40 Weeks Ago

Today I want to remember a beautiful moment. Not the horrifying and devastating loss that came after, but the beauty of a cycle that seemed so wonderful and promising. And it was, for a short time. I have a lot of pictures from last summer of the beautiful moments, and since technically my due date would have been around today or tomorrow from that cycle that proved I CAN get pregnant, in the RIGHT place, I think today is a perfect day to celebrate the joy and happiness that came from my last frozen cycle. I'm going to do it through pictures--pictures that are precious to me and I think capture just how these brief days of joy felt. Those days were important and sustain us to keep moving forward in our journey.

READY FOR TRANSFER

This is me, in the Magic Room. If you are an IVF patient, this is the room where it all happens. Not exactly romantic, eh? Note the ultrasound and scary wand to the left of my smiling, excited face. You actually get to see when your embryos are loaded into your uterus--there is a bright white flash and you know they are home. Hopefully to stay. Also note how freaking high those stirrups are and just how much you have to throw modesty to the wind. Good practice for birth, so I hear.

Despite this being my 6th time in this room, I actually was genuinely super excited and ready to have my next best chance at motherhood begin.

TRANSFER JOY

 This next picture is a beauty. This is during the waiting period, after the embryos are loaded, and
before you are cleared to go home, rest, and let those embryos settle in for the long haul. We felt so positive--despite everything that led up to this last frozen transfer, we were filled with hope. Three embryos were settling into my Mother Ship and at least one of them looked really, really good. After we took this picture I thought, Wow, this really looks like a hospital picture--like our baby is right below our smiling faces or in the bassinette thingie next to us. I feel like this is a peek into our future!


UNCHARACTERISTICALLY HAPPY WAIT

This is a super silly photo. We had taken a day trip to Sodus Point, NY (that's the lighthouse behind me) to take our minds off the wait. That dreaded two week wait where you read meaning into every twinge, every hunger pang, every tiny spot of blood you look for as evidence of implantation bleeding. Which, incidentally, I had this time and when I had the ectopic pregnancy. The wait is an exercise in torture, but for some reason it wasn't quite as stressful this time. Which is weird, because if this cycle didn't work out we really weren't sure what we would do next. One reason why this wait was easier was because it was shorter--frozen transfers are 5 day embryos, so the wait is almost half. Incidentally, my boobs look HUGE in this photo. An unfortunate cutoff point in the photo, but also thanks to the PIO and the early pregnancy hormones that I didn't know were already building up in my system, I was more buxom than usual. Something more to look forward to when I have breasts that are functional in the future! (Note high levels of sarcasm)

 

 

 THE BEST DAY EVER
I have seen these photos on Facebook before--people's "We're Pregnant!" photos, where both parties are just oozing joy. This is ours. I never got to share it because it ended too soon, but I'd like to share it now. This is what two people look like who have fought so hard for that good news. I thought my face was going to bust from smiling so much. We had received the call from our actual doctor just an hour or so before this stroll through trails in a field chock full of butterflies, and were just floating on the high. We had our first REAL pregnancy test that was positive without caveat--no low numbers (although in retrospect 61 was just over the threshold of "viable"), no "it's positive BUT," just pure joy. We had made it. We could hardly believe it, and yet it was true. And we couldn't bring ourselves to be overly cautious because we didn't want to miss a moment of this joy. Every day of this pregnancy was spent just marveling at the fact that we had made it to this point and it seemed real. We celebrated, we laughed, we planned. I actually don't feel sad anymore when I look at this picture. I feel such a strong sense of hope that we can have a picture like this again, and this time it will be followed by pictures of my growing belly. We'll have more than one ultrasound with a sac in it to prove that we can do this, we just need a little more help than we thought.


SPEAKING OF PROOF

Here it is. My second ever positive pee stick. It doesn't stay saying "pregnant" -- they fade after 10 minutes. I did get this picture though to remind me that I wasn't nuts, it wasn't a dream, I really was pregnant in my uterus last year. It can happen. We know more now and so we have our new plan to make this a lasting reality. Sadly, this picture of the pee stick isn't the happy one I peed on after getting that call. (I do NOT pee on sticks until after I have numbers that will show up -- I am not an early tester. I did that for a little while and it only added uncertainty and early heartache, so I stick to the bloodwork and pee on that stick when I KNOW it will give me the news I want to see!) This was after things had gone south, I was on bedrest, and I had found out that my numbers had dropped dramatically from several thousand to several hundred. I had actually called the folks at Clearblue Easy to see what their threshold was for HCG (it's 25, FYI), and so I peed on the stick to see if I still at least registered as pregnant. I just didn't want to believe it was over. I refused to go off my progesterone until they could prove to me that there was nothing in my uterus anymore. Stubborn? Crazy? Maybe. But when you are at this point in things and you thought that your happy ending was in your grasp and even your medical professionals are a little confused about how your numbers could drop like that so fast, you need proof. This stick was my proof that I WAS pregnant, that I could be pregnant, that some day I will have pee sticks that aren't showing that HCG is still coursing through my veins after a loss but showing that I am gloriously, sustainably pregnant. This picture, although steeped in sadness (and pee), is actually a photo of hope. It proves that we haven't lost it. We have been through so much on this journey and it seems just completely and utterly neverending, but somehow we have not lost hope.

 

These pictures are my proof that that joy is attainable. They are bittersweet reminders of the best days of our lives before that was inexplicably snatched away. We grasped the dream once, we can do it again. I cannot wait to share the pictures of our next happiest days. Thank you, short-lived embryo, for giving us this gift.

Infertility Feet

Yup, feet. As in my feet, which really have nothing to do with infertility, but the items I cloak them in do. I swear this will make sense shortly.

I have these black shoes:

See? They're still reasonably
cute on, despite their age.

Battered shoes by themselves

I love these shoes. I actually have them in brown suede, too, which are less beaten up looking (probably because they are suede and so I don't wear them in inclement weather, and I live in Rochester, NY, so that is pretty much NEVER).

Here's the problem with these shoes. Take a close look. They are obviously well-loved and well-worn. The insoles are totally cracked and offer zero support. The stitching is frayed and fuzzy looking. The toes are turning white and no amount of Payless black shoe polish will keep them shiny and black again for more than a day or two. And, they are Aerosoles, which used to be wildly popular (I think, I have never really been much of a fashion hound), but now I'm not sure that they exist.

