Geebaby

how bad was it?

2012-02-08T08:09:00.001-08:00

I unsubscribed from all child-related rss feeds. Threw out all the info packets from local fertility clinics. Drank gin and wallowed in self-pity.

I may be better now. I haven't decided yet.

Virtualosity

2012-01-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

In Skyrim and SWTOR, you can get married but can't have kids. I like visiting video game worlds where childlessness is the default (for players, anyways.) Intellectually, I know it's coding/design/story restraints.

But I bet my thewey Nord barbarianette and wise-cracking cyborg space cowgirl don't cry on the way home from the Mexican restaurant because ever having the money for IVF seems remote. I bet they find fulfillment in their careers (smashing in dragon faces and intergalactic crime lord, respectively) and sexy combat-capable husbands and don't constantly compare themselves to their childed friends. I bet neither of them blog.

I realize that last month I sunk a few virtual trees worth of screen space into whining about how I wish I felt more adult. But sometimes, I wish my life could be more like a video game.

WWW#5

2012-01-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

This morning I freaked out because I didn't see the number I expected, only to realize I was still holding my Kindle. Ups.
Read more »

January ICLW

2012-01-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

My intro, evergreen.
By now, you might not be following me because I'm a bit of a sadsack and my life is pretty boring. But if that hasn't turned you off yet, here's 7 other reasons you might not want to follow me:

1) I'm not actively in treatment. I think cycling bloggers have a lot of meaty content and emotional punch. I have the occasional rambling drunk post about fetuses.

2) I think animals are food. I don't think Velveeta is.

3) I'm an atheist.

4) I'm a feminist.

5) I still listen to the Backstreet Boys. And not ironically, like the hipster waiters in a vegan café.

6) I love good beer, and I love seeking out new and unique brews to taste. But at home? Alone? When I just want something to sip? Bud 55.

7) I've watched all the Twilight Saga movies- but only with the Rifftrax.

WWW#4

2012-01-19T06:13:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize it was Wednesday yesterday. That kind of week.
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the silent swimmers

2012-01-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

Let's spare a thought for Ay's little sperm, all cooped up in there, never to be free. Did they ever have dreams? I bet they're bored.

WW#3

2012-01-11T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of listening to my body when I'm sick, and this week it said, "I want to play SW:TOR and eat edamame all day." So I did.
Read more »

WW#2

2012-01-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

OK, yes, it's Friday, but I've been sick for a week and this is the first day I have the energy for typing so much. Seriously. FML.
Read more »

Bill Nye is the only NYE I celebrate

2012-01-01T16:23:00.000-08:00

If how you start the year indicates the path of the year to come, then 2012 is going to be full of germs, snot and whining.

WWW #1

2011-12-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

Michele at Greetings from Nowhere, NM laid out the format for this Weekly Wednesday Weigh-In update (inspired by Josey), and I've tweaked it slightly to suit. As much as I hate talking about weight loss around this time of year (it's not a resolution! I don't make resolutions!) it is something that I need to work on (in a big way. Get it? BIG way? Hohoho.) if I'm going to be ready for IVF. A blog post seems as good a way to stay accountable as any, doesn't it?

I'm putting this and all further posts in this vein under a cut, though, as I know weight-loss talk can be triggering to some and just plain boring to most.

ymas

2011-12-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

It's not that I don't like Christmas.

I don't even have it bad. My families all get along, for the most part, and the ones that don't don't celebrate together, sparing everyone the hassle. No one hounds me about children. It comes up, but I can easily deflect, and they accept it because I'm 27. Or we've only been married a year. Or I don't seem the mothering type (dingdingding.)

I'd have to say I'm Christmas Apathetic.

Christmas with my parents is a low-key dinner, Christmas with my mother-in-law a massive social production with set changes. I don't care much for either, but don't find them impossible. Presents are fine, but then again not exchanging gifts is also fine. Maybe a little more than fine. More than anything, Christmas makes me feel every year like a terrible actor in some bizarre play, woodenly going through the motions and hitting marks. Drink coffee, open gift, thank giver, eat cheese. Every year it gets a little worse. I know it's just me- Ay loves Christmas and gifts and feasting and pajamas and all of that. I wish I could borrow his enthusiasm. Or maybe just convert him, so we could stay home on Christmas and play video games that we purchased for ourselves and not even THINK the word "brunch."

(See what this holiday does to me? I love brunch! It's my favorite meal of the day!)

So I guess this is my xmas recap: It didn't go badly, it didn't go well. It just went.

December ICLW

2011-12-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

Yep, still not able to get pregnant. (Oh, how I'm looking forward to another year or two of typing that...)

