Previously on Self-made Motherhood Blog...
I was freaked out and hugely disappointed to learn that it is illegal for me and my unmarried self to get fertility/conception assistance from any doctor in Hong Kong. For realsies. Check out the ordinance. But i picked myself up, dusted myself off, and was prepared to start all over again by planning an IUI with a major Boston hospital's fertility centre. Short story - here's how that all went:
Me: Hi, I'm single and TTC with frozen/thawed donor sperm and want to do an IUI w/your facility in December. How do I make that happen?
Them: Log on to our patient interface site and upload all your medical records pertaining to your previous fertility treatment.
Me: I haven't had any previous fertility treatment. I've only TTC'd twice. With frozen/thawed donor sperm. At home. So it's not exactly proven (or even suggested at this point) that I have any fertility issues. I just would rather do an IUI this time around to boost my chances since I won't have an opportunity for another year or more. I can't get assistance in Hong Kong because I'm unmarried, so it's against the law.
Them: Oh, okay. Well then just send us all of your medical records pertaining to your previous fertility treatment. Or have your doctor in Hong Kong send your records via the interface site, or by fax.
Me: Oh, um...I think I may have already mentioned this all several times before, but I haven't had any previous fertility treatment. I've only TTC'd twice. With frozen/thawed donor sperm. At home. So it's not exactly proven (or even suggested at this point) that I have any fertility issues. I just would rather do an IUI this time around to boost my chances since I won't have an opportunity for another year or more. I can't get assistance in Hong Kong because I'm unmarried, so it's against the law.
Them: Oh, I see. Well then, we'll have to run all your labs and testing when you get here.
Me: What kind of labs? I do have some standard bloodwork from my primary care physician in NYC, and also my most recent pap and STI screening. I could have all that sent over to you...
Them: No, we'll have to run the tests here.
Me: Well, I won't have insurance in the US when I come. Could you at least tell me how much any/all of this is going to cost?
Them: Hi *S. I'm a totally different person than who you've been corresponding with. I run the IVF clinic here. I'll just need all your previous medical records from your previous fertility treatment to assess your situation.
Me: Right...well, as I mentioned already...several times to the person before, I haven't had any previous fertility treatment. I've only TTC'd twice. With frozen/thawed donor sperm. At home. So it's not exactly proven (or even suggested at this point) that I have any fertility issues. I just would rather do an IUI this time around to boost my chances since I won't have an opportunity for another year or more. I can't get assistance in Hong Kong because I'm unmarried, so it's against the law. Also, how much is this all going to cost?
Them: Oh, I see. Well, the initial consult is $674. One day IUI is $891, and two-day IUI is $1782.
Them again: Hi *S. I'm a different different person than the last two people you've been in contact with. I handle financial services for the IVF clinic. Okay, so if you're doing unmedicated or Clomid cycle, it's $761. If you're using injectables, then it's $2,684.88.
Them again: Did you get our last e-mail? You'll also have to have an initial consultation which will cost $674. And from there we can determine what labs/tests will have to be run. This will increase your initial cost of treatment. Any questions?
Now picture me huddled up in front of my laptop reading this last message, rocking back and forth in the fetal position. And....scene.
So after an appropriate amount of freak out time, I did what any self-respecting nerd would do: I went back to some hardcore research. I remembered reading somewhere that someone had done their IUI at home, but it turned out her best friend was a nurse, so the nurse friend learned the procedure and did it for her at home. BUT, someone else had done it at home with a midwife. So I started researching Boston+Midwife+IUI.
After a lot of sorting of procedures and services, and mapping of distances, I came down to two places. 1. Midwives at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge (MAMAH). 2. Alternative Insemination Center of Greater Boston (AICGB) in Arlington. I sent out a preliminary e-mail to MAMAH. AICGB didn't have an e-mail. Only a contact number. And since I hadn't yet figured out how to dial internationally on my cheapie rechargeable HK SIM card, I let it rest for a minute. A minute lasted exactly two days. I'd e-mailed over the weekend, so when I didn't hear anything back by Tuesday night (Hong Kong time), I figured out my SIM card dialing situation and called MAMAH. I explained my situation (living in HK, in Boston in December, want to try IUI). The person in charge was in a meeting, but the person I spoke to answered a bunch of my questions and told me that they do IUI only at their Arlington branch, and gave me the number to call to talk to someone directly there. Check this out: they charge $163 for the initial consultation, and then it's $190 per IUI. What were they charging me for at the mega hospital? Bureaucracy?!?!
So, just as I was about to dial MAMAH's Arlington branch, I looked down at my notes and realised that it was the same phone number I had for AICGB. Apparently, they used to be separate, but now they were merged. Well then!
In the interim, I've been e-mailing back and forth with a coordinator there. She's been fabulous and very attentive. She thinks it's awesome that I'm going for it in December. And she's taken my family medical history via e-mail and says my initial consult will be pretty short since we're getting most of this stuff out of the way in advance. I e-mailed scans of whatever medical records I do have and also PDF's of my charts from FertilityFriend.com. She said since I had all my physical exams, pap, and STI screening done in late December and late January, I won't have to make myself crazy trying to get it all done again. I just has to be within a year of IUI. And I come in just a few weeks under the wire. YAY! I am missing tests for Rubella, Varicella, Hepatitis C, and CMV. So i need to sort those out before I come.
In other Hong Kong awesome/kinda weird news: I signed up for Groupon HK, and found this in my inbox recently. It includes FSH, LH, and Prolactin levels testing (which I've never had checked before, but are good to know about when you're TTC), pap smear, breast exam, breast ultrasound, and pelvic ultrasound. No sh*t! And the cost? Total $888 HKD (approximately $114 USD). So weird! But i figure I should get a new pap before I TTC in December, because if/when I get knocked up, I definitely don't want any unnecessary poking and prodding up in there. Also, if you guys only knew how hard I tried to get a mammogram in NYC before I started TTC. If you don't have major medical insurance AND an already presenting lump, it is impossible to do for free or low cost if you're under 40 years old. Even when I explained that my mother was diagnosed at age 31, and I'm now 35...no dice. I got a lot of: "Well, you should definitely get screened then! But you'll have to pay out of pocket because we only test women over 40 here." Then with a random Groupon, I get a breast ultrasound (which are actually less invasive/uncomfortable/painful and can show abnormalities sooner). And it's a fraction of the price! Mind=Blown
Also, ordered one IUI vial of Bachelor #1 this past week. I'm waiting for a transfer from my HK bank to my US bank to go through (hopefully soon) so that I can order another one. I checked availability, and he currently has less than 10 IUI vials, and also less than 10 ICI vials before he's on hold for quarantine of the next batch again. I think the IUI vials go quicker, so I may have to get an ICI vial and have it prepped at MAMAH when I get there. AND, I have a friend who's going to be TTC with the same donor around the same time, so I'm hoping and praying for Christmas miracles for us both!
Stay tuned...
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Perturbed is not even the word...
Hi Hi.
So, as you all know, when I got the offer to move to HK for work, it kicked my TTC plans into high gear and I jumped right in to do my first at-home ICI. BUT, at that time, the vials that I had pre-ordered for Bachelor #1 were still in quarantine AND I was told at that time that he was "off the catalogue" officially, and would not be available for more vials in the future except for sibling vials to families that had already conceived with him. It was a little devastating, but I didn't want to wait, and because of the move with work, didn't have the option to wait. I traded in my Bachelor #1 vials for Bachelor #2 vials and moved forward. Bachelor #2 was in very good health, his grandparents were either still living or had died of natural causes into their 80's and 90's. And he seemed like an all around decent human being. Plus, I had his childhood photo. He was a cute kid, and I didn't see any potential for a bad mix of physical DNA (i.e. ugly babies....just keepin' it real y'all. If I were doing this the old-fashioned way, I'd want to be attracted to the person I'd be making babies with, right?). So June rolled around and I tried my well-timed at-home ICI with Bachelor #2. BFN. But I got right back up and geared up for the next cycle (the last one before I would leave the country for work for the foreseeable future). At the last minute, I got a message from the lovely Miss T. She and I were both in want of Bachelor #1, and she just found out that he was suddenly, very unexpectedly available and back on the catalogue! You can read all about the harrowing tale of my second attempt (ICI 2.0) here. Long story short: BFN. Super depressed. A lot of crying and eating my feelings covered in ice cream.
Well, then I worked through some issues. Did some soul searching and big questions of life, the universe, and everything asking. I looked ahead to see when I might be ovulating in December. If there was just the tiniest glimmer of hope that I might be able to try again while I was back in the States at Christmas time. OMG, more than a glimmer. So, that's the current plan. Step off plane in Boston, sleep, go meet some people about getting knocked up.
Of course, I was well aware that Bachelor #1 is well-liked and may turn up unavailable come December. So I hit the books again (or rather the laptop again) and started pouring over the donor catalogue at The Bank. I like my Bachelor #2, but though he is a man of color, the color is technically not Black (i.e. African or African American ancestry). I figured it's been a while since I looked at other options, so I may as well see if anyone new has come into play. Hopefully, Bachelor #1 will be there when I need him. And if I don't find anyone awesome-r, then Bachelor #2 would suit me just fine. I'd already tried him once and pictured our PFC's during my 2ww last time.
