Yesterday was Rough

It started with my temp falling 3 points and I felt like I was aboard a lifeboat that had been pricked by a shark tooth in the middle of the ocean and was slowly sinking.
And then it got worse.

There’s a TTC group that meets twice a month at the NYC LGBT Center and I used to go to these meetings a lot in the beginning of my journey. The group also has a list serve where you can ask/answer questions. I was hoping it would be more of a support group, but it turned out to be more of an information gathering group—which is fine, but much harder to form meaningful relationships when everyone is a drop-in level. There were two women coming late last spring who were so overwhelmed and new to all of this and I gave them loads of information and referred them to my Fertility Center and my RE. I even saw them in the waiting room on their very first visit to Dr. VID and sat and talked with them awhile until they were called in. And then I never heard from them again. Until yesterday.
They posted a long response someone had asked on the list serve about ‘when do you know when to be aggressive?’ Turns out, they, at age 35, decided to be aggressive from the get go and are now 3 months pregnant.

When I read that it was like someone punched me in the stomach. I have handled every BFN with relative ease. “It’s not my time.” “I knew the timing was off.” Etc, etc. I think I’m holding up pretty well, all things considered and am in a good place about accepting fate. My life has been hard and spent waiting for something good to happen. This is hard and I’m pretty good at waiting. End of story.
But this news made me feel worse than 6 months of TTC and BFN’s.

I immediately felt so stupid that we’d been coasting along, trying to get pregnant without drugs, doing it au naturel (well as au naturel as one can get with assisted IUI’s). Why hadn’t we gotten more aggressive? Why didn’t we do IVF right from the beginning? What is wrong with us that we could possibly think we would be able to do this without extreme intervention? Why am I such an idiot?

K made me put on my running shoes and we went on a 2 hour walk down the river where she reminded me that we wanted to try to do this without drugs. Dr. VID thought I had a decent chance because my body was doing everything just as it should be. The girl who went right to IVF had many other issues going on that I didn’t and those issues pushed her and Dr. VID to get more aggressive from the beginning. We didn’t want to do IVF.
We didn’t???
We didn’t even want drugs???
It seems a million years away that thinking of where we were just seven months ago.

And it’s petty, but I’m jealous. I’m jealous that I sent them to my RE and they got pregnant and I’m not. I’m jealous, I’m mad, I’m angry.
None of these are pretty things and I know they will pass and really, I’m quite happy for the couple while still feeling jealous—if that’s possible.

I woke up at 4:30am this morning with an unsinkable feeling that I was on my way to IVF and why didn’t I just do that from the beginning?
So I broke all the rules and fixed myself at full caf latte because I am that convinced I am.not.pregnant. Again.
This one hurts the worst.

Meditating the Anxiety Away

In preparation for the preggo test, I went to a 2-hour meditation session at the Tibet House tonight with this woman.  She was quite amazing and since she's going to be there the next couple of Tuesdays, I think I'll keep going. 

Tomorrow morning I go in for a blood test and we'll find out one way or another by mid-afternoon.

I completely do not feel pregnant (whatever that feels like!) and I've watched my temps drop for 4 days now despite being on the progesterone, so whatever.  

If it's not my time, it's not my time.  I cannot control this.

K and I had a conversation over the weekend and discussed switching donors.  How do you know when it's time to break up with your donor?  I feel so foolish to have bought so much of him without trying him out first, but what can you do?  We have two more vials of him at our Fertility Center that we won't be able to return, so we'll lose the money on those and that stings.

The rest we can do an exchange for $150--although I don't know if that's per vial or the entire switch.  Probably per vial...

Anyone out there looking for some black market sperm?  He gets other women pregnant!

We also talked about perhaps just taking the plunge and trying more drugs this next cycle.  I am super scared of multiples because of my body size.  But there's a woman in my building who is as small as me and she had twins a year ago.  I saw these twins twice this weekend and it was like the universe sending me a sign, saying,  "you can do it. If you had to do it, you could do it". God those parents look tired and haggard.  But I could do it.  We could do it.

My RE isn't putting me on fertility drugs because he knows my fears and he says it's my choice But I've only got two cycles after this before IVF looms.  Is it silly to try 6 natural IUI's and then go to IVF without trying fertility drugs?

Remember my age, I don't have time to waste.  My clock is a freaking time bomb folks.