That's because these shoes are easily 10 years old. I bought them and their brown counterparts at a DSW when I first moved to Rochester (I've been here 12 years now, so 10 years is a guess) and my friend Lynn bought the same ones. They are like getting away with wearing bedroom slippers at work. They have seen me through several moves, two marriages (one bad, one for keeps), and the lovely transformation of my feet as I age. I should thank them and scoot them into the garbage, since they aren't even remotely supportive anymore, and this lady needs arch support and shock absorbency. Because I'm moving into my late 30s with my next stupid birthday (hello, 37) and my feet are fairly abused. But I just can't get rid of them.

Why? I can't justify buying new shoes. Isn't that dumb? Your feet are super important (I know this because my mom has had horrific issues with her feet in the past few years, including several reconstructive surgeries, and so I know not to take feet for granted!). I am on them all day long as a teacher, and the halls I walk are a very hard, unforgiving linoleum. I should spring for the more supportive and yet attractive shoes. But I just can't.

This goes along with my pants conundrum. Why don't I buy new pants unless mine are tattered beyond repair? Because I want the next pants I buy to be maternity pants. I have been hoping for that shopping excursion for years. Ugh, it hurts just to say it...YEARS. I've been close twice, and I am the proud owner of two belly bands (which I mostly used when stimming and bloated beyond belief, and wore when bloated from PIO and early pregnancy, and may possibly wear on days when my pants won't button thanks to infertility fat), but still no stretchy waisted maternity pants in sight. So why no shoes? Because, in addition to the fact that nice, supportive, grown-up shoes are pretty freaking expensive, I don't want to buy shoes right before my feet change. That's right, I've had enough friends and exposure to pregnancy magazines and American Baby and Parents and everything like that to know that when you are pregnant, your feet swell and change. And they often don't go back to their pre-pregnancy size. So why should I buy new shoes?

Actually, the crazy in me thinks maybe I should buy the new shoes. Maybe, if I buy the new shoes, the Universe will laugh and say, "HA! She bought nice new shoes! Now we'll change her feet because she'll be pregnant, pronto, haha!" and little will the Universe know that that's what I really wanted. So I will trick it. (Sound crazy? It should...) Except I've tried tricks before. And really, there is no logical correlation between the purchase of shoes and the possibility of pregnancy. I would be buying shoes like mad if that was the case. Nope, I just don't want to retire these shoes until I am going to need to retire them in favor of a slightly bigger size. And honestly, they're a little stretched out and would accommodate swollen pregnancy feet pretty nicely. So I really shouldn't get rid of them anyway.

Do you see how exhausting it is to live life this way, always hoping for that event to occur and keeping things on hold in the meantime? That shoes could be such a complex issue? Everyone says you should just live your life at this point in the game and if you need new shoes, well hell, you'd be thrilled to have shoes you can't wear anymore! But I just don't work that way. I've tried, and it is just not me. I want to live my life, but this infertility nonsense is like a shadow I can't get rid of, tinting all my decisions and thoughts with but, what if what if what if what if this works out finally? which doesn't seem all that insidious, but those what ifs just keep going and going and they take over my thought processes completely. Especially since at the moment we are in what seems like a never ending holding pattern, waiting for all the pieces to come together so that we can even just get started on our next attempt. I am surrendering a lot of control (control I never really had, but at least I thought I had some) in this next process. So, I guess it's not so crazy that I want to control my shoes. My beat up, worn out, faded, but comfortable old constant friend shoes. Maybe it's like not changing your socks during playoffs or something. I have let go of so much, it's not so weird to hold on to this one little thing.

Lucky wanted to get in on the
photo shoot. Isn't he cute?

Then I realized I was wearing these socks.
Those are hospital socks that they give you
during retrievals and unfortunate tappings for
OHSS. I love these stupid socks, too... and
apparently Lucky is a little too interested.

So, shoes, you get to live another day. Just hopefully not for too much longer.

Living in a Lonely Space

Sometimes it feels like the world is an incredibly fertile place.

Sometimes, despite the fact that infertility affects 1 in 8 couples, it feels like I live in an island of inability to conceivedness, and no one else in my day to day life is infertile.

Not that I wish infertility on anyone, JEEZUM that is not what I meant. And I know quite a few ladies who share my struggle through support group connections, but that is a bubble where EVERYONE is infertile. I'm talking about every day life, where it seems like 1 in 800 couples are affected by an inability to conceive/carry.

Work/School
I am a teacher, and so I work at a school. Two schools, actually. And schools are fairly family-friendly places. And teachers, you know, LOVE kids. So it's no surprise that schools are hotbeds of fertility. People are always getting pregnant and having kids. Talking about their kids. And why not? I mean, that's where life is! And there are so many people to talk about pregnancy and kids with, because just about everyone is in that same boat. Except me. I am off in a sad little raft made of a door that refuses to open, listening to these conversations but I just can't get on that raft. That beautiful, fun, join-the-club raft.

I am sure I am extra sensitive to all this because my fake cycle to test out my new meds is over and I am just waiting for the go-ahead to get started. I am in this limbo where I am sort of on my way, but also stagnant. I feel like my new beginning could be right around the corner, or it could be months away, and I don't know PLUS I have no control over it. Which is incredibly hard for me. So I am super sensitive to talking with people at school in the hall or in meetings or at lunch and having all of the conversations be about having children. I smile and nod and laugh at the funny stories (because there are a lot) but inside I feel like crying because I am incredibly left out of the reality of all these things. Several times this week I had conversations with teachers who share students with me either in the hall or in their classrooms and "because I have kids..." and then a launch into a wonderful story about living with toddlers came up, and it was like being the freaking Little Match Girl, standing outside in the freezing cold, holding my little blue fingers up to a frosted windowpane, watching someone else's warm life with golden light play out in front of me, but on the other side of that glass. I can't get to the warm side of that glass.

