So two more days until I can take a HPT.  But, to be honest, I don’t think that will be necessary.  I just do not think I am pregnant.  Part of that is self-protection, so I don’t get my hopes up and then dashed — like last time.  Or like the last forty straight months, but who’s counting, right?!

I don’t feel pregnant.  I am tired, craving chocolate and extra-super-irritated.  I was known as Ms. Cranky Pants around the house this weekend.

I am sort of…what?  Resigned to?  Accepting of?  Sort-of-maybe-okay-with…going back east for a friend’s wedding and a family visit, and not being pregnant while doing so.  Of course I was totally hoping we would have good news to share with BeBop’s family, even though it would have been so early, since we rarely see them in person, we probably would have spilled the beans.  I just don’t see that happening, unfortunately.

And of course, of course, I have plans to see not one but TWO very pregnant friends!  AT THE SAME TIME!  Kill me now. 

I have been trying to get knocked up for so long that I have seen many of my friends have kids.  Many of these women have actually had TWO kids in the span of time we’ve been trying for one.  I’ve thrown a bajillion baby showers.  I have tried time and time again to be happy for their good fortune (and I am!) but still, when you’re knee-deep in the freakish fun house of infertility, it’s always hard to be around the beautiful pregnant ladies. 

Am I right?  Do you feel me??

I have done a lot of personal work around this whole issue of having people close to me get pregnant and have babies over the last few years.  After hosting  back-to-back baby showers that almost killed me I was so depressed and dejected, I just had to come to terms with the whole notion of being truly thrilled for my friends.  I had to focus on the fact that I loved them and felt genuinely happy for them.  And that their fortune did not equal more unhappiness for us, as if there was a limited supply of babies and one for them meant one less for me. 

I had nightmarish visions of just cracking under the pressure and running screaming from a baby shower, all dressed in white with really cute shoes, just after the salad but before the cake, clutching a stuffed animal that was a gift and shrieking: you stole my baby you BITCH, that one was MIIIIIIINE!!!!  AAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

Luckily, for the most part I kept it together and really tried to focus on my friends’ happiness.

But still.  STILL. 

Sometimes it just freaking sucks.

Okay, switching gears here. Let’s move on.

Since self-pity hour just ended, I am happy to report that my mother attended one of her conspiracy conferences over the weekend.  What a joy it must have been to sit in a room for hours on end hearing about the bird flu pandemic and the tsunami-causing meteor heading our way and the imminent market crash.  It makes for such fun dinner time conversation!

Oh, and if this blog is suddenly pulled without notice…you’ll know why…{insert dramatic theme music here.}

For those of you who read my post about the colon cleansing camp’s talent show, and the infamous light bulb eater…this is

HIM

Here’s the post, since I can’t figure out how to link to it…durrr…

A couple of years ago, my mom and I spent a week at a health ‘spa’ (very liberal use of the word spa here.)  You go there to cleanse your system, and the whole program revolved around raw foods, wheat grass juice, and colonics.  That’s right.  Colon cleansing as part of a vacation YOU PAY FOR.  You start off with a three-day juice fast, and then integrate raw and sprouted foods into your diet as the week goes on.  You have to cut and juice your own wheat grass three or four times a day.  To this day when I enter a Jamba Juice the smell of wheat grass makes me gag.  The funniest part (well, really, what’s NOT funny about a colonic?) was that at the end of the week they held a talent show.  Guests got up on stage and performed, one guy was a magician (in his non-colon-cleansing life) and he ate a light bulb.  WHICH, hello, was totally NOT on the diet.  The whole thing was like summer camp with enemas!  And although I did feel cleansed by the time I went home, apparently the raw food diet caused my entire digestive system to shut down and I didn’t poop for like a month.

Well, I don’t really have much to say.  I guess without news to report on the infertility front, I’m a hollow shell of a woman.  I must have nothing else going on in my pathetic life, other than going from one two-week-wait to another,  only to start the whole thing over again, like a crazy hamster wheel.  Blech!  I am sickened at the patheticness of this.

But.  There is one tidbit of news to share:  I decided to stop taking my BBT each morning. For much of the last couple of years, first thing in the morning I have faithfully jammed that digital thermometer under my tongue, being careful not to make any unexpected moves as that could raise my temperature a teeny tiny fraction of a degree.  I had my own private lab set up, with pen and clipboard and chart right next to the bed, so that I could perform this diagnostic test without disturbing BeBop or Bosco the Dog, who just lies in wait at the end of our bed until one of us moves which is apparently dog for:  crawl right up between us and put your furry head on my pillow.  Yes, QUITE the mecca of romance what with the chart and the clipboard and the thermometer and the dog. (And I wonder why we never have sex unless we ‘have to’??)

