That'll be 4 tickets, please

We're finally moving forward. I can't believe I finally get to type that.

The emotional infertility roller coaster continues. Monday was a definite low. It was an awful, depressing day. But then, when I went to the bathroom late Tuesday night before going to bed, I was spotting. Just a smidgen, but it was definitely spotting. And just like that, I was high again approaching the top of a steep incline. I went to bed, my ears buzzing with excitement that I could call Dr. PacMan and get things rolling again. This summer would not be an infertility waste. I would squeeze in one injectables/IUI cycle.

The next morning, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and lazily rolled over. Then I remembered the spotting! I sprung out of bed and raced to the bathroom. It was gone. Vanished. My enthusiasm deflated and I settled back into my "maybe" low.

I spent most of the morning checking for its return with no luck. Finally, I decided I'd just call the RE's office and see what they say. I left a message for a nurse and went back to puttering around the house, procrastinating about school work that needs to be finished (which is exactly what I'm doing again as I write this post) when the phone rang. It was the nurse and she said that spotting is spotting and the doctor said that this time around spotting counts as a period so it's on! The 81 day cycle is over! And, technically, it's not even a full season! Yesss! I gradually approach the top of the hill and throw my hands up to enjoy the ride!

First thing tomorrow morning, Mr. Jaguar and I go to the RE's office with our little cooler of drugs in tow to get my initial bloodwork done and learn how to administer injections. And my spotting has continued off and on over the last day or so to make me feel a little less broken than normal.

Today, things are looking up. Maybe this cycle will even work and I'll be able to leave the amusement park for good.

To everything, there is a season...damn

First off, for those of you who are wondering, my period held off for Thursday and has been holding off ever since. So while I'm eternally grateful that she did not arrive on Thursday, any time now would be good. A friend's words are ringing in my ears that she was in the same boat as me a while back and ended up having to go on birth control pills for a month to get her cycle regulated. I can't even think about that.

Second, today is cycle day 81. In 9 days, if my period is still MIA, I will officially have a season-long-cycle. That's absolutely outrageous to me and fills me with an overwhelming urge to throw things.

Okay, on to my post....

Today's been ugly, my mood foul. I'm hoping that turning to my blog and getting everything out of my head will offer some sense of solace.

I arrived home from Buffalo yesterday evening. It was great to see my two best friends and their families but the weekend was so much harder than I ever could have imagined. Like your heart swelling with joy while simultaneously your entire chest is aching. It's hard to explain...highs and lows, joyful and saddening, just heart wrenching overall.

My best friend is due in October and she looks amazing...just like her regular self but with a beautiful bump. Like I said before, her journey to motherhood has had its own challenges and so her pregnancy is different than everybody else's for me. I'm excited for her where most other people's pregnancies just depress the sh!t out of me.

But....it was a weekend filled with baby talk, small children and the most exquisite baby I've ever laid eyes on (seriously, this kid was so cute, she could've sold me baby food). These are all things I typically avoid these days. And it gradually wore me down. My husband did not come along for the trip and by Friday night, as everyone else slept, I laid in the dark staring at the ceiling thinking about how I needed a hug. I was the only one husbandless and felt as though I needed mine the most right at that moment.

Also, my neck has been bothering me for the last few months and last week, it got worse. I think the long drive and hauling my duffle bag around aggravated it even more and by Friday evening, I broke down in tears and called the on-call doctor. I don't think near constant pain is good for an infertile woman's enthusiasm level and overall peppiness.

The funny thing on this trip was that there was no way to predict what would bring on the lump in my throat. One moment, I'd be fine playing with the kids, the next moment with them would make my chest hurt. I'd admire my best friend's belly a million times, and the time after that, I'd be hit by a wave of sadness. I'd participate in all of the baby talk with no problems and then out of nowhere, it would make me want to cry. There was one thing that got me every time though. I've only hung out with my best friend's husband a handful of times and have never really seen him around kids for a extended period of time. He played with those kids with so much joy and anticipation. When his nephew would chat with him and then wander away, I'd watch the expectant father's smiling eyes follow the boy as he walked off. I always had to look away.

I'm going to end with positive thoughts from the trip because this all sounds too depressing. I got to feel baby Kara kick! And I got to feel how hard my best friend's bump is which always amazes me...it's like a smooth rock! I saw an old friend at the shower and met a new one (more on that later). I came home with an awesome drawing of me posing with a chair and a can of Pepsi which a certain soon-to-be-second-grader drew for me and I will display prominently on my fridge. I got to laugh a lot....even if it was often bittersweet laughter. I got to spend time with my two best friends in the world. And if I had to do it all over again, I would without a second thought.

Confession: I peed on a stick on the way home. I know, I have problems. But I got to driving and just started daydreaming that maybe that five days of spotting was really my period and the eggwhite cervical mucus was really me ovulating and maybe, just maybe, I could be pregnant. It's all totally feasible, right? And my best friend and I always talked about how we wanted to be pregnant together, and then I could text her and say "it's positive!" and she could call me and we could cry together about how amazing life is. It'd be great, so I must be pregnant, right? I even splurged and bought the more accurate digital test so I wouldn't miss the positive that I was certain to have. And I peed on a stick right in the grocery store restroom. But I'm sorry to disappoint, folks, it was negative. You're shocked, I know. And then I had a nine hour car ride to ponder that result.

