Hectic

Sorry I’ve been MIA… apparently all those plans I made for myself didn’t leave me a whole lot of time to write!  But I’m back from my weekends away, and the crazy week that went between them, and everything is suddenly coming up SOON.  All of my activities did really help the time go faster (less than a week left on birth control pills!), but it also had the unintended consequence of making my life feel a little hectic.  At the moment, I’m feeling out of control of….

My house – I can’t remember the last time we vacuumed, and our suitcases still aren’t unpacked.  My house just feels gross, and few things make me feel more stressed out than a gross house.

My diet – Two weekends in a row out of the house mean that I did not eat very healthily, and probably drank more alcohol than I should.  I feel like I haven’t had a vegetable in ages, and when I stepped on the scale this morning… ouch.

My looks – Ok, this one is really vain.  But all the dry winter air plus the stress plus my poor diet has me suddenly feeling like I look haggard.  I’m turning thirty this year and while I’ve never really cared about age before, out of nowhere I’m just feeling OLD.

My finances – Yet another thing that two weekends in a row away took a toll on.  In addition to vacation expenses, somehow we got hit with a lot of one-time bills this month (hello there, car insurance).  And even though my insurance mostly covers my IVF, there’s still a $700 co-pay and (hopefully) a $1,800 embryo freezing bill in my near future.

My non-IVF life – The dog needs to go to the vet.  I’ve been neglecting my duties in my neighborhood association.  A friend needs help with boy drama.  My mom is getting under my skin.  I’m behind at work.  Henry’s 35^th birthday is in a couple of weeks. Guess what I’m doing about these things? If you guessed “Feeling guilty, and not much else” you’d be right!

My mood – Combine all of the above, and I’m feeling a little scattered.  And “scattered” is NOT the way I want to feel going into an IVF cycle.

Thankfully, our hectic schedule slows down after tonight.  Now that I have some free time, Henry and I will clean, grocery shop, exercise, cook healthy meals (maybe even freeze some healthy meals in case we don’t feel like cooking during my cycle), relax, and check things off our to-do list.  The goal is to have wrestled control of my life back by the time I go in for my baseline appointment next Monday.  Hopefully, that will be enough to get me feeling positive and in command of my own destiny again.

Staying Busy

Even though I do communications for a living, I’m a math nerd at heart.  I love counting things, working out odds and percentages and lots of weird little numbers.  I think I do that because I’m impatient. I like seeing progress, and get antsy waiting for things to happen.  When you have boxes to check off, percentages to run through, every step is a step closer to the finish.

I breathed a sigh of relief when February started. I needed the break that January provided, and it went faster than expected, but I’ll probably always think of it as my month of waiting.  December 31, I learned that I wasn’t pregnant; February 1, my period showed undeniable signs that it was about to start.  The entire month of January was just thumb twiddling in between, and I don’t do well with that.

But since the start of my February meant the start of my period, it also meant the start of birth control pills, which I’ve been taking for a couple of nights now.  I feel so much better now, because from here on out, the waiting between now and my cycle is a predictable series of steps.  My birth control pills in their little plastic blisters might as well be an Advent calendar; every time I push one through the foil, I’m checking off another day.

In addition to the oh-so-satisfying counting down of the birth control pills (2 down, 19 to go - I'm almost 10 percent done!), I’ve set up all kinds of checkpoint activities for myself throughout the month of February. I’m really hoping to bounce from one activity to the next until I come out on the other side of this month, where my retrieval and maybe-transfer are.

February 4: Started birth control pills

February 8-10: Ski trip (one half of the reason I put this cycle off a month)

February 11: Counselor appointment

February 15: Appointment with my regular GYN

February 15-18: NYC for a wedding (the other half of the reason I put this cycle off a month)

February 21: FINALLY using the Groupon I bought for a massage ages ago to get a little pre-cycle stress relief

February 24: Couples massage class with Henry (yes, another Groupon… I get impulsive with deals when under stress)
February 24: Last birth control pill

February 25: Baseline ultrasound, a.k.a. getting reacquainted with my boyfriend the ultrasound wand

February 28: First shots

What can I say?  I’m happier when I’m busy.

Groundhog Day

Buckle up, we’re about to get started again – my period started on Saturday, a.k.a. February 2, a.k.a. Groundhog Day.

Because I’m a huge nerd and clearly everything has to have meaning, I tried to find the significance in the fact that my period started on Groundhog Day.  I mean, Groundhog Day typically means six more weeks of winter, and an IVF cycle tends to last about six weeks… maybe there’s only six more weeks in this bleak, dark season of my life?  And then I found out that the groundhog didn’t even see his shadow this year, which made me wonder if the universe is trying to tell me that this will be over sooner than I think?

And then I remembered the MOVIE Groundhog Day and it all made sense.

I’ve been trying to articulate to myself lately how infertility feels (not that anyone has asked; I just want to be ready), and it’s really hard.  It’s unlike any other feeling, and I don’t know if I could have understood how tortuous it is before this happened.  But in a weird way, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day comes as close as anything I’ve seen to showing what it feels like to be infertile.

That feeling that you’re repeating the same thing over and over and over and over? Yup.

That feeling that no matter what you do, it won’t make a damn bit of difference?  Yup.

That feeling that whatever you did, surely you don't deserve this hell?  Yup.

That feeling that you’re slowly going crazy, and no one around you seems to notice? Yup.

That feeling that there must be something you can do to change your fate, but you just don’t know what it is?  Yup.

If I have one quibble with the comparison, it’s that of course in the movie everyone else is repeating the same day, too, they just don’t know it.  In the infertility version of Groundhog Day, everyone else would get to move on; it would only be you that is stuck.

In the movie, Bill Murray’s character gets depressed.  I’m there right now.  He gets jaded and cynical.  Uh-huh, been there, too.  He takes up hobbies to kill time.  Totally done that.  He tries to kill himself.  Ok, maybe not that one.  But, of course, after being stuck in the same day for what IMDB tells me was about ten years, he finally gets it right and wakes up on February 3.  Hopefully it won't take ten years before I get to move on, too.