Thanks

Thank you for your reassuring comments. I gave notice to PN and Henry seems excited about it. I made a calendar to show him how many more days he has there and when I pointed to his last day he said, "Yeah! Because I don't like PN!" So I guess he will not suffer any trauma over this.

Meanwhile, we have one month to go until the baby is born.


Edited to add:

Also, I'm scared!

I forget what it's like to have a baby. Diaper blowouts and feeding every couple of hours. Not being able to sit in traffic because it's feeding time.

Henry was an incredibly easy baby. He never cried, he slept all the time. He only woke up once per night after about 8 weeks and by 14 weeks he was sleeping through the night.

I'm 41 years old.

How are we going to do this?!?!

I'm excited too. But this waiting is hard. I just want to be figuring this out already. The anticipation is killing me!

Henry and school

Henry goes to two different schools. He goes to a private nursery (PN) in the morning, twice a week. Then he goes to a public Pre-K program in the afternoons, four times a week. I pick him up at PN and he eats lunch in the car and then I drop him off at Pre-K. It's pretty chaotic.

So, next month there is a week of vacation starting Feb 17. We will probably go to FL for the baby at the end of that week and stay for most of the following week.

He has been having lots of discipline and behavior problems at PN. He started out going four times a week, but he was too much for them to handle and we switched down to the two days where they have the smallest enrollment because he needs so much one on one attention.

So, with him missing half of February and me not know how I can deal with a newborn who will need to feed when I have to drop him off and pick him up and eat in the car, I am thinking about pulling him out of the morning school.

Henry tells me he doesn't really like PN. He seems to like it well enough to me, but when I ask him why he has so much trouble making good choices there, he says it's because he doesn't like it. He likes Pre-K.

When I mentioned to Henry what he thought about not going back to PK, he was all for it.

I told the director of PK that we were thinking of pulling him. She seemed pretty ambivalent about it. I feel pretty ambivalent about it too. I'm not sure if it's a bad idea or not. I do think it will make my life easier. The baby will be home in March. The weather will be getting better. We will be able to play outside in the mornings and we can even walk to Pre-K with the baby in the stroller.

Is it bad to pull Henry out of PK in the middle of the school year? I want somebody to tell me that it's ok to do.

Blah.

And then there was one

I just got an email from the local embryo donor possibility. She used donor gametes and her contract with the donor states she cannot donate them to another person for birthing. So, now I have to hope the west coast people want to donate to us.

I have to admit I am thrown for a loop and sad.

But now we don't have to make a decision. The decision will be made for us.

I hope the west coast people choose us. I hope I want them. They seem kind of high maintenance, but maybe that's just me.  We talked to them via skype this past weekend and I truly liked them as people.

I'm back to freaking out about this. But I guess I can cancel my appointment with the RE where the local embryos were stored.

Decisions

How do I go about making these decisions?

I'm not even sure the west coast people want to give us the embryos. They are highly committed to a very open relationship. We are fine with that, but it will definitely be some work.  Their embryos are older, but are frozen in separate straws and there are five.

The other person would definitely give her embryos to us. There are only three of them and I believe they are all in one straw. But they are much newer and I could have the FET at the original clinic where they were frozen.

I still have a million more appointments at clinics and my HSG tomorrow and I have to find a lawyer. But we don't really know how to decide.

Another Nibble

I just got an email from someone else who is interested in donating embryos to us. They are local. The other nibble is all the way on the west coast.

The west coast people had been matched and rejected previously.

But it would be SO MUCH EASIER to do it locally.

Ack. We haven't had an "official" match with the west coast couple but I would hate for them to feel abandoned again.

But if we could go ahead with a local donation, we could possibly do a cycle sooner.

Yikes. I didn't anticipate this being an issue.

I want somebody to tell me what to do

I keep feeling like I'm making a terrible mistake. I feel like B is getting better with time, and aside from the back stairs issue (which will never be resolved unless we redo the back stairs) that I could be making a bigger deal of this than it really is.

B is getting used to not having two walks every day. And when all this snow melts, I'll be able to take him out in the afternoon more often. And the back yard will have more room for him to run around.

He's still not used to having other people in the house, and he doesn't know how to remove himself from the chaos. I am still not sure how I will manage keeping H away from him when there's a newborn that needs attention. I do fear disaster and that is the main reason I'm planning on him living elsewhere. I think Bdog would do better in a house without small children.

But maybe I should make this work.

My fear is that I will try and fail and we'll have to rehome him later, which will be much, much worse for Bdog.

I'm trying to convince myself that what I'm doing is in Bdog's best interest, but all I feel is selfish.

I want somebody else to tell me what I should do.