But that's when I saw him: Donor 3997. He was half Black, half a bunch of other things that added up to Caucasian (not completely unlike my own mixed bag of family background DNA). And on paper, he was fertile as all get out. He had a daughter of his own from a previous relationship, and he'd also helped a lesbian couple conceive before getting with the program at The Bank. It also said he was "responsible for 2 other pregnancies". I can only guess that alludes to girls he'd knocked up that decided not to continue the pregnancies. From his childhood photos, you could tell he was very handsome, so it was not a big surprise that women were getting knocked up by him left, right, and center. I liked him so much I was now having a hard time deciding between 3997 (aka Bachelor #3) and Bachelor #1. I think this was back in September or October.
So the months go by, and I still haven't made a final decision. But my IUI Christmas Holiday Spectacular is getting closer, and I wanted to order my samples in advance. Then I had a detour. My cousin was traveling with work and stopping off in HK. We'd planned a weekend trip to Beijing together. I had to work for a few hours before heading to the airport, so she met me at work (the kids were anxious to see her. she was a somebody from New York that they were actually going to get to see again, unlike their school friends...), and we left to the airport from there. I was low on reading material, so I grabbed a couple of magazines from the coffee table at work to read on the flight. One would change the entire game for me...
Have you seen this Newsweek article on so-called "donorsexuals?" "Free Sperm Donors - and the women who want them"? It's a bit creepy. BUT reading about creepy guys who are willing to hook up with women to get them knocked up (not all the donations are "asexual" is all I'm saying) isn't what freaked me out. In the article, it highlights one donor in particular, and then tells of a website where donors and recipients can interface and make plans. Like a dating site almost. It's called the Free Sperm Donor Registry. For some reason, after reading this article, I had this odd, defenses-up feeling gnawing at me all weekend until I came home from Beijing.
I found the FSDR site and signed up. Then I started looking through files for potential donors. Somewhere around page 6 or 7, I had my apprehensions confirmed. Donor 3997, who has a limit to how many families he can create via The Bank, also goes by FSDR10103 (you have to be signed in to see his profile), and according to his stats page, he's fathered 8 children through donation. I'm not sure if his "AI", or artificial insemination, offspring includes donations to The Bank or not, but some of his offspring on the FSDR are the result of "NI" or natural insemination. That means he actually had sex with women that he met through FSDR. How can I be sure it was him, you ask? Well, he has a photo of himself as a young man posted with his profile and first name. And I recognized his face instantly from the childhood photos I'd ordered from The Bank! I was sick to my stomach.
On the FSDR, you can contact other users directly, so I got in touch and asked him flat out if he was the same donor I'd found at The Bank. He replied back asking how I knew he was at The Bank, and saying that he thought he was off their catalogue. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's entirely possible that he only donated at The Bank for a year and thought that several years later, his dealings there were done. But if he has 8 kids via donation (in any form), then how likely is it that he's been playing on both sides of the fence during some overlapping time period? I thought very likely. I didn't think he was being completely honest. So I messaged him back and told him how I'd gone through The Bank, and he was in my top two choices. I asked if he wouldn't mind telling me a bit more about himself. He never replied. Then, I thought to myself, The Bank is in Area X, and he's listed as still living in Area X on the FSDR. I googled other Banks in that area and started going through their donor catalogues. I found another profile that looked surprisingly similar at Rainbow Flag Health Services (Donor #46-201-421). No photo, but ethnicity, height, weight, and eye color all match up (hazel eyes are not that common).
So I guess that settles it for me, Bachelor #1 it is! I re-googled him and searched other Banks for similar profiles and found zip on that by the way. After what happened with Bachelor #3, I had to check! I called The Bank to place my pre-order. Then, after that was out of the way, I broached the subject of Donor 3997. I told her about the article I'd read and the FSDR. She said a registry is different from a sperm bank, and it probably just showed offspring. That it was unlikely that he was donating there. I elaborated and told her about his personal profile and that he listed himself as a donor willing to travel to meet the recipient for in-person inseminations. I actually heard her jaw hit the floor. I gave her all the info for where to look online. Then she asked if that was the only place I'd found him. I told her about Rainbow Flag as well. She asked if I wanted to be kept in the loop on follow-up with this. I said no because now that I know what I know, I won't be using him as a donor EVER, but that I felt obligated to share the information with The Bank because they have a strict policy on family limits. I mean, I'm looking at The Bank trying to wrap my head around the idea of 20 other families having a kid (or two or three) who are half-siblings to my own PFC's. The notion that he is out there spreading it around like Johnny-freakin'-Appleseed because he needs to see more little versions of himself running around in the world, and there could be hundreds of half-siblings out there if he's not stopped is completely abhorrent to me. Perturbed is not even the word...
Even more disturbing is that his profile still shows up in a search at The Bank. Currently very creeped out and embracing the divine intervention that put Bachelor #1 in my path in the first place.
Stay tuned...
So, as you all know, when I got the offer to move to HK for work, it kicked my TTC plans into high gear and I jumped right in to do my first at-home ICI. BUT, at that time, the vials that I had pre-ordered for Bachelor #1 were still in quarantine AND I was told at that time that he was "off the catalogue" officially, and would not be available for more vials in the future except for sibling vials to families that had already conceived with him. It was a little devastating, but I didn't want to wait, and because of the move with work, didn't have the option to wait. I traded in my Bachelor #1 vials for Bachelor #2 vials and moved forward. Bachelor #2 was in very good health, his grandparents were either still living or had died of natural causes into their 80's and 90's. And he seemed like an all around decent human being. Plus, I had his childhood photo. He was a cute kid, and I didn't see any potential for a bad mix of physical DNA (i.e. ugly babies....just keepin' it real y'all. If I were doing this the old-fashioned way, I'd want to be attracted to the person I'd be making babies with, right?). So June rolled around and I tried my well-timed at-home ICI with Bachelor #2. BFN. But I got right back up and geared up for the next cycle (the last one before I would leave the country for work for the foreseeable future). At the last minute, I got a message from the lovely Miss T. She and I were both in want of Bachelor #1, and she just found out that he was suddenly, very unexpectedly available and back on the catalogue! You can read all about the harrowing tale of my second attempt (ICI 2.0) here. Long story short: BFN. Super depressed. A lot of crying and eating my feelings covered in ice cream.
Well, then I worked through some issues. Did some soul searching and big questions of life, the universe, and everything asking. I looked ahead to see when I might be ovulating in December. If there was just the tiniest glimmer of hope that I might be able to try again while I was back in the States at Christmas time. OMG, more than a glimmer. So, that's the current plan. Step off plane in Boston, sleep, go meet some people about getting knocked up.
Of course, I was well aware that Bachelor #1 is well-liked and may turn up unavailable come December. So I hit the books again (or rather the laptop again) and started pouring over the donor catalogue at The Bank. I like my Bachelor #2, but though he is a man of color, the color is technically not Black (i.e. African or African American ancestry). I figured it's been a while since I looked at other options, so I may as well see if anyone new has come into play. Hopefully, Bachelor #1 will be there when I need him. And if I don't find anyone awesome-r, then Bachelor #2 would suit me just fine. I'd already tried him once and pictured our PFC's during my 2ww last time.
But that's when I saw him: Donor 3997. He was half Black, half a bunch of other things that added up to Caucasian (not completely unlike my own mixed bag of family background DNA). And on paper, he was fertile as all get out. He had a daughter of his own from a previous relationship, and he'd also helped a lesbian couple conceive before getting with the program at The Bank. It also said he was "responsible for 2 other pregnancies". I can only guess that alludes to girls he'd knocked up that decided not to continue the pregnancies. From his childhood photos, you could tell he was very handsome, so it was not a big surprise that women were getting knocked up by him left, right, and center. I liked him so much I was now having a hard time deciding between 3997 (aka Bachelor #3) and Bachelor #1. I think this was back in September or October.
So the months go by, and I still haven't made a final decision. But my IUI Christmas Holiday Spectacular is getting closer, and I wanted to order my samples in advance. Then I had a detour. My cousin was traveling with work and stopping off in HK. We'd planned a weekend trip to Beijing together. I had to work for a few hours before heading to the airport, so she met me at work (the kids were anxious to see her. she was a somebody from New York that they were actually going to get to see again, unlike their school friends...), and we left to the airport from there. I was low on reading material, so I grabbed a couple of magazines from the coffee table at work to read on the flight. One would change the entire game for me...
Have you seen this Newsweek article on so-called "donorsexuals?" "Free Sperm Donors - and the women who want them"? It's a bit creepy. BUT reading about creepy guys who are willing to hook up with women to get them knocked up (not all the donations are "asexual" is all I'm saying) isn't what freaked me out. In the article, it highlights one donor in particular, and then tells of a website where donors and recipients can interface and make plans. Like a dating site almost. It's called the Free Sperm Donor Registry. For some reason, after reading this article, I had this odd, defenses-up feeling gnawing at me all weekend until I came home from Beijing.
