This poor sick baby – not sick enough to stay home and rest, but sick enough to be a crab apple. I snapped these pics on some of our few outside moments. The weather is finally better (despite last week’s rains and flooded basement, oy.) I keep hoping the fresh air will do her some good, but this is one slow going head cold/ sinus infection. Lucy has decided that she no longer wants to cooperate when it’s time to take antibiotics so I’ve resorted to a combination of wrestling and bribery. Are they helping? I don’t know… she still sounds and feels bad, but at least has no more crazy high fever. She is taking three hour naps and snoring louder than her dad every night, but at least she’s sleeping. I can almost excuse the wild temper tantrums she’s been throwing lately (almost.) They are so foreign to me, like when she did figure out that this was a way to communicate her frustration? Where is my angelic toddler? Who is this tiny screaming spitfire? Should I blame the antibiotics? The sinus infection? Distracted parenting?

I started the stimulation part of our IVF cycle last night. Now I’ll have more frequent monitoring appointments – every 48 to 72 hours for the next 9-12 days, until our doctor thinks that my eggs are fully cooked at which point we’ll schedule our retrieval. The cruelest part of IVF is the unpredictability. Want to RSVP to something? Sorry – there is no way to plan ahead. Need to schedule a meeting?  you may or may not be able to attend. Trying to take a trip? Nope – you have to be available for monitoring appointments. Will you or won’t you be pregnant? Will it work? I find it ironic that so many people (normal, fertile people) can schedule their lives around their planned pregnancy and I plan (or un-plan, as it were) my life around our infertility treatments.

I think some people find solace in statistics and information; I know I did during my first cycle that resulted in Lucy. IVF is so unpredictable that it makes sense to want to absorb whatever info you can find. You want to predict every possible outcome. Here’s what I know now. You can’t. You can’t possibly predict what will happen – whether your cycle will be successful, whether it will be cancelled, whether you’ll make it to transfer day, whether you’ll have embryos to freeze so you can try again later, whether it will work and you’ll get pregnant, whether or not you will carry that pregnancy to term. My doctor said it best during one of the million appointments you have prior to actually starting the process – “You are over one hurdle.” Just one. It really is like a hurdles race – you have cross each hurdle, each step in the process, and immediately prepare yourself for another one. This time around I’m not so vigilant about reading all the statistics and comparing my experience to other people’s, partly because I’ve been through it before and partly because I’m trying to keep the stress level low. This time I’m kind of just riding the wave, following my doctors instructions, trying to fit in extra rest when I can, and preparing myself for the next hurdle. Pk is gone for a quick trip around the world, but he’ll be back mid week – when I’ll be good and dosed up on hormones (excited honey?) There’s a kind of great relief in not being hyper vigilant this time around. We’ve set this process in motion and now we’ll see it through, whatever the outcome. Fingers crossed.

xo-H