only slightly bitter and not at all sad

So my best friend, aside from my sister, is now four months pregnant. She had a miscarriage a year and a half ago after getting pregnant rather quickly, so understandably has been rather paranoid this time. So far everything is going well. They felt comfortable enough to announce it to everyone this week. A lot of our friends use another blogging/networking site, so they each made a post there, and everyone made their congratulations. All expected. What I didn't expect was the girls only post that my friend made telling about the miscarriage (very few people knew about that) and that they had been trying for a year this time to get pregnant again. Again, all things that I knew. What bothered me was the ridiculous amount of support and "I'm sorry that you had to go through that" comments. When I made posts when D and I were trying and going through tests, I got very little support. D and I talked after I read through them all, and made the point that everyone loves the happy ending. So with my friend saying "hey, we struggled, but now we are having a baby" everyone can respond with "oh, that's terrible, but there's going to be a baby!! so happy for you...." With D and me, there's no happy ending in most people's opinions, just the terrible part, so they have nothing to say. Fuck 'em. We're making our own happy ending. And as D put it, "without the poop and the puke." Sort of unrelated, I was noticing the difference between men and women and baby talk. I was sitting at the table by the front door of the school (making sure people check in at the office, you know, protecting the school), and there was a conversation taking place behind me among two women and one man. They were talking about a student at first. But then one of the women started talking about her baby to the other woman, who has a baby about the same age (part of the baby boom of pregnancies last school year), and the guy goes "baby talk...I'm out." and just walked away. The women just laughed it off. My thought was "what the hell? If I did that, I'd probably be labeled a total bitch."

spring cleaning

I finally reached my breaking point with the piles in our bedroom. D still has his, but I wanted to fix mine. I filled two trash bags with things to donate, which was the majority of the pile. I'd decide that something didn't fit quite right or whatever and throw it on the donate pile. Problem is that the donate pile was taking over the room. So that is fixed. My other big project this weekend is sewing. I have material to make three dresses for work, two of which I'm going to use a pattern. The third, I love the material, but have a different vision for what the final dress should look like and it doesn't match the patterns I have. So that one I am saving for last, and will see if I can create what I have in my head. I am off to cut material now!

hope flicker

My period was late this month. It's been pretty regular my entire history of having periods, right on the dot of 28 days or earlier, never late. The only time it's been late was once on clomid, when I had a uterine polyp (three weeks late), and the month after IVF, it came on day 29. In the past year, it's been on day 26 or 27, so this month, day 26 came and went, day 27 came and went, day 28 came and went. By day 28, I started having the split-personality conversation in my head....

sane me: it's coming. I can feel it. should be any day now.

crazy me: what if this is it? we could be pregnant at the same time as our friend who is 3 months now!

sane me: don't be stupid. sure there's a teeny tiny chance that pregnancy could be achieved, but be realistic. it's not happening.

crazy me: but it could!!

sane me: shut it.

Day 29 came, I went to work, got home, got ready to work out, and then my period finally came.

I wasn't sad though, so apparently, in the pie chart that is my brain, "sane me" is definitely more than half.

meaningless cliches

I know these things are meant to comfort or show support (for infertility/wanting to be a parent) but the following phrases really bug me:

1) where there's a will, there's a way

2) if you really want to be a parent, you will find a way to do it

3) you deserve to be a parent, so it will happen


I don't care what kind of willpower you have, sometimes it just won't happen. And just because I don't want to adopt doesn't mean that I didn't "want it enough." And that deserving thing really pisses me off. So I'm not deserving of a baby, but the stupid teenage girls that can't graduate high school in six years are?

anniversary

We are quickly approaching the anniversary of the results of our one failed IVF cycle. The 15th was embryo transfer day, the 23rd, we got the positive beta, and two days later found out the numbers were falling.

We still have the picture of the two transferred embryos hanging on the fridge. It's time to take it down, but I don't want to throw it away. That picture and the one baby shirt we bought (this totally awesome star wars shirt, it's a layered look shirt, thermal long sleeves, millenium falcon t-shirt) when we first started trying are the only things we have to remind us of what we almost had. Maybe it's my pack rat tendencies, but I have a hard time throwing away things that are meaningful to me. I still have the cards that the elementary kids made me when I student taught for one semester (I was originally certified K-12 for math only, so my school had us student-teach one semester in an elementary setting for a couple hours a day, and one semester at the secondary level all day). I'm never going to see those kids again, but the cards are so sweet, and I can still remember most of them. Obviously, our possible babies mean a lot more to me.

So I'm trying to come up with something to do with the picture and the shirt, something to symbolize that we are moving on, but not throwing/giving them away. I couldn't bear to see someone else's baby wearing OUR babies' shirt. I'm leaning toward keepsake box kind of thing, something that we can put the shirt and picture in, and set it on the mantle. It's still a big part of what we wanted from our lives, but we are both getting to a place where we are okay with not getting it. But because it's still a big part of our lives, I want to keep it. Kind of like storing it away in my heart/head, but symbolically.

What do you think?

real nice, bro

My brother calls my sister and I "sis" and we both hate it. We always joke about calling him "bro" to see what he would do, but he'd probably like it, so we don't.

Anyway, he made this post on Facebook this morning:
We're EXPECTING AGAIN!I know, I know, it's crazy isn't it? I can't believe it myself. I wasn't going to put it on here yet, but decided to make it official. I mean who would have guessed that we are expecting AGAIN!!Yup it's official.. We are expecting freezing TEMPS today and AGAIN tomorrow!! **Re-post if you have any sense of humor*......

I've posted before about what crappy parents he and his wife are (my parents, the nephew's grandparents, have basically taken over raising him), so reading this made my stomach clench up. My husband said it made him "want to puke." My brother and I are not close, at all, but I think it's really shitty of him to joke about having another baby (even if it is a repost) when he knows that D and I cannot have kids, and our sister has been trying for almost two years with no luck.

I'm not sure how to approach this with him, or if I even should. I can't really say "look, you're a shitty, hands-off parent, and as an infertile, I don't think it's funny for you to say you are expecting another baby, when you can't even raise the one you have."

updated travel plans

Okay, I already posted about our upcoming DC trip. Since then, I have talked to my sister, who still currently lives in Phoenix, and one of our favorite authors (Kim Harrison) is releasing the 9th book of her Hollows series, and so is doing a signing tour. There isn't a stop near me closer than two hours away, and those are on school nights, BUT she is going to be in Tuscon on my sister's birthday weekend.

So D and I are going to fly to Phoenix Thursday night, hang with my sister and her husband on Friday, then sister road trip to Tuscon while the boys hang out on Saturday, we meet Kim Harrison (!!!), then drive back to do something fun for my sister's birthday that night. Fly home sunday evening.

So far on the itinerary is the Heart Attack Grill (D's choice: we ate there last time we visited and it is DELICIOUS), some authentic Mexican food (since we forgot to add this last time), and a "d box" movie experience.

I'm excited for this trip too. And I love that we can afford a somewhat spontaneous trip. And the only reason that we CAN afford it is because we don't have kids. If we had even one kid, all that money would be gone to pay for daycare. So yay!