Every Ovary Has a Silver Lining

I can’t lie. These last two weeks have not been what I would characterize as fabulous. They’ve been filled with feelings of failure, frustration and thanks to a bought of food poisoning, a fear of tuna fish. That’s right. Charlie the Tuna kicked my sorry digestive system on Tuesday night. Don’t let the smile fool you. 'Sorry Charlie' my ass…

But I digress…

Even though I typically am pretty successful at keeping expectations in check, this past cycle failing particularly bummed me out. Not helping matters was when I got my period; I got a crop of the worst pimples on my chin. Sure, I break out here and there around my time of the month, but this was like a freaking colony of blemishes. I’ve actually lost count of how many huge pimples I have on my chin right now. I would not be the least bit shocked if a blind person felt my chin and my zits spelled out, “Still Not Pregnant” in a sort of brail. Really… M. Night Shyamalan could make a movie about it. It would be called, “The Prophetic Pimples”.

But I digress again…

I went to see my most recent Reproductive Endocrinologist a few days ago. He started the session with, “I’m sorry you’re back.” As depressing as that statement is, I appreciated the sentiment as I was sorry I was back too.

Sam and I decided that we’d give it one more month of trying on our own before returning to medical assistance. I do have ambivalence about this as I don’t know if I can bear another period or another crop of pimples like the ones I have now but the doctor felt one more month wasn’t going to hurt or help either way. It’s not like we’re delaying anything for a year. It’s just one month to see if we can get Sam’s sperm and my egg to finally hook up once and for all. Jeez. It sounds like our reproductive parts are Ross and Rachel on Friends.

Today is this fifth day of my latest cycle. This will officially be the third time we’ll try on our own to conceive since my uterine polyp was removed. Some say the third time is the charm but it just may be, in fact, the third time and nothing more. After all, I have already done three inseminations and the third one those didn’t work so I’m not buying into none of that anymore. Besides, since we’ve already decided that if this doesn’t work, we’ll go back to injectables and insemination, I’m going to go back to where I was a few months ago and keep the pressure and expectations as low as possible. With this back up plan in place, this cycle should be nothing more than ‘let’s not think about it and just have lots of sex’. I've had cycles like that before and they were damn fun.

Yes, it would be lovely if we were successful this month and yes, I would love to avoid more shots, procedures and hospital gowns if we could but it is just one month, we have a plan and after the disappointment of last month, I physically need not to care about this for a few weeks… if that’s possible.

So, even though I have not been in my happy place lately, even though there’s no good news to share at the moment and even though I will most likely never eat tuna fish again, I do feel like there has been rays of hope and promise streaming through the clouds of crap.