The anticipation is the most challenging aspect.
Chance conspired to give us only one try at conception this month. We had two last time, and three is the goal. This is our second cycle, and it's both harder and easier than the first time. There are new fears: my luteal phase is too short, this pregnancy will fail like the last one, since we only got one try, it's not going to work, etc.
There are hopes, too. My body started a pregnancy the first time we tried. That makes it likely that I am fertile and reproductively capable, and that swim team Iron Will is going for the gold. (We threatened to get Will a swim trophy, because his little dudes clearly have what it takes). As for the short luteal phase, I'm lucky that it's fairly minor. Mine is 9-11 days, but I've seen people online allude to 4-6 day phases. That means that the body starts flushing the uterine lining before a fertilized egg even gets to the uterus! I'm trying everything I can to lengthen my luteal phase and raise my progesterone. I'm taking 100mg of B6, 120 mg of Chasteberry, and a bioidentical progesterone cream.
I'm also trying to get in to see my doctor. This experience had led me to appreciate the little things that make such a difference when your heart is on the line. I called my doctor's office. Her smile is dazzlingly beautiful, and her bedside manner is gracious and warm. Everyone is "gorgeous" and "honey." I'd give her a B+ on gay stuff, a C on queerness, and probably a D- on trans. That's not unusual. It will be interesting to see if she takes the opportunity to learn, as I've had several friends of the queer/trans variety ask for her information and become her patients. She is African American and her staff is entirely people of color of whom several seem to be gay/queer and her clinic shares office space and patients with a Chinese medicine and acupuncture outfit, and she takes many, many kinds of insurance. If she brushes up on care for queer folk, she'll be running about the best, most diverse, most welcoming local clinic in town. Her staff is professional, friendly, attentive, and I've never had a bad stick there. She's great about giving you the clearest information in a way you can understand. She wants my cholesterol down, which I know is responsible, but it kind of annoys me because I don't want to take statins, my diet is healthy and very low cholesterol, and the pattern for women in my family is (a) until 30s, low blood pressure and low cholesterol, (b) 30s through middle age, low blood pressure and highish cholesterol, (c) after menopause, high blood pressure and highish cholesterol. This seems to hold true depite many variations in lifestyle, climate, diet, and medication. I know it's unusual for a person to have an army of clones for medical reference, but that's how we do in my family. A bevvy of females. A matriarchy with my grandmother at the head (and my mom next in line of succession). We're all slight variations on a template, so you only have to look around the family tree to see your future.
Anyway, a week before I was due to ovulate, I realized that while I'd seen (and taken) over the counter progesterone, the medicine people were talking about on all the TTC websites is available by prescription only.
Boo.
So I call my doctor and (unsurprisingly) she is booked for the whole week. One of her staff, a beautiful young man named Alfonso, took my call. It would have been easy to just schedule me and note "would like advice on a prescription," but he paused and, hearing the urgency in my voice, asked if I would be willing to tell him more about it. I poured out the facts as quickly as I could: I am a queer person starting a family and trying to get pregnant through assisted insemination, I've been charting for months, my luteal phase is on the short side, last month I lost an early pregnancy, I need medical support to sustain a pregnancy, and the sooner the better because I was about to try again. Alfonso repeated everything back to me and said, "I'm going to talk to the doctor as soon as she gets out of her next appointment. I'll call you back before 4." I hung up on the verge of tears, just because someone seemed to take my needs seriously. I felt like I had support.
When he called back, he said that my doctor was willing to prescribe the cream, but wanted a hormone panel first. I came in the next morning, got a perfect stick (as usual--seriously, I can't tell you what a big deal it is to have someone competent draw your blood!) and--you guessed it--waited.
Our one insemination happened over the weekend. I figure that if I ovulate on Sunday, the (potentially) fertilized egg has a week to travel before it implants. That meant I had about a week to get my progesterone up and/or extend my luteal phase if I wanted to support implantation. On Monday they got my hormone panel back, but the conversation was really, really frustrating. Again, I still haven't seen the doctor, so I haven't gotten to communicate clearly about what's happening and why I'm asking for help. The message I got was that (1) based on the panel, she doesn't think my hormones need support, (2) she'd like to put me on birth control to regulate my cycle, (3) which means 6-12 months before I can get pregnant. Also (4) my vitamin D is a little low and my cholesterol is a little high and she'd like to straighten that out first.
...
Fun fact! Often ellipses imply a trailing off into silence. In this case, they indicate simmering rage.
I'm trying to chill because I know I still haven't talked to her, so my doctor probably doesn't understand that I'm a healthy person without severe fertility challenges who needs support because we have to borrow sperm for each and every try and I'm 34 so this is not something we can just dick around with okay??? <sigh> I can't imagine if we were paying for sperm and each cycle cost thousands of dollars. How many times could be try before we were forced to give up for simple financial reasons, if we were even willing to consider making a child that couldn't know the beginning of its own story? I don't know how to tell Will and Tink what it means that they choose to help us make a family, and are committed to being a family to us and to Tk. My fear says they'll give up on us, or it will become too awkward or inconvenient. I think it's just a miserable stupid fear, but it gnaws at me when I imagine letting more time slip by because of obstacles that could be removed. If progesterone cream is not going to give me cancer--and research suggests that it isn't--then I'm not interested in hearing about why I can't have what I believe will make a healthy pregnancy happen.
I have an appointment for this coming Monday, which likely means that any help I get will be too late for this attempt--hence the B6, chasteberry, and OTC progesterone cream. Unless you've tried to get pregnant (and I know there are so many people who have it so very much harder than I do) I don't know if you can understand the wordless animal need to make this happen. There's an emotional/intellectual side that wants to parent, wants to meet Tk, wants to continue the experience of family that so enriches my life, wants to make Tk's future as full of opportunity and possibility as it can be. And then there this bloody, hungering, primal goddess-not-like-Aphrodite-think-like-the-Morrigan-or-the-Gorgons. She has teeth and claws and a red ripe womb that's fit to burst with life, and god help you if you get in the way, because she will slash you to pieces and drink you dry.
Ahem.
I might not mention that last part to my doctor. Anyway, I'm taking Socks to the appointment if at all possible, and he's good at medical stuff. We can take turns playing good cop, bad cop.
Because come hell or high water, I am having this baby. And everyone else can help or get out of the way.
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