new schedule

I just talked to the clinic. AF's late arrival means my IVF is pushed back even more than I expected it would be. They have to keep me on lupron for a few extra days to accomodate their clinic schedule. The extra lupron days plus the 8 days my stupid period played hooky add up to a retrieval and transfer two full weeks after I was expecting. I know that's nothing in the grand scheme of things, I'm just disappointed. It's kind a pain for the delicate IVF v. job application ballet I've been choreographing. Oh well. What will be will be. New schedule is to your right.

not a moment too soon

You probably thought AF found me over the weekend and I didn't have a chance to get online and post an update. Unfortunately, no. I went in to acupuncture this morning and begged for help. My acupuncterist specializes in fertility and pregnancy, not the summoning of AF, but she said she'd "needle every darn contraindicated point [she] could think of." She also sent me home with instructions to press on certain points as much as possible, and a guarded whisper that if I got especially desperate, black cohosh could be my new best friend.

Well, I am pleased to announce that after a day of poking my hands and feet until I couldn't stand it any longer, AF rolled into town about an hour ago. I'm pretty sure the clinic will call tomorrow CD1, which means my period was 8 days late. Good grief. I've updated the IVF dates accordingly, but it's possible things will shift a bit more when I get in touch with the clinic tomorrow.

I haven't been this happy to see AF since high school. :-) The last few days have been really hard emotionally and I'm still feeling pretty blue, but hopefully this is a sign of the turning of the tides.

what else is new?

No AF today, which makes this officially the longest cycle I've had in 27 cycles of charting. I've kind of given up looking for her. I'm going to cease and desist with the daily updates. I'll just let you know if she ever rolls into town.

Happy Friday all!

Maybe I got pregnant on a break cycle!

I mean, it happens to straight girls all the time, right? Surely that's the only logical explanation for why AF would rebuff me in this manner. Granted, I haven't been in contact with sperm since sometime in February but hey, there's always immaculate conception. Perhaps the second coming will be via 2 previously infertile lesbians. How much would that rock?! I wonder if the baby will have M's features.

still waiting

Thank goodness we didn't try this month. I'd be losing my mind.

Dear AF,

I'll admit that I haven't always been the best niece. I have cursed your arrival many times over the last 18 months (nay, the last 16 years) and I'll confess to having said some less-than-friendly things behind your back. That said, I think I've been fairly hospitable on your last visit or two, and even looked forward a bit to your arrival. I believe we've turned over a new leaf in our relationship, you and I. So, it is with great displeasure that I note your tardiness on this 22nd day of April. I was expecting you yesterday and you did not arrive. Fine. Everyone runs a day or so late from time to time. But seriously, this is getting ridiculous. We need to work together on this. The welcome mat is out, the champagne has been corked, there are mints on the pillow in the guest room... what are you waiting for, a letterpressed invitation?

Please come soon. Or call. Or something.

With vigilance and impatience,
K

a story I forgot to share earlier

M and I had an interesting conversation this weekend. It started by me making her promise that she would never hold that which I was about to disclose against me: Not now, not at 3am on a random Tuesday a year from now... not ever. She promised. I confessed that as we go through all of this build up to IVF, I've kinda-sorta evolved a bit in my general feeling toward having twins. At one point, I was terrified beyond belief at the possibility of more than one baby - recall the triplet boys on Christmas Day story. Lately, I've moved more toward a position of neutrality and - dare I admit it - hope(?) that we will get pregnant with twins. The bottom line is that we're working so freaking hard for this and spending so darn much money. It would just be really nice to get a two-fer. After my hesitant confession, M admitted that she too is sort-of kind-of a little bit hoping for twins herself, for similar reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I'll still be scared out of my mind if the occupancy of my uterus ever surges to 2 (and let's not even TALK about anything beyond that), but there is a silver lining in there that I'll be grateful for. I really don't want to have an only child (no offense to any only children out there), but the thought of going through all of this again makes my head spin a bit. It would be really nice to have that pressure removed, because then we can still go through ttc again if we decide we want to, but not because we feel we have to.