So besides unpregnant as the day is long, what else am I? Well, I'm a voracious reader. I have a Goodreads and if any of you do I'd love some new friends. This year I averaged a book a week, which I was pretty pleased with... though if my high school self could see me now, she'd be very disappointed. I used to be a print purist but the Kindle has saved my life... I've re-bought a lot of the hardbacks I already own, just so I could re-read them in a format that doesn't require carting around an extra five pounds. So, in a bookish vein, here are the last 7 books I've read.

1) Zone One (Colson Whitehead) - Ok, so... I like books about zombies. I LOVE books about zombies. Does this stop me from being afraid of them? No, in fact, I read World War Z every year and every year I go 2-3 sleepless nights after as a result. The thing about zombie books is that most of them are awful. I'm not talking Twilight awful, I'm talking "that weird kid who sat next to you in 9th grade English and wrote their own stories" awful. My rule for zombie fiction is that it cannot be e-published only, which sounds harsh, but actually does not do nearly enough to cut down on the amount of horrible genre entries I've read. Zone One I had initial doubts about, as it was a zombie story by A Real Author and often those are surprisingly unreadable. But Zone One is awesome- if you like World War Z or Feed/Deadline I'd definitely recommend.

2) Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion (Various) - The title is a bit of a misnomer - I found that most of the essays in this collection were about abortion, considered through the lens of choice. But, my obvious biases aside, I think a lot of the discussion of choice applies to the assisted reproductive side as well as the arrested. This book gave me a LOT to think about - I would rate it as one of the most important I read this year.

3) Dead of Night (Jonathan Maberry) - Remember the bit about terrible zombie novels? This one wasn't terrible, in fact I quite enjoyed it, but it was very indicative of its genre. Strong, competent ex-military and/or mostly male leads? Yep, pretty par for the course. Do I dare bring up WWZ again? I write these intros a little ahead of time, so by the time you read this I will have probably started a WWZ read-through in retaliation. I'm so predictable. (edit: actually, as you read this I am on a plane to Seattle for Christmas, re-reading WWZ)

4) Dead Until Dark (Charlaine Harris) - I have this THING about making it through books my friends love, even if I don't like them. It's slow going - you don't even WANT to know how many times I tried Twilight before I succeeded. This was my second shot at this series opener, and I'm proud to say I made it through unscathed. It's not my favorite book ever, and I like the Read it and Weep episode far more than the book itself, but I could see myself having enjoyed this by the pool with a beer in simpler times.

5) Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) - Sometimes I try to read Real Books. In my senior year of high school my AP English teacher seemed convinced that if she mocked my affinity for genre fiction enough, I would suddenly see the light and switch to Real Books. Well, sorry Ms. Sessions! I'm still reading books about magic and zombies. But I do dip a toe in the pool of respectable fiction- not the classics, which I still can't slog through, but books like this that aren't about faeries. What I find about Big Girl Books is that they rely heavily on characterization rather than the fantasy trope of world-building, so when I dislike all the characters in a story, as I did in this, I can't fall back on an interesting premise to keep me going. Back to the castles, I guess.

6) Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (Mindy Kaling) - Only if they're lucky.

7) Tender at the Bone: Growing Up At The Table (Ruth Reichl) - I'm fat. Have I mentioned that? It's pretty important. I'm not fat for any excusable medical reasons- I love to eat and I hate to exercise. I love to eat, I love to cook, I love to think about food and most of all I love to read about food. There's a lot of sociology and history to consider in this memoir, but food above all. It's My Life in France or Lunch in Paris all over again, if only I had no life to be bound to! What a chance, to wander a country with no cares beyond my next life-changing meal.

Next year my goal is 2011+10%... so 64 books in 2012! With my reduced budget, I guess that's a lot of re-reading.

(life, waiting, early)

2011-12-12T19:37:00.001-08:00

I swear, I don't have a ticker on my desk that swings back and forth between "dashed-off tipsypost" and "self-involved overwrought wordywords." It just seems like that sometimes.

(All the times.)

Aprilvak had a post a few days back about her fear. It resonated with me immediately, because I have the same fear.

In my case, it is a certainty. I knew that making a blog now instead of lurking for the next 1-2 years while I waited to have the money for IVF would mean getting support for what's kinda turning out to be a shit time, but also that that support would move on without me. I had to think about the trade-off. I still think about it. Ideally, every single one of you childless ladypeople in my RSS reader will have a child by the time I'm even getting on clinic waiting lists and getting bloodwork done. Hell, a good chunk of my initial RSS feeds have gotten pregnant in the couple months I've followed them. I will probably even get lapped by someone reading this post.

