the last three days have definitely been the hardest on my mental health of this whole endeavor so far. i haven’t experienced so much fog and anxiety since the height of pandemic-work-pivot-nightmare. i no longer have the routine of meds to measure out my days, and i’m not “doing” anything ivf-y besides
just. gruelingly. waiting.
and then there’s the hyper-vigilance. as a midwife, i sometimes feel this creeping in if i’m at a long birth and have a another complicated 42-weeker waiting in the wings: constantly distracted with the idea that the phone might be about to ring, and jumpy. as. hell. when it does. our genetics company runs out of nj, and on day 26, after i wrote the last post, I missed a call from nj and was shaking as I hit redial.
it was our roofer.
my logical brain knows no call until thursday/friday at the earliest, but my lizard brain is READY to know that our 6AA is perfect. I decided the only reasonable response was to hike about it, so i went to white lake state park (picture above!), where one loop turned into three just to pass the time and move my body.
days 28 and 29 were spent with one of my very best pals as he house-sat for friends. we had a fancy dinner, watched the best three episodes of buffy the vampire slayer (hush, the body, and once more with feeling–fight me if you feel differently!), and enjoyed much general laziness. it helped to have something to at least partially take my mind off. the evening of day 29 was spent with a group of pals at a dinner, after our outside city romp was rained out. cny did not, indeed, call.
fill that calendar. quiet that crazy.
tomorrow, day 30, is the second most likely day that we’ll hear from cny with results from cooper genomics, but it could be as late as saturday or monday (cny is closed sunday even though cooper is not–UHG). i realize that my perspective is colored by the fact that this excruciating wait is personal, but it seems unnecessary and unacceptable to have such a wide range of possibility for news. it’s like the cable company saying that they’ll be to your house between 8am and noon, but times a million.
the nightmare: there exists information about whether or not this whole thing continues to be “successful” or has all been uncomfortably and expensively for naught, and we’ll call you at *some undesignated time* during this *four-day span* to tell you.
torture.
i’m not in good shape, but i’m calling myself lucky for having enough generally good mental health to notice an acute, temporary collapse.
perspective and *a thread* of capacity. and a great partner and lot of amazing friends. that’s what’s keeping me hanging on and able to show up both for myself and for a partner enduring the same thing.
the other interesting complication about today, thursday, day 29, is the fact that, since i started my period yesterday, i technically need to have a monitoring appointment at coastal tomorrow morning at 8am if i’m planning to have a frozen embryo transfer this coming month. my choices are 1) book an appointment and risk it being an $800 mistake if i don’t have any viable embryos or 2) take birth control all weekend to “pause” my cycle and pick back up on monday if we get to have an embryo transfer, and risk being turned into a hormone monster, which is my unfond memory of birth control.
my heart wants to chance it, but my bank account can’t afford to be wrong.
so here comes the hormone monster!
yours truly,
a hopeful mama
idylls of acadia 