This morning, my doctor's office called to check on me since I contacted the on-call doctor over the weekend. I went in for an appointment and, sure enough, I strained my neck and it is spasming. I scored some muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories. Jealous? Yeah, you are. They don't really give me a buzz though. Just make me drowsy, but damn, my neck feels a lot less tight. While I was there, I also asked my doctor if he could recommend a therapist for me and he could! He gave me a name and I left her a message today. Hoefully, she takes my insurance. I need some strategies for dealing with all of this stress.

I'll let you know how all of that goes...next season.

Will she or won't she?

I have an 11 hour window when my period does not have permission to arrive. Said period may arrive at any other point in the next 14 days besides this 11 hour window (and besides when I'm wearing white pants, but that's a given).

Tomorrow, at approximately 1 p.m., I am leaving New Jersey and heading to Buffalo. I will take my last dose of progesterone tonight. After speaking with the RE's office, we determined that if I get a period on Thursday, I have to stay home for one more day to get bloodwork done on Friday morning so that I can start my injectables cycle. I'd have to stay put because Monday would be cycle day 5 at which point it would be too late and I couldn't start my drugs. I don't love the idea of staying home for another day as I generally only see my two best friends I am visiting once every year or two at best so I want to spend as much time as possible with them.

But, what if I get my period after I've left Jersey but still on Thursday? Do I turn around, pulling an illegal U-turn on the highway at 60 (okay, 75) miles per hour? What the heck do I do then?

And so this is why, period, you do not have permission to arrive on Thursday, July 31st between the hours of 1 p.m. and midnight. And frankly, if you could just not arrive on Thursday altogether, that'd be super. I think I've been more than accommodating for the last 76 days and I am only asking for 11 stinkin' hours (but preferably 24 hours).

What do you bet the whore shows up anyway? Sorry, I take it back. I didn't mean it. Please don't show up. Please.

On another note, I'm going to New York because it's my best friend's baby shower. I'm beyond excited for her to become a mom. Her journey to conceive a child has been long and difficult. She will be an amazing mother. So this is a pregnancy that I celebrate.

But....at the same time, I can't lie. I'm a little nervous for the shower. It's the first one I'll attend since trying to conceive my own child (I bailed on one a few months ago because a beyond understanding, wonderful friend of mine gave me the option after a particularly harrowing weekend). So I'm a little anxious about the few hours of baby toys, baby clothes and hopefully not baby questions directed at me, but this friend and baby are different. This one comforts much more than it could ever hurt. This one gives me hope.

My other woman

She's here. Where she nearly always is. She's here with me.

Often it takes someone else's words to help me articulate my own. I've been reading the Kite Runner, which in the first few days, I thought was a horrid book and debated giving up on it. The story of Hassan and Amir's childhood left me wanting to reach deep into the pages and smack Amir for the many ways he wronged his friend, no matter his intentions. But I stuck with it, other people's praises reverberating in my head....it's one of my favorites....I love it.....couldn't put it down.

Finally, I reached the point where the author switched to telling of the boys' adulthoods. Thank God. No more childhood atrocities. I smiled through Amir finding love in such a gentle, innocent way. I cried as he lost his father. And then....I groaned aloud

....as I read the words unexplained infertility. I tossed the book on the bed and gazed at the lazily blowing branches outside my bedroom window. I didn't sign on for this couple to be infertile. I was looking for an escape....from my own infertility.

After a few minutes, I picked up the novel again and began to read on, mostly because I was too lazy to get out of bed. Shortly after, I came across this paragraph:

"Sometimes, Soraya sleeping next to me, I lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya's womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from Soraya and settling between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child."

Somebody else's words conveying so eloquently the random thoughts and jumbled phrases that tumble around my head daily startled me. Somebody else summed up my marriage, my household and my heartache in one paragraph.

For the last two years, I've written a letter on our anniversary, just summarizing what our year has been like. I tuck them away in our marriage box for now but I hope to make an album of them for our children to read as they grow up and my memory becomes fuzzy. That first year, before infertility made itself comfortable in our spare bedroom that's meant to be a nursery, the words flowed off the page with ease, my love for my husband seeping out of every line. But this year, this year was different. I still love my husband in more ways than I could ever commit to paper and I'm beyond grateful for my marriage, but there's a hole, a hollowness that echoes in my joy. My infertility.

I have to say, infertility's a pretty sh!tty roommate. She doesn't do any chores, she's quite the Debbie Downer and she tends to invade my quiet moments. Let's call her Hannah because I always spell infertility wrong when I type and have to go back and fix it and also because, let's face it, she's a big part of my life. She warrants a name.

