.

Learning to raise the white flag

Thank you to everyone who has commented on my last couple of posts. The support of this community means the world to me.

One of the comments exhorted me not to give up.

But that’s exactly what this is about.

I believe there could be a different outcome if we just kept trying and trying and trying and trying. Eventually, at some point, there would be another good embryo and a cycle that worked.

If we had unlimited financial resources and bottomless emotional reserves and endless time and an unceasing willingness to put our lives on hold, we could probably get there.

But we don’t.

One of the most insidious things about infertility treatments is there is nothing to tell you to stop.

If you succeed in building the family you want, whether that’s one child, or two, or more, then it’s easy. You write thank you letters to your doctor and the rest of staff at the clinic and skip away into the sunset.

But when you don’t end up where you wanted to be, the finishing line is much murkier.

I have a follow up appointment booked with my doctor for early December. I would love for him to tell me that we are making the right decision. I would love for him to look at my history and agree with me that thirteen embryos transferred resulting in one live birth and one miscarriage and a 70% attrition rate for the embryos during IVF cycles and a total failure to get pregnant during FETs suggests that maybe there is something else going on that we don’t know about and can’t (yet) test for. I would love for him to acknowledge that we got lucky, really really lucky, with the cycle that produced E., but that maybe he was a fluke and we should count our blessings and walk away.

I don’t think he’s going to do that. I think he’s going to tell me it’s all been a run of bad luck. I think he will be highly optimistic (because this man is ALWAYS highly optimistic) about our chances of success if we try again.

He’s not going to help us to walk away.

The onus is on us.

And here is the problem.

This is the first time in my life where working really really hard and doing everything right has not led to success.

I have not learned how to fail.

I have not learned how to give up.

I have not learned how to accept defeat.

Right now all I want to do is figure out a way to rationalize trying again.  And I can’t yet tell whether this is an indication of just how deep-rooted my desire for a second child is, or if it is a defense mechanism (because as long as I am planning another cycle that means I don’t have to actually deal with the grief), or if it is my stubborn perfectionist nature refusing point blank to accept that something I’ve done in my life might not turn out well.

I’m sure at some point in my life I would have had to learn this lesson.

I just wish it hadn’t been this.