Spinny Ride

When I was 8 or so, I went on this ride once at an amusement park that was one of those kinds that spun you around and around and, using centrifugal force, would plaster you to the sides of the wall and drop the floor out from under you.  I hated every second of it, and when I finally got off, spent the rest of the day moaning and looking green.  Ever since, even looking at a spinny ride makes me queasy.

Last night, I dreamed that I was on that ride again.  I can only imagine that it was my brain trying to reconcile the emotions of this past week.

As my wife has been documenting, this cycle has been decidedly wackadoo.  Compared to the previous cycles where everything has been like clockwork, the lateness, the symptoms (or lack thereof), the pee sticks (and frustration) and FEELINGS associated with this being The Last Try has, apparently, sent my inner self on a spinny ride of doom.

We don’t typically linger long on things.  Anything, really.  Deciding to have a baby – bam.  Buying a house – bam.  Trading in the hatchback for a convertible – bam.  We do sudden, big decisions REALLY WELL in our house.   We do in-between things terribly.  In fact, my wife won’t even stand in between a doorway.  True story.  I do really well in daydreaming, but have learned (in nearly nine years of marriage) that if I daydream about anything too loud, it will happen.  Bam.

So the uncertainty in anything is awful.   But the uncertainty about whether our last cycle worked is dizzying.  Yes, time will tell.  We’re even pretty sure, at this point, that it’s telling us no.  But we’d like to keep moving forward.  Mourn the loss of our potential two-child family.  Be grateful for the three year old who will be our (beautiful, healthy) one and only.  Support and comfort my wife, who may be resigned, but doesn’t mean she isn’t emotionally broken.  Try to find the right words and actions.

I’m not moaning, but I might look a little green.

Hey thanks…

Y’all are pretty awesome, ya know that?  Thanks thanks thanks, for all of the kind words, and cheers of encouragement, and pick-me-up’s when we’re down.

And no, I’m not just saying this all because Bob is going out of the country until November.  (NOVEMBER!)

But really.

We’re here in the wait.  As ya do.  Tomorrow, we’re heading, new annual amusement park passes in hand, to take our minds off of waiting by not riding rides, but seeing Halloween themed amusement park shows.  Sunday, I will be blissfully watching football, despite the Redskins’ AWFULNESS.  Next week, perhaps I’ll get inspired to mow my lawn.  Seriously, y’all.  That shit is TALL!  I can hardly find the dog out there anyhow…

Then it’s nearly my birthday.  In fact, we’ll find out about this cycle probably right before.  Which is kind of when we found out about RR in 2009.   Which is kind of when I started this blog.

Also in the meantime, I need to stop eating so much sugar.  Stop drinking so much beer.

I also miss my mom a lot this week.

Thanks for always listening.  High fives and finger guns all around.

Take Five

This afternoon at 3pm, we’ll be doing this one more time.  Cross all the things.  Pray all the prayers.  Think all the good thoughts.  Let’s make this one count, hm?

CD02

Title says it all.  Here we move into another cycle, still with hope that maybe this next kid just REALLY wants to share a birthday with RR.  I mean, if the Universe has its way, it would pull some shit like that.  And considering that my wife’s family and my family tend to pile up the birthdays on the same dates/times of month, it would all make sense.

So here we go.  Again.  C’mon Universe.  Don’t be an asshole.

On other fronts, we’re done travelling until November, thank goodness.  Then it’s a long weekend in Arizona followed be a week-long jaunt to the beach for Thanksgiving.  We hit up the amusement park a couple of times this past weekend, and connected with my family for some fun-with-cousins.  I never had cousins growing up, but M says that you do stuff like … go to amusement parks together.  Fancy that!  We’re doing it right!

I’m reminded of RR’s young and tender age when, at the end of the Elmo On Stage Dance Party, her poor sad face melted into a pile of tears, quietly sobbing into M’s shoulder, “But I need him to come baaaaaack.”  Oh honey.

Full Week Two of Montessori started today.  After we dropped my wife off of work, RR and I had a pep talk in which we vowed to conquer Tuesday.  There was shouting and fist-pumping.  She confidently told me that she wouldn’t cry at drop-off (which she didn’t) and that she would pee in the potty (I will believe it when I see it).

