Red Light, Green Light

I thought it might help to sort out what about IVF I am and am not scared of. Something's gotta help soon, because I'm sick of waking up at 4:30. (Good news: I found a sliding-scale acupuncture clinic! Gonna call next week, for reals. We'll deal with what about acupuncture I am and am not afraid of another day....)


What I am scared of:

- Big needles. Dr. Baby Factory prefers to use progesterone in oil, but he said he’s okay with coochie bullets. So I don’t need to worry about that one (except for the part of me that’s like “but shouldn’t I use THE VERY BEST THING? WHY DON’T I WANT A BABY???”)


What I am not scared of:

- Small needles. I’m a tiny bit weirded out by the thought of the follistim injections, but not in an unmanagable way. I used to watch my dad give himself allergy shots. I think this is one of those times that being a doctors' kid helps — I don’t have the feeling that medical care is something that doesn’t happen at home, and I’m basically into science experiments. And if it gets that bad, I have a friend with a medical degree who’s already offered to give me the shots. (And if that doesn’t work out, I can always have her 2.5 year old daughter do it. That kid gives me “medicine” with my bbt thermometer every time she’s over, which is often. She has a great bedside manner — comforting but very firm.)


- That follistim and friends will make my ovaries hurt unbearably, given that Cysty Lefty hurts an awful lot of the time as it is. Oh well. I suppose childbearing is a weird goal if I’m interested in avoiding discomfort, huh?

- Two-week follicular phase. That sounds like a big improvement over my usual twenty-odd days. I can do anything for two weeks, right?


- Egg retrieval. That’s normal, right? How could I not be scared of giant needles in my vagina, right? And how the hell are they going to get around my big-ass cysts? (According to my dream life, I am also afraid of crazy infections that enlarge the lining surrounding my heart. Awake, I am afraid that the Terrible Metaphor part of my mind is taking over. IVF leads to heartache? Real original, brain. MFA in Writing = money well spent.)

- IVs. Dr. Baby Factory said he’d want to do my ER with anesthesia — and he thought I’d object! Ha! I’m a big wimp and am all for being knocked out. So I’m telling myself that all I will have to do on ER day is show up and get an IV. Everything that comes afterward…well, I’ll be down for the count. (I hope. Last time I had twilight anesthesia — when I had my wisdom teeth out — I woke up in the middle. On the bright side, I was still too blissed out to be bothered. I remember lying there thinking, “Oh, that crunching sound must mean they’re having to break my tooth to get it out. La la la!”)


- Not having any eggs/embryos. Dr. Baby Factory doesn’t think the no-egg thing is likely (since I had a bunch of follicles on the last scan), but really, I suppose there’s only one way to find out.


- Twins.

- Single Embryo Transfer. Dr. BF thinks this is a great idea for me, given my age and all the rest (like my fear of twins). He thinks it lowers my odds only a little bit, and since my insurance is paying….
But then again, my insurance company wouldn’t be the ones climbing back into the stirrups, not to mention dealing with the emotional fallout not getting pregnant. Okay, it turns out I am a little afraid of this. But I am more afraid of twins in our New York apartment and our loosey-goosey financial situation.


- Believing this is a sure thing; losing my mind if it doesn’t work, even if only on the first try.

- Never having a child. Always being the-adult-kids-love, with none of my own to sometimes love and sometimes loathe me. Again, only one way to find out.

Quickies

I hate blog posts apologizing for not posting, so this won't be one.

Nor do I have a proper post in me now.

But there are a couple of things I think you should know:

1. It's CD1. Yeah.

Not sure what the next course of action will be, but at the very least we will probably switch donors, since we need to order more anyway. More on that later.

Also, I need to do my taxes so that we can see if we can even afford to order more.

2. Mrs. Spock made me cry. Practically everything's been making me cry lately, so that's not much of an accomplishment per se, but she made my cry in a good way. She sent me the ...I'm looking for a word, and all I'm coming up with is "bestest"... BESTEST! sock-gram package! It arrived when I was really at the very bottom of feeling crappy about everything, and it was just the very thing. Pictures to come.

3. A toddler I hang out with has been read somewhere -- I think in a Moomintroll book, but hers are in Danish, and I can only read the third-rate, adulterated Danish we call "English" -- about creatures cheering one another up by kissing sad creatures on the nose. She has become a dutiful practitioner of this technique, which is predictably sloppy and surprisingly effective.

Lovely Day

Happy Valentine's and Year of the Tiger and, of course, Mardi Gras! Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Sugar and I had quiet plans for Valentine's -- I made her the stamp above, she gave me cute underpants with a hedgehog from my favorite store in Brooklyn and picked up fixins for a nice dinner for two -- but while I was furiously carving and Sugar was waiting for the chocolate cake layers to cool, the phone rang. It was The Dane, the wife/mother portion of our favorite neighborhood trio, asking if we'd consider coming over to help them eat the duck she was roasting.