Hannah lounges about lazily when I attempt to do my school work. She interrupts incessantly as I try to meet a dealine for a paper. When I attempt my assigned reading, she wanders in and out of the office, playing with the highlighters on my desk and blowing hair from her face with her deep sighs. Anything to shift my focus back to her. Over dinner with my husband, she sometimes just sits at the table, begging to be noticed as I avert my eyes from her gaze. Sometimes, as I'm cooking, she peers overs my shoulder, her face closing in on my personal space. Worse, sometimes she stares at me when I'm alone with my husband, chiding me that no amount of time in the bedroom will make her pack up and ship out.

But sometimes, just sometimes, she leaves for a bit. Runs to the convenience store and I have a few minutes peace, a respite. Even better, on occasion she goes to see a double feature and leaves me a few cherished hours to enjoy myself and relax. But she always comes back and most of the time, she's quiet about it, sneaking up on me from behind and shouting boo! as she closes in on me.

These brief reprieves give me hope that one day she will leave for good.

Here we go again...

Last night, I had a melt down. It was just time. It had been awhile and acknowledging that the progesterone wasn't working coupled with the positive result of my rheumatoid arthritis test was just too much. I curled up in my husband's arms, tears started leaking out and quicky turned into sobbing. For the first time, I asked, "What if I'm not supposed to be a mom?" This was followed by wondering what we would do with the two other bedrooms in our home. We bought this house to raise a family in. Those rooms are meant for children. What if that never happens? What if kids' squeals and laughter never echo through my home? I eventually cried myself to sleep.

I should mention my husband fell asleep mid-meltdown while I was still in his arms. He was rubbing my shoulder while I cried, and it was getting slower, and slower, and slower until it stopped. He was asleep. I'll let him slide though. It was a school night. Still, it's a little funny.

Today, I went for my cycle day 70 bloodwork. Nothing routine about that, huh? So the usual nurse calls me back and asks me how I'm doing. I couldn't really...make words. Not at first. I just shook my head and managed to squeak out, "It's day 70" while fighting back tears. This spilled into something to the effect of me not knowing how much longer I could do this. She thankfully changed the topic to the newest Batman movie and, for that, I love her.

Don't get me wrong. I know it's only been just over a year. I know there are tons of women who have been on their infertility journey for significantly longer than me. I in no way feel as though I'm on the same level as them. But the thing is, I don't know how they do it. I try to imagine myself in the same spot in two years or even one year from now and the idea is unbearable. The emotional ups and downs of infertility exhaust me.

The RE's office called me back in the afternoon. They didn't bother to tell me that my pregnancy test was negative which I appreciated. She said that the doctor is doubling my dose of progesterone but I only have to take it for seven days rather than ten. Then she told me that the doctor said that, if I did not get a full flow, and only had spotting, that would be considered a period for this cycle. The doctor made a special note about this in my file so the nurses would be aware. Apparently seventy days makes you special.

In other cycle hillarity, I've been having egg white cervical mucus for the past four days. Ha! That makes me laugh while I choke back tears. I've been charting it on Fertility Friend and noticed that it started twelve days after my five-day-spotting-streak. Do you think that heavy spotting was a period after all and my jacked up body actually managed to ovulate? I have no idea since I've been waiting for my next cycle to resume temping, but wouldn't that be a kicker? Don't worry, we had sex. Just in case.

Hump Day Wrap Up

Let's sum up the medical portion of my day...

Talk with orthodontist:
Yes, you can come in and we'll make you a new retainer but you have no coverage for the retainer or your appointment. We'll see you Monday! (says the receptionist in a voice entirely too chipper for the mood I'm in)

Talk with RE nurse:
What? You're on cycle day 69? (stifle the giggle that sneaks out even though I'm frustrated and cranky) No, I don't think that progesterone you took is going to work. I don't see a period in your near future. Come in for some more bloodwork and we'll give some more progesterone. Let's see what a second round of it does. Maybe the doctor will give you a higher dose.

Talk with Primary:
Yeah, you tested positive for rheumatoid arthritis. It's mild but it's positive. It could be nothing but we still need to get it checked out. You're going to need to see a rheumatologist. (Sweet Jesus)

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Open Letter to "J"

If you're reading this, I'm so sorry to hear the news of your miscarriage. It's not even remotely fair and I'm angry for you just thinking about it. I'm thinking of you and keeping you in my prayers. If you ever want to talk, please don't hesitate to call. I don't know if you've "nested" at all but I wanted to include the Nest's pregnancy loss board. It's an extremely supportive group of women. Maybe you'll want to visit or maybe not. Either way, I just wanted to be sure you knew about it.

http://boards.thenest.com/boards/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=426&MsdVisit=1

I also wanted to post some blogs for you. This is the be-all-end-all list of blogs that are everything fertility related, categorized no less. Maybe someone else's voice can offer some small sense of solace.

http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/2006/06/whole-lot-of-blogging-brought-to-you.html

For anybody else reading this, if you could leave some thoughts, prayers, dust or juju for "J", please do. Thanks.