Fate is on our side, finally

With bated breath, I checked Serenity's blog and literally screamed when I read her post.

If anyone has earned an IF badge of honor, she has.

And no one else on the planet deserves to have a healthy baby more than Serenity and J. After all that they have been through.

I know that so many bloggers have already sent their love and well-wishes, but I want to ask the powers that be for a healthy and successful pregnancy.

As my "avid readers" know (you all know that I use this phrase tongue-in-cheek, right?), I don't believe in a god. Or hell. Life is hell, as I love to say. So, if there is a god, then I am certainly in the doghouse.

For those of you who have faith, please say a prayer for my dear friend....

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On an entirely different and less interesting note, I have returned from the sunshine state. Aside from a drunk and boisterous parent to two children sitting in back of us on the plane (how unfair is it that people like that can reproduce??!!) and a couple of delays, the trip home was fine.

But I realized something this morning, when I sat on the dock at the back of the rental property for one last time.

I am really really angry. I spent the week beating myself up for no longer being in shape. For being overweight (most height-weight charts put me at the top of the normal range but it is easily 20 pounds above and beyond my "ideal" weight). I couldn't shake it. I psychologically beat myself black-and-blue with criticism of my appearance - from the moment I woke up each morning to the minute I fell asleep each night.

Which just made me even angrier. That there is no vacation from these feelings.

It wasn't until the last peaceful moment of my vacation that I realized why I was being so hard on myself.

I am so so hurt that I am not yet a parent. And I am entirely afraid that I will never have my biological child. I know that I will be a parent someday, no matter what it takes, but I don't want to play this game for another year.

I will be incredibly depressed if I get a BFP this cycle, which I am anticipating.

I ovulated on CD11 or 12. Today is CD16. I have experienced some weird cramping in my uterus and breasts but the BIG C causes so many strange sensations that they only frustrate me. I have experienced *nothing* definitive in terms of signs or symptoms.

But I have certainly found some validation in my latest distraction. You know how sometimes a book jumps off of the shelf and it is the right story at the right time?

Have any of you read "Happiness Sold Separately" by Lolly Winston? The basic plot is that a couple's marriage is falling apart after two years of IF, which included a series of unsuccessful IUIs and IVFs.

I literally gasped at some parts simply because she captures the pain and feelings of defeat so well.

I am only on Chapter 3, but here are a few of my favorite passages:

"[L]ately this competence has been replaced by an overwhelming urge to lie down. By an exhaustion that lingers in her bones like the flu."

"By the time her fortieth birthday rolled around, she felt like a malfunctioning farm animal that needed to be put down."

[During a conversation in which her husband wants to talk, Elinor says:] "That's the problem. I don't think that I am capable of talking, Ted. I can scream, I can break things, but I don't think I can talk."

That's where I am. I think I should cry more. And hit pillows or something. I simply can't shake this frustrated sadness. I know that the Big C is partly to blame, but it is only magnifying feelings that I would have anyway.

I feel trapped. I can't change my situation. Mr. LIW and I had more se.x than we have had in years within four days of the u/s that indicated that I was ready to ovulate.

If this doesn't work, how can anything else? [Certainly this means that the "natural" route will never work, right?]

I know that these thoughts are illogical, there's still courses of treatment we have yet to pursue, but I can't help feeling defeated.

An HSG is next in my treatment plan and my biggest worry is not the pain of the procedure; it is the disappointment I will face if checking/clearing my tubes does not do the trick.

I am tired of feeling disappointed. And it has only been about 14 months of disappointment.

How can I get through this without damaging my self-esteem or going back to my old compulsive exercising ways?

I don't want to be in this space but yet there is nowhere else I can be right now....