Take that, students

It's midterm week, and I'm preparing the exam for my large lecture course. Now is the time when I get to retaliate against the students who have been irritating me with their insufficiently rapt attention and their stupid questions and remarks. (E.g., Me: What's your intuitive understanding of what consciousness is? Student: It's that voice in your head telling you what's wrong and right.) And yet, I find I'm not that inclined to make the questions super hard. Maybe it's some kind of newly awakened maternal instinct. Maybe I'm just too tired to deal with all the outraged e-mails that inevitably follow a nice, tough exam. Whatever. There's always the final exam.

Meanwhile, today I randomly picked an OB from the office where I want to be seen. (Receptionist: And what's the purpose of your visit? Me:..........Uh........I'm pregnant?) It's in the same suite as my clinic, and you might think I'd never want to see the place again. But it's so damn convenient. Plus, I started out with an OB in that office, long ago when I thought could just get pregnant, no problem. I like the sense of returning after a detour down the hall to the Land of Pain and Suffering. I set up an appointment for November first. It feels very odd to randomly choose someone, but I have no friends to advise me, and it turns out to be rather hard to find information sans personal referrals. It also feels very odd to not have an appointment for three weeks. How am I supposed to believe Bun Bun is okay until then? But I guess that's what I have to do.

Goodby, garden

It never ceases to amaze me how smart and thoughtful and...willing to be nice to me you guys are. Thank you. I slapped BFB around a little and she apologized. (Actually, she apologized before I even had to slap her around.) You're right that it will take a while to find our new equilibrium, but I think we will.

This weekend I put the garden to bed for the winter. When I did my first round of planting this season I posted a photo along with a request that it not be a totally barren year. It has instead been a pretty fucking fruitful year. I finally had enough tomatoes, and I even got a volunteer butternut squash plant (or pumpkin, for my Australian and New Zealander friends) that must have sprouted from a seed in the compost. I love butternut squash, and this plant produced two little beauties, one of which made a delicious soup for us last week (with fried sage leaves! Mmmm!). And then there's the little fruit presumably still ripening all up in my womb. I can't believe it. I would have bet a considerable sum on the reverse outcome, for reals.

Also this weekend: Mr. Bunny accused me of glowing. I was like, Whatever! You've just forgotten what it looks like when I'm HAPPY because it's been so fucking long.

Telling BFB

After my ultrasound on Tuesday, I shared the news with BFB. (That's Best Friend with Baby, my sometimes very sweet, sometimes totally insensitive best friend. For a good picture of our relationship, you could read my interview with her.) E-mail might seem a little cold for a best friend, but it's a totally normal medium of communication for us. Except...after she moved to California, I requested that we not speak for a while. Every e-mail from her just reminded me of what she had that I didn't, and I thought maybe if she just left me alone, I'd actually get some benefit from her absence. She was totally cool about it. In fact, I didn't even get the impression that she particularly minded. As a result, this was the first she'd heard from me in about two months. She was very excited, and we planned to have a phone conversation last night. So we did. Most of the conversation was fine. I got to tell her about every last detail of my adventures and she was enthusiastic. But two things were not fine.

1. I still found it painful to hear about her baby's antics. Jane is seven months now, and doing all sorts of remarkable things. It still hurt my heart to hear about them. This should not have surprised me. First, although I might be looking at my golden ticket off IF island, I might not. There's a long way to go before I find out. So it's not like my journey is over. And I spent a long year being tormented by the sight of her all pregnant and then having a cooing, gurgling infant. There's no reason why the pain would evaporate without a trace. Everyone says that IF leaves scars; even if I had my baby in my arms right now, I'd still be a changed person as a result of my experience.

2. After a perfectly reasonable conversation, BFB revealed that my asking her for some space left her feeling like shit. I can totally see how this would be the case. I bet that's how I'd feel! And she's had to do a certain about of bending over backwards to accommodate my precious feelings during the past year, much of which has probably been painful for her (as bending over backwards tends to be). Still, I wish she hadn't hit me with that at the end. It blindsided me and made me feel like the whole conversation had been false. That she'd just been putting on a pretense of interest and happiness while actually seething with resentment.

I'm so tired of negotiating things in this friendship, of apologizing for not being able to put my own feelings aside, of feeling guilty for whatever dampening effect I have on her experience of motherhood, of not being a good enough friend. I found myself wondering whether a friendship that requires this much delicate handling is really worth it. The thought of just giving up on it felt wonderfully restful.