(What kind of a question is that? Isn't a question supposed to have more than one possible response?)

We did consider, briefly, staying home alone, eating lamb chops and being generally Valentine's-y. But only briefly. Because why turn down an opportunity to spend time with people you love just because Hallmark says so?

So we packed up the cake and carried it over. And we had the most wonderful feast of duck braised in beer, roasted sweet potatoes and onion, red cabbage with clove, and apple stuffing particular to The Dane's home island. We played with Mr. Potatohead smashed playdoh between our hands. The Aussie Super Geek convinced us that we ought to be building thorium-reactor power plants, though he clearly remains scandalized by my hatred of efficient light bulbs. The Charming Toddler invented a perfect game for Valentine's, which consisted of her gathering her bucket and "going out" behind the chair, then "coming home" to tell us what she saw ("Ice!") and be greeted with exuberant hugs. Over and over, and it never got old.

For dessert, we at Sugar's fudge-y, nearly black chocolate cake, piled with whipped cream (as things tend to be, when The Dane is serving). And just like love, there was plenty for everyone, once we'd decided to share it.

/sappy part


We did get a time alone at the park before dinner, when The Dane suggested we take their sled on our walk. Normally I don't post pictures of us on the blog, but what the heck?

First, Sugar (right, foreground, by the bench):




And Bionic (by the lamppost):




You'd know us anywhere, right?

I'm doing it right!

I just went to Minnesota to see an art exhibit and also to see some friends and family. One member of my family there is three years old. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. Suddenly she's not a cute, tiny, shy thing. Now she's a cute, tiny drill sergeant.

She discovered early in the visit that I would do things that she told me to do. I found myself stretching out on my stomach on the floor and flailing my arms (Swim! Swim!) and then standing up and sitting down a lot of times. (Now you're all dry! Stand up! Stand up!) She had small fleece blanket that was alternatively a sprinkler (or maybe a tsunami machine?) and a hair dryer. Sometimes I was supposed to hold the blanket, push invisible buttons, and then pretend the blanket was doing . . . . something.

While this was exhausting, I found it very reassuring. I remember games like this. I had an invisible mouse that lived in an invisible, knitted, spherical house. I was the maniacal director of endless games of 'Harriet Tubman and the Spaceships'. (Um, all I can say about that one is that rapid travel through time and space would have made Harriet Tubman's job a lot easier in my six year old opinion.)

Also reassuring was the fact that my tiny cousin didn't stare at me in confusion or give up on me when I pushed the wrong invisible button or sprayed the fleece blanket instead of waving it or whatever. She just shouted no! no! over there! over there! As long as she had my attention, everything was A OK.

Apparently I can still play pretending games and not be lame. Cool.

Happy Baby

Our friends have a very charming baby. She's about two years old now, and she's smart and cute and all that, but the thing that really amazes me about her is how freaking happy she is all the time. How does she do that, and where can I get some? Or at least, where can I learn how to bring up a kid like that?

Cause I got depression and I really, really don't want to pass it on.

I had extensive depression lessons as a kid. For example, when I was about four and my mom's rheumatoid arthritis flared up, I remember standing next to her chair and talking to her while she stared straight ahead and didn't answer me. When I was a little older she found a dent in a tea strainer that sent her off weeping. And about once a day for my whole life my dad took some perfectly normal occurrence to mean that the world was coming to the end of its inevitable downward spiral. It was a barrel of laughs around our house, for sure.

I learned it, and I don't want to teach it. Yikes.

So I'll act happy, right? I'll espouse concepts like 'the world is great', 'people are basically good', and 'everything is going to turn out just fine.' This seems like a solid plan until I remember myself as a cynical, irritable seven year old who was having none of it.

Like the time fifth grade some nimrod at my elementary school hired an inspirational speaker to come inspire us. Our class was marched down to the all-purpose-room to hear an old dude with stick-out ears chant 'life is good, good, good!' at us. Even at the time I wondered how much he got paid for that, and could we have our taxes back? Then in seventh grade we all had to take a course called 'Quest' aimed at making us love one another through planning our social and financial futures in unsupervised 'cooperative' groups. At the end of the quarter, when we were allowed to give feedback on the experience, I stood up and announced that the entire class had been unmitigated hooey.

wait, are pep rallies required?

What to do? Right now I only have a growing version of what one of my college students called 'the anti-list' (everything he wasn't going to do for his final project, including mediate the artistic process with his mind). So far I've got:

• not say that child's behavior x will result in eventual doom
• not say (or imply) that child is unattractive
• not send insomniac child back to room with instructions to 'work on your breathing' (sorry mr. buddhist, but save that for the grown ups)
• not insist that every single thing the child thinks is wrong is due to lack of sleep
• not to announce that the world is becoming uninhabitable for environmental/economic/aesthetic reasons
• not have inexplicable crying jags

I sent Mr. Artistic Process back to write me a new project proposal after reading his anti-list. Now if only I could come up with my own . . .