It's not that I'm jealous- or rather, my normal petty and jealous nature is unchanged and unaffected by this situation. I'm not really envious of the people currently jamming needles in their cushy nethers or getting all sorts of things shoved up into their cervixes, because what sane person would be? I mean, ow? But there's a feeling that everyone I follow is running somewhere, while I just sit in a lawn chair at the start line and shout encouragement every so often.

A poser. Worse, a wannabe.

A community doesn't work in one direction. You gain support, but you give it too. I feel like I fail at this, as the Perpetual Sadsack Lady In Waiting (PSLIW). That's not to say that my comments aren't genuine, just that... they can't really come from a place of empathy. Yeah, me and my husband can't have a baby and it sucks balls. But med side effects? Ultrasounds? Injections? Hell, the 2WW? I am as qualified to give support on these matters as your average clueless and well-meaning fertility goddess.

ICLW is pretty cool. Every month, I add all of the blogs in the list to my RSS reader. There's a lot of primary blogs, in treatment- whether seeking diagnosis or trying with meds or doing IUI/IVF, or waiting on an adoption referral. There's parents- SIF blogs, PIF and PAA blogs. There's a few blogs that resolved by choosing to be childless. There don't seem to be any other "sitting around and waiting and feeling sorry for herself" blogs. I wonder if that's just a matter of my timing, or whether people in my situation realized they had very little of meaning and value to contribute to a community that is, for the most part, actively pursuing parenthood.

So maybe sometimes you won't hear from me for awhile*, and that will be ok. Because really, who wants to read a blog where all the posts boil down to, "Yep, still not pregnant!" or "I ovulated, but that doesn't mean shit."? And sometimes you'll have a really technical post and I'll comment with, "I'm thinking of you!" and you'll be all like, "Seriously? That was all she could come up with? Ugh, I hate that dude." It's unavoidable.

Even in the few short months I've been participating in the blogging community, I've met a lot of really awesome people. I hope you guys don't mind the PSLIW hanging out in the corner, being all awkward and hogging the ranch dip and maybe having a little too much of the champagne punch. I am trying my hardest so I can get to a place where I can join you, and finally feel like I have something worthwhile to say.

* Unless you follow me on Twitter, in which case you know that I literally NEVER SHUT UP.

The reality of my situation

2011-11-29T19:16:00.001-08:00

...is made clear as I wash these prenatals* down with a beer.

(What? I know I can't get pregnant unexpectedly, but they were on sale and cheaper than my regular gummies. I love me an ironic deal.)

All Grown Up

2011-11-26T08:31:00.000-08:00

"It's so crazy to think I'm a grown-up now!"

No, he's didn't just finish puberty or graduate from college. He's about to be a dad for the first time. And as I read the status update, I wonder why it bothers me so much, when I roll my eyes at its close cousins,

"Being a MOM is the HARDEST JOB in EXISTENCE even more than FIREFIGHTERS on the SUN!!!"

and

"No one who isn't a parent will ever know the true meaning of love! Pls repost so the childless people on your friends list know you secretly believe their life is an empty, meaningless shell!"

Maybe it's the little voice in the back of my mind, telling me it's true. That if I never have a child I'll always be seen as a selfish extended adolescent.

I think everyone, when they're younger, has the feeling that being an adult will be recognizably different. That one day something would flip that switch, and you'll be responsible and socially aware and serious, just like grown-ups are. But it hasn't happened. I still like video games and pop music. I still get jealous of others, say the wrong things all the time and can't make small talk at a party to save my life. I may look 27 but inside I feel perpetually, awkwardly 15.

Life (and Facebook) is full of messages about parents. Parents are loving and patient, selfless and responsible. I wonder if I've twisted my definition of "adult" into a shorthand for "parent". Why am I so bothered by my failure to grow up - do I think being an "adult" is a requirement to parent, or do I think being a "parent" is the ticket into adulthood?

On sleepless nights I worry about this, that my overwhelming desire to be a parent is not because I think I would be a good one but because I'm looking to fill some inner deficiency. That pursuing extraordinary measures to conceive is the height of selfish, adolescent self-centeredness. That I'm just jealous and obsessed and petty and everything an adult shouldn't be.

I sat here for a long time trying to wrap this up with a meaningful conclusion, but I'm no writer and this is no high art so I'm free to say that this is a brain dump and I don't have one. I worry about this. I worry about a lot of things. I guess it's lucky that I have a long wait in which to figure it out.

Evocation

2011-11-24T18:50:00.001-08:00

I have just graduated college. I am driving from Seattle to Los Angeles, to move in forever with the man who will become my husband. This song comes up on my iPod. I think, "This is the worst possible song to be listening to right now."

