Thanks everyone

 

I write my posts as a bit of blog therapy for me rather than thinking someone will read it, but I have to say I always feel better after reading your comments. Thank you so much.

I just popped open a beer even though I wanted to go cold turkey this IVF. I just spotted my neighbor on the street - she and her husband are opera singers so they have the summer off and have been gone visiting their families in Scandinavia. We share a backyard so we see them a lot when they are home... and she has a rather pronounced belly now. Instead of being the good neighbor and welcoming her home, I ran into my apartment and hid.

Gaah. That makes 6 in one week.

On the up-side, I took my last birth control pill this morning in preparation for our 5th round of IVF. This round has to be it for us, right? It's gonna work?!

 

another one...

 

Oh come on already! I've put another Facebooker on 'hide' because she's announced her pregnancy with a big happy sonogram as her profile photo. This week's tally for hitting the 'hide' button due to baby blabber? Five.

This latest one pisses me off a bit more than the others because she's so young and flaky.

Another young 'un is also in the throes of morning sickness - 22, barely married, and her husband says creepy things to her.

#3 was nearly devastated that it took them 6 whole months to conceive. Of course, she hadn't charted or done anything like that, so I think 6 months is rather reasonable. She doesn't want to hear that though, so I won't say it. She will be hearing the smack of my head against a very immobile wall if she doesn't cut out the whining about it... you're pregnant and so obviously not infertile, so SHUT THE F UP ABOUT ALMOST BEING INFERTILE BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT. Whew.

#4 has kids that are nearly out of the house. "Whoops" doesn't even start to cover it. She's happy and sad all at the same time. I can completely understand why she feels the way she does, but I'm also not in a position to hear from someone who isn't overjoyed to be pregnant.

#5 is someone I know only online and who has gone through more than double the number of miscarriages I have. I am so happy for her, I really am, but I can't read literally 20 updates a day from her on the subject. Oooh - you hiccuped again?! Can that be a sign that your baby is a boy? Three farts in two hours? That means twins, right? Eight weeks along and she bought a stroller, then posted photos of the stroller, then her buyers remorse for not getting it in green instead of brown... at 8 weeks! After 7 miscarriages!

Wow, am I bitter today. And awfully judgy. I shall wear a long black robe and carry a gavel this evening (or my bathrobe and a wooden spoon as I have neither a black robe nor a gavel).

 

Another place to find me...

 

I've had a not-so-hidden blog at twinge.vox.com to work out the whole ART thing. I started it when we weren't letting anyone in on the TTC troubles in our lives, but after this long it's too hard to dodge the "when are you going to have kids" question so we're just giving honest answers now. No more need to hide.

You can find our (mis)adventures in IVF and miscarriage here:
Twinge


Scratch that. It's too hard for people to comment on Vox as you have to get a login, so I'm coming back to Blogger. We're not hiding the IVF anymore, anyway.

Stay tuned right here.

 

Cycle #5: In Progress!

 

CD 3:

Is this our last round? Not sure yet. Some adoption agencies in the US have recently stopped taking overseas US citizens as clients, I guess we'll probably go for another round.

Let me again take this opportunity to rant about folks who ask, "Why don't you just adopt?"

1. I'm afraid to take on a special-needs child with my family so far away and my support network here consisting mainly of transient expats. Many countries do not allow 'healthy' children to be adopted outside of their home country, even if it means those children languish in orphanages.
2. I'll be turned down by many agencies in my own country because I live overseas. It's not illegal, but it is difficult and many agencies don't want to deal with it anymore.
3. There are few German babies to be adopted. We're looking at a 4 year wait here, by which time we'll probably be deemed too old.
4. Will you lend me €20,000 euros for a non-German adoption? Didn't think so.

 

Stupid, Stupid Strato

 

My hosting company froze my account for some reason. "Abuse", apparently. They can't tell me what is wrong with my WordPress installation, what sort of abuse they suspect, or how to even go about diagnosing it. Their words: "someone might have hacked your site". "To make it do what?", I asked. "We already gave you the information," was the reply. "Um, I need more than 'maybe somebody did something' to go on... what flagged the abuse report?" "We already gave you the information. Fix it."

GAAH!

None of the file dates are recent (except for a few posts, and I checked the code and found nothing in those).

I'm furious and will be writing a very angry letter to them demanding my money back and that they cover any transfer fees to a new provider. So don't bother going to bethundmartin.de for a while, and don't ever, ever use Strato as a hosting company.