Lambda Legal

Honor or Memorial Gift:	Yes
Honor/Memorial Gift Type:	In Honor of
Name(s):	Those in FL denied adoption

Comment moderation

It seems that some people who are anti-adoption have found my blog. I have left their comments up and tried to address their viewpoint a little bit. But I do not want my blog to be a place where we are having an argument over whether adoption is okay or not. Some adoptions are okay, and I am sure that some have also been done in a non-ethical and non-moral manner.

Neither of us are going to change each other's minds. Again, I have left their comments up on a previous post. If you are interested in reading more about the anti-adoption movement please refer to the book that one poster left as a comment, or you can link to their blogs and get more information, I am sure.

This blog is a diary for me. Yes, it is a diary that other people can read or comment on, but I just can not put myself in a place where I am arguing with people who do not agree with how I am creating my family. I have turned on comment moderation now and I will no longer be publishing these clearly anti-adoption posts.

I have to go to work now, but I wanted to post this now.

Vacation != miracle

So, having the good vacation s.ex didn't make us a baby. AF is here and how.

Not that I expected it to. I didn't. I'm still not tracking my cycles, though the EWCM is always obvious. And I know that the right things happened at around the right time. But apparently being in a good mood and feeling relaxed doesn't actually help. People just say it does.

And despite my past few PMS-y and sad posts, I've been doing quite well. Turns out that caffeine agrees with me. (Yay coffee!) And generally speaking I've been in a pretty good mood.

But despite the old bitch's arrival, I'm still feeling pretty okay. We've decided (well, mostly I've decided and T has agreed) that we're not going to be doing a dIUI next cycle either. I've been too happy to put myself through another cycle. I need to just let go and relax as I've been. We still have the 2 more vials, but we still have another year of storage. We have a year to make a full decision.

Our S.ex Offender Registry info came back to us. Happily, neither of us is a s.ex offender. Yay!

Have a wedding to go to tomorrow. I'm not a big fan of weddings, but it is what it is. I'll know a bunch of people there, so it shouldn't be too bad. The weather is okay today and I think T and I are going to go eat tips and drink beer and watch the Sox game.

Things are okay.

Leaving

Tomorrow is my last day of work before leaving. I have so much crap to do and I don't know when I'm going to do it. I'm going to try to leave work early tomorrow so I can do things. Tonight we each have plans with friends and will not get anything done. Oy!

T still hasn't finished his autobiography and I am requiring we mail it in on Friday. I have no idea how he's going to finish it. I am very upset about it right now, but he still says he'll get it done. We cannot talk about it without him getting frustrated, and we can talk about anything. We never argue or even get that annoyed with each other, so it feels so weird to have this albatross around our necks. I want him to finish it so we can just mail the damn thing in and get that part over with. We still have a bunch more big hurdles before the waiting just starts.

I have decided to give up giving up stuff. I'm drinking caffeine. I'm drinking alcohol. I've stopped my prenatal. Yes, we have two more vials of donor sperm, but I'm just sick of doing things that indicate I have some sort of hope. I have no hope. I will never get pregnant and have a child. It's just not in the cards for us. If a miracle happened, I'll start taking precautions then. Worse things have happened. Fuck it.

I'm trying to not stress. Our vacation should hopefully be relaxing. But I'm not quite there yet.

I probably won't blog from the road, so I'll not be back until after July 1. I'm sure nobody cares, really, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Have a great couple of weeks.

Nothing is new

I'm here, just watching the days go by. I called the alternative clinic (it's a group of midwives, so maybe I'll call it that) and it seems that if I pulled everything together, I'd be able to do the dIUI there when I'm ready to ovulate in about a week. I asked them to resend me some literature, so as soon as that arrives I will probably be good to go. The only question with that process that remains is how to pick up the sperm. I think I may have to send T as my job is totally inflexible and the bank's hours are also inflexible.

The only question is, do I try to do the dIUI this cycle, or do we just try on our own for a month and organize it for next cycle. For some crazy reason, I just want to try on our own for a month and organize for next cycle. Maybe it's because I'm enjoying my time off. Maybe it's because it's a pain to coordinate work issues. Maybe it's because I'm deluding myself to think we could bypass all of this crap and get pregnant with a healthy baby that's genetically related to ourselves on our own. In any case, I think I just want to wait and try on our own. I mean, what the hell?

We do need to start the adoption process, though. I need to talk to T about choosing an agency (which I think we have) and filling out the application and just moving forward. I think we are choosing a flat fee agency because it's a bit easier on our end. I'm feeling very conflicted about that one. With this agency, we could even find a baby who was born in MA where we live. But T likes this agency, and since I don't feel strongly, I feel like we should pick that one.