I have a massive list in my head of things I need to do at my house.  There’s cleaning and spackling involved.  Who is coming to help?  Not everyone at once, now…

For your patience, here is a picture of RR with Grover this past weekend.  She spoke to him like they were kindred spirits.  She then told him to have a nice day.  That said, please note the MANIA in her eyes.

Here we go again!

Like clockwork, man.  My wife’s cycle is right on time today!

A positive OPK is sending us for a 1:15pm IUI this afternoon, and another IUI tomorrow morning at 8:30am, CD15 and 16 respectively.  Here’s hoping one of these ambitious swimmers can find my wife’s egg, and they can make beautiful cells together.  Cross your everythings!

3DPO

So last week, I was all, WOO next week we’ll be doing IUI’s!  Woo!

But then we did both IUI’s on Sunday morning.  Huh.  Well OK.

Let me back up.  Or you can read my wife’s account.

Saturday, we went shopping at a mall about 50 minutes away.  We were lured by the promise of an exciting lunch out at a restaurant, and the potential to buy some summer shirts.  That is neither here nor there.  My wife brought along an OPK to test at 11am in the restaurant bathroom.  So romantic.  The kit came back negative, so we went along with our day.

We walked along the mall for a bit and headed home after some shirt success and a RR-potty failure that involved her taking a giant crap in her Pull-Up while hunched over and practically crawling into a row of nicely folded V-necks at the Eddie Bauer.  It’s only a little awkward when the cashier is smiling nicely asking if you need help, while your child narrows her eyes and shouts “GO AWAY MAMA!”

I CAN’T go away, RR.  You’re pooping in the Eddie Bauer.  Jeez.

Eventually, we made our way to the car, into a new Pull-Up, and home in time for RR to take the world’s most late nap from 2:30pm until we had to wake her ass up at 5pm.

Sometime around 6pm, my wife says, “Do you think I should test again?”  It was CD15.  Sure?  Her iPhone app said she’d ovulate on, like, today.  But OK.  I fired up the grill, threw on some steak, and she came out onto the deck with the positive OPK and said, “Well shit.  Now what do we do?”

First, I said, we text shg, who had so graciously offered to watch RR if the IUI happened over the weekend.  Cause, hellooooo emotional scarring.  Then we double-checked with the clinic’s website on when to call, and planned on calling at 7am the next morning to make an IUI plan.

My wife called at 7am, and we nailed down a 9:30am IUI for two vials at the same time.  We dropped RR with shg at 8:45am, and headed to the downright deserted clinic, where we saw a total of three people:  the lab lady, the nurse, and our RE.  In the waiting room, we continued our ritual of talking about some kind of disaster to take our mind off of things.  This time, I told my wife all about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.

The nurse called us back, and the RE soon joined us.  We wished him a happy father’s day, and spent much of the procedure talking about our respective visits to Yellowstone.

15 minutes later, we left, picked up RR (we can’t thank shg enough), and headed home where my wife elevated her feet on the couch all day long.  We had lunch, RR napped, I walked the dog, mowed the lawn, and here we are 3DPO.  The waiting is killer, man.

CD06

Donor #2 (who looks more like me… sort of like a leprechaun with brown hair) is ordered and making his trek to our town as we speak.

We start monitoring OPK’s next week, with an eye around the 15th-18th for the go-ahead smiley.

This cycle, we’re doing two IUI’s back-to-back – one the day of the OPK change, and one the day after.

May the waiting continue to go by swiftly!

CD01 v2.0

So we didn’t test on Friday.  We actually agreed on Friday that we’d test Monday morning if she hadn’t started bleeding by then, because bleeding is a much nicer way to find out you’re not pregnant than some crap-ass pregnancy test.  In the end, her instincts were correct.

I admit – I had a lot of hope.  I still kind of recall reading those cooky message board posts from people who were medical anomalies, with their pregnancies despite negative tests and bleeding.  Google, you so crazy!  As an aside, testing in the morning is just about as awful as an idea as ever.  Good morning!  You’re not pregnant!  Carry on!  Have a pleasant day!  I kind of wish it had a more Magic 8-Ball reaction… like, “Try again next month!” or “Outlook not so good.”

