my ordinary life

it is bizarre how crazy things end up feeling ordinary.

it somehow becomes ordinary to lie back and have a person stick a wand up your hoohoo and
it is somehow ordinary to happily exclaim when you see the dark voids that mean follicles in the strange foreign visual language that is ultrasound.

it is ordinary to mix drugs on the kitchen island, pinch a swatch of belly fat and push a needle in with stinging fluids to make follicles grow, it is ordinary to do this in the aforementioned kitchen, in bathrooms at your own house, in a dunkin donuts, in the library, or just in the car in some parking lot somewhere at the appropriate time.
is ordinary to schedule around it, to realize you'll have to leave yoga class early to do this
or you'll do this and then go grocery shopping

it is ordinary to field strip the syringe, to take your handful of empty vials and throw them away in a container that includes used dental floss, and kleenex, and hair from the drain. the boxes and inserts and plastic trays go into the recycling bin with restoration hardware and landsend and athleta and jjill. it is ordinary to have a recycling bag more full of follistim boxes than of junkmail.

it is ordinary to lie in bed hoping that this will do what it needs to, to hope for feelings of fullness, some sign that something is happening.

it is ordinary to count the follicles along with the ultrasound tech,
assess the plushiness of your own uterine lining,
learn the language of follicle size and count and E2 levels and
it is ordinary to weigh the pros and cons of suppositories versus injections for progesterone support, to weight the pros and cons of heat versus ice, of standing versus lying down

it is ordinary to hope they will poke through the wall of your vagina and suck out eggs and magically make embryos happen in a special little dish and put them back in with a bendy straw made just for things like this
and it is ordinary to speak in code and shorthand of stim and trigger and ER and ET and dpt, and hCG and

it is ordinary to swing from hopefulness to hopelessness and back as you troll the internet for certainty, for statistics that fall in your favor, for the secret to success, the way to get rich quick, lose 100 pounds in 100 days eating chocolate, get pregnant over 40, over 41, over 42...


and then you ask yourself, what is this life I am leading where this is ordinary?

I started this journey with naive absolutes, no injections, no IVF, with many nos that have all morphed into maybes and yeses as other things failed.

Last night I started stims again, and looked at myself in the mirror over the sink, my shirt pulled up, pants down, roll of belly pinched and the needle in and I saw this person, this competent looking hopeful person, doing things I said I would never do.
I'm ok though, I am. It is just the oddest thing ever, this slippery slope of hopefulness, of maybe this time or this protocol or this cycle or these eggs or this lucky roll of the dice...
just
one
more
time
and maybe it will work.

So I hope and swab and stick and pray. Good old ordinary hope... without it, where would we be?