Hope, and Fear, and Hyperventilation

Our FET is approaching at a rapid pace. I thought I was ready. A few weeks ago, I was in a very Zen place.

Now, I'm an example of just how much infertility can screw with your head and make you seem like a crazy person to friends and strangers alike.

It started with a visit to the hematologist last week. RE doesn't want to manage the Lovenox, so a local hema doc is doing it. I was hoping I could just call and get another script, but since the last time I saw him was 18 months ago (before the retrievals), I had to go in again. With the retrievals, I was only on Lovenox for a few weeks, so there weren't any follow ups.

With the transfer, if the beta turns up positive, apparently there will be follow ups. Early. Ridiculously early. As in 4 weeks pg early.

He told me this, and I started to have a mini-meltdown. Because, you see, when he said "I want to see you around 4-6 weeks, closer to 4 weeks, to make sure you're not bruising or bleeding excessively", my infertility-addled brain thought, "By going in there at 4 weeks, you're signaling that you're arrogant enough to think you're going to be taking those shots for a while to come. Which means that you're just opening yourself up to fate reaching out and smacking you back down once again to prove you wrong. Which means that going to see the hematologist at 4 weeks = way to guarantee yet another miscarriage."

I stuttered, I stammered, I teared up. I pointed out that rarely do I make it beyond 6 weeks. He acquiesced and said I could just come in whenever I feel ready. Probably figured it was just easier to give in than to risk seeing what full-blown hysteria looked like.

Then CD 1 showed up on Sunday. The fact that it arrived wasn't much of a surprise since I had to do progesterone suppositories for a week to bring it on, but Sunday was a few days earlier than I had expected it to start.

I was supposed to start the patches and Lovenox last night, but there was a mixup because the clinic thought I had the patches when I didn't. So I got those today and slapped four of the clear little suckers on. As long as it doesn't generate some sort of weird rash, I'm all for patches instead of injections. And I've got plenty of real estate (i.e. flab) on which to stick them. Finally my hips come in handy for something.

The nurse called me today to talk about the cycle schedule and some of my paperwork. Transfer is tentatively planned for May 5th. Three weeks from tomorrow. Aaack - so soon! Another mini-meltdown ensued with me hyperventilating and calling one of my best friends to say I couldn't possibly be ready to face the reality of this in three weeks.

She had just managed to calm me down when another thought struck: May 5th is the 6th anniversary of our first miscarriage. Perhaps doing a transfer on that day isn't such a great idea. But the nurse is trying to find out if the transfer date can be pushed to the 6th or 7th anyway so that I don't have to take quite as much time off work. So rather than call her back in a panic and completely erase any doubt about my sanity or lack thereof, I decided to wait and see if she is able to get the date changed.

On the bright side, a transfer that week means we'll stay in Colorado and hide out during Mother's Day weekend. (We're celebrating two weeks early with our mothers for other reasons.) And I have decided that once the first 24 hours after transfer pass, we need to go stay at a place in the mountains where I can just relax and take cues from nature about how to get life to grow.

So at least there's one upside to that infertility-addled brain - it also makes the leap from "vacation" to "treatment-enhancing medicinal rest" without a second thought. Now if only we could claim it as such on our taxes...