Summer Plans

A girlfriend emailed me today to make plans for a girls weekend this summer. She doesn’t know about our challenges with infertility. She proposed a date in August. First thing I had to think about was where we might be in our treatment. Can I make plans for August? What if I need to stay close to home for treatment that weekend? How will I explain if I need to cancel the trip? Maybe I just shouldn’t make plans at all.

Time-Out. My plans have been on hold for so long. Trying to plan my life around the possibility that we might be moving forward with IVF on a certain date is making it impossible to live my life. I wrote back and told her that I would LOVE to plan a girls weekend and the date she proposed would be perfect.

There is a scenario in which I’ll have to cancel because of treatment, but the chances are so small. Even though I just know that we have more bad news waiting for us when we get our next SA at the end of July, I want to believe that they will find sperm and we will start IVF with my cycle that month, which would mean I couldn’t go away. Small chances, so tiny, not even worth mentioning. Its amazing how a glimmer of a chance can be enough to control my life. I sure don’t plan my summer around the chance that I could catch the flu, get laid off, break my leg, win the lottery, etc. Crazy. When I think about it like that, I feel a little bit crazy!

Final Summer without Kids

It was a few years ago that I started thinking this could be the last summer we do this or that free from the burden of kids. (yep, we used to say things like that - little did we know the burden would actually be getting those kids.) What stands out most in my mind is a summer camping trip we take every year with a group of friends from college. Definitely not the kind of trip that would be appropriate for little ones, but loads for fun for us bigger ones.

We were on one of these adventures the first time we ‘slipped’ up on our birth control. It was late afternoon, we were having the most wonderful time, we got caught up in the moment, and, well, one thing led to another. I knew it was late in my cycle, but oh my god, we hadn’t planned on this, and anything was possible. I was happy. Really happy. Just knowing that there was a possibility that we could have conceived made me so happy. Just knowing that he might be ready to really start trying made me so happy.  It was a pure innocent kind of happiness, a calm happiness that I yearn to have again.

I was sure that trip we were on that summer would be the last one like it that we took without kids.

Fast forward to 2010. Yeah, so here we are years later planning the annual summer camping trip, headed back to the same forest where the first (what was supposed to have been fateful) incident took place.

I am excited about a vacation and spending time with our good friends. I especially love vacations because I get to spend so much time with him. The timing of the trip is really nice because we will be just finishing up four months of hormone therapy that is supposed to generate sperm production. We’ll get the SA before we leave, (expecting negative results), and will probably appreciate a chance to get away and grieve together.

I don’t find myself thinking anymore that maybe this will be the last summer we do this without kids. I just want to find a way to enjoy the experience without any expectation of what comes next. I want to enjoy the moment, to love in the moment, to let go of these expectations and fears and enjoy it for what it is. This is my life and I’ve spent too long thinking about conception and planning my life around it. This is it. It may or may not be our final summer trip without kids. Regardless, this is my life, and it is up to me to live it.

Lemon Cheesecake

We made my mom the most delicious lemon cheesecake for Mothers Day dinner. It was so good, and I ate way too much.  I thought that Mothers Day might be hard, but it was fine. I am grateful to have such a wonderful mom and family. I am happy for my friends who have perfect little ones and are expecting perfect little ones. It was my mom who brought it up, who expressed her grief for me and hope that maybe next year there will be reason to celebrate.

Hope has been so elusive, and although I feeling a thousand times better recently, I still can't bring myself to think that "maybe next year at this time" we will be parents. There is way too much hope in a statement like that.

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I read a study that there are a disproportionate number of female bloggers. The researchers found that teens and young women were empowered in communicating their thoughts and feelings and ideas and fears in the form of a blog. Blogs offered a mix of diary-writing and public validation. I've been thinking about this blog for a long time and ready to give it  try. I need my voice now more than ever.