stuck

so, you know how i said that i would call the r.e.'s office "tomorrow" to get a consultation? well, i didn't. i still haven't. i looked him up online, and the reviews were not glowing. they weren't horrible... he was considered competent but with limited bedside manner and a disorganized office which is apparrntly constantly running behind. well, that's pretty much any doctor's office in nyc (i think i waited 2 hours to see my ob-gyn once for an annual exam). hearing these somewhat negative reviews did leave me a little cold. unfortunately, none of the recommended doctors were on my insurance plan.

i ended up spending the day with my mom tuesday. she wasn't feeling too well, and my dad had to go off for meetings, so i made sure she ate regularly and took her out for a short walk. with all that time on my hands, i ended up mentioning that we are considering seeing a doctor for infertility. she was surprised... she knew that we had been trying for a while with little success, but i don't think she ever considered that we might be infertile. i asked her if she had had any trouble conceiving, and she said she didn't... she wondered if, perhaps, we might be having problems because of stress... mine, given my her illness, and mil's, given the stress of applying to and starting medical school. obviously, that's possible. i've wondered it myself quite a few times. i should interject -- my mom has a bit of a "granola" streak... though in appearance she blends in well with the well-heeled suburban moms, she has always preached the ills of artificial flavors and colors... too much sugar... and unnecessary medication. i sometimes wonder if she would even have chosen to take chemo if it hadn't been for her brother who died trying to defeat pancreatic cancer with non-traditional treatments. so, that said, you can get some sense of how she might feel about treating infertility with hormones and surgery. i knew this going into it... but i wanted my mom on my side... emotionally, and possibly financially. i told her that at this point we would just go in for diagnostic procedures... to find out what is wrong with one or both of us. i was smart enough to mention that we might consider acupuncture treatment, but that we wouldn't even know which one of us needed the treatment if we didn't do some diagnostic procedures first (in all honesty, i don't know if this was being smart... or just the apple not falling too far from the tree). she agreed... and then brought up the story of some relatives who tried "all sorts of treatments for months" and "it was such an emotional rollercoaster that it was hurting their marriage" so they stopped and then a few months later conceived a son on their own. i knew this story and figured it would come up since it was the only experience my mother has really had with this sort of thing, but it still threw me for a loop... i thought about the stress... and the fact that mil has been home for a total of about 10 waking hours this week. and i became stuck.

i'm still stuck. something is holding me back from calling that doctor. part of me is ready to get this show on the road... if it ain't working the old-fashioned way, then let's get it working some other way. another part of me wants to give the old-fashioned way more of a chance. and i don't know if it's because a) i don't have the emotional energy right now to deal with the ups and downs of treatment, b) i don't want to burden mil with the time commitment of treatments (as minimal as it is for the man) and the potential rollercoaster of emotions that i might be going through in his first year of med school, or c) i'm just too much of my mother's daughter...

if we don't go to the r.e. now, i'm thinking i might just toss all the gadgets and test sticks out the window (not literally, thank you, nypd) and try my best to forget about trying to get pg for a while. i know i'm not getting any younger, but if we wait until next summer, mil's schedule might be a little better for a few months, and maybe things will be calmer in other areas of life, too. of course, mil is part of all this, and given that he's been home so infrequently, we haven't really had a chance to have a conversation about this. he seems to be of the "get-the-show-on-the-road" variety, but then again, he doesn't have any time to go to the r.e... unless somebody's office is open on weekends... haha!

