Bust

About a month ago, I went lingerie shopping and bought myself six new bras. Three are basic black, but two of them are pink, and one has a leopard pattern -- the one I love wearing most of all.

For a while there, I was bummed that getting pregnant would mean that my boobs would engorge, and I wouldn't be able to wear any of them anymore, but judging from the negative home tests I've been getting, this isn't anything I have to worry about.

What a relief.

Nightmare on Elmo Street

I've been having baby dreams. Three in a row. Not good ones.

In the first, I give birth to a baby, but she isn't legally mine, and in order to file for custody, I need her verbal consent, which I can't get because she's a baby.

In the second, I give birth to a baby, but because she isn't really mine, my breasts won't produce milk, but I nurse it anyway by attaching a tube of milk to my nipple.

In the third, I have a baby girl, and it's not until she's 6 months old that I realize I've never said anything nice to her because I don't feel I have to because she isn't really mine.

Um,... so,... yeah.

Getting Testy

I took a home test this morning. It was negative.

Naturally I got pretty bummed out, but then I Google-stalked every woman who's ever peed in the history of sticks, and I accumulated a 6-point plan of rationalization for why I should stay hopeful. It is:

1. Testing 7 days after a 5 day transfer (7dp5dt) is still early
2. I had just peed 5 hours before my test, which didn't allow enough time to let the hCG hormone build up in my urine
3. I drank 12 gallons of water last night, and my pee was way too diluted
4. Turns out, I miscalculated, and I'm actually only 6dp5dt
5. Apparently frozen embryos take longer to implant than fresh embryos, so my positive wouldn't show up until after others'
6. If you think about it, my transfer wasn't until 1:30pm, which means that 7:30 this morning was actually still 5dp5dt, which really is too early, even when you aren't searching through Google's entire caché for flimsy evidence to support your mania

Speaking of mania, I have 3 more sticks to pee on. Stay tuned.

Pro-Choice versus Pro-Life

I discovered a secret to life.

Or rather, I discovered fractions of a secret to life. The first half is that "choice yields unhappiness." The second half is that "choicelessness yields happiness." And the third half is that I'm doing it wrong.

At least these secrets are true according to the dozen or so TED Talks I've been watching lately. They say, for example, that if the only pair of jeans in the world were Levi 501s, then you'd either like jeans or you wouldn't like jeans, but your emotional connection to denim would pretty much end there. As it stands, though, you go into a department store and try on 5 different brands and 12 different styles in 4 different washes and 3 different sizes, and you leave with nothing except feeling short, fat, and out of sync with fashion. Hypothetically.

Translated into donor shopping, this would mean that instead of trying on 18 pairs of jeans, you pore through 5,000 donor profiles, and instead of leaving the store with self-esteem issues, you just pick someone.

That's what I did. She wasn't a perfect fit.

The TED folks would say that this is because I had 5,000 choices, which would naturally lead to 10,000,000 miles of expectation, which in turn would get me galaxies' worth of disappointment. (Measurements are approximate.)

Honestly, though: what are the odds that I would have found her perfect? As anyone who's sat across from me at dinner knows, I'm seriously picky, and that's just with things that go into my mouth. Imagine how much more particular I am about things that go into my vagina?

But the premise of this TED-sourced phenomenon is based on choice, and the truth is that I no longer have a choice of donors. I had a choice 6 months ago, and I made it, so what choice is making me unhappy now?

To help explain what I'm babbling about, I'm going to babble for a moment about something else: grief. Specifically about Elizabeth K übler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief. And most specifically about stage three.

I'm a master at negotiation. And by master, I mean idiot.

First, let me give you examples of how normal infertiles negotiate:
If only I could have a baby, I swear I'd go to church every day, or
If only I could have a baby, I'd work harder on my relationship.

Here's how I do it:
If only I could go back in time, I'd have tried to get pregnant when I was 30, or
If only I could go back in time, I wouldn't have done all those inseminations, or
If only I could go back in time, I wouldn't have "accidentally" had an orgasm 4 days after my second transfer, or
If only I could go back in time, I'd have chosen a different donor.

Yes, there's a part of me that literally believes I will find a time machine and use it to travel into my past so I can make other fertility choices. Let me be clear: the time machine isn't the variable that's up for negotiation. The time machine is a given. The part I'm trying to negotiate is exactly how far back the time machine will let me go.

Now, since selecting a donor was my most recent choice, it's most logical to negotiate for going back 6 months, because the possibility of successfully going back 10 years is obviously absurd.

And how does one pass the time while waiting for this time machine to manifest? One watches a dozen TED Talks about happiness and choicelessness. And in watching a dozen TED Talks about happiness and choicelessness, one inadvertently finds oneself getting grounded, being present, and breathing in the post-transfer, pre-pregnancy-test air.

Along the viewing way, I coincidentally happen to be dabbling with Kübler-Ross's fifth stage of grief: acceptance. I'm finding it a little easier to accept that this donor is going to be my children's genetic parent. Moreover, I'm actually accepting that I'd be lucky if this donor were my children's genetic parent (because the alternative would be an emotional and financial disaster). And mostover, I'm tired of the trying phase. I just want a baby. And this is the likeliest way it's going to happen.

