Schrödinger's Fetus

My uterus
contains two embryos. Quantum theory says, I guess, that they are neither alive nor dead. In general, this explains why quantum theory is something that I never intend to trouble my pretty little mind with in any sort of systematic way.

But right now, specifically, at this moment, I am a fan of quantum theory. I much prefer to spend the next few days thinking of the embryos as neither alive nor dead. It's painful to think that it could be all over already, and I just don't know it yet. Better to think that they are neither until the instant that first drop of pee hits the peestick.

Where we are
1 day past 5 day transfer of 2 embryos (both 3BB).

How we got here
For a while I'd been making noises about trying for another "starting around Small Boy's second birthday." He turned two on Tuesday. Wednesday we transferred two defrosted embryos.

Things that are true #1: this is nothing, nothing, nothing like the past three attempts.
I am in no way discounting the acute pain that secondary infertility causes some people when I say oh my fucking god so much better. Last time, failure was "dangling over the abyss." This time, failure is "not getting what I want". I mean, I know I would have survived, I would have had to, people do. But every time I thought of it, my brain just blurred into pain. Now? I'm not as flippant as I hoped I might be; I care. I care a lot. But... my worst-case scenario is not the abyss. It is (kinnehorah-inshallah-god willin-and-the-creek-don't-rise) only raising my funny, fascinating son.

I can never feel hard-done-by. I have him, and while I may not be grateful every day, I am at least grateful every second or third day.

Things that are true #2: this is nothing compared to the physical devastation of my fresh cycles.
Frozen embryo transfers are so low-key that they barely register. It don't mean a thing if it don't involve a sharps container, you know? Take some pills. Stuff some gel up your vagina. After a couple of weeks, stick a couple of embryos in there and see what happens.

C'mon. At no time during this cycle have I been able to say "breathing hurts". Calling that a win.

Things that are true #3: this is still amazingly nerve-wracking. Maybe it's the hormones; although there are no injections (my protocol was strictly Estrace - Crinone) there are still tons of hormones floating around my brain. Or maybe it's that it's impossible to ignore the magnitude of what we're trying to do and the difference it could make in all of our lives.

So the request I am making to the universe: please. I am so grateful for what I have. Can I have some more?



Procedural notes for record-keeping:
D3 E2 = 52 FSH = 7.9

26w3d: lilacs out of the dead land

All month I've had the slightly itchy feeling I'll be glad when April's over.

Today is April 30, the one year anniversary of the end of my first pregnancy. I mean, it probably isn't the anniversary of the end; April 30, 2008 was a Wednesday, and the pregnancy probably ended the Thursday prior, which I guess would be April 24. But it was the end of my thinking I was pregnant, and that's the important part, as anyone with a blighted ovum or headless fetus could tell you. It's not what's there. It's the end of the dream, of what you want to be there.

The Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival is this weekend, again. We were planning on going last year, but by Saturday I was spotting and by Sunday I was bleeding and cramping but good. This year? I don't know. We love the Sheep & Wool Festival, but these days my feet get sore really fast. And we've got stuff to do, lots of stuff, tiny-guy's-room stuff.

I'm... I don't know. Breathing quietly through this day. The little guy has given me several reassuring thumps. If he were born today, he'd have about a 75% chance of survival and a 60% chance of escaping with no or mild neurologic disability.

The time between last April 30 and November 20 was the darkest I've ever had. Is it depression if it's about something real, and it goes away when the real thing goes away? Because since November I've had so many waves of realizing what a weight I was under during those eight months, how heavy and dark the hours were, how good it feels just to feel good, how light it feels not to be afraid of quiet time and my own thoughts. My joy has been so palpable not just because of what I have, my happiness and excitement for our life with this upcoming little boy. It's also about the lifting of pain. It feels so good when it stops.

Can't help but think about what this whole experience has meant to me as a person, as a parent. I am not at all convinced that it has made me a better person, but it has made me a different person.

