Maybe next year...

Test was glaringly negative. It's day 15 (3-4 days longer than usual), my temperature is still above the coverline, and I have no period or spotting. My body is obviously messing with me now.

But... I can drink wine over the weekend in Spain. That's something.

Thanks for the hand-holding. It's nice to have someone to wait with.

The Good News and the Bad News

I'll start with the bad. Mr. got his second semen analysis results via telephone yesterday and they are worse. To recap the last results: less than a million total and all have very poor morphology. The doc told Mr. over the phone that we should make an appointment because ICSI may not even be an option. Yeah, that super attitude is why our appointment in December is with another clinic, one that likes to share stories of how they found two lonely sperm in a sample and still created a pregnancy.


Now for the good - or at least not bad. It is 14 days past ovulation, which is two days longer than normal, and my temperature is still quite above the coverline, although a little lower than yesterday and the day before. I have no signs of my usual cramps or spotting or any of that. Yeah, combined with the results from yesterday, this is weird.

So, if nothing occurs by tomorrow morning, I'm breaking out that test. :) Thanks for the good wishes!

Idiot Anonymous

Hi, my name is Beth, and I'm an idiot.

*Hi Beth*

I'm setting myself up again for a huge disappointment. I don't want to be one of those crazy women who posts every last little symptom and sign: could I be? am I? am I not?. I think I've said that quite a bit before. So I guess I also should locate the nearest chapter of Boring Repetitious Bloggers Anonymous. But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to share my latest tale of idiocy.

I have a very, very regular cycle. This cycle is turning out not to be so regular. And my heart is saying "neener neener" and doing that thumb-to-nose finger-waving thing to my brain. My brain is getting rather pissed off at such a juvenile display and is kind of hankering to bitch-slap my heart when it's not looking, but the brain has no arms and can't reach that far so that's kind of a stupid thing for a brain to want to do.

I went searching through my apartment for one of my cheap pregnancy tests this morning. The only one I could find was the expensive-ish one, and I'm not about to pee on 8 euros just because I'm an idiot. I may well be an idiot, but I'm a frugal idiot who is planning three vacations and IVF. So now we're at the waiting stage - waiting for the cramps, spotting, and temperature drop that I expected a day or two ago. Two more days to wait and then we'll see.

I've been away...

I've been working in another city for a few days, and I don't have internet there.

Just in case you were wondering what the big deal a few days ago was... I quit my job of 4 1/2 years. And my new boss is friends with my old boss. Which made quitting rather uncomfortable.

In any case, contractually I have to give notice for the end of the quarter (Dec. 31st) six weeks prior. But I have vacation starting Dec 17th... which means only four more weeks! And two of those involve long weekends!

So that's where I've been. I have a six month probationary period at the new place, so of course I had to tell them about the IVF. I can't continually be gone for appointments without them knowing why. It was odd to tell them and still not have told our families. Ah well, the bosses won't point to my *ahem* not-so-studious (i.e. not-so-sober) college days as the reason we are having trouble now.

Second time's the charm?

Mr. went for his second sperm analysis today. We get the results in a few days. Ah, more waiting. Just what my patient self loves to do. I also never get marks in my fresh nail polish because I'm that good with waiting.

Ahem. Back from Fantasyland. Sorry about that little diversion.

The doctor from our IVF informational evening and Dr. Silber, author of my favorite IVF book, both stress how variable these results can be from day to day. They have charts! I like statistical charts! So now I'm wondering if the last results were on the bad end... we were in Amsterdam right before the last sample, ahem. He also hadn't quit smoking at that point. Or maybe the result was on the better end, despite the indulgences. Or - and this is what I am expecting - it was a fairly normal sample.

Mr. is finally ready to start learning more about the situation. He's read his sperm report a number of times, but I think until now he'd only seen little Viagra pills dancing across the page, taunting him and denigrating his manhood. Nasty little buggers those, making him think that a bad sperm analysis means he's impotent or will soon be. Last week he finally asked me if I knew what it all meant, so I gave him the synopsis and suggested he look at some of my books. So much for light bedtime reading. Last night, his brain started smoking over a section on azoospermia. I had to calm the poor guy down and show him the section on oligospermia. Our new mantra: a few is better than none.

Mr. was on a prize jury, so he's off to the awards ceremony tonight in another city a plane ride away. That's good - something to get his mind off of it, at least for tonight. As for me, I'm going to light many, many candles and watch crap TV and try not get marks in my nail polish.

Keeping Up

I want to do NaBloPoMo with both this blog and my regular blog that has nothing whatsoever to do with babies. I got a late start on this one because it didn't occur to me to post on both.

But tonight it's really cold in our apartment and I just battled it out to get two FTP servers running on two different computers at home (yes, I'm a total geek). Now I want to go to bed so this is all the post you get for today.

I think this is technically cheating, but it's better than flaking out in the first week, right?

Some People...

I like Oprah. She seems smart and compassionate, so it pissed me off even more than it should have when I read an transcript of one of her shows wherein she asks a woman struggling (and spending) to conceive if she had considered adoption.

It is a loaded question for infertiles. 'No' implies that you are selfish and don't care about giving a loving home to children who desperately need one. 'Not yet' suggests that these kids would be second choice, again making you selfish. 'Yes' means you've given up. Notice that fertile people are never guilted with the 'poor little orphans' number.

You wouldn't suggest to a family who just lost a child that they get started on a replacement. The need time to mourn their first before they can be healthy parents to another. The feelings are similar for the little one you've dreamt of but haven't met yet. You imagine seeing your husband's goofy grin or your freckles on this person who the two of you created. We as women have heard so much about the amazing experience of carrying a life within us... and now we're supposed to turn all of that emotion off and just be happy to have any child.

Adoption is a wonderful thing. I know that adopted children are just as wanted and loved as biological offspring. But I don't want to adopt out of desperation. I want to want to adopt. I'm a long way from that point. Am I selfish for spending so much money in an attempt to have my own baby? Damn straight. And if it doesn't work for us, I'll cry and mourn and eventually get over it. And that's the point where I'll research adoption more thoroughly.

But don't suggest it to me before I get there.