Anyhoo, I’ve always loved the TCYF thing because it did make me feel that I had a degree of control.  Which?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE. But. It’s not so much control as it is insight or knowledge.  And yes knowledge is power and blahdyblahblah, but what the BBT-ing did was give me a window into what my body was doing and when, without having to rely on OPKs or tests or doctors.  And I did feel empowered by this.

And then…it just all felt like a cruel joke.  Yes, I could pretty well tell if I had ovulated and if so, when. Even last month I saw a one-day drop at 10DPO (implantation, I shrieked that morning) and then a second temperature rise (I’m pregnant, I shrieked that morning) but we all know how that turned out.

So long story even longer, I realized that doing this every morning was a self-imposed prison of some sort.  I believed that knowing what was happening could give me that sense of control I so crave, but it was all an illusion, much like that scaly David Blaine’s attempt to escape from those under-water chains and hold his breathe for like an hour.

About a week ago, I stopped taking my temperature each morning and I have to say: 

I’M FREE, people! 

Raise the roof, wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care, oh yeah, sisters rejoice in the freedom that is RCYF (Relinquishing Control of Your Fertility).

So I have no idea if I ovulated or when, I don’t know how the timing of the IUI was (or wasn’t), I won’t know when to expect my period.  I am totally in the dark, letting my body do its thing, and it feels great.

I’m sure I’ll freak out in about another week, but for now I’m trying to enjoy the not-knowingness.  Farewell expensive but thoroughly accurate digital thermometer.  Goodbye entering the information into a computer program and waiting for the temp. shift. Peace out checking for my ever-elusive cervical mucus which always seemed more Rubber Cement than Egg White.

On the way into my doctor’s office this morning (with specimen cup tucked firmly in the bosom area to keep warm), BeBop and I saw the doctor walking in ahead of us.

“There goes Dr. Doolittle,” BeBop remarked.

“Why are you calling him that?” I asked.

“Because so far, he DO LITTLE for us.”

So tomorrow is…duhn duhn duhn…IUI #4.

And we all know how I feel about the number four.

I am actually feeling fairly ZEN about the whole thing. I don’t have my hopes up, but I’m also trying not to be pessimistic and overly negative. My mantra is to stay open, and keep saying "maybe something good will happen" over and over.

I did the trigger shot today, and the last two times I’ve had the HCG shot, I have woken up in the middle of the night feeling faint. Like can’t make it back from the bathroom without keeling over in a clammy cold sweat faint. The doctor thinks it could be low blood pressure, which I don’t normally have, so it’s very odd. Today he only gave me a fraction of the regular dose of HCG, so who knows if that will do anything.

Tomorrow morning BeBop does his thang in the privacy of his own bathroom at home, and then with sterile specimen cup tucked safety into my bra, off we go! Oy.

Wish me luck. I’ll need it.

So, ummmm…yeah.  Mother’s Day. 

Sigh.

Or, why I am overly-sensitive and need to chill the frick out.

Everyone keeps telling us to ‘have more fun’ and to just ‘relax’ —  each and every one of us infertiles has probably heard this <bunny ears> advice <bunny ears> a quadrillion times since we started trying to get pregnant.  And even though I usually sigh and with an exasperated and barely-disguised sneer on my face say, "I know, thank you.  We should try that.  I’ve never thought of THAT."  As frigging if.   

But. 

In the spirit of trying to have more fun and relax, BeBop and I decided to get massages yesterday at a local spa.  (I know:  I am married to a total metrosexual.  Well, this IS Northern California after all, what did you expect??  He gets massages and wears sandals and I have made my peace with that.  Moving on.)  We couldn’t get appointments at the same time, so instead he went in at 4:00 and I went at 5:00.  While he was paying for his massage and I was checking in for mine, the women at the front realized we were married and both at the spa at the same time.  Eee gads!  For some reason this was very alarming to one of the attendants.

WHERE ARE THE KIDS?  She screeched at me as we were walking to the back room where you’re supposed to relax before your treatment.

"Ahhhh….we don’t actually have kids."

"Oh. How was your Mother’s Day?"

And my reaction to that lovely remark?

"Ummmm….well, actually we’re trying to have kids, and when you’re trying for a long time Mother’s Day can actually be kinda crappy.  To tell you the truth.  Since you asked, and all, and ahhhh ummmm…"  I stammered on and on and ON like a complete raving lunatic moron.