I found the FSDR site and signed up. Then I started looking through files for potential donors. Somewhere around page 6 or 7, I had my apprehensions confirmed. Donor 3997, who has a limit to how many families he can create via The Bank, also goes by FSDR10103 (you have to be signed in to see his profile), and according to his stats page, he's fathered 8 children through donation. I'm not sure if his "AI", or artificial insemination, offspring includes donations to The Bank or not, but some of his offspring on the FSDR are the result of "NI" or natural insemination. That means he actually had sex with women that he met through FSDR. How can I be sure it was him, you ask? Well, he has a photo of himself as a young man posted with his profile and first name. And I recognized his face instantly from the childhood photos I'd ordered from The Bank! I was sick to my stomach.
On the FSDR, you can contact other users directly, so I got in touch and asked him flat out if he was the same donor I'd found at The Bank. He replied back asking how I knew he was at The Bank, and saying that he thought he was off their catalogue. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's entirely possible that he only donated at The Bank for a year and thought that several years later, his dealings there were done. But if he has 8 kids via donation (in any form), then how likely is it that he's been playing on both sides of the fence during some overlapping time period? I thought very likely. I didn't think he was being completely honest. So I messaged him back and told him how I'd gone through The Bank, and he was in my top two choices. I asked if he wouldn't mind telling me a bit more about himself. He never replied. Then, I thought to myself, The Bank is in Area X, and he's listed as still living in Area X on the FSDR. I googled other Banks in that area and started going through their donor catalogues. I found another profile that looked surprisingly similar at Rainbow Flag Health Services (Donor #46-201-421). No photo, but ethnicity, height, weight, and eye color all match up (hazel eyes are not that common).
So I guess that settles it for me, Bachelor #1 it is! I re-googled him and searched other Banks for similar profiles and found zip on that by the way. After what happened with Bachelor #3, I had to check! I called The Bank to place my pre-order. Then, after that was out of the way, I broached the subject of Donor 3997. I told her about the article I'd read and the FSDR. She said a registry is different from a sperm bank, and it probably just showed offspring. That it was unlikely that he was donating there. I elaborated and told her about his personal profile and that he listed himself as a donor willing to travel to meet the recipient for in-person inseminations. I actually heard her jaw hit the floor. I gave her all the info for where to look online. Then she asked if that was the only place I'd found him. I told her about Rainbow Flag as well. She asked if I wanted to be kept in the loop on follow-up with this. I said no because now that I know what I know, I won't be using him as a donor EVER, but that I felt obligated to share the information with The Bank because they have a strict policy on family limits. I mean, I'm looking at The Bank trying to wrap my head around the idea of 20 other families having a kid (or two or three) who are half-siblings to my own PFC's. The notion that he is out there spreading it around like Johnny-freakin'-Appleseed because he needs to see more little versions of himself running around in the world, and there could be hundreds of half-siblings out there if he's not stopped is completely abhorrent to me. Perturbed is not even the word...
Even more disturbing is that his profile still shows up in a search at The Bank. Currently very creeped out and embracing the divine intervention that put Bachelor #1 in my path in the first place.
Stay tuned...
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Really, Hong Kong? Really?
SO!!! Last time on Self Made Motherhood Blog:
I tried a second ICI over 4th of July weekend...and nothing came of it. AF showed up two days before I got on a plane to France to be with my work babies (and their extended Frenchy-Frenchy family) for a month before we all moved to Hong Kong. So I didn't really give myself time to process or grieve at all. And the reason why I might need to process or grieve was because The Bank does not deliver swimmers internationally, so if I'm going to have another chance to get knocked up at all (with The Bank that I really like that has the top 2 - 3 WTBK donors of color/mixed heritage that I really like), it won't be until I'm back in the US for my Christmas/New Year's holidays in December. So it's not like the first try where my attitude was very "Oh well, got my period...Let's get ready for the next cycle in two weeks!" I won't be able to even think about trying again until December, and since I'll be in Hong Kong for at least two years, it may be my last chance to try at all. If you read the previous blog, you know that when I finally got to France and went through my entire work day with the kids, after I'd finally gotten them to sleep, I went back to my room and had a very quiet, yet very ugly private cry.
So what's next? Well, I had the little aftermath breakdown in France. I woke up the next morning looking for a solution. There could actually be advantages to TTC in HK. For one, I refused to go at all unless they fully provided for my health insurance coverage there. They acquiesced, so my first thought was that I should research fertility treatments/clinics in Hong Kong. For my prospective next try in December, I already made up my mind to give up on ICI and move on to IUI. Due to the terms/conditions surrounding delivery of swimmers from The Bank, I'd have to have the IUI done in the US for sure, BUT I figured maybe if I could start fertility testing/treatments/services in HK and coordinate with a Boston area clinic, I'd be a step ahead of the game when it was finally time for the procedure itself. I found a few clinics/hospitals with fertility centres/specialists in HK that seemed really appealing, so I sent out e-mail contact inquiries about services and the possibility of coordination between an HK medical team and a Boston one. My first reply nearly knocked me off my chair:
It is unlawful for any doctor in Hong Kong to provide fertility/conception services/treatment to any unmarried person. Any doctor suspected of doing so could be investigated, prosecuted, fined, jailed and/or lose their license to practice medicine. Really, Hong Kong? Really? This ordinance has been on the books in HK for some time, but somewhere around 2007 doctors were actually starting to be prosecuted by the government, so there's nobody out there who'll hook me up and look the other way even. SUCKSVILLE!!! What now?!?
Here's what: so we know that I've decided to go with IUI (or possibly even FSP, but probably IUI) for my December cycle in the US. I started researching Boston fertility clinics. Several are very well-known with very good statistics and reviews from current/former clients. Of these, most also accept international clients, so their programs are set up to accommodate consultations and courses of treatment via e-mail correspondence and telephone for women coming in from abroad just to get pregnant. The biggest issue (I think, so far) is that I won't be insured in the Massachusetts or anywhere else in the US, so knowing the cost of every last detail and what I'll have to do to cover those costs out of pocket is paramount. So that's pretty encouraging...
Also, I'm currently forecasting December ovulation to be somewhere between December 15th - 20th. AND, it seems I may have three weeks off for vacation this winter instead of two. So I may have just enough time to do everything that needs to be done while I'm there. I have some consulting to do, but if I decide to do the hormone/trigger thing, I may be able to start the birth control (to regulate my cycle to a statistical 28 day one and know exatly when I'll get AF) while I'm still in HK. I mean, they won't help me get pregnant. Let's see if they'll prescribe something to very specifically keep me from getting pregnant.
So far, it could all be very promising.
I tried a second ICI over 4th of July weekend...and nothing came of it. AF showed up two days before I got on a plane to France to be with my work babies (and their extended Frenchy-Frenchy family) for a month before we all moved to Hong Kong. So I didn't really give myself time to process or grieve at all. And the reason why I might need to process or grieve was because The Bank does not deliver swimmers internationally, so if I'm going to have another chance to get knocked up at all (with The Bank that I really like that has the top 2 - 3 WTBK donors of color/mixed heritage that I really like), it won't be until I'm back in the US for my Christmas/New Year's holidays in December. So it's not like the first try where my attitude was very "Oh well, got my period...Let's get ready for the next cycle in two weeks!" I won't be able to even think about trying again until December, and since I'll be in Hong Kong for at least two years, it may be my last chance to try at all. If you read the previous blog, you know that when I finally got to France and went through my entire work day with the kids, after I'd finally gotten them to sleep, I went back to my room and had a very quiet, yet very ugly private cry.
So what's next? Well, I had the little aftermath breakdown in France. I woke up the next morning looking for a solution. There could actually be advantages to TTC in HK. For one, I refused to go at all unless they fully provided for my health insurance coverage there. They acquiesced, so my first thought was that I should research fertility treatments/clinics in Hong Kong. For my prospective next try in December, I already made up my mind to give up on ICI and move on to IUI. Due to the terms/conditions surrounding delivery of swimmers from The Bank, I'd have to have the IUI done in the US for sure, BUT I figured maybe if I could start fertility testing/treatments/services in HK and coordinate with a Boston area clinic, I'd be a step ahead of the game when it was finally time for the procedure itself. I found a few clinics/hospitals with fertility centres/specialists in HK that seemed really appealing, so I sent out e-mail contact inquiries about services and the possibility of coordination between an HK medical team and a Boston one. My first reply nearly knocked me off my chair:
It is unlawful for any doctor in Hong Kong to provide fertility/conception services/treatment to any unmarried person. Any doctor suspected of doing so could be investigated, prosecuted, fined, jailed and/or lose their license to practice medicine. Really, Hong Kong? Really? This ordinance has been on the books in HK for some time, but somewhere around 2007 doctors were actually starting to be prosecuted by the government, so there's nobody out there who'll hook me up and look the other way even. SUCKSVILLE!!! What now?!?