I expect that I'll cool off and feel ready to work this kink out soon enough. The anger is probably mainly a reaction to learning that I hurt someone without really knowing it. And maybe I should have renewed contact with her before telling her about this development, so that we could have had a conversation about the period of non-communication before we talked about babies. I don't know. I just feel like shit.

What happened to sex?

I'm too embarrassed to actually admit how infrequently I've had sex since the obligatory post IUI bout. (And even then, doctor's orders were to screw that day and for the following two days and we managed only that same day.) And since you know all about my uterus and orgasms and whatnot, you know the number is SMALL if I'm not willing to spit it out, 'cause I'm pretty frank with y'all. But it's even smaller than you think.

My sex drive is deader than it's even been, and that's saying something. It was dead leading up to this IUI. It was dead during it, and it has remained dead. And yeah, the never-ending cold and not sleeping well and being extra tired and feeling a little pukey and not wanting my breasts touched isn't helping, but I don't think those factors would stop me if I were actually hankering for some man meat.

What the fuck, y'all? Frankly, it's becoming a bit alarming. I've heard that the more sex you have the more you want, so maybe I just have to force it until I warm up again. (Gee, doesn't that sound both healthy and enjoyable?) I've also heard that the second trimester can revive the sex drive. But what if it doesn't? What if I never want to have sex again!? And I also know that most of us go through periods like this, but this feels extra severe, and, I dunno, weirdly continuous with the whole IF has killed my sex drive experience. It seems like things should be DIFFERENT, now that things are, you know, different. Any words of encouragement? Any tips for rekindling the flame?

Remember Viking Rune Candle Lady?

Long time readers may recall the woman who gave me the VIKING RUNE CANDLE. She's the wife of a friend of Mr. Bunny's, and while we are not at all close, she knew about my IF because she herself had been through six miscarriages and was very open about the whole thing, so I opened up to her a little. At the time the VIKING RUNE CANDLE (it has to be capitalized) was presented to me, she was early into her seventh pregnancy. Mr Bunny mentioned to me last night that she had a baby boy a few weeks ago. I was totally overjoyed. She is a really weird lady, but it makes me so happy to think that she MADE IT. I know success stories for RPL abound, and there's no reason why this one should mean anything to those of you suffering through the experience, but... After the VIKING RUNE CANDLE had been sitting around the house for a few weeks, I finally lit it and said a secular prayer for all of us. It worked for her. (Yes, I'm taking credit for her successful pregnancy.) It looks like it might work for me. Who knows how far-reaching the power of the VIKING RUNE CANDLE will turn out to be!

Bun Bun lives

All was well at this morning's ultrasound. Bun Bun has grown the right amount, is sporting a head (Sweet! Definitely going to need that later in life!), some fine lookin' limb buds, and a heart beating away at an appropriate rate. I got to say goodbye to my RE. I told him how grateful we were and he was like, I'm a freaky little doctor man and don't know how to deal with human emotions, despite the fact that I do it all damn day! He gave me a hug, patted my knee, and then patted the top of my head. I don't know, man. But the end result is that I have to find a fucking OB. Holy shit.

There's a long way to go, and I'm not going to take a single day for granted. But I have to confess that while part of me is still so very scared, a much larger part of me believes this is going to work out. Foolhardy? Perhaps. But I'm sick and tired of protecting my heart. I'm ready to live a little!

That's how I feel today, anyway.

Oh drugstore.com order list, thou art a mirror of my soul

I buy all my drugstore-type-products online, partly so I can purchase embarrassing things without human contact, and partly because we're a one-car family, so it's often not convenient for me run out and get something. An interesting consequence is that I have a record of all my IF purchases. To wit:

The last order for birth control pills.
The fertility monitor.
The sad series of test sticks for the fertility monitor.
My first box of pregnancy tests.
A pathetic string of orders for fertility monitor test sticks and pregnancy tests.
Just pregnancy tests. No need for the test sticks once we started ART.
Magnesium citrate for the BOWEL PREP prior to my laparoscopy.
More pregnancy tests.
Vitamin E oil for my myomectomy scar.
The fateful box of pregnancy tests that contained one lucky test destined to be my first real positive.
Morning sickness drops.

I wonder what will come next? Will I get to order a series of alarming products from the heretofore detested "baby and mom" section? Or will my next order come from the "my baby turned out to be dead at my nine week ultrasound" section? I haven't thrown up since I wrote that complainy post, so I'm not at all sure it won't be the latter. I hope they sell liquor in the dead baby section.