I am driving home alone from Thanksgiving dinner. I have work on Friday, so I excuse myself early from the festivities and the champagne, but not before having to explain IVF and our plans for it to Ay's side of the family. This song comes up on my iPod. I think, "This is the worst possible song to be listening to right now."

Dear Period,

2011-11-23T14:11:00.001-08:00

You've taken 46 days to show up already, you couldn't wait just one more until AFTER Thanksgiving?

We need to talk.

Yours,
Gee

tweedle dum

2011-11-21T23:08:00.000-08:00

I may ~~complain endlessly~~ post about my complicated relationship with general life blogging, but I realized that (contrary to long-winded sighs) I do life blog. I just do it in 140 characters or less.

Do I find it a bit disheartening that my daily life is so uneventful as to be completely contained in content micro-bursts? Maybe.

Do I have a Twitter account primarily as an outlet for jokes that are so bad I can't even tell them to my husband? Maybe.

Should you follow me on Twitter so I can follow you back? Probably not, but throw caution to the wind!

November ICLW

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

It may have been a bit silly and self-involved to post an intro for ICLW last month after only 6 posts, but I'm pretty sure it'd be even more so to do it this month too. So, instead, here's a list of 7 TV shows I'm totally digging right now, chosen at random from my DVR listing.

1) Community. Total disclosure: I would watch Community even if it sucked. I have what is commonly referred to as "a thing" for Joel McHale. But it doesn't suck, in fact, I think it's the best ensemble comedy running right now. Danny Pudi and Donald Glover could find a way to make the phonebook funny. (And now its future is in question, which makes perfect sense because as always, I kill shows with my love. Firefly, Jericho, Better Off Ted, it doesn't matter, if I like a show it's doomed. Crap, maybe I shouldn't be listing these after all.)

2) Game of Thrones. One of the reasons I bought a Kindle was so I could re-read the GoT series without having to lug my hardback copies around. Aside from a few tiny plot issues (which I will not list because could I GET any nerdier?) the series is spot on. Besides, blood! Guts! Nudity! Dragons! Dragon-aided nudity! What isn't to like?

3) New Girl. I watched the first episode and thought it was the worst, most awkward thing I'd ever sat through. Then it pulled a complete 180 and it's been hilarious ever since. I almost peed myself laughing during the last episode.

4) The Soup. Ok, yeah, here's that "thing" again. But The Soup gives me enough information about important current events such as "the names of those dudes on Jersey Shore" so I don't sound like a total recluse during office conversations, and that's a very underrated resource.

5) Once Upon A Time. It's like a reverse 10th Kingdom AND my MIL likes it so we have something to watch together after Sunday dinner. Our previous selection: The Walking Dead. She wasn't the biggest fan.

6) Eureka. But seriously, could I GET any nerdier?

7) Dr. Who. Just shredding any hope now of ever being thought of as cool.

Sadly, you've probably just learned more about me from that list than from any intro post I could write. Happy ICLW!

Turkey Panic

2011-11-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

Today is Mini Thanksgiving.

This isn't some feel-good term for a day that I am especially thankful - I lack some essential measure of gracefulness to ever pull that sort of thing off. This is the term for the weekend before Thanksgiving, in which I do an annual dry run of everything I plan to cook on turkey day in an attempt to lessen what by this time is my screaming, overwhelming anxiety about ruining the holiday.

(And before you say, "But that's not possible!", I was nearly disowned by Ay's side of the family for making skin-on, chunky mashed potatoes my first Thanksgiving. IT'S A PREFERENCE, PEOPLE, NOT A CHARACTER FAILING.)

This year, my anxiety levels are making every year previous seem like caffeine jumpiness. That's because this year, my mother-in-law is out of town until the holiday, so she's asked us to host at her house.

I'm making all the appetizers.

The beans.

The stuffing.

The Turkey.

The Turkey has consumed my thoughts for months. I've considered and discarded countless recipes and strategies, thought about faking sick at the last minute and buying a glazed ham, thought about faking my own death and moving to Alaska. My anxiety needed a king, and Turkey sits atop his throne, all my other entertaining fears dancing in attendance.

So today I make a turkey. It's kind of expensive and more than a little crazy, but if it'll get me through the day without tears, it's worth it.

Nerd Alert

2011-11-11T10:32:00.001-08:00

Harry Potter 8 and Lego Harry Potter 2 are waiting for me at home. The anticipation has made me near useless at work today. It is fortunate that I am not a doctor.

Mundane Mondays?

2011-11-07T19:07:00.001-08:00

More than a week ago I boldly swore to blog about my life, which so far has yielded the following:

OK, so maybe I still have a slight problem with gatekeeping.

So, here's a life thing.

My husband has lost his wedding ring. I am not bothered. He is very, very bothered.

