Waiting for the phone call

Here I am, waiting with a very large knot in my stomach, for the phone call that will officially end our first IVF cycle. Even though I KNOW it will be negative because I truly can't believe that the HPT could be wrong, part of me apparently still hopes.

I cried so much yesterday I'm not sure I really need to cry today when I get the news. But, I imagine I will. I'm still going to blame it on all the progesterone surging through my body, but I imagine I'd cry anyway. Although, I have to admit, there have been times in my life when I should have cried, that I just couldn't. And of course, many many times when I shouldn't have cried, that I did. And most of those in public.

And have I mentioned I don't cry pretty? My face gets all red and blotchy and puffy, really puffy. And then I can't see out of my contacts because they start to feel all cloudy and goopy. And then I'm exhausted and all I want to do is sleep. Of course sleeping is the best way to escape from it.

When the call comes, and after the "I'm so sorry, it was negative" bit, I'm going to take a Xanax, maybe even two. Then I think I might crawl in to bed with Old Faithful, because I deserve a good buzz, and since I've been so damn horny from the progesterone but couldn't do anything about it, it's about time I get off.

And then maybe a couple margaritas this weekend are in order.

So how long does it take for the hormones to get back to normal? When will the crazies go away? And do I really have to wait a full cycle before I can start again? That means I can't start Lupron for at least another 7 weeks. Which means our next cycle would be September/October I think. Right smack in the middle of our annual vacation to visit my family.

So now I'm going through the it's not fair crap. I guess part of me really did think that I had gone through enough with all the fertility treatments we did a few years ago. Then the years in between believing it might work on it's own. I wonder just how many periods I've had that I've cursed over. Adding the adoption of TB, and the stress of it all as we discovered his special needs and faught for help for him. Then this cycle all the ups and downs with AD's sperm/no sperm issue. I thought maybe we had been through enough, and that the cosmos would agree and finally grant it to us.

I'll have to add everything up, but I think we have spent about 15K for this cycle with all the extra stuff we had to do (multiple SA's, the ICSI, assisted hatching, banking the sperm we did get, having donor sperm on back up, my choice to do acupuncture). And of course all the regular costs involved.

We took out a home equity loan with the thought it would pay for 3 cycles (assuming one would be a frozen), and give us enough to pay off a bit of debt we had. Well, this cycle cost a little more than I thought, and our air conditioner broke the end of may, so we had to spend 9K replacing the heat and cooling system in our house. We had hoped to have enough left that when I got pregnant we could replace the rust bucket that I drive, and get a safe, family car, like a minivan. This isn't going to happen though. Because I looked at our account, and what we have left is only going to cover another cycle, with maybe a little left over. Maybe enough to do a third cycle if we had embryos left that made it to cryo. Which afer this cycle seems unlikely.

I'm rambling now, I realize that. Blah, blah, blah.

Yet, here I am, still waiting for the call, still hoping. Am I fucking insane?