Now I just have to apologize to my friend L who has been pulling for twins all along and I've been snapping at her to bite her tongue every time she says it unless she's planning to be over for night-duty at least 3 times a week. Similar apologies go out to my dear friend inlocoparentis who I've been secretly hexing ever since she expressed her desire for us to squeeze two peas into the pod. ;-)

jitter. bounce. fidget.

I have an acute lack of focus.

AF is due today. At least, I think she is. I didn't track my ovulation this month so it's possible it was later than usual. I'm antsy and distracted and watching the minutes tick by until I can do... I don't know what exactly, but it's gonna start by getting out of this desk chair.

I talked to the pharmacy this morning. I'm having 4 of my scripts transferred to a local pharmacy for pick-up this evening (PIO, Prenatals, Doxycycline, and Medrol) and the rest will be shipped around May 7th. That gives me some time to explore the possibility of getting some injectibles for free from my doctor. Cross your fingers, please!

In the meantime, I just keep looking at the calendar and counting days and I realize this is making me feel crazy but stopping makes me feel even crazier. I spent some time checking out this summer's concert line-up and that provided a good 5 minutes of distraction. However, researching concerts prompts me to think about dates and thinking about dates prompts me to look at my calendar and looking at my calendar draws my attention to a colorful sea of projected IVF checkpoints and that, my friends, is what we call "back to square one."

I just keep reminding myself that in less than 2 months, our life's course will be significantly more concrete than it is now, and in 3 months, it'll be even more so. My job right now is to chill out.

There are plenty of house projects to be done. I need to put a second coat of paint on our kitchen walls sometime this week. The first coat was applied... never mind, it's too embarassing to share. We have new threshholds to be installed and house plants to be re-potted. I also have an art project in mind for the dining room. Hopefully I can focus on these things for a while instead of... darn it - square one again.

update

First off, THANK YOU all so much for your opinions and insights and suggestions. You helped in some ways you probably know and some you don't even imagine.

M and I talked last night and I now have a little more information about the hiring process. It turns out that because it is a state job, there are 2-3 months full of bureaucratic hurdles to clear before anyone will be hired. 2-3 months! That means they plan to offer the job to someone between June 18th and July 18th, give or take. If we continue with IVF and if everything stays on schedule, our beta will be around June 16th-ish. If we are willing to go ahead with paying out of pocket rather than waiting to see if I might or might not get some infertility coverage, we can most likely have an answer from our IVF cycle before the job offer goes out. So, the current plan (as of noon today - give it a few days, hours or minutes and it may change) is to push ahead with IVF as scheduled and also apply for the new position. Perhaps I'll hear back sometime during our cycle that I'm out of the running for the job, or perhaps I'll get a BFP before a hiring decision is made at which point I'll withdraw my application from consideration. The only way we could find ourselves in a bit of a sticky situation is I'm offered the job and the hiring process takes much less time than they expect it to - like if I'm the only qualified applicant or something (unlikely). If that happens, hopefully it will be close enough to our beta that I can tell them I need a few days before I can give them an answer. If it's too far away from our beta to do that... well, I don't know but we'll just figure it out if and when we have to!

un-freaking-believable

Just when I thought nothing could derail us...

There is a rather exciting job opportunity in the system I work in. It's a significant vertical move, both in annual salary (the cost of our IVF cycle, incidentally) and in job classification. Having been at my current job for 3 years, I could easily take it without being accused of job-hopping, and frankly, it's such a signficant promotion, I'm pretty sure it would be considered justified even if I'd started at my current job a week ago.

There is no guarantee I would get the job. I don't know who else is even thinking about it - maybe some good candidates. However, several people with influence asked me specifically to consider it, so that seems like a promising sign. I at least have a good enough chance that I have to take my decision to apply seriously. It's not a "eh, I'll just throw my hat in and see what happens" situation.

Here's my concern: I'm pretty sure they're looking to fill the position quickly, as in, definitely before I know the outcome of our IVF cycle and probably before we even have the retrieval and transfer, but probably NOT before I would need to start medications.