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so long, month 11

like clockwork. cd 27 brings cramps... cd 28 light spotting... and cd 29 = cd 1. yay. fortunately, i'm not surprised. i just no longer believe that we're going to get pregnant without some medical help. what's sad is that i've somehow managed to lose mil's s.a. referral. (there's probably something freudian in all of this.) i called my ob-gyn's office to find out if there are any other labs that my doctor works with that accept our insurance, but they didn't seem to know (and couldn't even find the original referral). instead the woman gave me the names of some r.e. clinics that they work with... hmm... i'm very tempted to just call these clinics and start there with someone who specializes in i.f. but i'm not sure if i should wait the 1 extra month for i.f. to be official. i'm tired of waiting. in my heart, i know something is wrong, and i want to know what it is, so we can do something about it. i feel like every month we wait to do something, is a month we could have had a real shot at making a baby.

anyway... i'm going to discuss with mil and see what he thinks. seems like it might be a waste to start with the ob-gyn, just to be transferred to an r.e. a month or two later (and likely repeat some of the same tests). and it doesn't hurt that the r.e.'s office is literally down the block from my apartment... you ladies have had the best advice so far... any tips on making sure you've found a good r.e.?

lucky

lately, i've been feeling a little sorry for myself... sorry that i don't have the perfect job... sorry that i have to work so hard just to get pregnant (and i know i haven't seen the half of it!)... sorry that my husband studies so much... and most sorry that my mom has cancer.

then sometimes, i read a blog or two or talk to a friend who recently lost her mother, and i realize how lucky i am. no matter what happens next week, next month, or several years from now, right now i have my mom. i can call her when i feel like it. i can spend the day reading a book with her while she naps on the couch. i can convince her to go out for an afternoon walk with me when she'd rather keep napping. i can tell her about my friends who are engaged to losers or talk to her about what a pain it is not to be able to get pregnant when i want to... i can give her a hug and get one in return. how can i not be happy? how can i let myself get down about a future that may or may not be?

temp(t)ing

i've ovulated! woo-hoo! i'm in that happy phase of thinking that i might be pg just because i ovulated. makes sense, right? ok, maybe not. i guess i was just worried for a couple of days there and good news is good news, right? now i'm not sure whether to take myself up on stopping the temping thing till old af comes (or doesn't... please don't). it's just that it's nice to have something to do while you're braving the tww... something that feels like you're still trying. but then again, it's nice not to have anything to remind you that you're in the tww, and every dip or peak can mean something (or, most likely, can mean nothing at all). (can you tell i like parentheticals? and ellipses? i do. this is how i think, too. no sentences, no clear trains of thought... just jumbles of parentheses and ellipses.)

has anyone else tried ditching the thermometer for the tww? is it just an exercise in futility to think that you can ignore the tww? it was easy when i was in germany and didn't have the thermometer handy, but i had a lot of other distractions... like, i was in germany!

oh, and i have a question for the more experienced ttc-ers out there... i finally called the s.a. lab to ask if they take our insurance (i'm slow... i know), and they don't, so even though our insurance covers it in-network, we'd have to pay the full $250 since these folks are out of network (and we haven't touched our deductible yet). if necessary, we can afford to part with the $250 (i know that's nothing compared to the services that will likely come later). anyway, the woman said that other larger labs probably take our insurance, but usually they are not as good as the smaller labs... i don't know what this means exactly. would it be a waste of mil's precious time to go to a big lab to have them potentially do a poor analysis that would later have to be done by a better, smaller place anyway? is there a big difference in analysis quality between labs?

the other annoying thing about this lab is that they only to s.a. on thursday mornings. so we'd basically be waiting for mil to have a free thursday morning before they could do the test anyway... thoughts?

meandering

one of the blogs i read pretty regularly recently announced that they have become pregnant with their second child. when i first saw the announcement, my heart sank. i know how selfish that sounds. i was also truly happy for them. just from reading their blog, i know that they are warm, smart, caring parents... just the type any child would be lucky to have. but... i also knew that i would be reading pregnancy posts for the next several months. posts that, while insightful and entertaining, would only remind me how empty my womb currently is. i hate that reminder... whatever form it comes in. and yet i can't hide from pregnancy. i want to find a way to make peace with this journey i've found myself on. i believe that life is in the living, and we can't live for the future... my mom's cancer is a constant reminder of that. i think this means i have to put some time and effort into myself, right now, who and where i am at this moment. mostly that means i need to figure out what to do with my career... i need to be doing something i love, not something that just pays some of the bills.