Here's what: so we know that I've decided to go with IUI (or possibly even FSP, but probably IUI) for my December cycle in the US. I started researching Boston fertility clinics. Several are very well-known with very good statistics and reviews from current/former clients. Of these, most also accept international clients, so their programs are set up to accommodate consultations and courses of treatment via e-mail correspondence and telephone for women coming in from abroad just to get pregnant. The biggest issue (I think, so far) is that I won't be insured in the Massachusetts or anywhere else in the US, so knowing the cost of every last detail and what I'll have to do to cover those costs out of pocket is paramount. So that's pretty encouraging...
Also, I'm currently forecasting December ovulation to be somewhere between December 15th - 20th. AND, it seems I may have three weeks off for vacation this winter instead of two. So I may have just enough time to do everything that needs to be done while I'm there. I have some consulting to do, but if I decide to do the hormone/trigger thing, I may be able to start the birth control (to regulate my cycle to a statistical 28 day one and know exatly when I'll get AF) while I'm still in HK. I mean, they won't help me get pregnant. Let's see if they'll prescribe something to very specifically keep me from getting pregnant.
So far, it could all be very promising.
Monday, July 18, 2011
So This Is The Aftermath...
So for those of you still interested, my flight to Paris was delayed by about an hour, so by the time we landed & taxied in, I had all of 47 minutes to go through Passport Control, get my luggage off the baggage claim (because I was flying on two different, unrelated airlines and apparently if flying from JFK to CDG on American Airlines, they will not check your bags through to your final destination if you are finishing your travels with Aire France), print out my boarding pass at a kiosk in another section of the airport, wait in the wrong line to get through security, get to the right line all the way on the other side of the terminal, get my bag checked onto the flight I needed to catch, and get myself through security and onto the plane. Caveats: my new luggage made it super easy to spot coming off the conveyor belt and its 360 degree wheels made it so much easier to run with it from one place to the next. Also, by the time I got to the correct line for checking my bag (and myself) onto my connecting flight, the guy running the line was bored of looking at foreigners and listening to the varying ways in which they butchered his native language, so it took me longer than it should have to make him understand that the flight I needed to catch had started boarding 10 minutes ago and waiting in that line was not gonna cut it. To his credit, once the fog of general French disdain lifted, he not only whisked me to the next open counter to check my bag, but he got on the phone with the ground crew (and had the guy at the next counter calling the flight crew) to make sure that both myself AND my bag would make it onto the plane before it tried taking off. I have this face I make (and I don't know what it is because I've never seen it. I just know it exists because once my face does this expression - whatever it is - I see a change in the person I'm talking to and they immediately want to do whatever they can to make me happy). I guess the face was working that day. To my own credit, when I need something from someone, I always instinctively smile and use please and thank you in nearly every sentence, and sometimes when there's just an awkward pause, I'll throw in an extra "thank you so much" for good measure. A lot of people have thankless jobs and I try to make it less so when they're trying to do me a solid. I was the absolute last person to sit down on the flight and we were literally in the air within ten minutes.
Frenchy-Frenchy Granddad picked me up at the airport on the other end and drove me out to his and his wife's summer condo on the beach in LaBaule where my work babies were awaiting my arrival. Their parents had departed on a train to Paris (and from there to Hong Kong) about an hour before my flight landed, so Frenchy Grandma was on her own with the two of them for a few hours. As Granddad and I were approaching the lobby door from the parking lot out in back of the condo, I could see my kids on the other side of the glass. Too much to be cooped up in the house any longer, Grandma was taking them for a walk. Once I opened the door, I was immediately tackled to the floor by my three-year-old big girl. And the two-year-old jumping up and down waiting for her turn and shouting, "*s, we're all together now! We're all together! I miss you so, so, so much, *s!" And this is why I love my job and I'm willing to duke it out with Frenchy Grandma every summer over the most banal of child-rearing differences, and also why I'm willing to uproot myself and my plans for babies of my own to follow these two (my eldest two babies) to the other side of the world for an indeterminate amount of time. I love these kids. And if I can't have kids of my own, the last thing I want to do is give up raising these two to be decent human beings. I've been with them since the big one was 3.5mos old. The younger one has never known anything different. In any situation where her mother is not present, I am her first choice (and even some situations where her mother is present). In talking with my friends or other nannies about work, I sometimes refer to her as My Baby Mama. She's their mother and there's no replacing her (regardless of what any nanny tells you, or how any overworked mother who doesn't get to spend enough time with her kids feels, there's no replacing a mother in a child's universe), but they are my babies. And for now, that will just have to do.
Anyhoo...Grandma took the kids out for a bit while I unpacked and decompressed a bit in my condo-adjacent studio. Then they came back from their walk and a good deal of the day was just business as usual. Lunch, nap, wake-up, find something to do, bath time, dinner, pre-bedtime routine, and finally bedtime. I stayed for another 30 minutes or so the make sure they were really asleep before retiring to my room for the evening.
I made myself a cup of tea, went to my room, sat down on the bed and just started crying. Through all the apartment moving drama, and relocation craziness, and boarding my cat at the kennel, and insanity trying to make my flight from Paris to Nantes, I had been on the brink of a breakdown for days. Maybe even weeks. Culminating in a Big Fat Negative on an HPT, getting my period, realizing I would be going to France and Hong Kong without a baby on board, and hoping things worked out in HK because if the universe doesn't push my dreams of motherhood into being, these two kids may be the only children I'll ever have. And every time I was on the verge of tears at any point in the weeks leading up to my arrival in France, I would just shake it off, blink the tears back, and remind myself that I had too much to do to sit around feeling sorry for myself and whining like an idiot. But now I'm here. In France. Mothering two children who aren't my children, in the home of their grandparents who are not my parents. Not pregnant, and not sure when or if I'll have another chance to even try again before biological timing makes it impossible. Wondering if I made the right choice both in taking the job offer to move to Hong Kong and in deciding to have a baby on my own in the first place. So, yeah, I cried. A lot. And it was not pretty. It was real, real ugly. By the end of it I felt a little empty and nauseous. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, wrapped my hair and fell into a deep sleep.
I awoke the next morning feeling kind of like sh*t and realizing that I'd even cried in my sleep a bit. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and dressed. I sat down to my laptop, logged on to FertilityFriend, and started comparing my forecasted December cycle with my forecasted two-week Christmas holidays...could be promising.
Stay tuned...
Frenchy-Frenchy Granddad picked me up at the airport on the other end and drove me out to his and his wife's summer condo on the beach in LaBaule where my work babies were awaiting my arrival. Their parents had departed on a train to Paris (and from there to Hong Kong) about an hour before my flight landed, so Frenchy Grandma was on her own with the two of them for a few hours. As Granddad and I were approaching the lobby door from the parking lot out in back of the condo, I could see my kids on the other side of the glass. Too much to be cooped up in the house any longer, Grandma was taking them for a walk. Once I opened the door, I was immediately tackled to the floor by my three-year-old big girl. And the two-year-old jumping up and down waiting for her turn and shouting, "*s, we're all together now! We're all together! I miss you so, so, so much, *s!" And this is why I love my job and I'm willing to duke it out with Frenchy Grandma every summer over the most banal of child-rearing differences, and also why I'm willing to uproot myself and my plans for babies of my own to follow these two (my eldest two babies) to the other side of the world for an indeterminate amount of time. I love these kids. And if I can't have kids of my own, the last thing I want to do is give up raising these two to be decent human beings. I've been with them since the big one was 3.5mos old. The younger one has never known anything different. In any situation where her mother is not present, I am her first choice (and even some situations where her mother is present). In talking with my friends or other nannies about work, I sometimes refer to her as My Baby Mama. She's their mother and there's no replacing her (regardless of what any nanny tells you, or how any overworked mother who doesn't get to spend enough time with her kids feels, there's no replacing a mother in a child's universe), but they are my babies. And for now, that will just have to do.
Anyhoo...Grandma took the kids out for a bit while I unpacked and decompressed a bit in my condo-adjacent studio. Then they came back from their walk and a good deal of the day was just business as usual. Lunch, nap, wake-up, find something to do, bath time, dinner, pre-bedtime routine, and finally bedtime. I stayed for another 30 minutes or so the make sure they were really asleep before retiring to my room for the evening.
I made myself a cup of tea, went to my room, sat down on the bed and just started crying. Through all the apartment moving drama, and relocation craziness, and boarding my cat at the kennel, and insanity trying to make my flight from Paris to Nantes, I had been on the brink of a breakdown for days. Maybe even weeks. Culminating in a Big Fat Negative on an HPT, getting my period, realizing I would be going to France and Hong Kong without a baby on board, and hoping things worked out in HK because if the universe doesn't push my dreams of motherhood into being, these two kids may be the only children I'll ever have. And every time I was on the verge of tears at any point in the weeks leading up to my arrival in France, I would just shake it off, blink the tears back, and remind myself that I had too much to do to sit around feeling sorry for myself and whining like an idiot. But now I'm here. In France. Mothering two children who aren't my children, in the home of their grandparents who are not my parents. Not pregnant, and not sure when or if I'll have another chance to even try again before biological timing makes it impossible. Wondering if I made the right choice both in taking the job offer to move to Hong Kong and in deciding to have a baby on my own in the first place. So, yeah, I cried. A lot. And it was not pretty. It was real, real ugly. By the end of it I felt a little empty and nauseous. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, wrapped my hair and fell into a deep sleep.