Then, yesterday was an oddball Friday faculty meeting, and there was time for announcements. Anytime there are announcements I steel myself for the inevitable pregnancy announcement. Yesterday there were several, most of them second babies. There were so many announcements about babies coming in August/September that someone behind me said jokingly, "Must be something in the water!" Ha ha HA ha ha. I have to stop bringing in my water from home because maybe THAT's my problem. I hold myself together for the most part at school, but yesterday between that and some very confusing information about APPR, I was in tears on my way home and not the most pleasant sight for Bryce to come home to later in the afternoon. It's just so hard to continually be the odd one out. I am left out and a passive observer in so many conversations because people with kids love to talk about kids (I will too someday, this is not a criticism in the least), and when we have meetings everyone asks "How are your kids?" or something along those lines. No one asks, "How are your cats?" because that would just be weird. And for some reason, I don't get a lot of small talk that starts with "How is your husband?" I am in a no-man's land. A no-baby-land. I have a core group of people who know about my situation and they will ask me how I'm doing with things, which is nice. But then there are other people who kind of sort of know my situation and it sort of feels like they have given up on asking how things are going because the answers are just always so depressing, or at this point it's obvious that I'm not pregnant, so why bother asking because the answer won't be good. It hurts just a little bit. I just hold on and keep telling myself, someday this will be you... someday this will be you... someday this will be you... but it feels like someday is just so far away, even though we're on the cusp a new opportunity, because someday keeps sneaking up on us and then passing us by. Someday keeps almost coming, but just missing us.

Facebook:
I haven't been too active on Facebook lately, partly because it is IEP-writing season and so my life is not my own, but also because it is like a freaking time bomb. Pregnancy announcements run rampant. Pregnancy posts run rampant. Bump pictures and nursery pictures and hospital pictures and first weeks home pictures and all those super cute month birthday pictures with the round stickers on the onesies... they are everywhere. It's great, for those people immersed in the happiness of their new and exciting lives. But it seems like it is everyone, EVERYONE but me. I know this isn't really true. I know I'm being hyperbolic. But there has been a rash of second babies that are being born to people who got pregnant with their first baby when I was already heavy into fertility treatment. That hurts. That really brings it home to me how long we have been struggling and how easily life goes on all around us. I do not begrudge people their pregnancies. I live in awe of people who get pregnant easily or even relatively easily. I just don't understand how the Baby Fairy has so completely skipped over my house. I feel horrible, but I find myself dreading engagement announcements too, because at this point some of those people have passed me by on the road to parenthood and I start wondering if this newly minted couple will be among the lucky who get pregnant immediately and whose pregnancy announcement I will be reading long before I share my own. So when I log in to Facebook, looking for, oh, I don't know, funny things my friends say or memes about how Friday is your second favorite F word or videos of a loving relationship between a barn owl and a cat, and I am instead barraged by evidence that fertility is everywhere but here, it hurts. I feel horribly left behind. I want to be writing about when our baby is arriving. I want to be writing about the funny things my firstborn wants to name my secondborn. I want to be writing about the trials and tribulations of stroller/crib/glider assembly. But I'm not. I just watch it all scroll by.

Infertility World
I almost feel like this one is a little taboo to talk about. I feel horribly left behind by so much of the infertility community, too. I am pleased as punch for all of the long-awaited, battled-for babies out there. But it is a little startling to go to your blogroll for your infertility blog and find that almost everyone you follow is either pregnant or has had a baby recently. Again, PLEASED AS PUNCH, but when you start a search to find some people who are still fighting the good fight in your particular area of treatment and are really struggling to find someone who isn't pregnant, who is feeling similar things that you are feeling on the journey, that is hard. But, don't get me wrong, this situation is also incredibly hopeful--because if they are all pregnant that means, eventually, THIS WORKS. But for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, could it please work for me at some point before our world collapses around us? So many of those facebook babies are fertility babies, and that makes me happy. But then there are some tricky associations. For instance, I read an email from a fellow infertility fighter recently and she mentioned that she is 35 weeks and anxiously awaiting the arrival of her baby. On the one hand, this is awesome news--she is so close to having that baby in her arms! She's almost made it! Hurrah for the third trimester in a world where the first trimester and even the second hold no guarantees whatsoever despite all you've done to get there! On the other, slightly bitter hand... I felt punched in the gut when I read it. Because this fabulous mom-to-be got pregnant two days after I did in July. And she is almost ready to give birth, and I am...not. To realize that it could have been me sitting on a couch with my hand on my giant belly, maybe feeling some movement while typing this message of incredible hope, was really hard. I am not a mean-spirited person. I don't wish ill will on anyone. But I just don't understand why we BOTH couldn't have been in a position to bring babies home in late March/early April. Why did the stars align for her and not me? This is not a pretty side to infertility, but it exists.

Caveat
I have a lot of joy in my life. I am so fortunate to have so many things in life that others struggle for. I have a good job in a highly competitive field that is relatively secure-ish. I have a wonderful husband who loves me and treats me spectacularly well and is supportive in a way I didn't know existed in another life. I have a beautiful home and the means to take care of it. I have wonderful family who supports us in every way imaginable and awesome friends who are the best cheerleaders ever, and when we finally do make it to babyland they will be so ecstatic. I don't want to imply that I live this dark life in the shadows, lurking around other people's happiness like an infertile Gollum. But it is incredibly, heartbreakingly true that my wonderful life has a giant hole in it. A hole that we have tried to fill for 3 1/2 years of medical treatments with very little success but always great hope for the future. A hole that feels like it increasingly sets us apart from...almost everyone else. I know that even though my 37th birthday is looming in the not-so-distant future I am "still young." But I don't feel it. I was upset to find that a teacher that I work with was several years younger than me a month or so ago--not because he was younger than me (and not by much, so who cares?) but because he has multiple small children and so I thought that he had to be at least my age. I forget that people have children in their late 20s/early 30s. That not everyone gets started later only to find that this journey will be incredibly long and arduous with no foreseeable end that is trustworthy. I would love to believe that this next opportunity is going to do the trick, and I will be on the other side of the glass. But I just can't trust it anymore. I will feel differently once we are truly on our way. I always do, because I am an optimistic sucker. But until we are headed towards our transfer, I am kind of living in this gray limboland. And, despite my awesome support network, it is incredibly, incredibly lonely.

I also want to put out this caveat--I am sharing how I feel because I think a lot of people in this situation feel the same way, and aren't sure that it's "OK" because it's dark and/or less than the positive thinking that infertility patients are encouraged to display ad nauseum because somehow having a negative thought could make you less likely to get/stay pregnant. Which is crap. I think that validating ALL of the feelings that come with infertility, pretty or not, is super important to mental health. Get positive again when you are ready, but great jehosaphat, if you've gotten to this point in your journey to have a child and are still unsuccessful I think it's ok to have dark days, sad days, gray days. Even weeks. However, sharing this honesty does not include an expectation that I want people to change their behavior around me--at times I have written honest posts about how certain situations feel only to have people take it completely to heart and feel awkward or distant around me afterwards. I want to hear your stories about your kids. I am happy for your pregnancy announcements/births/milestones (I just might "Like" it on Facebook rather than commenting, because if I comment then my notifications are bombed with comments congratulating people on their baby which turns my phone into a torture device). Please don't leave me out of those moments because you don't want to make me feel sad. I am GOING to feel sad, but I WANT to share your joy. I don't want those things to change. I want my situation to change so that I don't feel this way on the inside every day. I want to join you. I want to leave this lonely space and move on, leave this stagnant period of my life behind and go forward to the world of parenthood.

