12dpo, all things old are new again. kind of.

The peach?
MAGNIFICENT.

And eating it took a lot longer than 10 seconds and included juice dripping down my chin.


I am interested in memory, how it shifts, and how I re-discover things, see things as if for the first time, have Ah Ha! moments that I have had before and forgotten, reached conclusions I have reached before without realizing I am tracing the same paths over and over. I think OK now I KNOW something, but do I really? I forget it, put it aside, then find it again later and think OK! Now I ....
Yeah well.

Ahh the thrill of rediscovery. I think I might be doing that with my IVF clinic search. I might be searching and researching just to talk myself out of it. Fear of work disruption, fear of logistical complexity, fear of failure at a place with a better track record and a bigger price tag. Gosh darn.

I've done this before, and not too long ago-- my CCRM and Boston IVF consultations.

So--this time? Shady Grove: IVF until 43 y 11months. Hear ye hear ye
and 9,500 per cycle (since I am too old for shared risk, that ends at 39 for all you youngsters out there). Their stats are *fine*, not sure they are good enough to make me change clinics but I will go ahead and have a phone consult (sept 21st).
DE: Their shared DE program that I am interested in is their 1:3 (one donor per 3 recipients)-- 29,000 for 6 cycles, live take home baby or your money back. You can opt out at any time and get your money back if you just burn out. Max age? 51.

(none of this includes my meds or pretesting of course).

IVF New jersey is sending an info packet in lieu of answering my question more directly about eligibility (age limits) and costs for both IVF and DE.

Chicago AFC is next. (Thanks Onward!)

See, for me it is not just about stats, (they matter a LOT), it is about life too-- how to keep my boss happy while I try to do this surreptitiously (9 people in the company, the boss is The Boss), and also how to do this in a way that makes sense considering Everything. Ideally, I would be able to let this be my full time job- do this thing with all my time and energy, including resting and not always striving and panicking. But in real life, it is only one of the things I am doing. Which I hate, but is real.

Anyway, as I said, it is not just about stats, it is about logistics and finances and tradeoffs of time and travel and money and stats, and it is also about the experience I will have there. I wish I could be all clinical about this, but I am not, I am kate. I am tender and want to feel cared for and about. So this matters to me too.

But all of this is for later (not much later necessarily, but later). Next cycle we'll do a medicated cycle here-- with IVF as the intent, IUI as the backup. Hope the cysts are gone. My darlin' wants to give it a real go here and so do I, since we have not had a real IVF yet, not really, the first IVF was canceled with no eggs retrieved, the second canceled late stim with a lead follicle and was converted to an IUI that worked! for a while! with heartbeat! then we lost the pregnancy and my heart broke. But we have not done a proper true no kidding multiple eggs (or even one) retrieved IVF. It sure would be nice to try.

Of course, I would rather just be and stay pregnant already and not have to DO any of this other crap. It is now 12dpo, I've had only one urge to pee on a stick, an urge that passed. I think I feel resigned to failure this month, realistically. One egg at most, if that, crazy late ovulation, blah blah not sure how to feel, afraid to bother feeling hopeful. Know my temp will drop and that will suck and we'll be off again on the next cycle.
Still tired, still weird about food, still broken out, still headachy. Still emotionally tender/touchy/softhearted...

My bloodwork came back fine so I guess I have to deal with blueness that is blueness. Which I HATE. This truly messes with my sense of self. I think I am kate, a happy person, optimistic, buoyant, resilient. So to have a stretch where I feel so down sucks ass. Messes with my self perception (almost wrote self protection, hmmmmmmmmm).

So anyway,
about that Brett Favre...

On a different note, or maybe not, I realize that I write stuff again and again and again. I am so sorry. I repeat myself. And tend to be redundant at temporally infrequent intervals. Did I mention I am sorry about that? I can hear you all now, yeah yeah, foggy mountain, yeah yeah, blue kate, financial worry, shitty work stress, yeah yeah we know we know we know.

But I swear, in the moment I am writing, it does not matter if I wrote it before, it is what I am thinking and feeling. But I also realize it is probably not so great from a reader sensitivity perspective, unless you are into deja vu-ishness.

At 5am, the sky lightens just enough to see the trees separate from the sky, dark gray from dark gray. I have seen it every morning, sometimes at 4, sometimes at 7 depending on the season. I am sure I have written this before.
But this morning, the sky turned from charcoal to pearl, the trees from shadow to texture. And it feels like magic, like something brand new, and in that moment, I do not care if I have seen it before, if I noticed it before, and now, I will try not to care if I've written about it before. For me, in that moment, it was all brand new.