When we got engaged, I wore the ring for a grand total of two weeks. It's not that I wasn't happy to be engaged, but I'm not a jewelry person and though I thought an engagement ring would be different, it really wasn't. I was constantly banging it on things, snagging it on clothing, pinching and twisting and irritating. It was a relief to take it off, even if that began a never ending line of intrusive questioning from others.

(Little did I know this would only be preparation for the interrogation that came after the wedding, when I wasn't wearing a new last name either.)

But Ay was different. From the moment we bought his wedding ring, he wore it. You can imagine how well that went over during our engagement, his finger be-ringed and mine without. He ignored it all - an engagement ring completed him, somehow. They've never spent more than a day apart. On the morning of our wedding, he removed it and passed it to his groomswoman, assured that they'd be reunited in a matter of hours.

I wear a wedding ring, too. Placed on my finger for the first time during the wedding, a small delicate band of patterned gold. I never take it off - it's so simple and light than I hardly know it's there, so I'm afraid I wouldn't notice it was gone until it was too late.

That's most likely what happened. Ay's hands sweat and swell, so he takes off his ring sometimes, to sleep or to type. We've checked the couch and the desk, of course, but no sign of it. (I suppose I could run a check of all the area's seedy hookup bars?~)

I'm annoyed by matters of cost - if my ring was lost, I would not pay to have it replaced right now. We have babies to be makin'!* But to Ay it isn't even a matter of cost, something essential has been lost to him.

A little scrap of gold, to be carrying such weight.

I really hope it's in the couch somewhere.

*(-g large savings accounts for the conception of)

People Who Know We Can't Get Pregnant

2011-11-02T18:27:00.001-07:00

(An abbreviated list.)

1) My Stepmother. She dealt with infertility for over 10 years before having my stepbrother, though she never sought treatment. Wouldn't this be a good reason for me to have confided in her? I think so, but no, it's actually that I can be a bit of a chatty drunk and I've learned from experience that it's best to have a go-to for drunk dials that knows you well. BUT she always has something helpful to say when I call and I treasure her deeply. No matter how much I also complain about her cluckiness.

2) Some Friends. Two of these are friends we've explicitly told, who know the specifics of the situation and who know that we've decided to pursue fertility treatments when we are able. Some of them are friends who've asked us in the past if/when we're having kids, and have gotten the answer, "We probably can't." and gone on to assume for some reason that we don't want/like kids. I'm cool with that assumption standing a bit, for obvious reasons. One of them is a friend who joked over shared martinis, "Just don't have a baby next year, I can't afford any more baby shower gifts." to which another friend loudly interjected, "You KNOW they can't have KIDS, RIGHT?" Argh.

3) The IT Department. I once read a study that said 1 in 4 office workers has viewed porn at work. That's why, if browsing briefly at work, I try to only read IF blogs that refer to genitalia euphemistically.

4) My Mailman. The information packets have started arriving from area fertility clinics. I don't know if he even reads the return addresses on those big envelopes. I still can't meet his eyes these days.

...and also things that are not.

2011-10-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've blogged, in one form or another, since my freshman year of college. When I started out, everything was tossed into one pot - personal posts, video game posts, everyday banality, rants and whines. Eventually I got into MMORPGs (online roleplaying games - think games like World of Warcraft) and my offline friends complained about slogging through so many posts they didn't understand, so I split my blog identity in two - one for my offline life, one for my online. Later on I started playing multiple online games, and friends from one complained about having to read so many posts about the other. Again, I divided.

From then on it was my standard operating procedure - start something new in life, start a new blog so I wouldn't offend anyone's reading sensibilities. When I was engaged, I had a wedding blog. I had a cooking blog. I had a book blog. If I even THOUGHT I might be getting interested in a new activity or subject, I drafted some likely journal names and checked for availability.

My Facebook was intricately segregated and organized so that there could be no chance of my friends reading posts that didn't apply to them somehow. I was utterly paranoid, not that they'd get information that I didn't want them to have, but that if they had to read my thoughts on a subject that didn't interest them they would be bored.

And we can't have that! Entertain! Entertain! I'm Fun Gee!

90% of my status updates, I deleted within seconds of adding the final punctuation. Some were emotional, and you can't let your friends know you have emotions because that would be such a drag for them. Some were mundane, and you shouldn't even bother posting those because you're taking up valuable space here, maybe pushing someone's worthwhile status below the fold. I stopped updating, and then I stopped visiting the website all together. Utility sunk beneath the weight of neuroses.

So we come to this blog, another closed cell for another facet of Me. As the subtitle suggests, I did intend for this to a be a place where I could write about things other than my husband's babymakers, but a month out, I still haven't brought myself to really post about anything else. Because, by jove, this is an infertility blog and if people have to see posts about things that aren't infertility they might get bored! But at the same time, I've painted myself into a corner by letting my paranoia close all my other outlets. My online life is a prim, well-ordered shelf.