Dodo Arms, Coffee Guilt, and Bellies for a Reason

I had excellent intentions. When we decided that we needed to take a break after our last disastrous attempt to have a baby, I was going to use the break constructively ("decided" is really a loose term since a break was pretty much mandatory due to school schedules, refusal to have a holiday with injections and blood tests, and the need to raise up a small fortune for our next opportunity). Take some time to grieve and throw myself into a new school year, and then really make an effort to lose the fertility pounds I keep padding myself with every time I go through this process. I was also going to live like a normal person, so that meant not taking 8 billion supplements each day, dropping the prenatals I've taken for almost 4 years now for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON, and not worrying so much about what foods were possibly destroying my fertility from the inside out. Drinking coffee and wine and the Friday night margaritas was a must, because feasibly these activities were to be short-lived. And exercising--I was going to exercise my face off.

That... did not happen so much. I forgot how much school swallows almost all leisure time, especially when you're teaching new classes and creating/modifing a ton of materials with the hope that you can use these materials in the future and not have to redo it all again. I forgot that when you are coping with a devastating loss and a plan to move ahead that is very different than how you imagined things would be, and when you are realizing that IVF really HAS NOT WORKED FOR YOU, you tend to get depressed. The couch becomes incredibly inviting, and staring at the ceiling with tears in your eyes as you replay the long and arduous journey that you have to take to have baby while Facebook is peppered with "easy" babies (beautiful, loved babies, but babies conceived in beds or bedlike structures and discovered via a second pink line or digital "pregnant" announcement) seems like a great way to spend several hours. I swear Bryce almost deactivated my Facebook account multiple times. Coming home with a bag that I could bench-press full of work tended to forgo my plans to do yoga or go for a nice brisk walk. I managed it sometimes, but somehow my state of mind did not lend itself to disciplined fitness attempts. In December I signed up for a fitness challenge through Facebook (motivating but utterly unenforceable), to do SOMETHING every single day. I did great through mid-December, and then I got an upper respiratory infection that totally waylaid me. And it was COLD, dammit. I don't have a house with an elliptical in the basement. I have yoga supplies, a hula hoop, and a DVD player. And I just didn't feel like doing any of that. So all of the poundage from Lupron and estrogen shots and progesterone shots and being pregnant for a brief, beautiful point in time just kind of sat. I got rid of about 7 pounds of it, but just couldn't dig deeper.

Enter January. After our beautiful vacation to snowy Vermont, I decided that I was going to TURN THIS SHIP AROUND. In a post-guacamole and -tequila trip to Target, I bought a handful of exercise DVDs to add to my neglected stack. I was going to DO SOMETHING! I bought Ballet Beautiful: Swan Arms, Ballet Body Blast, and Ballet Butt 1&2 (all one DVD in case you think I've totally lost my mind). I bought Core Yoga -- 3 DVDs in one! by Shiva Rea. And I decided to move these in and out of rotation with some Crunch videos I already had, mostly yoga and pilates-yoga blends. I started with the Ballet Beautiful to do something different. And uh, it's different. I thought I would do Swan Arms, since my arms are getting that lovely droop that can appear in your 30s and just gets floppier and floppier through middle age. Down With The Droop! Swan Arms sounded like a great way to battle this unfortunate side effect of aging and being on the pleasantly plump side. Except Swan Arms is by turns STRANGELY DIFFICULT and also UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS. This tall, lithe, actual ballerina who trained Natalie Portman in Black Swan and is the personal fitness guru to Zooey Deschanel instructs you on how to make graceful swan arms. Basically you flap your arms in a way that looks incredibly fluid and graceful when the instructor does it, but mildly seizure-like when you do it. I look like I'm trying to take off but I am obviously a flightless bird who has no business trying to become airborne. I am doing Dodo Arms. I can only imagine what my neighbors see outside as they walk their dogs and peer into open windows and see my arms flapping about, facing the mirror so I can see for myself how unlike the video I look. I do not strive to be ballerina-shaped. I just want toned, unfloppy backs of my arms. This DVD reminds me of an unfortunate and hilarious moment in my high school life, where my trio of bestfriend-dom decided that we were going to take dance lessons. I think we were juniors in high school, so we definitely did not have a long and illustrious background of dance (we had all taken ballet and tap as preschoolers, I think that's about it). Kelly was adamant that tap would be the best, but Shannon and I insisted on ballet. It will be graceful! It will get us toned! It will be awesome! We totally should have listened to Kelly. We walked into the ballet class, which was called Ballet I although it quickly became apparent that there must have been many fractions beforehand because these young ladies were NOT beginners like us. We were all pretty slender then--some of us naturally so (not me) and some of us from running cross country and track. But we did not hold a candle to these balletic bodies that lined up at the bar. There was stretching, and plie-ing, and leaping. The barre routine was horrifying because while we three were all not as lithe and willowy as the other more professional dancers, I was by far the most voluptuous. The teacher came over and shoved my ass in and my stomach in and yelled, "Pull it IN! Pull it IN! Long and LEAN!" until I just laughed and said "It's as IN as it gets!!!" I was an avocado in a sea of carrot sticks. And then the leaping. The leaping solidified that tap was better than ballet. These graceful skeletal creatures ran and leapt into the air, landing on the bouncy wooden studio floor with a tiny little tap noise. You can guess what that looked like for me. I ran and leapt with what I thought was graceful abandon, and when I landed the whole place shook. Ooops. Tap was a much better class for me, and no one yelled at me to suck it in when I felt like I was already blue in the face from the sucking. We were only scolded for not being enthusiastic enough with our smiles and our arms.

So anyway, Ballet Beautiful is nice because it is 15 minutes per mini workout and I can do as much or as little as I want, and the only person in the room is me. No one else can witness me feeling like the hippos from Fantasia. Then came the Shiva Rea yoga tapes. These are great and very relaxing, but holy moses, she is definitely a free spirit. Instead of being told to "hold in your center and contract" as in the ballet series, she tells me to "find new spots to work on in the garden of my belly." I am told to find my creative flow as she literally twists herself in a pretzel during the free flow time where I am supposed to independently do my own free-wheeling thing based on the poses she's showed me at the beginning. It's kind of nice, but I need a little more structure. I do feel less bullied in that video than others I've tried.