The good news about my potential for happiness is that most of the fertility-related choices are behind me. Case in point: I didn't choose the embryo that was transferred last week. Someone else did. There were 6 frozen embryos, and some random embryologist chose one, thawed it, watched it develop, and then put it in the catheter that was inserted into my uterus.

This is the embryo I didn't choose:

This is the embryo I didn't choose that I nursed through bed rest, the embryo I didn't choose that may have successfully implanted, and the embryo I didn't choose that could have potentially grown by now into the size of a sesame seed.

It's also the embryo I didn't choose whose endurance I'm hoping will be revealed tomorrow morning when I take my first pregnancy test.

[Breathlessness.]

Tennis Anyone?

With a dozen eggs, you can make an entire menu of foods consisting of deviled eggs, a chef's salad, matzo ball soup, fried chicken, a noodle casserole, and cupcakes.

A dozen eggs can also make twelve people. That's more than enough for a football team, a soccer team, a baseball team, or a cricket team.

Two days ago, I had my 5th transfer where a 12th embryo put in my uterus. Yup. Twelve. And so far, I have zero teams: not lacrosse, not rowing, not basketball - not even beach volleyball.

My uterus is where eggs go to ... well, I won't say "die," because that's harsh, but at the very least, it's where they "get composted," and yet I'm still hopeful that one player will emerge at the end of all this.

Very, very, very, very, very, very hopeful.

Quotable Quotes: “You’re Good”

In case your man needs support in seeding those eggs.

Sincerely,
Christopher Walken

(PS: Thanks to those of you who've been checking up on me in the days leading up to my transfer. You make my heart sing. For those of you looking for something more than a Christopher Walken pep talk, I'll post something more meaningful in the coming days -- at latest during bed rest, because what else will there be to do? xo)

O, Me of Little Faith

My parents got married in 1970 and divorced in 1980.
Then they got remarried in 1990 and divorced again in 2008.
And then last year, they got re-remarried.

This time it's different, though. This time they're also married to God.

They seem quite happy in their religious re-reunion. They hold hands, and they sprinkle each other's days with compliments and kisses. They talk about the bible, talk about religion, and talk about how sad it is that they'd never talked before about the bible and religion. It's all very sweet.

Revolution #3 on the marriage-go-round could be the one that sticks, but I'm not entirely convinced because my parents have 45 years worth of untherapized shit between them, and I happen to believe more in counseling than in God by a factor of infinity.

Unlike my parents, I am an atheist. To clarify: that's totally, utterly, and completely unlike my parents. In fact, if you were to imagine a continuum of faith that ranges from 1 to 10 (with 1 being a monkey and 10 being Kirk Cameron), then I am a zero, and my parents are Orthodox Jews.

It's safe for me to say that you have no idea how consuming religion can be until you’ve spent a week with Orthodox Jews - very safe for me to say, because you honestly have no idea.

But I'm an atheist, not an asshole, so I've done my best to accept the changes. I deal with their not being able to eat with me at restaurants, I arrange plans around their combined 6 hours a day of prayer, and I ignore the fact that they've started dressing like extras in Fiddler on the Roof. If they're happy, then I'm happy for them.

Happy, that is, until my mother came home from a bris and handed me wine blessed by the rabbi because she believed that my drinking it would get me pregnant. Then I wanted to punch her in her bible.

I drank the wine, but only because the experience made me really need to drink some wine. It didn't get me pregnant, but it did give me some clarity about a boundary that I wanted to set around my parents' faith: when it comes to rituals, there's a line they can't cross, and that line is at my vagina.

Sacred or not, I needed my parents to understand that wine wouldn't make me pregnant. Maybe if I were 16 and had a butterfly tramp stamp pressed against the flatbed of a pick-up truck while the idiot on top of me refused a condom because I could just douche with Mountain Dew, then the wine might serve as a pregnancy aid, but it still wouldn't be the wine that got me pregnant: it would be the egg, the sperm, and the uterus.

One good egg, one good sperm, and one good uterus is what it takes to get pregnant. Nothing else. Nothing.

Not prayer, not optimism, and not crossed-fingers; not astrologers, not psychics, and not hypnotists; not gluten-free diets, not vitamins, and not kale; and definitely not vacations.

One good egg. One good sperm. And one good uterus. That's it.

And as luck would have it, I've got six good eggs and six good sperm in the form of six good embryos on ice. At least the embryos looked good before they were frozen, so odds are high that they're still good now.

As far as the uterus goes, that's currently in development. Injectibles started last Monday, my period is on its way, and we've got 4+ weeks of blood draws and ultrasounds before my transfer on October 18th.

But a good uterus is not a sure thing. Goodness means over 7mm of lining, a trilaminar pattern, and hormone levels high enough to make me cry when the pickle jar won't pry loose. Those are quite a lot of variables, and the truth is that I'm a bit nervous because I've struggled with one or another of these issues during most of my previous cycles.

Statistical odds are on my side, though, and I'm hopeful that donor cycle two will yield me baby number one. So, wish me luck, dear friends. And, ... um, ... if you're so inclined, then maybe say a prayer for me, too.