Mock Cycle: Week 3

I had my fourth and final mock cycle ultrasound on Friday.  It didn’t go so well.

After being on an ever increasing dosage of estradiol (estrogen) for 22 days — and at 10mg for the last 10 — and a booster shot last week, the lining of my uterus is at a stubborn 7mm.  This is in spite of oestrogen levels in my body being well above 4,000 (usually 46!).  I have the hormone, but my body is playing hard to get.

Dr. H will confirm, but Nurse C predicts that I will be put on injectables for The Real Thing.  I don’t care, I said. And I don’t.  But I am slightly freaked out that my body is so unresponsive to such massive of levels of hormones, however they’re administered.  Is it possible I will be as unresponsive to the ‘big guns’?

As of Friday, I’m off the estrogen and on progesterone, which I will be on until next Sunday. When I stop taking that, I should get my period anywhere from a day to 10 days later. On CD2, irony of all ironies, I go on birth control pills to sync me up to Nellie’s menstrual cycle.

I took the opportunity to ask when The Real Thing might happen — say, third or fourth week of January? Nurse C said February is more likely.

February? I’m so deflated by this news.

Logically, I know it’s only an extra couple of weeks we’re talking about.  And whether it’s January or February, I can still use the hashtag #preguary. I guess it’s just that I feel like I’ve been really patient.  I’ve made some impossible decisions.  I’ve conquered fears.  I’ve been true to myself and still congratulated others on their BFPs.

And I think that’s the crux of the matter.  I don’t know how or when this all ends, and I don’t know how many more BFPs I can take.

All I can think right now is: There are women who got pregnant after I lost Bean who are nearing the end of their pregnancies — the first such baby was born the other day. All these women I know who are pregnant are going to be well into their second or third trimester before I’ve even got started. I’m so far left behind, behind, behind. And I’m not going to be pregnant by the time my miscarriage anniversary comes around.

I have that feeling in my nose and chest like I need a good cry.  I’m just too worn out.

♥

After a long hug from DH, I passed out for 2 hours. Tears filled my eyes, but a good cry wouldn’t come, so I gave in to drowsiness.  I woke up, groggy and in a bad mood. I shouldn’t have gone on Twitter, but I did.  There I saw the news that someone else is pregnant in time for Christmas.

And you know what? It really hurts. Time and again, women get pregnant and I squeeze past, eyes averted. I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I know it’s shit of me to be so unsupportive of my comrades, but I can’t take much more. I’m alright as long as the boat isn’t rocked. Trouble is, boats tend to rock in unpredictable waters, and I’m thrown around between pitch and yaw. The sight of others’ bumps, BFPs, and young babies start with a sharp breath that implodes in my chest and makes me weak at the knees.  I’m marginally better than I was over the summer, but back then I didn’t know my chromosome was wonky and would never have a genetic child of my own.

This particular BFP, however really set me off. (Hey, if you’re reading this and figure out it’s you, I want to preface this by saying: no hard feelings, love.)  You see, I sent the woman in question my spare copy of Take Charge of Your Fertility (aka TCOYF) by Toni Wechsler a few months ago. And now she’s pregnant.  Of course, it would be deranged of me to say she’s pregnant thanks to me, but clearly the book helped.

As I said, it was also a spare copy, picked up for $1 at my local library. I lent my original copy to a friend who’s pregnant now too.  (That announcement stung too, but we have since met up twice and it’s been more than okay. She’s had a loss too, so understands how hard others’ BFPs are, and we’ve agreed to just figure it all out as things happen.  I can’t go through again what I went through with my SIL and I don’t want to lose E’s friendship — she is one of the silver linings of 2013.)

DH was in the kitchen, making us tea.  I stared at my phone, reeling, and suddenly needed to pee.  I stumbled to the bathroom, and as I started peeing, I burst into tears and ripped my glasses off my face.  The sobs shocked me and wracked my body.  I haven’t cried like that in months.

Because, you see, my two copies of TCOYF get the two people I gave them to pregnant in a few short months, but Lil’ Miss Freak here has to rely on a stranger’s eggs. And this new slap around the face hurts so fucking much. And yet, I knew this would probably happen when I shared them, I just hoped I’d be knocked up too by that point. I had no idea about genetics and chromosomes back then, you see. (But if I did, I still would have shared the books, but perhaps the consequences would have been less of a shock.)

However irrational it is, February feels like a long way off, and I’m so scared that it’s not going to work at all, much less first try. There are so many hurdles to overcome. Nothing’s worked out before.  Nothing good has happened so far.  The only good news I’ve had is neutral: I don’t have breast cancer; DH’s semen analysis is good; we don’t have cystic fibrosis.  Sure, I can be grateful for these things, but they’re more like the default settings of life. How un-Zen of me to put it this way, but it’s not like something wonderful happened.  I am — we are both — primed for bad news.

Taking things day by day is also hard when Christmas is upon us.  In addition to the slew of BFPs in time for the holidays, I am also bracing myself for everyone getting excited about my niece’s first Christmas. All I can think is: had things worked out, I’d be celebrating my (now two-and-a-half months old) baby’s first Christmas too.