I did really well with these new tapes and my old standards until I started medication. I was doing something at least 4-5 times a week, and it felt great. I could feel nice hard muscle where things had been pretty soft as of late. And then I started medication. I don't know what it is about this medication that just saps me of motivation. Maybe it's the constant state of headache, or exhaustion, or overwhelming feeling of not being able to handle too much. Maybe it's that I need to go to bed at 8-9 in order to feel rested and my brain just can't handle any more after I get home from school. I started Lupron a couple weeks ago and did my favorite tape, SuperSlimDown Yoga/Pilates blend by Ellen Barrett. I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. I had just done this tape a few days before without any ill effects, just sore muscles that felt good the next day. But somehow it all changed on Lupron. I felt awful starting halfway through and almost stopped. This doesn't make too much sense, but it made me feel like the tapes weren't going to work out while on meds. Then I started these estrogen patches, which will be the subject of a different post because they are kind of hilarious in their own right. But ever since I've been on the patches I have felt completely wiped. I have had a low grade headache every day (sometimes it spikes up into a full-blown migraine) and have just been exhausted and unfocused. And I feel FAT. But unable to really do anything about it. I have been scolded by many people that the last thing I should worry about is my weight right now, that that is secondary and not so important. I mean, I still fit into my jeans and I still have fat jeans that are too loose to wear right now. But it's so frustrating to want to do something more active but then feel completely at a loss to do it.

Then there's the food piece. I am trying to be good, eating fruits and veggies and gluten free whole grains (the only kind I can eat, thanks so much celiac), and avoiding alcohol and coffee. Well, I was doing well with the coffee. But I'm so tired that I just can't get rid of it entirely. And here's the kicker--DOES IT REALLY MATTER? How many people drink oodles of coffee and get pregnant no problem? I didn't drink coffee for three months prior to my last transfer and I got pregnant, but it didn't last. So was the coffee really a key variable? I'm not talking a pot day here. I'm talking maybe 4 cups a week. WHY AM I SO WORRIED ABOUT COFFEE??? And, seriously, WHY NOW? I am on drugs, yes, and I am building a lining, yes, but there are no embabies going into that uterus at this time. This is a test run with the new meds to see how I respond before the big game. So my worry is, will the coffee disrupt my lining? I have a cabinet full of sardines. Yes, sardines. Convenience food popular with senior citizens everywhere. But sardines are a great source of omega-3s, calcium, and potassium. Sardines are great pre-pregnancy and pregnancy food. And, I will admit, I do like them. They are disturbing but delicious. And my sardines are sustainably harvested, low-mercury fish. I am so careful about the food during cycles because I am terrified that some food is going to hurt my chances. And yet, it seems it is entirely possible to get pregnant on a diet of cheetos and crystal meth. But here I am, dutifully downing lemon-flavored fish oil capsules in addition to eating TINY WHOLE FISH WITH SPINES IN THEM!!! And I am still not pregnant. And none of it has mattered up until this point. I am starting to feel a little disillusioned.

I want to be clear, I want to lose weight to be healthier. I'm not looking for 25 pounds here. I'm looking for just enough to feel like I would be starting a pregnancy from a good place. But people keep telling me I am putting too much pressure on myself. See, I lost a bunch of weight when I got divorced, and then even more when I discovered that I should be eating gluten free. But it is a total fallacy that eating gluten free will make you skinny. I eat not a speck of gluten and while I am not obese, I am definitely in the "overweight" camp. Stupid BMIs. But my body is meant to hover around this size. It's where I keep ending up. That must mean something. It's just so frustrating to constantly be at the high end of my size when I know if I wasn't on all this medication and under all this stress and constantly in a state of grief and loss, I could be 10 pounds lighter without much effort. But again, is this really worth the stress of worrying about my weight when I am so focused on getting knocked up? I mean, look at all the fertility idols out there across cultures. They're not the willowy lithe ballerinas, they're curvy and soft. In some cases downright zaftig. So if I fit in the middle, that should be ok.

It stinks that I have to think so much about exercise and foods and weight not from a downright health point of view but from a "how will this affect my chances to get pregnant?" Really, at this point when removing eggs from my body that were harvested like salmon roe and then individually injecting them with sperm and creating embryos to transfer back into my plush uterus hasn't done the trick, I shouldn't worry so much about sardines versus 4 year old cheddar from Vermont. And, it's not like you get skinnier when you are pregnant. Although, I have to say, I am very much looking forward to being chubby for a good reason. I will be wearing that baby belly with tremendous pride. I don't think I will be complaining about how "fat" or "huge" I am when it is mostly baby. Hard-won, incredibly precious baby. I just want to have a starting point that's healthy so that I can have the cutest baby belly ever, and finally be proud of my body for doing what it's supposed to do. I really, really hope we make it to that point when these injections and patches are on for the real deal. I am so ready to rub my big, hard belly to connect with the baby inside, instead of rubbing my floppy, bruised belly with isopropyl alcohol and injecting it with more drugs to try to have another chance at making that baby belly happen.

The Best, Hardest Present Ever

January has been incredibly busy. I have been getting back into the swing of school after an amazingly rejuvenating vacation in Vermont over the holidays, and I have been getting back into the swing of being a fertility patient again. I am exhausted and tired and cranky. But, I really wanted to go back to a moment in Vermont that was really important. Beautiful. And so, so hard.

We had our Christmas in Vermont--packed up all of our presents that had been shipped to us by out-of-town family and our few presents to each other. We had a cap on the presents since, really, the awesome trip to the tavern was the biggest present and everything else was like a stocking gift. Not a jewelry-store version of a stocking gift (It's small but precious! Buy your wife these sparkly diamond earrings or she will hate you forever!), but small gifts that were meaningful but not expensive. I took the small part very literally, gifting Bryce with neat things that could actually fit in a real stocking. A little wine trivia game, a guitar pick punch (turn any gift card or expired credit card into a guitar pick!), things like that. Bryce had a few small things and one ginormo box for me. I was so curious about that big box.

