Stranger in a Strange land

Finding myself without my regular "poke-n-prod" appointments has been... well, odd. But relaxing too.

It's been so strange to find myself thinking about normal things. About the world beyond my uterus. When you're infertile, and TTC, you lose some of yourself. And I'm not just talking about vials of blood, or your sense of modesty. There's always the shadow of your fertility struggle looming over every thought, and action. You end up feeling like your own evil twin, or a "reasonable hand-drawn facsimilie." You try to think about the greater world, but the stress, anxiety and sadness pushes you back into the hormone-clouded bubble. You forget what life felt like before you became so hypersensitive.

But... without the drugs in my system, I'm starting to feel almost human again. I can sleep through the night without waking up drenched in sweat. I can concentrate on my work... well, at least as much as I ever could. I can be intimate with my husband without worrying about laying perfectly still afterward, or praying that it will work this time. We can be intimate when we feel like it, and we do feel like it. I never realized how different making love and making a baby were.

Without the drugs in my system, I feel like I'm learning how to be myself again. It feels strange, but good. I'm glad I'm taking this time for myself, to recover from how hard these last couple of years have been, and to prepare myself for the next part of the fight.

It's a Long Way Down

As I prepare for my 3rd IUI, I'm sitting here, not feeling excited or nervous, optimistic or encouraged, but miserable. Just plain miserable. I'm feeling rather down in the dumps lately, in general. Starting this 7th round of Clomid, I've felt the effects to be more intense, more acute, more difficult for others to be around me. I just feel so discouraged by the process. I wonder how much of this has to do with coming up on the 2nd anniversary of my 2nd miscarriage? I cried during Rosh Hashanah services, when they read the Story of Hannah, wife of Elkanah, mother of Samuel. It's like picking a scab. You think it's healed over, and then it starts bleeding as if it just happened.

It may not seem like it today, but I'm really trying not to let this get me down. I am wallowing in a rather viscous lake of self-pity which is making me particularly horrible to my friends, family and co-workers. I feel as if this self-pity, almost self-loathing, is a stinking slime seeping from my pores. I am so far from the person I was before I miscarried. Before I began this difficult journey of infertility treatments. The drugs make me feel like I'm watching someone else, maybe my evil twin, bark at people, and rant and rave, thinking "Oh that's horrible, why can't she just take a breath and look at this objectively?" She doesn't have an objective view-point to see things from. Perception is reality, after all. This ShadowGirl version of myself is angry and jealous, mostly angry, and can't get past her fear and pain about having to go through this to remember why we're doing this.

It'll be just like Starting Over

IvoryBoy and I went for a consultation today with the reproductive endocrinologist. He feels that we're on the right track and should do at least two more Clomid cycles before considering IVF. He feels that with my PCOS, and the fact that I am responding to the Clomid favorably, that injectibles would pose too high a risk of multiples. I'm ok with the idea of twins, but I don't want my own reality show, thankyouverymuch. And I don't really want to be in a position where I have to figure out how I feel about selective reduction. I appreciate that they're concerned with avoiding quadruplets or more. Makes me wonder how Kate Gosselin or Octomom talked their doctors into allowing them to risk carrying whole litters of babies.

So I started my next round of clomid tonight, (Lucky everyone around me, getting to see mood-swinging-hot-flashing-IvoryGirl after a short hiatus) and then we'll do an IUI in about 10-12 days. I'm feeling pretty well rested from having that time off from our previous attempts. Hopefully that will help me to stay positive through this cycle. That and my sweet IvoryBoy, who keeps reminding me how much he loves me, and showing his support through it all. Even with all of this, I'm a very lucky girl.