The last thing to think about is work. I haven't talked to work yet. I have planned to tell my boss that I have a medical condition that requires I be out occasionally for a last minute doctor's appointment, and that I only will know the day before. But I want to tell my boss this privately, and I haven't yet. I think that's part of the reason I want to wait. But something kind of crappy happened at work, and I just don't want to bring it up right now. I didn't get in trouble or anything, but I sent an email to the wrong person and it got escalated in this really bizarre and incredible way so that it got sent to a VP of the company. Anyway, it was a silly mistake (I sent it to a person with the same first name and the same last initial, but it ended up being in the wrong department) and the person who mistakenly got the email blew it completely out of proportion. I'm sure it will blow over just fine, but I just don't want to talk about time off right now.

I guess I just have to do what feels right for me, and right now it's trying on our own one more time this month. Maybe we'll win the lottery.

Irony. Or not.

I talked to my RE's financial coordinator. She basically said we had pretty much no hope for being covered because a genetic defect is not a qualifier for using donor sperm under the rules of my insurance company. This is ironic because we were so excited to get my insurance so we could move on. I think we may have had coverage with T's insurance (though not at my current RE's office) and we were so eager to switch. We can't even go back to just doing monitored Cl0mid cycles with a trigger because now that our request has opened a can of worms and created a need for a semen analysis, they won't cover anything until they get that SA and T's SA will be normal.

So, we may have T do the SA, get rejected and have a lawyer write a letter. That is our only hope, and it is a slim one since according to the law, we are not infertile.

Or, we may go to another clinic and do a Cl0mid IUI using OPKs and just pay out of pocket.

Or both.

This is really hitting me hard. I kind of expected a rejection, but it's hitting me hard anyway. I am really coming to realize that although I have been pregnant four times, the chances of me ever giving birth to a child is extremely low. I will most likely never bear a child. Ever. Yes, I know that I can parent, but this loss feels huge to me right now. It's almost like finding out about our infertility all over again.

I really feel empty inside today. I am feeling my losses so acutely. I don't have the will to fight anymore.

Last night T and I decided that I am going to go on bcps for one more month because there is no way I can scramble together an IUI in two weeks, and if, by miracle, we get the medicated thing approved I'd be all ready. But I'm not sure if I really should do that because the chances of an approval is so small. I want to stop taking bcps and just try on our own. I mean why not? What difference does it make any more?

I am so sick of making these decisions. I want to be done and have a baby on the way, but that is just not how it's going to be in my life. It is going to be finger prints and FBI checks and home visits and waiting and not knowing and possibility and rejection and more waiting. It's going to be money and more money and waiting and renewing and not knowing.

I just can't think straight anymore. I can't make logical decisions any more. Logic has left me. I am a bitter, angry shell. I'm paralyzed. I literally do not know what to do anymore.

What is, and what I hope will be

I kept thinking how I would word the blog post that my negative was just an early false negative and that -- surprise, surprise -- I'm actually pregnant. I couldn't believe that this process wouldn't work for us yet again. When I woke up this morning, I contemplated taking another hpt, but I wasn't ready to see one line again. My bbt had dropped by a few points, and that was enough of a sign for me. And yet, here I am, still thinking that maybe it has just dipped, and if tomorrow my bbt is up, I will certainly pee on another stick. Is this a sickness? Have I lost all signs of sanity? Is it possible to go about normally in a normal world when this is how you think? Intellectually, I know that I am not pregnant. It's just, without any signs of bleeding or a blood test, I cannot completely let go. Why can I not let go?

I am thinking about letting go a lot. When is it time to let go of this quest to be pregnant and birth a live child? How much emotional energy must we spend? When do I know it is time to move on?

I am not ready to move on now. I'm giving myself about 6 more months. But in 6 months, I'm not sure I'll be able to do this any more.

I think about adoption all the time. Right now, I am too angry at the world to pursue it. Why should we have to spend our entire life savings to get what people make accidentally? Why, in order to save some money, do I have to not be able to raise my child from infancy? Why, when we got pregnant three times without any trouble can I not get pregnant now?

I have grieved infertility from the male side, but I guess I haven't grieved my side of it yet. It's funny, it's not the genetics that are getting me. It's the experience of seeing a child grow from nothing into something ready to exist outside its mother's body, to welcoming it to the world. I want to be part of that, and I'm not ready to give that up.

This is how I know that we will find some way to try IVF with the few eggs we get from me when we do IVF. Without the 1 in 10 chance of the translocation, it's possible that our few embryos will work. If that fails, maybe the expense of donor embryo is worth it for us, even if it's spending money for only a chance at something.

All of this is so damn hard. I can't believe that all of this shit has happened to us. The unfairness of it all overwhelms me.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to make myself believe that I'm truly and honestly not pregnant.