Curated.

Categorized.

Sterile.

Reading new blogs during ICLW, I saw entries about lots of things, and thought, "Wouldn't that be nice? To just post about anything that came to mind?"

So I'm steeling myself. Yes, I have a lot of thoughts about the status of my uterus and its relationship to society at large. But sometimes, I have banal thoughts, thoughts about friends or television or large appliances, and I am going to try my hardest to let those posts through. To not self-censor into isolation again. To be strong enough...

To bore you.

fangirl

2011-10-27T18:52:00.001-07:00

I haven't learned my lesson yet about browsing my RSS feeds at work.

So I was initially quite excited when the latest post at Hyperbole and a Half popped up while I was being oh-so-productive.

"It's been so long!"

And then I read it.

I'm not there now, but I have been. One long stretch of time after my mother died and a few shorter times since. And she really nails it. Really, really, really.

And for once, I was softly crying over something other than babies in my cubicle.

The worst thing about ICLW...

2011-10-24T19:23:00.001-07:00

...is that I am terrible at captchas.

Every comment a battle, I swear.

Do Over

2011-10-22T21:48:00.001-07:00

I was talking with Ay about the sperm test a few days ago.

(I swear, this is not all we talk about around here. Sometimes, we also make fart jokes.)

I mused about what we would have done differently, had we known the results back when we first decided to toss the birth control.

"Well," he said, "you wouldn't have married me if you knew."

Let's set aside, for the moment, the fact that while I always carried a secret, tiny, shameful, disagreeing hope, I did pretty much know. By the time that we got engaged, my lot had well been thrown, there was no stopping that bullet, additional metaphor for inevitability goes here, etc. But spooling it back further- if I had known before I fell in love with him, would I have ended it?

Logistically, it would have been tough. I fell in love with him between our first and second dates, a twelve hour stretch he mostly passed sleeping in the twin bed in my tiny college apartment, snoring like a buzz saw. And the most sensible, reality based answer would be no, because I was 21 at the time and didn't even know if I ever wanted kids. So to this hypothetical situation we would also have to add a premonition, washing over me as I considered, that one day I would be certain that I did want a baby. Answer still an emphatic no, since now that I've been warned I have 6 years to save for IVF.

OK, so now we're adding a crystal ball, that College Gee could gaze into and get a full reckoning of the next (almost) 6 years. She could see how happy we've been, the places we've lived, all the margaritas she'll drink at our favorite Mexican joint. Maybe she'd learn a powerful lesson about consuming so many margaritas and chimichangas without a firm cardio plan in place.

But she'll also see the rest. The friends who will move on to motherhood and gradually pull away. The nights when the longing becomes so strong and all she can do is sob, silent shudders and swollen eyes to be camouflaged the next day. The accusation that she's just thinking too much about it, that she should just relax. The self-loathing, rising like bile, the shame of feeling so strongly about something so seemingly insignificant.

With all things foreknown, would she have ended it?

I don't know.

I don't think so. Sometimes I think of what life would be like if I hadn't gotten together with Ay and I'm filled with a paralyzing sadness, so strong that I turn my brain away to happier pursuits. So she'll go on that second date, proceed, still hungover, to the third. She'll graduate, they'll move in together, get engaged, get married.

But I suppose I have no way of knowing for sure.

I didn't say this, of course. I rolled my eyes and replied, "You know that's not true." I smiled at him.

And then I made a fart joke.

October ICLW

2011-10-21T06:51:00.001-07:00

I've been lurking around the ALI blogspace for awhile, but this is my first blog here and my first ICLW. I wasn't going to post an intro (since I only have 6 entries and all) but everyone on my RSS feed was doing it and I ~~am a lemming~~ ~~am painfully insecure~~ thought it might be fun.

My husband and I live in Los Angeles and have been married just over a year (10/10/10 baby!) We're video game nerds to the highest degree - when I say "We met on the Internet" I'm hoping you'll assume eHarmony. You will be wrong. I'm 27 and work on Internet Things, he's 33 and works from home. I cook, he cleans, I read, he kills orcs in the Man Cave, everyone is happy and now would be the perfect time to have a baby, according to everyone I have ever made smalltalk with, ever.

But! My husband has Cystic Fibrosis, which leads to CAVD in a large majority of cases, and we confimed last month that he is no exception! We've decided that IVF w/ICSI is currently the route we want to pursue, so now we've entered into a long wait for treatment, while we pay off all our debt and save up the money for an uninsured cycle. I try to see the next two years as a gift, as a chance to get into a good place financially, physically, emotionally and life...ally before starting a grueling process that will hopefully lead where we want it to.