There was some spotting yesterday, followed by more aggressive bleeding today, and a negative pregnancy test to boot!  So we can all agree to call IUI#1 a bust in baby-making.

After some paperwork this week, we will ship donor #2 to the lab and hope for another try in a couple of weeks.  The “good” news is that at least she started bleeding and we didn’t get into a weird place where she tested negative AND her period packed up and left, saying “fuck this shit!”  So yay AND boo for CD01.

Try #2 is underway, in as much as it can be as you’re waiting for someone to stop bleeding and ovulate.  Right?

As sad as I am that RR won’t have a genetically-linked sibling, donor #2 really seems to be a great fit to our family.  Isn’t it nice when that happens?  I don’t remember it being this hard to pick a donor last time, but this time, we went through a metric ton of options.  One donor we overlooked a few times eventually out-awesomed everyone else in a way that made us wonder why we had ever overlooked him in the first place.

Onward we go.  In the meantime, it’s Saturday night and I’m eating ice cream and watching My Cat From Hell.  We all cope in our own ways, right?

How are you feeling? How about now?

My wife might kill me if I ask her one more time how she’s feeling.  She has patience in her eyes, and she answers nicely and honestly.  Today, it’s sweaty palms, which is notably NOT an early pregnancy symptom.  It is also 88 degrees outside.

We tested yesterday morning, which was 12 DPO.  I convinced myself it could have really been 11 DPO if you do the funny math of the OPK change on 5/16, meaning that ovulation was COMING (i.e. hadn’t happened) and could have happened on 5/17, which would have been 0 DPO.  Ya see?  Right?

Anyhow – her period is due any day now, so we’re waiting to see if she’s late (call us old fashioned!) or if it comes.  If no blood between now and Friday, we’ll test again that morning.  Don’t worry – you all will be the first to know.

The waiting is grueling.  Days go by ever so slowly, and the heat outside makes it feel like time is ticking by while sitting in a pool of molasses.  I’m still hopeful (I’m perpetually hopeful), but I’m also trying to be realistic.  I’m trusting my wife’s instincts and physical read on her body.  We’ve also picked (well 98% sure) Mr. Back-Up Donor (also anonymous, like RR’s donor, for y’all following at home), so we’ll just have to move swiftly to get him in stock in time for try #2 in June.

If you need me, I’ll be here waiting.  Tick… tock…

Pay To The Order Of: SEMEN

If I never write another check to a lab for the storage of semen, I will be eternally grateful.  (Who still writes checks?  Me, that’s who.)

For nearly four years, every single month, I’ve written a check to store the last vial of our donor.  That amount of money could have taken us on vacation.  Or remodeled part of our house.  Or paid off some debt.  Or two months of RR’s school.  Or replaced the remaining five windows in our house.  Or bought endless amounts of grass-fed beef.  Mmmm.

So many times over the past three years, we’ve balanced our household budget, and groaned over that pesky vial and its place in our monthly finances.  We downgraded our cable.  We adjusted the thermostat to keep the utilities down.  We financed our mortgage.  We debated several times whether or not we should get rid of it.  It wasn’t an astronomical charge, but it was consistently there, with no end in sight.

I think I was hoarding it because I didn’t know if I was ready to not be pregnant again.  But it seems right after I decided that I didn’t need to be pregnant again (a whole other post), my wife was ready.  It’s the one time in my life that holding onto something that didn’t have an immediate use has paid off.

We’re 8DPO over here.  We’re waiting.  We’re anxious, but trying to relax.  (HA!)  We’re still hopeful.  We honestly have no reason to NOT be hopeful.  We’re having visitors this upcoming long weekend, and we’re hopeful that they will take our mind off of being anxious and waiting.

If this cycle doesn’t work out, we’ll try again next month with a new donor, but only buying as much as we need, per cycle.  Less economical up front, perhaps, but more economical in the long run, so that we don’t find ourselves in the same spot, both financially and, well, emotionally.  My semen-check-writing days could be officially over.  Hallelujah.