I awoke the next morning feeling kind of like sh*t and realizing that I'd even cried in my sleep a bit. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and dressed. I sat down to my laptop, logged on to FertilityFriend, and started comparing my forecasted December cycle with my forecasted two-week Christmas holidays...could be promising.
Stay tuned...
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Up, Up, and Away...
So Friday morning, I woke early and did my best at clearing and sorting and packing. The kennel only does admitting for boarding pets between 12pm - 5pm, so I didn't worry about getting P.Roy all bathed and clipped and ready to go until later in the afternoon. I'd pre-sprayed his carrier pad and his two cozy carrier blankets with this "No Stress" pet calming spray and let it all air out to dry. I'd given him two "herbal calming chews for cats" when I'd fed him earlier that afternoon. When it was finally time to go, he climbed into his travel carrier willingly and was a really good sport all the way to the kennel on 5th Ave. & E. 20th St. Roy gets car sick, without fail, every time I have to take him somewhere by car or bus that takes longer than 15 minutes. He did really well on this particular trip. I really do think the calming spray helped a lot. He kept himself low, laying down in the carrier instead of spazzing out and jumping all over the place, trying to get out like he usually would, with his head down and his nose buried in the calm-scented blankets. The driver had decided to take the Williamsburg Bridge into the city, which is the farthest one from my house, so at some point while we were crossing the bridge (about 20 minutes into the trip), Roy started meowing plaintively and licking his lips a lot. These are his signs that he's going to be sick. I was ready this time. He had an absorbent disposable pad lining the bottom of his carrier, and I opened the door and laid down a towel under his front paws and waited for it. He sicked up a pile of food and fluids (overshare?) and I folded up the towel carefully and put it aside on the floor of the taxi until we got to The Cat Practice. Poor baby. He was calm again after it happened, still laying down with his face buried in the blanket, but you could see his stomach heaving and his breathing going a mile a minute the whole time.
When I got him upstairs (after disembarking the taxi and shaking the puke towel into a garbage can on the street corner), I was informed by Sophia that to admit him for boarding, I was supposed to bring him in by 12pm! What?! I was positive the website said admitting was from 12 - 5pm! Nope. That's for Saturdays. Monday through Friday, it's 8am - 12pm...Dumbass!!! Fortunately, Sophia took pity on me and my kittie and let us in. In retrospect, my Saturday departure day was so insane, there is no way that I could have possibly brought Roy in and still gotten to the airport on time. Sophia, you angel!!! Of course in my push to get us out of the house, I'd left P.Roy's vaccination record/rabies certificate tacked to the cork board in the kitchen. Fortunately, my vet's office was able to fax them over right away. Phew! Another crisis averted. Finally, I was taken into the back of the practice to get Roy settled in and talk with one of the techs/nurses/assistants (not sure of her title) about his needs, likes, and my preferences. I gave him some last cuddles and kisses before putting him in his kennel cage (with his favorite purple Snuggie) and heading back to Brooklyn to make more vain attempts to get my sh*t together. I did shed a few tears then. I'd just found out I wasn't having a baby that I had prayed and wished for, and here I was putting my "baby" in a kennel for someone else to look after for a month while I jetted off to France to raise someone else's children. Let's just say it was an emotional low point for the day and leave it at that.
I got home and just managed to get some more things packed, and some more things sorted out for donation to Goodwill, before getting in the shower and heading out the door to meet my cousin at Mid-Town for Cirque du Soleil. I'd barely eaten a thing all day, and there was no time to stop and grab something before the show (you absolutely, positively, do not want to be late for a Cirque show). Fortunately, though everything at/near/under Rockefellar Center seems to close around 6pm when the office workers go home, Dunkin' Donuts was still lit up like Christmas tree in the underground, so I hit them up for a blueberry muffin and ate it out in front of the theatre while I waited for my cousin to materialize. What I didn't realize was that this was a show in preview. I mean, I did think it was peculiar that Cirque was at Radio City instead of in its own trademark blue and yellow tents on Governor's Island. I just didn't think it all the way through. The Music Hall was decorated from head to toe with Cirque props and lighting. And wandering about were various performers mingling with the throngs of people for photo opportunities, some of them mic'd and singing the entire time! It was like a faerie land! I was in heaven...When my cousin and I finally made it to our seats (front row center of the 1st mezzanine), we were both all giddy and excited. I hadn't realized that she'd never been to a Cirque show before! I love it when I'm the one to introduce someone to Cirque! I've been the gateway for my father, my brother & his wife & kids, my Auntie, and my other cousin (present company cousin's older sister who was like an older sister to me growing up)....and now this cousin, too! Score! They are all now officially addicted to the magic of these fabulous French Canadian productions.
The show that we saw was Zarkana. It was visually stunning. The music was beautiful (though since it's in previews, the soundtrack was not yet available for purchase. Hmmph!). Costumes, sumptuous enough to make me second-guess my calling as a child caregiver/stand-in mum and wonder if I should have followed my fashion school dream of costume designing and working for the Cirque...*sigh* And every time there was some teeny tiny wisp of a woman doing some impossibly complicated and/or dangerous acrobatic feat, all I could think of was one of my own baby cousins (who's not a baby anymore, btw, she's contemplating grad school at the moment) who grew up as a bit of a gymnastics prodigy, and wondering if she'd ever consider setting aside her psychologist aspirations and run away with the circus. It was a lovely night. However, I will say this: startling lack of contortionists. I mean, it's Cirque du Soleil for goodness sake! Come for the contortionists, stay for the jugglers....But you come for the contortionists! I hope they fix that before the show goes on tour.
All in all, it was beautiful as my last night in New York and I got to spend it with one of my favorite people in the universe. What makes her so special, you ask? Well, part of it is that her mother and my mother were the only two sisters in a brood of six children, and only two years apart in age. They were also both Black, unwed, teen first-time parents at the same time in the 70's. So, my older brother and her older sister are only 2 months apart in age and were raised essentially as twins before I came along four years later. Then this cousin came along four years after me and was the little sister I'd always longed for. Our mothers are very close and so the four of us were raised more like siblings than cousins. Add to that the fact that my mother in all her craziness had us uprooted and moving around so often that I often had to lie about my address to stay in the same good school system with the advanced academic programs, and not end up in the crap schools of some of the slum neighborhoods where we sometimes lived. I was the youngest in my house and deemed too young for my friends to be trusted with such a secret lest I be booted from school. So I was a loner. My two greatest loves, closest comrades, and most up-for-anything playmates were my fat orange tabby cat, and this self-same cousin four years my junior. She's special. She just is. And she reminds me of this by doing things like, kissing & hugging me goodbye after the Cirque show and promising to come to my apartment at 12pm to help me clear out so that I can both make it to the airport in time AND get my deposit back (which could never have happened if I'd left as much undone as was undone when I had to hit the road for JFK on Saturday). She's special.
Saturday morning, I had gone to the post office to mail off a couple of boxes to HK with things that didn't make it into the original shipping day convoy. Silly me, thinking this would be the same as when I'd shipped things from Los Angeles to my new place in Japan 9 years prior, thought I'd get out of this for $100 dollars or less. FAIL! The United States Post Office no longer offers a surface mail/sea mail option for overseas parcels. You can either send it Priority Mail or Express Mail. Priority is cheaper so I did that...$155 for one box. $246 for the other. Plus insurance. $402 dollars later, I emerged from the post office and called a taxi to go to my last massage appointment at Opal. I was exhausted from cleaning/sorting/packing/not sleeping and depressed and achy and emotional from 1) not being pregnant and 2) being on my period. I think my massage therapist (who'd seen me two weeks earlier just before I'd ICI'd) sensed my mood and no-good-news aura. She didn't ask and I didn't offer up any information. She just laid hands on me and made me forget the world for 70 minutes. And I love her for that. I tipped her, drank some water, and gave her big hugs goodbye. Then I rushed outside, called another taxi to take me home and tried to reassure my landlord that I would definitely, DEFINITELY be cleared out and the apartment cleaned by the end of the day. As I sat in the back of the cab home, I dialed a few numbers for Man-With-A-Van that I'd found on craigslist, and made arrangements for someone to come around 12:30pm to cart all my donatables over to the Goodwill on Fulton St. only a 5-minute drive away (but they don't pick up donations & the service where you can arrange for a pick-up doesn't seem to work very well since I could never get an actual person on the phone and no one returned my calls after having left several messages).