But most likely I'll just make monthly posts where I get trashed on wine coolers and talk about baby showers.

50/50 odds.

Anniversed

2011-10-14T19:45:00.001-07:00

It's my anniversary!

Well, it was my anniversary. A week ago. And I really intended to post about it!

I was gonna say, "Yay, we made it through a year!" (And almost 5 before that, but who's counting? Certainly not any of Ay's relatives, that's who.)

But instead I thought, "If we were ~~a normal couple~~ any of our friends, we'd probably be celebrating a different kind of yay right now."

Surprisingly, this kind of positive thinking was not the source of my weeklong funk.

We decided to celebrate our anniversary in the traditional manner - by going to the urologist for our follow-up to the sperm test. We first learned of our sperm analysis result in a voicemail left on Ay's phone while we were celebrating his birthday at an Outback Steakhouse. Of all the places to learn that you have no sperm in your ejaculate, I think the bar of an Outback rates pretty low, though I suppose it depends on whether or not you've already gotten your Bloomin' Onion. The urologist left a rambling message indicating that Ay should schedule a follow-up appointment to discuss biopsy as the next step, and to make it as soon as possible.

Here is the entirety of our 10 minute meeting with Dr. Voicemail:

1) yep no sperm
2) Testicular Biopsy? Yeah, we can't do that here. [THEN WHY DID YOU MENTION IT, DR. VOICEMAIL?]

And of course my insurance didn't cover this appointment.

There it is, my funk. Because as of now, we are officially out of the care umbrella of our HMO. Which means that we are also officially on hold. For the next two years.

Because two years is how long it will take for two young adults in a high cost-of-living area with decent but not amazing jobs to pay off all our debt and save up enough money for one or two shots at uninsured IVF/ICSI with invasive sperm retrieval and pre-testing. Yeah, medical tests suck, but at least when we were still getting testing, it felt like we were going somewhere. I used to wish that Ay had gotten tested a lot earlier, for confirmation of what we already knew. But now I think, if we had known 3 years ago, we'd have been looking at a five year wait instead of two. I don't know how I would have done it.

I'm not sure how I will do it.

I assume beer is involved.

So here's to one year of happiness, with the same wish for the next two. May I hold back my tears, keep my shit together, get in shape, win the lottery and find a wellspring of non-snarky comebacks to the question, "So when are you two going to start trying?"

sucker punch

2011-10-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

I've been known to get weepy over baby shower invitations, but view them as a necessary evil - after all, if you didn't send them, no one would know to show up.

Baby shower SAVE THE DATES, however, can go fuck themselves.

Birthday Present

2011-09-30T19:59:00.001-07:00

Just in time for Ay's birthday, we did get some good news: my genetic screening came back, and I'm not a CF carrier!

Well, at least not of any of the common mutations. This was of concern to us as I'm in a risk group for delta f508, which is one of Ay's mutations, and a child of ours who was homozygous for it would present much more severely than Ay does. His other mutation is pretty rare, and wasn't tested for, but for now, we're looking at PGD off the table unless we choose to further test (at our own expense) for something less likely.

I had to call the office every day for a week to get someone to call me BACK with the good news, of course, but it's nice to have small happy things to hold onto.

Happy Birthday

2011-09-29T19:09:00.001-07:00

Today Ay is 33!

(Side note: I don't call him Ay. or his actual name- I call him Baby. Hence, Geebaby. But I figured making a bunch of blog posts about "Baby" would probably end up being really confusing, given the primary nature of this blog and all.)

In the spirit of the day I asked him where he saw himself at this time next year. He paused for a long while, a pensive look on his face.

"That's a good question. Let's talk about it when I come back from getting ice cream."

Free ice cream was fetched and we returned home, made ourselves snuggly on the couch.

"So, what was your answer?"

I turned into the warm circle of his arms. He gazed deeply into my eyes, the moment potent with emotion and expectation.

'Um, I was hoping I'd think of something while I was in the store. But I couldn't."

Sheepish grin.

Yep, that's the dude* I married. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest fucker on the planet.

So happy birthday, husband mine. Every year I have with you is the best year.

* Actually, I call him "Baby" because early on in our relationship he rejected being called "Dude", which prior to this I had always considered my highest form of endearment. What he doesn't know can't hurt him.

Coin Toss

2011-09-23T20:33:00.001-07:00

Ay and I are very different. I'm the shy, neurotic overachiever and he's the outgoing, happy-go-lucky teddy bear. We are two sides of the same coin- I pessimism, he optimism. So it feels odd to have switched places in the last week.

