Waiting for the flood

I stopped the progesterone on Monday. My RE called later that day, with a kind "sorry" -- I didn't need to hear it, but I appreciated it.

For next round, which will be in bloody October (well, the transfer will be), we're going to switch to IM progesterone. I don't believe that there's a strong reason to do so, but I don't mind. The shots hurt, but Crinone isn't exactly pleasant, and maybe it was the lack of a sharps container that interfered with the last cycle.

I've been thinking, too, about fresh cycles. Two weeks ago I was fat and sassy, sitting on my 14 frozen embryos. Now I'm down to 7, 5 of which are slow-frozen. I have a fantasy that maybe I'll be the one person whose embryos like slow-freezing better than vitrification (or the lab fucked up the vitrifying on my embryos) and that the five I socked away from my very first cycle will thaw beautifully. But chances are that they won't. That means that if the next FET doesn't work I'll likely be starting fresh again, at age 38 this time.

That's okay. It'd be less scary this time, since I know the process inside and out by now. But this time, unlike last time, I have limits. First time 'round I pretty much would have kept going until I fell over. This time I've got... more exit conditions.

Mainly it's about how well I can hold my shit together. I have Small Boy now, and he deserves to have both of his mothers firing on all cylinders. I'm willing to allow for a substantial performance hit, given that I believe that a sibling would be of long-term use to him, but there's a limit.

Right now it's in his best interest for me to try for quite a long time and not succeed, because apparently my BFN-coping mechanism is to buy Small Boy a buttload of stuff. His first train set -- clothes -- some DVDs of vintage Sesame Street -- if I don't catch promptly, this kid is going to be spoiled rotten. I did not budget for this when figuring fertility expenses.