When my dearest, darlingest cousin arrived a little before 12pm, I nearly burst into tears I was so relieved not to be doing all this by myself. She just grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "What do you need to do to get yourself ready for the airport?" I told her. "Well, you do that, and I'll handle everything else...If I have questions, I'll just ask." ANGEL!!! By 1:15pm, I'd finally squeezed the last of anything squeezable into my three suitcases. I'd just recently bought a new set of luggage (something new and sturdy with 360 degree wheels that would be easily spotted at the airport in a sea of tasteful black suitcases), and I'd only planned to take the the mid-sized one to France. American Airlines only allows one checked bag for economy passengers on international flights, and it seemed stupid to pay for extra luggage going there when I'd just have to pay again to bring it all back. Besides, my work babies' granddad was the one picking me up from the airport on the other end and I had no desire to cause this poor man a cardiac incident for the two other bags full of things I'd only need for Hong Kong. So, my lovely friend ZsaZsa (not her real name, but it's what I've always called her) agreed to let me stash the largest and smallest of the set in the storage closet in her front hallway. ANGEL! By 1:20pm, my cousin was urging me to call the taxi. But there was still so much to do to get the apartment 100% cleared out! She didn't bat an eyelash. "Don't worry. I'll stay and finish up. GO!" So I spoke with the landlord and his brother, and got to okay to leave my cousin at the apartment with the keys and they agreed to turn over my deposit to her (which she then deposited into my account the following Monday - IN CASH, if you can believe it). My landlord is a big guy. Like, 5'10" maybe, and somewhere in the vicinity of 400lbs. It was hot as Hades that day and he and his brother were outside sorting and re-stacking all the junk my cousin and I were hauling out of my apartment. This gentle giant stopped what he was doing and gave me a great big bear hug (hot and sweaty as he was!), and wished me good luck and a good journey. Awwww...Then my cousin put me and my suitcases into a taxi over to ZsaZsa's and wrapped me up in the biggest bear hug her 90lb frame could muster (she's surprisingly strong....). Then, for the first time, I really did let a few tears go. Goodbye New York! Goodbye my life...It still doesn't seem real yet. I got to the first stop and hauled my heaviest bag up the stairs to ZsaZsa's 3rd floor apartment while she took the smallest & lightest. Hugs and kisses again. I raced back down to the waiting taxi and sped off to JFK.
I arrived in record time and, after kiosk check-in, boarding pass printing, and luggage check (my suitcase was exactly at the 50lb limit, by the way...Awesome!), I passed through security and found some inexpensive (by airport standards) and healthy food to eat (my first bite of anything besides water all day so far). I finished what I could (when I don't eat for a while, I feel really hungry, but I usually can't eat a whole lot) and took myself to the bathroom before boarding call for Flight 44 to Paris. I had more time than I'd anticipated actually. At the last minute, they changed the departing gate for the flight from Gate 35 to Gate 12 on the other side of the airport! Needless to say this delayed the flight by about an hour, so I had time to buy a newspaper, magazine, some chocolate (I need chocolate for airplanes worse than I need chocolate for movies), and a little FDNY playset as a surprise for the girls (I was really being hit hard with how much I'd missed them over the past two weeks). I had time to charge my phone and go to the bathroom again before we finally boarded the plane. Finally, I was in my window seat (me and Erykah Badu see eye-to-eye on that one) and watching all my anxieties getting smaller and smaller and disappearing to nothing but blue sky and clouds...*sigh* Sleep....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
When I got him upstairs (after disembarking the taxi and shaking the puke towel into a garbage can on the street corner), I was informed by Sophia that to admit him for boarding, I was supposed to bring him in by 12pm! What?! I was positive the website said admitting was from 12 - 5pm! Nope. That's for Saturdays. Monday through Friday, it's 8am - 12pm...Dumbass!!! Fortunately, Sophia took pity on me and my kittie and let us in. In retrospect, my Saturday departure day was so insane, there is no way that I could have possibly brought Roy in and still gotten to the airport on time. Sophia, you angel!!! Of course in my push to get us out of the house, I'd left P.Roy's vaccination record/rabies certificate tacked to the cork board in the kitchen. Fortunately, my vet's office was able to fax them over right away. Phew! Another crisis averted. Finally, I was taken into the back of the practice to get Roy settled in and talk with one of the techs/nurses/assistants (not sure of her title) about his needs, likes, and my preferences. I gave him some last cuddles and kisses before putting him in his kennel cage (with his favorite purple Snuggie) and heading back to Brooklyn to make more vain attempts to get my sh*t together. I did shed a few tears then. I'd just found out I wasn't having a baby that I had prayed and wished for, and here I was putting my "baby" in a kennel for someone else to look after for a month while I jetted off to France to raise someone else's children. Let's just say it was an emotional low point for the day and leave it at that.
I got home and just managed to get some more things packed, and some more things sorted out for donation to Goodwill, before getting in the shower and heading out the door to meet my cousin at Mid-Town for Cirque du Soleil. I'd barely eaten a thing all day, and there was no time to stop and grab something before the show (you absolutely, positively, do not want to be late for a Cirque show). Fortunately, though everything at/near/under Rockefellar Center seems to close around 6pm when the office workers go home, Dunkin' Donuts was still lit up like Christmas tree in the underground, so I hit them up for a blueberry muffin and ate it out in front of the theatre while I waited for my cousin to materialize. What I didn't realize was that this was a show in preview. I mean, I did think it was peculiar that Cirque was at Radio City instead of in its own trademark blue and yellow tents on Governor's Island. I just didn't think it all the way through. The Music Hall was decorated from head to toe with Cirque props and lighting. And wandering about were various performers mingling with the throngs of people for photo opportunities, some of them mic'd and singing the entire time! It was like a faerie land! I was in heaven...When my cousin and I finally made it to our seats (front row center of the 1st mezzanine), we were both all giddy and excited. I hadn't realized that she'd never been to a Cirque show before! I love it when I'm the one to introduce someone to Cirque! I've been the gateway for my father, my brother & his wife & kids, my Auntie, and my other cousin (present company cousin's older sister who was like an older sister to me growing up)....and now this cousin, too! Score! They are all now officially addicted to the magic of these fabulous French Canadian productions.
The show that we saw was Zarkana. It was visually stunning. The music was beautiful (though since it's in previews, the soundtrack was not yet available for purchase. Hmmph!). Costumes, sumptuous enough to make me second-guess my calling as a child caregiver/stand-in mum and wonder if I should have followed my fashion school dream of costume designing and working for the Cirque...*sigh* And every time there was some teeny tiny wisp of a woman doing some impossibly complicated and/or dangerous acrobatic feat, all I could think of was one of my own baby cousins (who's not a baby anymore, btw, she's contemplating grad school at the moment) who grew up as a bit of a gymnastics prodigy, and wondering if she'd ever consider setting aside her psychologist aspirations and run away with the circus. It was a lovely night. However, I will say this: startling lack of contortionists. I mean, it's Cirque du Soleil for goodness sake! Come for the contortionists, stay for the jugglers....But you come for the contortionists! I hope they fix that before the show goes on tour.
All in all, it was beautiful as my last night in New York and I got to spend it with one of my favorite people in the universe. What makes her so special, you ask? Well, part of it is that her mother and my mother were the only two sisters in a brood of six children, and only two years apart in age. They were also both Black, unwed, teen first-time parents at the same time in the 70's. So, my older brother and her older sister are only 2 months apart in age and were raised essentially as twins before I came along four years later. Then this cousin came along four years after me and was the little sister I'd always longed for. Our mothers are very close and so the four of us were raised more like siblings than cousins. Add to that the fact that my mother in all her craziness had us uprooted and moving around so often that I often had to lie about my address to stay in the same good school system with the advanced academic programs, and not end up in the crap schools of some of the slum neighborhoods where we sometimes lived. I was the youngest in my house and deemed too young for my friends to be trusted with such a secret lest I be booted from school. So I was a loner. My two greatest loves, closest comrades, and most up-for-anything playmates were my fat orange tabby cat, and this self-same cousin four years my junior. She's special. She just is. And she reminds me of this by doing things like, kissing & hugging me goodbye after the Cirque show and promising to come to my apartment at 12pm to help me clear out so that I can both make it to the airport in time AND get my deposit back (which could never have happened if I'd left as much undone as was undone when I had to hit the road for JFK on Saturday). She's special.
Saturday morning, I had gone to the post office to mail off a couple of boxes to HK with things that didn't make it into the original shipping day convoy. Silly me, thinking this would be the same as when I'd shipped things from Los Angeles to my new place in Japan 9 years prior, thought I'd get out of this for $100 dollars or less. FAIL! The United States Post Office no longer offers a surface mail/sea mail option for overseas parcels. You can either send it Priority Mail or Express Mail. Priority is cheaper so I did that...$155 for one box. $246 for the other. Plus insurance. $402 dollars later, I emerged from the post office and called a taxi to go to my last massage appointment at Opal. I was exhausted from cleaning/sorting/packing/not sleeping and depressed and achy and emotional from 1) not being pregnant and 2) being on my period. I think my massage therapist (who'd seen me two weeks earlier just before I'd ICI'd) sensed my mood and no-good-news aura. She didn't ask and I didn't offer up any information. She just laid hands on me and made me forget the world for 70 minutes. And I love her for that. I tipped her, drank some water, and gave her big hugs goodbye. Then I rushed outside, called another taxi to take me home and tried to reassure my landlord that I would definitely, DEFINITELY be cleared out and the apartment cleaned by the end of the day. As I sat in the back of the cab home, I dialed a few numbers for Man-With-A-Van that I'd found on craigslist, and made arrangements for someone to come around 12:30pm to cart all my donatables over to the Goodwill on Fulton St. only a 5-minute drive away (but they don't pick up donations & the service where you can arrange for a pick-up doesn't seem to work very well since I could never get an actual person on the phone and no one returned my calls after having left several messages).
