All in the Family

Speaking to my sister yesterday, before Pessach, she mentioned that she is pregnant with her fourth child, and is due to give birth in November. I am of course pleased for her, she is an excellent mother. My sister-in-law is due to give birth around August with her second child, she and my brother have a girl who is already over a year old, and they will be moving to the DC area in June.

How odd that I am nearing 40 and working on my first child, sans husband, and my siblings are working on expanding their family. Odd but not sad for me, and I look forward to this time next year when G-d willing I join the ranks of motherhood.

And who knows, there may even be a husband in the picture as well, the Universe is capable of surprising me.

Fertility Lottery Ticket

Drank half a bottle of wine last night, check.
Sat with friends today at the cafe and had my first coffee in a month, check.
Will have sushi next week for dinner.

This process of fertility and IUI is like buying a lottery ticket, when the winnings are in the many millions. From the time you buy the ticket until the actual draw, you fantasize and plan how you will spend your millions, how your life will change. You may know full well that the chances are slim that you will be the Grand Prize Winner the first time around, and yet you live in a euphoric bubble.

It was so nice to be pregnant for that week and a half, to speak to my stomach and know that something was new and different, knowing that the statistics work against me. Yet I felt happy and expectant, ready to turn my life upside down with the advent of motherhood.

When my lottery number did not come up this time, I certainly experienced the disappointment, but can't wait for my next cycle, to try again.

The Official Results

The official results of the blood test are in, and even though I was somewhat prepared for the negative answer, hearing it was sad for me, and it made it even harder to pretend at work that everything was cool, and that sniffling was my allergies. I will grieve this very short pregnancy, does it count if it was under two weeks? And once Pessach is over, I will try again.

Meanwhile I am putting a re-frame on this situation (to quote my life coach): now that I am not pregnant for the next month, I can freely imbibe alcohol and coffee, eat sushi, and sit in the sauna. I can take Lorastine for my allergies rather than sneezing myself through the day. I can even get laid for real, lose my virginity and possibly get pregnant the non-Hadassah way.

For tonight, I am shutting off my phones and opening up that bottle of wine that has been tempting me for the last three weeks. Tomorrow I will deal with people.

:-(

I think I started spotting this morning, but it so minor, and this cycle has been very different, that I just don't know. And my Chiropractic kinesiology testing is sending so many mixed signals, because I want this so badly.

If I didn't have to pay my own way, I would cancel all my clients today and wallow a little.

Today I am sad.

Buying the Pregnancy Test

Although I will not have Hadassah test my blood for hCG until Thursday, all medical research points to its presence in the urine by day ten, which will be tomorrow. So I went to the pharmacy and after perusing entire shelves of what seemed like the same deal in different packages, I bought a Pregnancy Test.

The pharmacist was thrilled to sell it to me, wishing me a congratulations in between my pointing out that I don't know yet, but that is Israel. There is a woman at my pool who has started showing - I already knew she was pregnant - and all the older women now feel the right to tell her how to be pregnant and how to raise her future child. Like I said, that is Israel.

So tomorrow morning I pee on a stick, keeping in mind that these tests are 99% correct. False negative or false positive results happen, but it gives me something to think about until Thursday.

Resisting the Urge to Plan

It has been one week since they performed the IUI, and while I can hope that it worked, I will not know for sure until next week, when Hadassah does the test for the presence of hCG in my blood.

Meanwhile, I am learning the very important lesson of living in the Now, and going from day to day. Yes, I am taking care of myself physically and talking to my belly; "How are you today, little baby? Have you implanted on the left side or the right side of my womb?" But I am not planning ahead to the next month, the next year, or the next ten years. Other than thinking about baby names, I have not shopped for strollers or maternity outfits.

This is a hard lesson for me, if you had asked me at age 13 how my life turned out, I could have given you details, names of husband and children, trips taken and piano recitals attended. The cliche says that "Man plans and G-d laughs," and so I have given into the uncertainty of the process, knowing that I have done all I can to prepare myself mentally and physically, up to this point.