Living Day (28) to Day (28)

Okay, you know you are officially insane when you hear that someone has a follicle that large and you put on a party hat. I'm not kidding, Jennifer, I'm sitting at my computer in a party hat leftover from New Year's, and I'm very excited and happy and hopeful...

and I could not agree with Jennifer more - the waiting and the not-knowing are definitely two of the things that make those of us dealing with this the craziest. Unlike Jennifer, I ovulate (or at least they think I do), so I live in 28 day cycles (or sometimes 27, or in one case, a very cruel 32 day cycle).

Days 1-5 are spent starting a new 28-day calendar, figuring out when day 13/14 (when I usually get two purple lines on the ovulation predictor stick) will be and where we'll be for those days, and what else we have going on during that week (do I have anything due at work that will make me pull an all-nighter - never conducive to wanting to have sex - or will my husband (who is a lawyer) have a trial? Will someone be visiting us - and therefore staying within inches of our bedroom? Does it fall on a weekend when we will want to be at our ski house, with its paper thin walls and 100% guarantee of house guests?

Days 6-10 are spent impatiently waiting for day 10, when I will start to pay attention to the "egg white" situation and maybe will part with some of those very overpriced pee sticks on the off chance that I ovulate early.

Days 10 -16 will be spent dutifully having sex every other day, or sometimes every day or every third day depending on our schedules. Fun. Wahoo. Sex On A Schedule - I've heard there's a new porno out with the same name.

Days 18-28 are then spent waiting. Waiting for what I know will come - even though I try to tell myself that if I assume that I'm not pregnant, I won't be. I don't even bother with the home pregnancy tests anymore. It's too painful to get all hopeful and "cheat" early with a test only to have disappointment arrive a few days early.

And so this is my life. This fall, we stopped "trying" - or rather, we decided to forego fertility treatment for a few months to recover from Dr. G. I told myself we wouldn't think about it - we'd just live normally. After all, that's when you get pregnant according to everyone and your mother in law. When you just "relax" and "don't think about it."

But honestly, unless I go back on the Pill, I can't not think about it. I just can't. I know exactly what my body is doing and when it's doing it and that little spot of hope is always there, so I have to take advantage of it.

I think with anything in life, it's the Not Knowing that is the worst part. I've always thought it would almost be worse to have your child kidnapped than anything else - the Not Knowing would literally make me 100% insane. Because with Not Knowing, you can never grieve, never move on, never Get Over It. Not that you ever get over the loss of a child or the loss of the ability to have a child, but there is something about Not Knowing that adds to the emotional insanity that is Infertility.

I'm terrified that this insanity is going to destroy my marriage, and change me permanently. I can only imagine what it is like for people who have gone through this for years - I honestly think they are the strongest, most amazing women I don't know (very few people talk about this) because if I had to ride this roller coaster in hell for two or three or four or five years, I'd be a shell.

But for now, it's not two or three or four or five years. It's just 23 days, cause I'm on Day 5.

-L