We opened our presents on Christmas morning after breakfast--drawing out the process well into the early afternoon. We like to spend a little time with each present--admiring it, exploring it. One at a time. Make it last, be sure you appreciate the gift and the sentiments behind it. It was really, really weird not to have a Christmas tree (and I'm sure the hotel appreciated us NOT bringing our presents down around their real tree that was decked out in the "living room" by the fireplace), but it worked ok. We had Christmas music on the radio and there was snow on the ground. We were in Vermont, far away from all things fertility, and it was actually an amazingly relaxing and romantic holiday.

We made our way through the presents, carefully picking which one the other person should open next. The big box was near the end. Bryce seemed a little nervous about it. We're always nervous about the presents we get each other, always worried that what seemed meaningful and sweet while shopping becomes trite and crappy upon opening. It's super neurotic. And it's never the case--the presents are always sweet and meaningful and well appreciated. One year Bryce got me a set of stainless steel kitchen accessories from Crate and Barrel--a paper towel holder, a canister for utensils, a salad fork-and-spoon set, and measuring cups and spoons. Hefty, substantial, grown-up kitchen accessories from my favorite homegoods store. We didn't register when we got married because we had so much home crap from our assorted previous weddings (ice cream makers in closets! three coffee makers!) and from living alone however briefly that it seemed silly. So these gifts were awesome to me. His best friend thought differently, freaking out when Bryce told him what he'd gotten me. "She's gonna kill you! A paper towel holder? That's not a Christmas present! What the hell are you doing? You need to go back out shopping immediately before this is the worst Christmas ever!" Now, I get it--to some this would be the equivalent of the birthday vacuum. "I celebrate you with a tool to make my house cleaner all the time. Here you go, 1950s wife." But to me those stainless steel kitchen items were the most thoughtful present because I had always wanted really nice, quality things for the kitchen and now I had them. It represented to me an appreciation for the things that I enjoyed doing and for the fact that we were truly grown-ups, in our home together, finally in a secure place where salad forks could be a beautiful gift. I use them all the time. These things are part of my daily life, which is the way a good gift should be. Useful and beautiful and seen often.

So anyway, here I was with this mystery box, wondering what could fit our price cap criteria and still be in this mongo box along with the earrings (silver g-clef) and books (of the picture variety) and cds (country Christmas, sweet simply because Bryce HATES country music and it just isn't the holidays without Dolly Parton for me...) and other sweet things I had been given. I started to open it. And had a feeling of both dread and incredible love when I spotted something left on the box that gave a clue to what was inside.

The label said, "BABY BUDDHA."



It looks like it's in jail,
but really it's safely in
the baker's rack right now.

I opened the box the rest of the way and inside was this. This beautiful, well-crafted, devastingly meaningful buddha statue for the garden.

It was perfect. It was incredibly touching. And it made me so happy, yet at the same time incredibly, deeply sad.

Let me explain. When we lost the little almost-miracle but totally-ectopic pregnancy that fooled us with low numbers that shouldn't have continued and then numbers that doubled but weirdly, giving us hope and then dashing it with the scary tubal implantation that had to be surgically removed, forever leaving my belly decorated with scars that will always remind me of that loss every time I get out of the shower, we had a ceremony to commemorate that loss. We had an event and said goodbye, within a couple weeks of that tragic experience. I wrote about it here. But we hadn't done anything yet to honor the brief presence of our last loss, the one that in my mind was more tragic because while not as dramatic as seeing a misplaced pregnancy on a high-definition ultrasound and being whisked into surgery within hours, it just seemed cruel and senseless. I am having a hard time getting over this loss. Bryce is having a hard time getting over this loss. Everything was going so well and then BOOM. Gone. But we hadn't yet done anything to put something resembling closure onto the experience. I wanted to do something, buy something for the garden. Some people plant a tree or a plant or something, but what if we moved? I couldn't leave that symbolic representation of the baby that could have been behind. So I wanted a statue for the garden, that we could take with us wherever we went and keep safe in the wintertime. I wanted something peaceful that could both clearly represent our poor lost baby (really, babies--both of them) but not be totally morbid to others. And, that could bring a sense of peace. I wanted a Buddha statue that we could put in our side secret garden, that could go near the prayer bells we added a year or so ago. But I couldn't find just the right one. I looked half-heartedly, but just couldn't bring myself to pick one out.

So the fact that Bryce took it upon himself to find this beautiful, perfect statue that captured everything I wanted was amazing. There is so much emotion in this little boy face. He is holding an open book, which is perfect. The stone is beautiful and I can just see exactly where this memorial can go when it's warmer and there's life once again in the garden.

But man, it was a tough present to open. I held it and just welled up and didn't know what to say. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was heartbreaking. I lost it. And then Bryce lost it. He was so worried. Maybe this wasn't the right time...maybe it would put a shadow over Christmas. It took that thin layer of healing and opened it up so that we were hugging and crying and holding this little statue and just feeling the loss all over again. But it wasn't a bad time. It was perfect. I wanted to have the ceremony or memorial item in hand before we started our next cycle. I wanted closure to a year that once again held a lot of sadness for us and loss of hope that we keep regenerating, although never quite as strongly as we were once capable of. I'm not going to lie, the statue made me feel incredibly sad. I was in a bit of a funk for hours. But I was so grateful to Bryce for having the strength to do what I just couldn't. He found the perfect statue. He combed internet sites and catalogs until just the right one came to be. It can't have been easy. To find it, to receive it in the mail, to wrap it, unsure if this was the right time to give this incredibly gorgeous but extremely hard gift to your wife. But it was. That took some strength that I deeply appreciate.

And now, we have that closure in a sense. I see the Buddha every day and see it not only as a memory of loss but a peaceful reminder of the hope to come. We were so close, and the changes we have made will bring us even closer. Even though we have suffered what seems incredibly disproportionately on this journey to the ever elusive expanded family, one that has talking family members, not just meowing ones, we can keep looking forward to what we have to gain. Appreciate the loss, and hope for the future...for the baby that stays. 

