Trying Again

The meds have commenced.

The process of getting them in me the first night (Friday) would have been comical if it wasn't so stressful. Once again I ask, how is there not a better way than trusting regular people to mix medications and stab themselves with needles? It is ridiculous. Four years have passed and the whole thing was new again. And of course we got home late from an overnight trip and H refused to go to bed. Refused. I was sure he would come downstairs and see me injecting myself, and how would I explain my way out of that one? Even the cat went nuts, meowing her little cat head off just to add to the chaos and we'll-never-figure-this-out atmosphere of despair.

Anyway, we apparently figured it out, got the egg-making hormones in me, because I went this morning for labs and they told me to stay on the same doses. I also had a call with the PGD lab, during which they told me all the ways this could go horribly wrong and make it a hugely expensive and emotionally exhausting waste of time.

In spite of this, I think I'm doing okay -- managing. I think I'm mostly in denial, though it also feels like I have a low-level freakout simmering somewhere below the surface, threatening to jump out and terrify those around me at any moment. H's preschool teacher told me today that they went to Chapel for the first time and talked about the fact that God wants us to be kind to one another, and the thought of eight tiny people learning to be kind struck some sort of nerve and I welled up. I mean, should I just wear a t-shirt or sign like "Ask me about my IVF" so people know what they're dealing with right now?

Mostly this whole process is just reminding me of what it was like four years ago, when I was an entirely different person doing this. When I didn't have a beautiful, amazing, miracle of a boy already living under my roof. When I wasn't sure I'd ever win the battle and be a mama. I just think, What if it hadn't worked? Or what if the fact that it did was this incredible unlikelihood and we just lined everything up perfectly, every single thing, and that perfect combination of tiny things we didn't even know we were doing somehow made it possible? What if one of those things hadn't happened? Who would I be right now?

Right now I'm just a mama trying to see if I can do it all over again. I ask for nothing more than the same thing that parents all over the world get every single day, without trying very hard at all.