This baby I am carrying, this tiny guy, my little fellow, our son: he is not better than our little solstice baby, the boy or girl or nothing that I was carrying, due December 23, 2008. But he is different. He is someone else entirely.

And the life that we will have together, kinehorah, is not the life that due-on-December-23-me would have had with Solstice Baby. But this is the reality we have, and I think it is going to be pretty damn wonderful.

I'm sorry that I couldn't be with your four-month-old self, little Solstice Baby. I really, really wanted you. But you couldn't be around, and that reality couldn't be ours. Now I am so very glad to be here with our little guy, our summer baby.

I thought that the solstice due date seemed so right: I was born in November, I love the fall and early winter. It's a time of year when I'm comfortable and happy. Summer makes me fussy and restless, trapped in our few air conditioned rooms, constantly scuttling away from the oppressive heat. But the baby we got is a summer baby. He is his own baby, and this will be his time, whether I like it or not. Maybe he will love the summer. Maybe he will love sports, or bagpipe music, or a thousand different things that I cannot even fathom being attracted to. He came along on his time, not my time, and he will be his own baby, and then, kinehorah (I have said that more often during the past six months..) then he'll be his own child, his own boy, his own man, someone I cannot imagine, someone I could not even make up.

I can't wait to meet him.

9w ultrasound

Yesterday was the 9w ultrasound, our graduation from the RE. The whole experience was less dramatic and less traumatic; I knew to tilt my hips immediately, thus avoiding the OWOWOW drama.

In short: there is a critter in there, it is the right size, it has a heart and (I am assured) a head. My sweetheart and the doctor both said they could see limb buds, but I think they were lying.

Here's the ultrasound, if you like that kind of thing!

It was best described as "fetus in a snowstorm". The enormous round thing off to the left (far bigger than the fetus or sac) is an ovarian cyst... doc thinks it should start to recede in a week or so.

We have an OB appointment next Wednesday.

Yesterday I was just shaking and exhausted and happy after having had every muscle in my body tense for a week or so, out of fear of the 9w ultrasound. And now..?

If I'm happy, is that arrogant? Does that assure that something's going to go wrong to knock me out of my smugness? I am haunted by this happy chirpy post I made the day before I found out that the pregnancy was over. Logically I know that the happy post didn't make that happen, but my brain is a small primitive animal that links proximal events and sucks at figuring out causation.

If I'm scared, is that ungrateful? So far there has not been one single thing wrong, not one result for me to point to and say "meh". I haven't bled a drop. What more do I want, really? Women would kill to be where I am right now. Shouldn't I just shut up and enjoy it?

I'm covering all my bases by having wild mood swings, from elated to terrified. I'm both gratefully happy and humbly frightened! Of course, that also means I'm ungratefully frightened and arrogantly happy. Welcome to my brain. Over the lintel, in old English letters, it says YOU CANNOT WIN.

I do feel like I can be grateful for one thing: I feel pretty damn good. Morning sickness has been minimal; some waves of low-level nausea, but no pukin', not even close. In fact, I'm eating like a horse; I'm hungry every hour or two. Some waves of exhaustion, but mostly I'm just enjoying the fact that I slip off to sleep easily at 10pm, as my non-pregnant self struggles with insomnia. My breasts are sore, but they don't bother me unless I poke them. Other than the swollen abdomen I'm having a picture-perfect time. This scared me when I thought it meant nobody alive in there, but now that I know it's possible to feel this good and have a good-lookin' fetus I'm grateful for how much I've lucked out so far. My body really seems to like this just fine. GF says I look fantastic*, and I'm inclined to believe her.

And that's the 9w1d story.

Love to all of those who surrounded me with warm words and thoughts on my last post. I love knowing that y'all are out there, and that this tiny scrap of proto-humanity already has friends.

^*She may have been looking at my mammary glands when she said that, I don't rightly recall.