As I write this, my phone is buzzing with texts containing details of my sister in law’s labor.  I am also nearing the end of the two week wait following our first IVF.  My HPTs have been negative (today is 9dp3dt), and my PMS symptoms are in full force (both emotional and physical).  True, I do not know definitively that this cycle failed.  My beta is Friday.  As the texts from M’s brother began arriving last night, I joked about replying simply with “Unsubscribe.”

It has been quite some time since I have posted.  I’ve thought previously of this space as displaying an arrow going round and round in a circle with “buffering” written underneath.  For some reason I thought that I needed to have things figured out and to be in a better place before I wrote.  No more. That said, I am not sure anyone is still reading, especially with Google Reader going poof, which was how I kept up with most blogs.  No matter.  I am still going to write, if for no other reason than I want to write this down.

One thing I should have written about here was the awful experience of learning that M’s brother and sister in law were expecting.  It happened over Thanksgiving weekend, while we were at dinner at an Italian restaurant.  The announcement and ensuing discussion were both so terribly insensitive that it seemed like something out of a sitcom.  On that night I felt like someone punched me in the gut, and I have to admit that this morning, as my phone buzzes with texts about her labor progressing, the feeling is a bit similar.

I have a list of things that I will do if this cycle fails.  Things that I cannot do now but that I can look forward to doing if I’m not pregnant.  A sampling:

  • Drink red wine while eating blue cheese
  • Go swimming
  • Run up the stone steps next to Memorial Bridge
  • Have sex
  • Sip a latte

There’s also another list of things that I will likely do if this cycle fails.  Is it helpful to list them, as it is for the prior list?  I’m not sure.  But a few do come to mind, so here goes:

  • Cry
  • Experience bitter anger and resentment towards the world (particularly fertile people)
  • Despair over our depleted finances
  • Feel abandoned by God
  • Feel guilt over the fact that our embryo did not stay and grow inside of me

This month we reached the sad anniversary of trying to conceive for six years. This post also doesn’t feel like a proper update.  But I just needed to write this down.  To reach out to some of you who understand how much this sucks.

Sadness now.  But I’m going to feel it, and in feeling it, I am doing the work that is needed to get to where I can laugh and leave most of the sadness behind me.  Writing this depressing post is part of that work, I think.

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