When my dearest, darlingest cousin arrived a little before 12pm, I nearly burst into tears I was so relieved not to be doing all this by myself. She just grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "What do you need to do to get yourself ready for the airport?" I told her. "Well, you do that, and I'll handle everything else...If I have questions, I'll just ask." ANGEL!!! By 1:15pm, I'd finally squeezed the last of anything squeezable into my three suitcases. I'd just recently bought a new set of luggage (something new and sturdy with 360 degree wheels that would be easily spotted at the airport in a sea of tasteful black suitcases), and I'd only planned to take the the mid-sized one to France. American Airlines only allows one checked bag for economy passengers on international flights, and it seemed stupid to pay for extra luggage going there when I'd just have to pay again to bring it all back. Besides, my work babies' granddad was the one picking me up from the airport on the other end and I had no desire to cause this poor man a cardiac incident for the two other bags full of things I'd only need for Hong Kong. So, my lovely friend ZsaZsa (not her real name, but it's what I've always called her) agreed to let me stash the largest and smallest of the set in the storage closet in her front hallway. ANGEL! By 1:20pm, my cousin was urging me to call the taxi. But there was still so much to do to get the apartment 100% cleared out! She didn't bat an eyelash. "Don't worry. I'll stay and finish up. GO!" So I spoke with the landlord and his brother, and got to okay to leave my cousin at the apartment with the keys and they agreed to turn over my deposit to her (which she then deposited into my account the following Monday - IN CASH, if you can believe it). My landlord is a big guy. Like, 5'10" maybe, and somewhere in the vicinity of 400lbs. It was hot as Hades that day and he and his brother were outside sorting and re-stacking all the junk my cousin and I were hauling out of my apartment. This gentle giant stopped what he was doing and gave me a great big bear hug (hot and sweaty as he was!), and wished me good luck and a good journey. Awwww...Then my cousin put me and my suitcases into a taxi over to ZsaZsa's and wrapped me up in the biggest bear hug her 90lb frame could muster (she's surprisingly strong....). Then, for the first time, I really did let a few tears go. Goodbye New York! Goodbye my life...It still doesn't seem real yet. I got to the first stop and hauled my heaviest bag up the stairs to ZsaZsa's 3rd floor apartment while she took the smallest & lightest. Hugs and kisses again. I raced back down to the waiting taxi and sped off to JFK.
I arrived in record time and, after kiosk check-in, boarding pass printing, and luggage check (my suitcase was exactly at the 50lb limit, by the way...Awesome!), I passed through security and found some inexpensive (by airport standards) and healthy food to eat (my first bite of anything besides water all day so far). I finished what I could (when I don't eat for a while, I feel really hungry, but I usually can't eat a whole lot) and took myself to the bathroom before boarding call for Flight 44 to Paris. I had more time than I'd anticipated actually. At the last minute, they changed the departing gate for the flight from Gate 35 to Gate 12 on the other side of the airport! Needless to say this delayed the flight by about an hour, so I had time to buy a newspaper, magazine, some chocolate (I need chocolate for airplanes worse than I need chocolate for movies), and a little FDNY playset as a surprise for the girls (I was really being hit hard with how much I'd missed them over the past two weeks). I had time to charge my phone and go to the bathroom again before we finally boarded the plane. Finally, I was in my window seat (me and Erykah Badu see eye-to-eye on that one) and watching all my anxieties getting smaller and smaller and disappearing to nothing but blue sky and clouds...*sigh* Sleep....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Trust Me, If It Was Good News, I'd Have Told You By Now...
So...not quite a Two-Week Wait. More of a 12-Day Wait. Well, let me back-track a little. I've been a bit, but not horribly stressed about my upcoming travel and move for work. Since most everything I plan to have in Hong Kong has already been shipped from my apartment, my most pressing task has been to give away and/or sell the things that are left. Because all of my things have already been shipped, I've been sleeping on an air mattress for the past two weeks. Not ideal, but there are worse things. I know this because late last night around 1:30am, after I'd enjoyed my last night of karaoke in NYC with my cousin and a few good friends and gotten home to pack up a few more things, I pulled out said air mattress and found that, despite the fact that every morning I deflate it and fold it up into an uninteresting corner of the living room, my cat had not scratched, but bitten not one, but several holes into the air mattress. I took out the included patch kit (two patches, but I cut them to size and did what I could) and got to work damming up the leaks. Just when I'd think I'd gotten them all, I'd fill it again and hear a hissing coming from somewhere. Only to find one or several more tiny punctures in some random spot. Eventually, I ran out of patch and had to resort to crazy glue and packing tape. It did seem to work. But not well enough. I went to bed around 3:30am on a comfortably inflated bed only to wake up to the sound of my 6am alarm flat on the floor with an ache in my hip and lower back. Thanks Roy! So, for my two remaining nights Stateside, I will be pulling up a nice piece of hardwood at bedtime. Sweeeeet!
Not an ideal way to wake up. Now, flat on my hardwood floor or not, I had the sense to reach under my pillow and take my temperature. 97.33 F. A dip. That only happens for two reasons. I'm about to get my period, or I'm about to ovulate. We know I already ovulated. That's what got this party started in the first place. So I hauled myself up off of the floor and went into the bathroom to pee on a stick. BIG FRAKKIN' NEGATIVE. I'm optimistic, but I'm not stupid, people. I've heard other women say that they tested on CD12 and it was negative, but then they tested positive a few days or even a week later. I know my body and my cycle well enough to know that my period was scheduled for today or tomorrow. I just prayed for tomorrow to at least put it off by a little. Well, anyway, after the HPT-, I decided to lay back down for a little bit - hardwood floor be damned. I was not ready to face the day just yet. I set my alarm for 8am and tucked my face into the pillow.
Naturally, I didn't actually get up at 8am. So, naturally, I was running late to get myself out of the house and up to Harlem to get my hair braided. *sigh* Ever since the Wündertwins returned to Germany, it's been a hot mess sorting out their visa situation to get them back to NYC. And, unexpectedly pregnant as the elder twin was, the process took so long that they had to stay in Germany for her to have the baby whether the visas came through or not (so far, still not...) because she was just too far along to travel. (In case you're wondering, the baby was born in mid-June and is beautiful as we all expected him to be.) I'm happy for her, but I miss the days when those two girls would show up at my door at noon, chit-chat & watch movies with me and have my whole head braided in four hours. But I digress...I got up to Harlem only about 10 minutes late stepping off the train. I ran to the bank to grab some cash to pay the salon, and ducked into a beauty supply shop to grab a few more bags of hair just in case what I had already wasn't enough. Now, those of you who know me personally, know that my hair color of choice is a little bit unusual. So, I was going to compromise and get a "normal" color - just to fill in in the back and then keep the rest my usual, more vibrant coloring. But lo and behold: directly in front of me when I stepped inside the doorway was my color! Three for five dollars, so I bought three and power walked down the seven blocks to the salon - only to find that the braider hadn't arrived yet. I rang her and she was with her momma at Walmart! What the sh*t?! By the time she actually got there and started it was nearly 12pm (only two hours late for a 10am hair appointment...). And by the time she finished it was nearly 4pm (with the help of two other girls)...when the braider remarked that we started at 12pm and finished before 4pm and patted herself on the back for it, it took all my home training to keep from saying, "Yeah! Just think of how early I'd be done if we'd actually started on time!"
Anyway, this is all a way to let you know that when my hair was finally done, and I'd paid, I went to the bathroom before leaving and getting on the train for another hour and witnessed the arrival of Aunt Flo. Just when my day was lookin' up. Damn, I hate that b*tch! So this morning's HPT was not an "early result" or a case of false negative. I am definitely not pregnant. I pulled it together, grabbed my bag, and marched myself outside.
