Ah, hindsight.
Three months ago, I posted in immense frustration. Everything to that point had been easier than we'd dared hope, but we'd hit a speed-bump and progress had temporarily stalled. We were crouched, waiting for the starting pistol, and it just kept getting delayed. It's like waiting in the longest line at Disneyland - you know you could be off doing other excellent things but you want to be doing THIS thing so you stand in the beating sun for hours on aching feet with sweat dripping between your boobs, distinctly uncomfortable but unwavering in your conviction that this is the ride you want to be on. And then not only is the rollercoaster completely average, you have to go back to the beginning of the queue and wait to ride again and again and again until one time it's magically a different, amazing, wonderful rollercoaster.
(I feel like this analogy is going to fail me any moment now because how I'm feeling is nothing at all like riding a mediocre ride at Disneyland. Riding a mediocre ride at Disneyland is actually worth getting hella sweaty for because it's still a ride and you're still at Disneyland, you know? Therefore I am going to drop the analogy and just talk about the hard thing with nothing to hide behind.)
We've started trying, but it hasn't worked. Yet.
It turns out the two weeks you wait between being inseminated and finding out if you're pregnant feels longer than the six months you spent waiting to start. It feels so long, in fact, that even after you find out you're not pregnant, you sometimes forget and still think you might be, and then you have to remember all over again that you're not. The expected birth date if it had worked remains burned behind your eyelids, ready to wake you at 3am with the knowledge that many babies will be born on March 31st, but none of them will be yours. For two weeks it was Shrรถdinger's baby and then it was nobody's baby at all.
Most people, by the time they start IUI, have been trying for over a year at home. This means two things: one, that they are already accustomed to the sting of a negative pregnancy test, and two, that they now know that they have taken longer than average and therefore expect that it may take a while. Both of these things make me sick to think about - I want to hug every single non-homo couple in the waiting room and tell them how sorry I am about their rotten luck. For us, though, it's different: we don't have the fatigue, but we also don't have the resilience. We had no reason to believe that it wouldn't work. Linda has had every single pre-pregnancy test, examination, work-up, and preparation procedure known to mankind and not a single one turned up anything that may be an issue, except her AMH which puts a time pressure on things but shouldn't be impacting her chances of conception at this stage. Given that IUI bypasses the cervix and shoots the sperm directly into the uterus, meaning the chance of conception is increased, and given that they'd been tracking her cycle with blood tests to know exactly when the ideal moment was, our odds of success were like, really really good.
We were so excited, in that room, on that day. Sparkles were radiating from both of us, hope and joy and love and anticipation and nervousness and we'd picked out a bassinet and a stroller and we hadn't bought them yet but we could start, soon, when it worked, and as Linda lay there we talked about what we wanted the baby to call each of us and then we went home and read in our pregnancy book about how she probably can eat fresh sushi but definitely not soft cheeses and I rested my hand on her stomach and imagined cells dividing, over and over, and then it didn't work.
It didn't work, and our cat died. Our cat died first, and we cried until we couldn't cry anymore, but we had our IUI start date then and we thought, soon there'll be a baby. Now we have no cat and there is no baby. We moved into this house because it had three bedrooms, and one was so perfect for a nursery, and now we're moving and the people who are replacing us are expecting a baby in November and it'll be their nursery, not ours, and the distinct unfairness stings even though we haven't been trying for long and we tell ourselves over and over that other people try for years and years and I wish that lessened the sting but it doesn't, really.
Today Linda went to Nature Baby to get a gift for a beloved pregnant pal and she has her period because we're not pregnant and she just had to stand there in amongst all the baby things and she came home with a gift for the friend and a frappe for me and a very heavy heart, and I have cramps because I also am not pregnant and even though there's no way I even could be pregnant right now the cramps feel like stabbing reminders that we have two empty uteri in the house today. We have two uteri and we have sperm and we have our savings account and we have so much love and we have a tiny Care Bears onesie that I bought even though I'm not supposed to be buying things and we have a negative pregnancy test and the date we start trying again that doesn't feel nearly as sparkly as the last one did.
This is the most self-pitying, unhelpful post I have ever written and I'm a little bit sorry but mostly just sad. (I am sorry to the at least three of you I know who got not-pregnant news recently who have been trying for far longer than we have, please know that I am holding you in my heart every day).
We're dusting ourselves off and getting ready to get back in the saddle (stirrups?) soon. Send us thoughts if you can spare 'em.
