Monday, May 30, 2011

Memorial Day: Zero impact on baby-making

I've been incredibly remiss in my blogging, but I have what I believe to be a solid excuse in that my best friend was visiting from out of town.  It's not a great excuse, because Sarah wouldn't be my best friend if she didn't appreciate the need for frequent internet breaks; she probably would have understood if I had to stop and blog.  So I'm just a terrible person.

Friday, May 20, 2011

It all started with a big bang

It's normal for me to be awake past 11, but tonight I feel like it's 3am and I'm gonna get caught.

Heather and I are inseminating tomorrow-- allegedly-- and decided to take a Christmas-morning approach, going to bed early so we'll be refreshed but also because we're going to be checking to see if Santa's come every few hours.  The difference is that, on this particular holiday, "Santa" is abundant fertile mucus surrounding a gaping cervical opening, and Santa is not influenced by cookies.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Motherfucking Action Plan

Time to resurrect the motherfucking action plan.

We were ready for a different kind of action plan-- Tums, foot rubs, surreptitious browsing of the Amazon baby department-- but we've got to hold tight for a little while yet.  Heather and I shared our grief Sunday with the usual exchange of tears and anger, and, when Monday morning rolled around and she had wretched cramps, we accepted that there was nothing negotiable about the spotting.  I nagged to be sure she was truly bleeding-- this, again, is the kind of warped reality in which we're living-- and then started pulling out the books.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Heather took Midol last night

She has cramps, she says.  I say, what if your uterus is acting up because there's a little wee creature in it?  But Heather is certain that she's not pregnant and that she's about to start her period, and I'm not in any position to insist otherwise.

Today is Mother's Day-- blah blah blah-- and Heather told me as she got up this morning that she wasn't one.  Yesterday, someone left a Mother's Day note on my desk in error, intending it for a co-worker with a five-year-old son; I thanked the co-worker, thinking her name was a signature rather than part of the message, and she said, oh, well, you have a cat, right?

Friday, May 6, 2011

Mother's Day & the Two Weeks Wait

Sunday night, we’re going out to dinner with my parents to celebrate my mother’s contribution of two whimsically bitchy girls to the world.  She has asked that we not get presents or flowers for her, so I’ll be abiding by her previously-expressed request for an ergonomic litter scoop.*  I think I’ll give it to her outside the restaurant.

Heather’s body has taken a whimsically bitchy attitude itself, having timed her ovulation such that we’ll be testing the day after Mother’s Day.  I almost admire her body for the fertility fuck-you; I can’t think of any more appropriate way for two contrary women to reproduce. Still, I can’t think of any more appropriate way for us to be disappointed Monday morning.

It would be cute, I know, if this time it worked and everyone could say, “See?  We told you it would happen!”  (To which I—I can’t speak for Heather—would be mentally responding, “Um, fuck you, you’ve said that for months now and you weren’t the one staring at that negative pee stick.”)  I might find Heather a discount Mother’s Day card and we’d keep it forever.

The alternative, though, is an ugly one.  Heather has been telling me for over a week about how her breasts ache, but she says that every time we inseminate and it’s never paid off, so I almost hate to hear it.  I want something different to happen.  I want her to feel nothing, or for her breasts to burn with the fire of Hades.  That doesn’t sound nice, but I told her the other day that, if it helped her get pregnant, I would punch her in the breast and not feel sorry for it.  She could punch me in the breast, too, and I would not care.  After months of harsh reminders that we have no control, nothing seems unreasonable.

Heather told me at lunch that she didn't want to be a downer, but that she didn't think she was pregnant.  I said I didn't think so either.


*Dude, seriously, they’re really nice.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Dreadful support

So here's some shit: I wrote Mamie and Nina, hoping they'd tell us we were crackpots for thinking Heather could sense a pregnancy only eight days after insemination.  They did not say that, and I find myself staring at the ceiling, wanting to cry and to shout.  I feel what I hope is truly premature grief about what we might find on Monday, and this powerful, irrational anger at both Mamie and Nina for giving me the wrong answer.

The bitch of it is, they were both really, really nice and warm and enthusiastic.  I should feel comforted and secure, grateful that there are people who support and care for us.  Instead, I'm irritated at myself for asking them, and I'm pissed that I'm letting it affect me the way it is.

"Sore boobage" and other possible signs of pregnancy?

Heather's breasts hurt.

Is this a big deal?  Is it fantasy?  Who fantasizes about breast pain?  The answer to the last question is: crazy-ass, pregnancy-obsessed lesbians. 

Monday, May 2, 2011

Halfway there: the one-week-wait

We've made it a week.  I'm proud and delighted we made it this far, although we haven't had a choice in the matter.  There's nothing we can do about the situation other than try to ignore it.  It's doing something that would be a failure. 
Here are some things that we did not do in our first week's wait.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Waitin' for a Superman

Monday, the 25th, we inseminated.  Two ICIs at home, just me and Heather.  It was a peaceful, low-key experience, and we had a lovely long nap afterwards while it stormed outside.  In a way, it was so calm that I’ve half-forgotten it; it was my day off and the procedure was just a blip in my marathon of sleep.  When I went to the bathroom this morning, it all came back.

It didn’t come back because I gave birth on the toilet, as in a classic episode of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, but because I was cramping and wondered if my period was due.  It used to be that I could track my cycle based on where Heather was in hers (don’t ever let anyone tell you lesbian relationships aren’t glamorous), and I thought about it for a second before realizing that maybe she wouldn’t get her next period.  What if the time came and there was nothing?  What if we had the strength to wait all the way till the 9th before testing and she hadn’t bled yet?  What would those days feel like?