Magazine Intervention

My magazine problem knows no bounds. I am a magazine junkie. I have subscriptions to Glamour, PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Country Gardens, Whole Living (although I've let that one expire)... and Parents magazine. Yup, Parents. I used to have that awful subscription to American Baby but due to a marketing ploy and a small lie on my part about due date that could have been but wasn't (not an actual successful cycle, so it's not as awful as it sounds) it went away. I graduated to their partner (and not free) magazine, Parents when my "baby" was 6 months old or so. It was just as well, because this was for my vision board and my Baby Binder. The vision board is now facing inwards in the closet in our back office/junk room because it is just too painful to look at at this point. So much hope went into that board, and I put three cycles worth of embryo pictures on it with the caption "We Love You and We Welcome You!" on the orange cardstock frame. And then we lost you. Every one. So the board became less a beacon of hope and a wondrous imagining of what world lay ahead for us and more a reminder of all we kept losing. So I didn't really need pictures for that anymore (although I can't bring myself to dismantle it and I kind of want to just rearrange it a bit to "freshen" it up and put it in the little room during our next cycle...). The Baby Binder still exists at the bottom of a drawer in our coffee table, next to the drawer that holds all my medical crap and plans from all of our cycles, including several beautiful pictures of my rosy, perfectly fine little uterus (inside and out) from various surgeries. The Baby Binder is another beacon of hope, but one that I can stuff to the bottom of a drawer when I can't bear to read articles about an experience that I am worried I may never have. It is a beautiful book, but I haven't taken it out since our last doomed cycle.

The Parents magazine was supposed to be for Baby Bindering in the absence of American Baby. I ordered it when I could get 12 issues for just $1 and I was pregnant. Shortly after I ordered it I was placed on bedrest (but it was too late), but I still hung on to the thought that things could work and it would be fun to receive in my mailbox. Nope, not the case. But then I thought about it, and I wrote about it, and I said, "I can read it and razor it for the Baby Binder when I'm in a good place, and I can stuff it in a drawer when I'm not. It will be fine." Needless to say I have not added any pages to the Baby Binder anytime recently, or rather anytime since I was last filled so completely with hope in the face of possible (and then certain) tragedy. They have been stuffed in the drawer, too painful to even be out on the coffee table. I have about 4-5 months of largely unexplored Parents magazines waiting to be cracked open when I feel like this experience is in my very near future. The one thing I do check for every once in a while is recipes. This magazine is a crazy treasure trove of deliciousness. Roasted Broccoli is a favorite in our parent-free home, as are the Cider-Roasted Carrots and Parsnips. If you want tasty veggie recipes, apparently Parents is the place to go. The other stuff is great, too, I'm sure. I will gorge on it when I am actually in that place. Past the first trimester this time, probably.

Although maybe not. Because I DON'T LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES. I have this crazy selective memory and shiny optimism that overcomes all logic and sense. Today I received a SPECIAL OFFER in the mail--from Family Fun magazine! Oh, holy jeezum, THREE WHOLE YEARS of Family Fun for only $11.99!!! Strangely, as I wasn't even trying to have a family at that point, I used to subscribe to Family Fun years and years ago. I was a Big Sister mentor, and it has awesome craft activities that I used with both my Little Sister and my next door neighbor, and I made a Craft Ideas Binder that has become neglected and dusty in the basement craft area because I have no one to craft with at the moment. But again, this stuff does not go bad. These crafts won't go out of style when I finally have little people to craft with again. This is a wonderful magazine with great activities and tips and again, photos that worked well for that vision board. So I spent a lot of time looking over the awesome direct mail marketing materials--so glossy! So inviting! So persuasive! So many great ideas for an expanded family I DON'T HAVE!!! I started talking out loud about it. I started admiring the crafts and thinking loudly about how this could be a fun magazine to have--hey, we're headed into a new and exciting cycle that could be our best chance yet! Why not? I think the thinking out loud was a subconscious cry for help. Because Bryce, wonderful Bryce, paused chopping jalapenos for the slow-cooker chili and very carefully looked at me and said, "Is this such a good idea? Maybe you hang on to this offer for a little while. Do we need another magazine like this? Maybe having something to look forward to isn't such a bad idea." He is so wise! But of course, my first reaction was to say in a slightly whiny tone that means I know he's right but I'm not ready to give up, "BUT IT SAYS I ONLY HAVE 10 DAYS FOR THIS SPECIAL OFFER!!!!" First he said, "How about you wait until the 11th day to make your decision?" I gave him the evil eye. And then he just looked at me. And I knew just what he was thinking. How do I save my wife from more heartbreak at the mailbox? Family Fun came from the Parents subscription, if she signs up for this one we will officially be on parenting mailing lists and the mailbox will become a veritable minefield of sadness. And we are coming up on LUPRON here, so this is NOT GOOD. Please realize this is a horrible idea without me saying any more. Realize it! Realize it! Realize it...  And so I looked over at the pile of Parents magazines that I had just hauled out from the drawer, searching for that stupid Cider-Roasted Carrots recipe, and I looked at the shiny happy families and small children that are years in the making for us, and I teared up and realized. THIS WAS A VERY BAD IDEA. I don't need one more thing in my mailbox to remind me that we are a unwillingly childless household. I don't need to keep confusing my mail carrier who can probably tell by looking at our house and our carseatless vehicles in the driveway that I am a big fat poser. I need to wait this one out, as tempting as it is to have a shiny glimpse into the world we haven't quite entered yet. Today was a kind of good day, a hopeful day, but it is true that the evil Lupron days are coming sooner than later and this is the kind of thing that sets off the waterworks and the crazypants funks.

So I ripped up my special offer and recycled the direct mail pamphlet and burst into tears. I just want so badly to be ready to order freaking Family Fun. But it is absolutely the right decision to wait. It's not going anywhere. I need to remember my promise to myself to not buy or sign up for anything pregnancy or child related until I am absolutely viably pregnant, as much as that can be assumed. It's better that way. And I can trust that Bryce will keep me in check, for his sanity as much as mine. It's a wonderful thing to want something so much and be so optimistic about it. However, I am grateful to have had a mini-intervention tonight to save me from my Pollyanna tendencies that would cause my mailbox to, yet again, become a black box of torture. Well done, Bryce. Well done.

Happy New Year

Well, 2012 has come and gone. Gooooodbye, 2012. I hate that I seem like a party pooper, because it seems every year the New Year celebration comes and every year I'm like, "Adios, stupid year! You were a stinker! Next year will SOOOO be better!" And, so far, this is a repeating chorus. I am getting mighty tired of this song.

Now, I can't say 2012 was a total stinker. In the baby department it sure didn't meet expectations, to put it mildly. But there were many things that were good, if relatively good. Let's start with the bad stuff, so we can end with the positive.

