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.
Hey there-
I’ve done all of them, really. For my first IVF cycle, I was all Mrs. Hopeful, even though I hyperstimmed and got sick as a dog (let’s not EVEN talk about having to get drained-urgh), the second time (cryo cycle)I was the Zen Mistress, and for IVF #2 my attitude was a bit negative. Now, for fresh cycle #3, I think that I am going to at least try to act as if it isn’t a big thing and just go about my daily life as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Now, whether that actually plays out this way will be another story…..
Honestly, I think that it was emotionally worse for me before I found out that I was infertile. We were doing everything “right”-charting, timing sex, temperatures, using pee sticks and the monitor-and nothing worked. Once I found out what my problem was, it was like a load off my back and took the pressure off this whole process-I realized that, no matter what I did or didn’t do, I’d have a better shot getting run over by a bus of old ladies on the way to Atlantic City than get pregnant naturally. Of course, now that I’ve been doing fertility treatments, it’s a whole different kind of stress, which, I think, is due to all those lovely hormones they make you shoot up.
Seriously, though, what you’re feeling is totally normal, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re doing IUI’s or IVF-the emotions are the same, so don’t feel like you’re whinging and whining away-you have a right to. We all do.
Speaking as a crusty old infertile who’s been at this for almost 4 years now, just try to take each day as it comes. I try hard every day not to let conceiving a child become the all consuming obsession in my life (well, okay…it IS, but I do try!), because, for a time, I started to forget who I was and why I was doing this whole thing. A wait and see attitude is the best one to have, along with a little hope thrown in for good measure.
I truly hope that everything works out this cycle!
I know it is hard to keep getting your hopes crushed…..sorry you are feeling this way. As S said, you just have to keep it one day at a time…it makes it more bearable vs. thinking of everything and the what ifs. Hang in there! Thinking of you!
Personally, I think the more relaxed the better. Stress really is a factor. I was so excited for my 2 rounds of IUI and my first IVF. This time I almost keep forgetting to give myself the shots. I can’t help but think this is a better way to go. I don’t want to be obsessed about it — it’s not healthy. Also, part of it is probably a self-defense mechanism. Stay zen.
Thank you ALL for the wonderful and supportive comments! It’s so nice to get advice from women who have actually been through this, not just well-meaning friends who try to help but have no idea what this journey is like.
Dear Watson, I have no real advice. All I know is that having no hope is awful, and having too much hope is awful too. I try to maintain a hope equilibrium. “Try” being the operative word. The best thing is to try to distract yourself. (Again, “try” blah blah blah.)
And you’re right, IF in all its lovely guises just sucks.
I just read your account of the Korean bruiser — very funny. What a truly odd experience!