Mommy Odyssey

Before I begin, a little announcement: A few of you have asked what happened to Rachel at e*g*g*s**i*n**a**r*o*w. Well, she’s moved over to new digs and you can find those new digs right here.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled blog post. In three acts. Because I feel like it.

ACT I – Eggs of Steel! (Shyeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt)

So yeah, I was about here last week. Absolutely sure that there was no way in heck I was knocked up, yet completely hoping that I was, somehow, magically preggo. Oh, and I got precisely ZERO positive OPK’s this month. I initially dismissed it, since we weren’t actually trying this month so it “wasn’t important”, and I figured I just missed the surge or something. But remember this – it becomes important later.

Anywhoozers, I was going nuts. So two days before AF was due, I used up one of my two (!) remaining Rolls Royce pee sticks. Guess what? Only one line. So my pee was only semi-magic, since it didn’t make the coveted second line appear.

ACT II – Pee-Stick-O-Rama

I didn’t let that one BFN stop me! Oh no! Granted, I wasn’t going to waste my one remaining Rolls Royce, but I had a nice little stock of OPK’s,  and they are almost as good, according to the best website on the planet. So, for three days, every morning (ok, and a couple of times in the afternoon) I peed. And peed. And peed some more. Alas, no second line. Although once I thought I did see a hint of something, so I decided to pee on a real HPT (the one that came free with the OPK’s), and alas, my pee was half-magic again. Fail.

Apart from the obsessive peeing, my uterus started hurting. Not literally, but I was finding myself telling Shmerson about once (or maybe twice. Ok, three times. Four. I swear it was only four times) a day: “I can haz baby now?”

Shmerson didn’t really know how to react to that. I don’t blame him. Poor Shmerson and his crazy wife.

Act III: The Unraveling

So CD 33 rolls around. I still wouldn’t use my Rolls Royce, but I was going a little crazy.  Before my pregnancy with Nadav my cycle was like clockwork. 30 days. Ovulation on CD 18. Always.

But before my first pregnancy, my PCOS was in full form. AF would show up (at best) once every 4-5 months or so.

So on CD 33 I started panicking. What if my cycle is screwy again? What if I can’t ovulate on my own any more? What if we need fertility treatments on top of everything else we have to go through?

My head was spinning. To make matters worse, I had an appointment with my GP that morning to get a few routine blood tests done, and I had to tell her about what happened with Nadav. She knows my whole history. She cried with me when I told her.

Not a good start to my day.

Of course, I couldn’t let it go and bought yet ANOTHER HPT at the pharmacy, and of course – one single solitary line again.

I was starting to freak out. That’s it. We’re done for. We’re going to have to do injectables. Or IVF. Or something. Or my eggs have started to suck. I’m screwed. I’m officially screwed.

After that little adventure I had a class to teach. But not before crying just a little bit in the bathroom. That was fun.

After my class I was obsessively checking my three (yes, three) cycle-tracking apps, trying to make sense of what was going on. I was in the parking lot when I decided I would just bite the bullet and call the Russian.

But wait! Why call when he’s exactly a one-minute drive away from where I teach?

So yeah, I decided to go to his office instead. Without an appointment.

His secretary was gracious and snuck me in for a couple of minutes. He gave me his usual exasperated look as I recounted the fact that AF was late and that I hadn’t had a positive OPK this month.

Through rolling eyes he told me to calm down, and gave me a prescription to jump-start AF, but told me not to fill it until it was 10 days late, and only after a negative HPT.

Armed with the script, I walk out of his office, not feeling much better. What if it’s another ectopic and that’s why I keep getting BFNs? What the hell is wrong with my freaking body?

A couple of hours later I had a shrink appointment. I spent most of it ranting about my late period. And about how tired I am of all of this and how I just want it all behind me.

At the end of the session she asked: And where are YOU in all of this?

My answer: Who knows? I haven’t been me in two years.

So I leave the Shrink’s office hysterical, and I go to pick Shmerson up from the train station. By the time I get there I’m a blubbering mess.

He asks what’s wrong. I answer something like:

“OhmygodI’msotiredofallofthisandmyperiodislateandIdon’tknowifI’mpregnantandI

havesomuchworktodoandIcan’tconcentrateandthissucksandI’msickofwantingababy

sobadlyandIjustwantthistobebehindusandhaveImentionedhowmuchthissucks?”

Poor Shmerson.

He drives us home and orders a pizza while I try to pull myself together and cancel a meeting I had the next day, because seriously, I don’t go into meetings puffy-eyed.

I take a shower, take one of my 10-pound-hammer happy pills and go to bed.

EPILOGUE

The next morning, 8am, CD 34, AF shows up.

Turns out I have some crappy-ass PMS.

Breathe, regroup, apologize to my poor abused husband, and do this all again at the end of this month.

Hopefully with a little less crazy.

Dude – if this is how I am when I’m just cycling, how in the heck am I going to survive six months of bed rest?