I just wanted to STOP but my mouth kept forming words and stringing them together in half-sentences and I was powerless to stop it!!

It was just the kind of response that sent her, I’m quite sure, scurrying back to the front desk to report on the ‘crazy lady in the white t-shirt who is obviously in need of something MUCH stronger than body work.’

Actually, the massage itself was pretty good.  And I needed it, after spending the morning with MY mother.  She’s a kick, but rather exhausting.  Which you’ve probably picked up on if you’ve read more than a couple of posts here.  Brunch was all bird flu, the evils of sugar substitute and a comprehensive report on how the hybrid car we want to buy just ‘explodes without warning on the freeway’ or some such thing. 

Good times.

Last night’s conversation over dinner:

BeBop: When you finally get pregnant I am going to throw a huge party.

Me: Really??

B: Yep. Just like Christopher (from the Sopranos)’s visit to California!

Me: Complete with booze and hookers?

B: Yep. And blow too. Lots of blow.

(Kidding, of course! But since you don’t really know us I thought I should make it clear before someone calls AFT or DHS on us or something.) (And yes, I know jokes about elicit drug use and prostitution aren’t really funny.) (Except they are, kinda.)

Here I am on CD8, getting super excited (insert sarcasm here) for my next ultrasound on Monday.  I am neither excited nor dreading it, I’m not worried or relaxed.  I am not optimistic, but I’m also not particularly pessimistic either.   I am not hopeful, but I wouldn’t say I was hopeless.

So where does that leave me? I just don’t know.  I am stuck in this really weird in-between-ness that I’ve never experienced before.

For the 1st IUI, I considered it the trial run and didn’t think it would work.  And it didn’t.  For the 2nd one, I was slightly more optimistic, but actually getting pregnant still seemed highly improbable, like I just couldn’t picture it.

And as I’ve written about, last month I really and truly focused all of my energy into being hopeful. I really believed it might work.  I tried to stay open and relaxed throughout the entire ultrasound/trigger/IUI routine. When I had a one-day temp drop 10DPO, and then a temp rise, I freaked.  This is it, I thought.  We all know how that turned out.***

So now I’m sort of stuck in this no-woman’s land between hope and despair, and I’m not sure what to do.

Should I try to stay in this zen space and just have a wait-and-see attitude, should I prepare for the worst so I’m not caught off guard, or should I try as hard as I can to be hopeful and open to the possibility that this might actually work?

What would YOU do?  What HAVE you done?  Any and all feedback is most welcome.

***This is just a note to say that I know millions of women have gone through much worse…tests up the wazoo and IUIs and injectibles and IVF and more over years and years.  So to some, my whining over 3 failed IUIs might seem like nothin,’ but that’s just my experience to-date.  Any way you slice it, IF sucks.

Just a quick edit to last night’s post.

I realized this morning that it sounded like I had a bruise the size of a small Korean man on my body – which, really, is quite ridiculous isn’t it??  What I meant was:  I have a small Korean man’s THUMB-sized bruises all over my body. 

Good.  That’s all cleared up.

The actual story coming a little later today…

Well, I have quite a story to tell, if I might say so myself…which I may, this being my blog and all.  Unfortunately, I am trying to get out of the office soon and my tale will have to wait for another day.

I don’t have any spectacular news from my doctor’s appointment on Friday.  When I asked the nurse practitioner, "Ummmmm…when exactly do we start talking about what in the freaking hell to do when the IUIs don’t work?" and she answered, "about now,"  I almost started crying.  But then, the doctor came in and said we should do a 4th IUI, and that I shouldn’t lose hope.  I asked if they ever had patients who actually get pregnant after 4 or 5 IUIs, and she said yes.  But I suspect she was lying.  Regardless, it was nice to hear, the whole ‘hope’ part.

So, no, my story does not revolve around some miraculous panacea my doctor found last week curing all cases of unexplained infertility.  DUH!  I like, totally, would have e-mailed y’all by now if that was the case!

No, my story has to do with a ‘healing’ I had this weekend, at the hands of a Korean ‘healer’ my mother sent me to.  (And it’s scary how many of my stories will start with a phrase just like that one.)  Of course I went willingly because (not to promote any stereotypes or anything) in Northern California it’s quite common to spend a Saturday evening in a run-down office off the El Camino Real, being poked by a small Korean man who speaks precious little English.  Totally normal, I tell you.

So tomorrow, I will regale you with the story that ends with…wait for it…me covered in small Korean man-sized bruises ALL OVER MY BODY.  But am I HEALED, you ask frantically!?!?

I’ll let you be the judge of that.