Three months ago, I posted in immense frustration. Everything to that point had been easier than we'd dared hope, but we'd hit a speed-bump and progress had temporarily stalled. We were crouched, waiting for the starting pistol, and it just kept getting delayed. It's like waiting in the longest line at Disneyland - you know you could be off doing other excellent things but you want to be doing THIS thing so you stand in the beating sun for hours on aching feet with sweat dripping between your boobs, distinctly uncomfortable but unwavering in your conviction that this is the ride you want to be on. And then not only is the rollercoaster completely average, you have to go back to the beginning of the queue and wait to ride again and again and again until one time it's magically a different, amazing, wonderful rollercoaster.
(I feel like this analogy is going to fail me any moment now because how I'm feeling is nothing at all like riding a mediocre ride at Disneyland. Riding a mediocre ride at Disneyland is actually worth getting hella sweaty for because it's still a ride and you're still at Disneyland, you know? Therefore I am going to drop the analogy and just talk about the hard thing with nothing to hide behind.)
We've started trying, but it hasn't worked. Yet.
It turns out the two weeks you wait between being inseminated and finding out if you're pregnant feels longer than the six months you spent waiting to start. It feels so long, in fact, that even after you find out you're not pregnant, you sometimes forget and still think you might be, and then you have to remember all over again that you're not. The expected birth date if it had worked remains burned behind your eyelids, ready to wake you at 3am with the knowledge that many babies will be born on March 31st, but none of them will be yours. For two weeks it was Shrรถdinger's baby and then it was nobody's baby at all.
Most people, by the time they start IUI, have been trying for over a year at home. This means two things: one, that they are already accustomed to the sting of a negative pregnancy test, and two, that they now know that they have taken longer than average and therefore expect that it may take a while. Both of these things make me sick to think about - I want to hug every single non-homo couple in the waiting room and tell them how sorry I am about their rotten luck. For us, though, it's different: we don't have the fatigue, but we also don't have the resilience. We had no reason to believe that it wouldn't work. Linda has had every single pre-pregnancy test, examination, work-up, and preparation procedure known to mankind and not a single one turned up anything that may be an issue, except her AMH which puts a time pressure on things but shouldn't be impacting her chances of conception at this stage. Given that IUI bypasses the cervix and shoots the sperm directly into the uterus, meaning the chance of conception is increased, and given that they'd been tracking her cycle with blood tests to know exactly when the ideal moment was, our odds of success were like, really really good.
We were so excited, in that room, on that day. Sparkles were radiating from both of us, hope and joy and love and anticipation and nervousness and we'd picked out a bassinet and a stroller and we hadn't bought them yet but we could start, soon, when it worked, and as Linda lay there we talked about what we wanted the baby to call each of us and then we went home and read in our pregnancy book about how she probably can eat fresh sushi but definitely not soft cheeses and I rested my hand on her stomach and imagined cells dividing, over and over, and then it didn't work.
It didn't work, and our cat died. Our cat died first, and we cried until we couldn't cry anymore, but we had our IUI start date then and we thought, soon there'll be a baby. Now we have no cat and there is no baby. We moved into this house because it had three bedrooms, and one was so perfect for a nursery, and now we're moving and the people who are replacing us are expecting a baby in November and it'll be their nursery, not ours, and the distinct unfairness stings even though we haven't been trying for long and we tell ourselves over and over that other people try for years and years and I wish that lessened the sting but it doesn't, really.
Today Linda went to Nature Baby to get a gift for a beloved pregnant pal and she has her period because we're not pregnant and she just had to stand there in amongst all the baby things and she came home with a gift for the friend and a frappe for me and a very heavy heart, and I have cramps because I also am not pregnant and even though there's no way I even could be pregnant right now the cramps feel like stabbing reminders that we have two empty uteri in the house today. We have two uteri and we have sperm and we have our savings account and we have so much love and we have a tiny Care Bears onesie that I bought even though I'm not supposed to be buying things and we have a negative pregnancy test and the date we start trying again that doesn't feel nearly as sparkly as the last one did.
This is the most self-pitying, unhelpful post I have ever written and I'm a little bit sorry but mostly just sad. (I am sorry to the at least three of you I know who got not-pregnant news recently who have been trying for far longer than we have, please know that I am holding you in my heart every day).
We're dusting ourselves off and getting ready to get back in the saddle (stirrups?) soon. Send us thoughts if you can spare 'em.
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