For me, the SA result brought relief. We may have known that there was a vanishingly small chance we could get pregnant naturally, but a hazy percentage point seems much larger when you're a week past period time with nary a twinge to show for it. The glimmering spark of "Could I be...?" followed by the relentless crushing tide of negative tests. Regaining my resolve and then losing it again with a random, off-handed comment of "Oh, I know a girl who NEVER tested positive on a urine test! For all 5 kids!"

It brought self-assurance. I've diffidently charted on and off, bought prenatal vitamins and gone weeks dry. "Just in case." And when I had nothing more to show for it, I felt stupid. I felt deluded. But I couldn't stop, until now.

It brought hope. I feel like I've been floundering in the dark, fighting some monster I couldn't even prove was there. Now, even if for a brief time, everything is illuminated. My overplanner swings into action. OK, we're looking at IVF/ICSI/possible PGD, what will we have to pay? How will we get the money? How long will it take? What will we do in the meantime to be the best two sets of reproductive organs that fertility clinic ever did see? I can deal with this!

I hadn't realized before this week, not truly, that Ay believed he was part of that small percentage who could naturally conceive.

For him, the result was shattering. I'm not sure that he had, despite our discussions about it over the course of our relationship, ever thought about the specifics of how we would form babby if he didn't have magical sperm. And while I've prepared, read books, researched IVF, read blogs and tried to smother myself in pure information, he's talking to the genetic counselor and the urologist, mystified by new terminology and drowning in a sea of new knowledge. He was certain and now he is uncertain.

It was shaming for him. I can't even imagine. Over the past five years I have brought myself to a slow realization that even if we need ART, there is nothing wrong with us as people. He's had a week.

It destroyed his last bastions of denial. It destroyed his hope. I've processed this over the course of years and he's found himself suddenly naked, stripped of all his defenses and facing the hard truth - that he's not the exception, that it won't "just happen" if he hums through the statistics.

It sucks, and it is awesome.

It sucks, because the guy I love is in pain, and it's hard to tease out. Compared to mine, which slides on the surface like an oil slick, ever ready to burst into flame.

It's awesome, because suddenly everything makes sense. When I was at my lowest, the support I hoped for wasn't there. I questioned it, even questioned if I had made the right decision in marriage. Now I understand - before this week, he honestly didn't believe that we were infertile. He couldn't come close to understanding why I was in pain.

This week, we gave and received pain, rocking back and forth as our emotions allowed.

Two sides of the same coin.

An Introduction

2011-09-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

How do you even start a post like this?

Here are some things I have tried and then deleted:

"Hi!"

"So, guess who's infertile?!"

"Put your hands up if you've got sperm! Ay, PUT YOUR HAND DOWN."

Blogging is not as effortless as I always imagined it being.

I'll just overshare, then.

My name is Gee (27) and 11.5 months ago I married Ay (32), after dating him for 4.5 years. It was awesome, we had booze and cake and dancing and all that. And of course, because people could no longer make small talk about our wedding they started making small talk about our genitals.

"Won't be long now!"

"When are you two going to start trying?"

"Get ready for a surprise!"

Oh, you.

Ay and his sister Ess were both born with Cystic Fibrosis. Thankfully, their mutation combo is really mild. Ay has never been hospitalized, and his problems mostly manifest in the form of horrifying gastric issues and some occasionally disgusting things hocked up into the sink. His family and friends know he has CF but what they don't know is that 95-98% of CF men (depending on the study) are unable to insperminate on their own, due to a congenital absence of the vas deferens. (I try to be understanding but seriously, would it kill them to Google?)

So we've known for awhile that there were likely no happy accidents in our future. 3~ish years ago I had a hellish 5 months on the NuvaRing and we decided that since the chances of being able to conceive "naturally" were so low, I might as well go off HBC and we'd see what turned up. In direct contradiction to the warnings of my 9th grade health teacher, I did not become preggers the minute I looked at a guy while unvirginal and unmedicated. We weren't that bothered, we weren't even married yet and babies were still something theoretical. ART was something I had a vague conception of in my mind- "well, in many years we'll pay *hrmhrmhrm* dollars and there'll be some medical magic shit and then a baby....?"

Then I got married.

And everyone I knew got pregnant.

Yeah, ok, when you're in your mid- to late- 20's, there's lots of benefits like hangover resilience and soft hair and skin elasticity, but there's also the crushing emotional blow of everyone you know getting married and then immediately getting pregnant.

So what used to be a cloudy maybewhen became a sharp, jagged RIGHTNOWOK. Then it was doctors and tests and needles and a voicemail (A. VOICEMAIL.) informing us that yeah, you were right, ain't no sperm round these parts so let's discuss "options".

And now you're caught up.