The pros as I see them:

• GIANT leap in terms of job status
• influence on a system I care about
• excellent resume builder
• a TON more money

The cons as I see them:

• how irresponsible would I look if I had to announce a pregnancy two months into a new job?
• what if I have a difficult pregnancy and am sick during some or all of my probationary period?
• what if I have a very difficult pregnancy and have to spend the whole thing on bedrest?
• the only surefire way to avoid those last three points is a con itself - postponing IVF until... who knows when?

What the F am I supposed to do?

In the 18 months we have been trying to get pregnant, I have turned down two other opportunities for major promotions because I was so sure I'd get pregnant right away and look like a jerk. In hindsight, I wished I'd made a different choice and I made a pact with myself I wouldn't let a similar opportunity pass me by again. No point keeping my life on hold for something I can't control or predict. So now here I am, and based upon past promises to myself, I should pursue this opportunity without regard to anything that may or may not be happening in my reproductive life. That said, this is IVF. I feel like an idiot for saying this, but what if I get pregnant? I mean, I've used that excuse before but this time it could actually happen. No really! You know? I would NOT forgo this opportunity if we were going in for IUI #11, but we're not. We're paying a boatload of money and enduring an exceptionally advanced procedure based on the relatively high likelihood that it will be successful. It's seems a little messed up of me not to give the possibility this will work at least as much credence as I gave our past attempts in regards to making future decisions. I mean, it's just one more try, really. If it doesn't work, we're taking a break and I'm free to take any and all promotions that come my way. The thing is, they won't. I work in a system that is notorious for having few internal promotion opportunities. People get supervisory jobs and then sit in them foreeeever. To move up, I'd have to move out (the last two job openings I passed up were external) and I love what I do. This is a really unique opportunity. Fuck.

I think the worst case scenario is that I take the job, wind up pregnant (possibly with twins or more!), and have the pregnancy from hell. I won't qualify for FMLA because I'll be a new hire. I don't know what their short and long-term disability coverage is like and whether I'll even qualify for it yet. We could really get screwed. At my current job, I am not on new-hire probation, I have accrued sick and vacation leave, I'm enrolled in short and long-term disability programs, and I have 3 years of strong performance to encourage them to accomodate whatever I may need. That is definitely a better position to be in going into what has a minor but real chance of developing into a medical problem where I need leave and flexibility.

But this is a really, really good job opportunity. So do we postpone IVF so I can pursue it? Is that seriously an option I'm even willing to type? M is as ambivalent about it as I am, but we both have strong emotional responses to the idea of postponing IVF. But are we cheating ourselves if we put too much weight on that? Are we letting our resistance to waiting push us into a poor long-term decision? IVF is the culmination of something that has consumed our every thought, minute, and dollar for the last 18 months. It's all been building to this. It's not just some small thing we decided to do.

Here's my question, for those that want to give input: How bad is it to get pregnant at the same time as you're starting a new job? I mean, clearly it's not ideal, but is it a major offense or just one of those "probably better not to if you can avoid it" kinda things? We hired someone a couple of years ago that got pregnant pretty much the weekend after she signed her employment papers and while I thought it was an extremely irresponsible move, the rest of my office (including my boss) didn't seem to think anything of it. So, am I just being prudish about this? I kind of feel like, if it came to it, I could tell my future boss (who I already know well and have great rapport with) that we tried for a year and a half with no success and I genuinely didn't think it would be an issue. Once she finds out we did IVF that compromises my story a bit, but I could tell her our cycle was already past the point of no return when the job became available. Yeah, I know. That's a lie. It's not a big lie, though, and hardly a lie at all if you count emotional momentum, and we did already pay for it.

What to do? What to do? What to do? I worked myself into a fit over this dilemma tonight. I tried to watch tv to quiet my thoughts but I felt queasy and couldn't relax at all. I really don't want to put IVF off, but I also feel like I'll regret it if I don't pursue this opportunity, especially if our IVF is unsuccessful. I'm pretty sure the BFN will hit me hard enough on it's own without piling some "AND you missed out on a once-in-a-blue-moon professional opportunity!" on top.

I'm just gonna keep hoping for clarity. Something will rise to the surface soon, right?