Good Riddance, 2012 Things:
- A Christmas frozen transfer that was negative. First frozen blastocysts in my uterus, way to start the New Year horribly disappointed that even awesome quality frozen beauties wouldn't stay put.
- A fresh cycle with our best ever egg retrieval--something like 26 eggs (I count it as a good thing that I don't remember the exact number), and 6 usable embryos, 3 of which were frozen and 3 of which went into my uterus. Those 3 fresh day-3 embryos didn't stay, either. Cue 36th birthday hot on the heels of another failure, the fourth fresh transfer and fifth transfer, and 13th embryos to go in and decide it wasn't a good home. Good times, good times. Not my best birthday.
- A summer where we couldn't go to camp in Maine because the week we normally go wasn't available and we couldn't reschedule because we didn't know how the frozen cycle with our three last frosty hopes was going to go. Which meant a summer of stepping into the L.L. Bean and stepping right out because it made us cry.
- A frozen cycle with three blasts of varying quality (one beautiful, one that had better have had a good personality because it wasn't going to win any beauty contests, and one ugly duckling), that resulted in our first real BFP ever. A starting number of 60 something (again, so proud of myself that off the top of my head I can't remember the number) that doubled and doubled like it was supposed to, no mind games and no life-threatening tubebaby. A call from the doctor that we'd waited for for so long that lead to one of the best days of my life so far, where Bryce and I were full of so much joy and hope that we were truly on our way out of this reproductive hell. A beautiful dream that ended in a cruel, drawn-out way with a crazy bleed (that still has me trying to avoid my Grandma's bathroom like the plague and hyperventilating when I can't wait to go somewhere else), bed rest, rapidly dropping numbers, and an ultrasound that a week earlier showed a sac trying to hang on in the bleed but now only showed debris. By far the low point of the year.
- A delayed trip to Cape May, NJ with my best friend and her mom, aunt, and cousins that has been an every 2-4 year experience since we graduated high school, that became a trip I could not go on at all. At first because I was freshly pregnant and perhaps with all the close monitoring we infertile ladies get once we hit the jackpot, a trip down the shore wasn't such a good idea, even if one lady was a nurse who wouldn't flinch at giving me the PIO butt shots. Then it became a canceled trip because I did not care to miscarry all over the Jersey shore and be the ultimate shark protector, the sacrificial swimmer who lures the sharks away from her friends. (Usually this person is the furthest out, which actually doesn't matter to sharks but makes us feel better anyway, or the reckless person wearing sparkly nail polish which apparently does attracts sharks, or the person with their period, haphazardly swimming in sharky waters anyway, like a tampon is going to deter a bloodthirsty shark.) That trip that never happened was part of my loss because I was so looking forward to my time on the beach, a vacation in a vacationless summer full of needles. Oh well.

But, all was not terrible. Pretty much everything was fertility-related that was terrible, but there was plenty of non-fertility related stuff that happened in 2012 that was notable and good.

2012, You Weren't Entirely Sucky Things:
- We did not lose any pets this year. This sounds like a depressing positive, but seriously, we have lost a greyhound to organ failure, then lost a greyhound to relocation because the dog needed more attention and space to run than we could offer and frankly fertility had sapped all of my capacity to deal with anything the least bit stressful at home (a very hard but very good decision), then lost my beloved three-legged cat, Rocky, to a mysterious illness that robbed him of the use of his two back legs over a period of weeks and deteriorated further of course, the week of our Christmas frozen transfer, and so I had to put my cat down (which was horribly botched and traumatizing for all involved) two days before Christmas, the day after my transfer, and during a time where I was supposed to rest and relax and avoid stress. I'm sure hours of wracking, heaving sobs covered that. BUT, that was 2011! 2012 started with our rescue cat, Lucky, and while his namesake didn't rub off on our transfer, he has been an excellent addition to our home. He has been playful and cuddly and gets along decently with Abner, and curls up on your lap and purrs when you need some good cat loving. We have lost no one furry in 2012, and that is something to be grateful for.
- Bryce's job was very stable and excellent in 2012--he was pretty happy with all of his projects and he did an amazing job with everything, winning accolades like crazy. Good stuff in an uncertain economy.
- I received tenure in September! I have a somewhat new and, while exhausting, very rewarding and exciting job teaching 8th grade self-contained Reading and English as well as three 9th grade resource room classes. I have more job security (although how much more is questionable in these times where teachers are so villified by the public and budget cuts run rampant, cutting tenured teachers left right and sideways). So if I do get cut, or I do go out on maternity leave, I at least can get called back and have a job waiting for me when I return. Which is a huge relief. And a big accomplishment.
- We received a positive pregnancy test. Even though it ended in a heartbreaking miscarriage that is by far the most difficult of our losses to bear, it was proof that I CAN GET PREGNANT. In my UTERUS. Now we just have nail down the staying pregnant part.
- We have a new plan, something different. Our next cycle isn't like our previous cycles, and I am excited about that. After six cycles that all ended in heartbreak of varying devastating degrees, it is good to know that this next chance has a much higher rate of success and we are changing things up. I have had time in the fall to take a break and get used to this new plan. I am still terrified to put embryos in a place that so far has not hauled out the welcome wagon, but everyone medical believes that I truly do have a perfectly good, welcoming uterus that will seal the deal for us. And so I ended 2012 in a place of hope.
- We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary. Sad that there's still no baby or bump in sight, but grateful and happy that we have so much to celebrate in our marriage. We are a team. We are solid. We are awesome together. We can do this. And we will do it with grace under pressure, stronger as a couple through this horrific gauntlet that will one day, so help us, end in a child.
- We celebrated our Christmas in a wonderful, magical vacation in Vermont. A separate post about this vacation will come after, but wow, what a way to cap off the year. We reconnected (not that we had far to go, just this year has been EXHAUSTING). We romanced each other. We spent tons of time laughing and hiking and eating and drinking and acting like newlyweds. It felt like a honeymoon. If we weren't so horribly infertile and I wasn't on the pill, I would say it was the kind of vacation so magical you could totally get pregnant on it. Except that kind of story just doesn't happen for us, but maybe all the relaxation and romanticalness and wondrousness of this vacation set the stage for a terrific cycle in 2013.

So there you have it. The good, the bad, the ugly. No year is every truly all good or all bad, but this year was really a mixed bag. I can hope that 2013 holds the key to our family expansion project. I don't dare say "THIS is THE year for us, baby!" because I've said that too many times. My ability to be completely enthusiastic about a new beginning is...impaired. But not destroyed. I hope that 2013 is our time, and our time for keeps. None of this fakeout shit of 2011 and 2012. As long as our Good list is longer than our Bad list, I will be happy. And if that Good list contains the one item we have been longing and hoping for, for YEARS now, I will be freaking ecstatic. Bring on the ecstasy, 2013.

Lovebirds, ending the year in our room in Vermont.