If you build it...

It seems I have neglected my little blog for far too long.  I have been really distracted lately. Probably a little depressed, not wanting to do anything.  I had 3 days off from work and can honestly say that all I accomplished in 3 days were 2 grocery outings and 1 trip to the Dallas Museum of Art to see the King Tut exhibit.  In the spirit of not wanting to do much (I am not completely out of this funk yet), I am going to hold out on my obligatory Octo-Mom bashing until further notice.  In a nutshell, I am hoping that the world does not have an unrealistic view of IVF after this total fiasco.  It is shocking to me how little the general public knows about ART, and I have a tremendous fear of Nadya Suleman, an unmarried, unemployed, mother of 14, becoming the poster child for IVF.  It's a total embarrassment to those of us who actually have our lives together yet need assistance to create that precious little person that continues to elude our infertile bodies.  I hope her babies are taken from her and adopted out to families who can love them and afford to raise them properly.  I hope her doctor never practices again. :::stepping off of soapbox:::

For the past 16 months that we have been trying, I have done everything to avoid the yellow room.  Anyone who knows me IRL knows the yellow room.  It's the bedroom next to ours.  The people we bought the house from used the room as an office, and it was painted a very dark, almost navy blue.  We changed almost all of the paint in the house within 48 hours of closing. Our bedroom went from gray to sky blue.  The front bedroom went from gray to a cool beige/peach.  And the navy office became the gender-neutral yellow nursery-to-be.  When we moved in to the house there were no questions about my fertility.  I proudly told everyone that the yellow room was the nursery, and when they asked when we would be trying my response was, "Right away!"  Ugh!  So old, yet so naive.  

So over time the room became "the place you put the stuff that has nowhere else to go right now but will have a better home soon".  Not only did we not have a baby, we had given birth to a room full of crap!  Pierce starting asking me if I wanted to put up wainscoting and chair rail in the room, as we had discussed many optimistic months ago.  My response continued to be a very unenthusiastic, "I don't know".  The next thing I know the crap has disappeared.  At this point I am getting annoyed.  Finally I asked, "Why are you doing all of this?"  And his response reaffirmed to me that there is absolutely no one else on this earth that I could ever go through IF with.  "I just think that maybe if we get things in order, and the baby can see that we have a place for him or her, then we will get pregnant."  Huh?  I have spent months worrying about doing anything like that for fear of jinxing us, and now he wants to do the complete opposite. Well, we won't be buying a crib beforehand, but I think I can respect the baby's space and keep the extra stuff out of the yellow room.  My mom has been all over us to drive home and pick up my old cradle.  I haven't wanted to, but not having it here hasn't helped me get knocked up. Maybe there is something to the Pierce plan.  Maybe the baby needs to know there is somewhere for him/her to lie down.  I am requesting vacation in May for a road trip home.  Maybe we'll actually need the cradle by then...if not the cat will love it!

Octo-Ugh!

It had been my intention to let this octuplet story run it's course and slip away without expressing any views one way or the other; however, I have reached an indescribable level of rage.  I do need some time to collect my thoughts in order to respond to this abomination of assisted reproduction with a little more fact and less emotion (who me? emotional?).  Don't worry....I won't be long.

Should have stayed in bed

It's official:  I have become one of those of those crazy trying-to-conceive women who can't handle a random drive by pregnancy announcement.  If I hear about it second hand or over email or in someway that does not put me in direct contact with the happy knocked up lady, I have time to process the information and respond accordingly.  But when I am blindsided by my boss, congratulating another one of my superiors who is sitting next to me in a meeting, that is an entirely different story.  It wasn't a specific congratulations, and I even considered that perhaps I was paranoid and slightly ridiculous to assume that all goofy-smile congratulations =Baby on Board.  However, my instincts were correct.  

At the close of the meeting, she stood up straight and revealed a not incredibly obvious but unmistakeable bump.  I excused myself to run to the ladies room.  Safely inside the stall my head fell in my hands, and the tears started the race down my cheeks.  Work is supposed to be my safe place where I don't have to think about this crap.  I'm good at what I do and well-respected there.  How dare insecurity and failure invade the only place where I still know who I am.  Infertility can't take that away from me, or can it?  I should have stayed in bed.