Little reminders of optimism

Transfer is at Noon today. I have to be at acupuncture at 10AM, then the surgery center at 11AM to take a valium and fill up my bladder (more funtimes!) Despite my plan of sleeping in this morning I woke up at 6:14AM. I'm trying hard not to freak out but I hope all the embryos survived overnight and the grade 1's are still grade 1's and I hope the transfer goes well (Dr. Downer is doing it, ugh) and I hope and pray this is the cycle that finally works. Because in reality this is our last chance with either one of our genes, after this we won't be using my eggs/Doug's sperm anymore. It's sobering to think about and even more irritating to me that reproductively-speaking I'm young and women ten years older than me are getting pregnant with their own eggs. Doug believes everything happens for a reason and I tend to believe him but it's hard.

For happier thoughts these are some little reminders of optimism floating around our house this week:

 
The fortune from my cookie a few weeks back

My self-written message on the chalkboard in our kitchen

Flowers brought to me Monday by my very sweet and thoughtful friend

Hitting the pause button

There has not been much to report around here in our reproductive life. The biggest bit of news is that we're putting the whole homestudy/donor embryo path on pause right now. We got the second packet of homestudy questionnaires and financial information requests and we even got an appointment at the NEDC. But then the tiny bit of waffling we had been doing got stronger and we both felt like we couldn't move forward just yet. It's a hard thing to say goodbye to your biology, to the dreams you had of a child that might resemble you or someone in your family. So we're holding on to our paperwork and waiting it out. We will most likely do IVF a third time before moving on the donor embryos. This time we'll know that statistically a third IVF cycle is not likely to work and we will most likely be spending $13,000 + without any return but at least we're kind of okay with that. At least we know we will have given our own DNA the best chance we could and after that it's alright to let go. I've had a lot of people (friends, my boss) tell me we should look at going to another clinic. That's been weighing on my mind heavily too. However when it comes down to it, doing an IVF cycle here, at a clinic 5 minutes from my office and 10 minutes from my home, is already hard - what would it be like flying to Denver or Las Vegas or even driving 5 hours to St. Louis? Plus we know the drill here, we know the staff, the surgery center, the doctors and they know us. I really like my RE, sure I haven't gotten pregnant yet but I don't blame the doctor. He's good, the practice is good, their SART numbers are good and frankly I don't want to start all over again somewhere else. We've been seeing this RE for almost seven years and my file is like an encyclopedia, I don't want to drag it elsewhere. Besides, if my eggs are bad, they're bad. We can try different protocols and medicines and supplements but going elsewhere isn't going to improve my egg quality, just like it isn't going to make Doug not sterile anymore.

I have to say that I never thought we'd be here all these years later. There are days when it feel hopeless, when everyone seems to be able to get pregnant without blinking an eye, when people are so clueless about the things they say and do, when the daydream of me being pregnant feels like it's going to stay just a daydream. But I have to snap out of it and realize how incredibly lucky we are, lucky to have each other, lucky that Doug survived cancer, lucky that we have options that others never had. We will get through this, we will be parents.

First-world-problems & tangible hope

This last cycle has been more difficult for me than in the past. Maybe it's because I'm mad at myself for entertaining the possibility that something miraculous could happen and it would work. Maybe it's because we're edging closer and closer to the reality that we will not be biological parents. Maybe it's because we have spent $6,000  in IF treatments since the beginning of this year (let alone last year) and we have nothing to show for it expect an empty savings account. Whatever the reason it's been hard - then I read this post at Funny Little Pollywogs and I gave myself a kick in the arse. I don't 'know' Lacie but I have been blog-stalking her lately and her statement about having a broken heart but having so much more rang true for me. I *do* have a broken heart and we are dealing with a crap situation but we are also incredibly lucky. We have good jobs, we have housing, food, supportive family and friends. There is so much sadness and misery in the world right now and I need to be thankful for the things I have. That doesn't make me any less heart-broken but it does put things into perspective. Now on to the tangible hope part.

Besides blogging about infertility, I'm also a knitter. On my other blog I write about baking and knitting and other stuff. I learned how to knit during a particularly icy Saturday afternoon five years ago. Since I started knitting I have happily made things for other people and their babies. People I was related to, people I was friends with and sometimes people I didn't know. Every time I knit another little hat I would also wonder when it would be time to knit for my own baby. Time passed and I still had not needed to knit for my own little one. At the beginning of this year I decided that now it was time to knit for us, for our future baby, because we will have one, however he or she comes into our lives. 

So I've been knitting for us. Since the first of January I have knit these little things. Two hats (huge pom pom courtesy of my friend Sarah), a vest, a sweater, an owlie snuggle sack with matching hat and right now on my needles is another sweater. I have caught myself picking these little knit things up and thinking about the time when there will actually be a baby to wear them. Every day brings us closer, even though we don't know when or how.