45 minutes later, I'm getting off the A train at 14th Street and 8th Avenue. I catch the bus across the street to take me to Union Square. I was meeting a friend in a couple of hours, and I figured Barnes & Noble is always a good place to hang out if I have nothing in particular to do. Now, if I'd actually gotten my hair done at 10am instead of 12pm, I might have had time to go home and get some things done. But alas, no...The up side was that I did get to see a friend that I almost never get to see because she is seemingly always in the middle of no less than seven projects at a time and/or in the throes of some mutant cold & flu virus. The down side was that, apart from getting my hair done, I was having kind of a rough day. My friend was aware of, though a bit oblivious to, my plans for baby-making. It's not her fault. Some friends are more interested/curious than others. And the truth is most people will gladly talk of nothing but themselves for hours on end if you keep silent enough and/or ask the correct set of leading questions. Cee just happens to be one of those people whom I never get to see and so always has 1) a mega-ton to catch up on, 2) always has no less than seven projects in the works at any given time, and 3) always talks at a pace that is just slightly above Mach 1 - meaning she's saying a lot, but I very rarely hear or understand what most of it is about until I debrief myself later. So while Cee was going on and on about her projects and what new things she was doing or thinking of doing, or thinking about thinking of doing, she would occasionally pause for my input or even ask me a question - which would catch me off guard and I would give some short, glib answer, and her conversation (mostly with herself) would continue on unabated for another 15 - 20 minutes or so. Way too much time to spend puttering around in my own head trying to sort out my own sh*t between necessary-conversational-input moments, and I nearly burst into spontaneous tears about seventeen separate times. I'm sure of it. Add to that the fact that I was super-emotional and physically low because (duh!) I'd just gotten my period, and (sorry Cee!) I couldn't wait to get away from her and head home.
The oddest thing was, the whole way home, I felt on the verge of tears and I just kept fighting them back and making lists of all the things I had to do before getting on a plane to France in 48 hours. The lists in and of themselves were staggering and that alone almost brought me to tears more than once. But I had my hair done today and I had tickets for an 8pm Cirque du Soleil show at Radio City Music Hall the next night with my cousin (who doubles as one of my all-time favorite people in the universe), and I was doing my damnedest to keep a positive attitude and go full-steam ahead. And I didn't get a lot done that evening once I finally did get home...I had to make arrangements with another friend to bring her all my non-perishable groceries. I had cupboards full of stuff and was livid at the thought of tossing out perfectly good (and really healthy, somewhat pricey) food if there was someone who could use it. And she's a single mum to two of the awesomest, ridiculously tall, and constantly eating kids you could ever meet. If anybody could use a big box of free food, she could. And this is a friend who was very much interested, curious, and hopeful about my goals for single motherhood (and also one who was able to talk to me about it very realistically since she is a single mum herself), so being in her presence was such a blessing emotionally, if not timing-wise. We knew this was our last chance to hang out and what was supposed to be a quick visit turned into two or three hours of get-it-all-in-while-we-can girl talk. Not enough time with her. Not enough time spent getting my apartment/luggage/cat business together at home. Sooooooo much to do!!! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Hold it together, *s. Just hold it together...Stay tuned.
Not an ideal way to wake up. Now, flat on my hardwood floor or not, I had the sense to reach under my pillow and take my temperature. 97.33 F. A dip. That only happens for two reasons. I'm about to get my period, or I'm about to ovulate. We know I already ovulated. That's what got this party started in the first place. So I hauled myself up off of the floor and went into the bathroom to pee on a stick. BIG FRAKKIN' NEGATIVE. I'm optimistic, but I'm not stupid, people. I've heard other women say that they tested on CD12 and it was negative, but then they tested positive a few days or even a week later. I know my body and my cycle well enough to know that my period was scheduled for today or tomorrow. I just prayed for tomorrow to at least put it off by a little. Well, anyway, after the HPT-, I decided to lay back down for a little bit - hardwood floor be damned. I was not ready to face the day just yet. I set my alarm for 8am and tucked my face into the pillow.
Naturally, I didn't actually get up at 8am. So, naturally, I was running late to get myself out of the house and up to Harlem to get my hair braided. *sigh* Ever since the Wündertwins returned to Germany, it's been a hot mess sorting out their visa situation to get them back to NYC. And, unexpectedly pregnant as the elder twin was, the process took so long that they had to stay in Germany for her to have the baby whether the visas came through or not (so far, still not...) because she was just too far along to travel. (In case you're wondering, the baby was born in mid-June and is beautiful as we all expected him to be.) I'm happy for her, but I miss the days when those two girls would show up at my door at noon, chit-chat & watch movies with me and have my whole head braided in four hours. But I digress...I got up to Harlem only about 10 minutes late stepping off the train. I ran to the bank to grab some cash to pay the salon, and ducked into a beauty supply shop to grab a few more bags of hair just in case what I had already wasn't enough. Now, those of you who know me personally, know that my hair color of choice is a little bit unusual. So, I was going to compromise and get a "normal" color - just to fill in in the back and then keep the rest my usual, more vibrant coloring. But lo and behold: directly in front of me when I stepped inside the doorway was my color! Three for five dollars, so I bought three and power walked down the seven blocks to the salon - only to find that the braider hadn't arrived yet. I rang her and she was with her momma at Walmart! What the sh*t?! By the time she actually got there and started it was nearly 12pm (only two hours late for a 10am hair appointment...). And by the time she finished it was nearly 4pm (with the help of two other girls)...when the braider remarked that we started at 12pm and finished before 4pm and patted herself on the back for it, it took all my home training to keep from saying, "Yeah! Just think of how early I'd be done if we'd actually started on time!"
Anyway, this is all a way to let you know that when my hair was finally done, and I'd paid, I went to the bathroom before leaving and getting on the train for another hour and witnessed the arrival of Aunt Flo. Just when my day was lookin' up. Damn, I hate that b*tch! So this morning's HPT was not an "early result" or a case of false negative. I am definitely not pregnant. I pulled it together, grabbed my bag, and marched myself outside.
45 minutes later, I'm getting off the A train at 14th Street and 8th Avenue. I catch the bus across the street to take me to Union Square. I was meeting a friend in a couple of hours, and I figured Barnes & Noble is always a good place to hang out if I have nothing in particular to do. Now, if I'd actually gotten my hair done at 10am instead of 12pm, I might have had time to go home and get some things done. But alas, no...The up side was that I did get to see a friend that I almost never get to see because she is seemingly always in the middle of no less than seven projects at a time and/or in the throes of some mutant cold & flu virus. The down side was that, apart from getting my hair done, I was having kind of a rough day. My friend was aware of, though a bit oblivious to, my plans for baby-making. It's not her fault. Some friends are more interested/curious than others. And the truth is most people will gladly talk of nothing but themselves for hours on end if you keep silent enough and/or ask the correct set of leading questions. Cee just happens to be one of those people whom I never get to see and so always has 1) a mega-ton to catch up on, 2) always has no less than seven projects in the works at any given time, and 3) always talks at a pace that is just slightly above Mach 1 - meaning she's saying a lot, but I very rarely hear or understand what most of it is about until I debrief myself later. So while Cee was going on and on about her projects and what new things she was doing or thinking of doing, or thinking about thinking of doing, she would occasionally pause for my input or even ask me a question - which would catch me off guard and I would give some short, glib answer, and her conversation (mostly with herself) would continue on unabated for another 15 - 20 minutes or so. Way too much time to spend puttering around in my own head trying to sort out my own sh*t between necessary-conversational-input moments, and I nearly burst into spontaneous tears about seventeen separate times. I'm sure of it. Add to that the fact that I was super-emotional and physically low because (duh!) I'd just gotten my period, and (sorry Cee!) I couldn't wait to get away from her and head home.
The oddest thing was, the whole way home, I felt on the verge of tears and I just kept fighting them back and making lists of all the things I had to do before getting on a plane to France in 48 hours. The lists in and of themselves were staggering and that alone almost brought me to tears more than once. But I had my hair done today and I had tickets for an 8pm Cirque du Soleil show at Radio City Music Hall the next night with my cousin (who doubles as one of my all-time favorite people in the universe), and I was doing my damnedest to keep a positive attitude and go full-steam ahead. And I didn't get a lot done that evening once I finally did get home...I had to make arrangements with another friend to bring her all my non-perishable groceries. I had cupboards full of stuff and was livid at the thought of tossing out perfectly good (and really healthy, somewhat pricey) food if there was someone who could use it. And she's a single mum to two of the awesomest, ridiculously tall, and constantly eating kids you could ever meet. If anybody could use a big box of free food, she could. And this is a friend who was very much interested, curious, and hopeful about my goals for single motherhood (and also one who was able to talk to me about it very realistically since she is a single mum herself), so being in her presence was such a blessing emotionally, if not timing-wise. We knew this was our last chance to hang out and what was supposed to be a quick visit turned into two or three hours of get-it-all-in-while-we-can girl talk. Not enough time with her. Not enough time spent getting my apartment/luggage/cat business together at home. Sooooooo much to do!!! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Hold it together, *s. Just hold it together...Stay tuned.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Round Two & The Two-Week Wait
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!OVERSHARE ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(If you do not really want to know how babies are made the not-so-old-fashioned way, then this is not for you. Skip ahead to the last paragraph if you're just not feeling that curious or bold today...)
ICI Round 2:1
The plan, as has always been my general framework for a plan: I have super-regular cycles and almost unfailingly ovulate on CD13. So the idea is basically to inseminate once in the evening of CD12, again in the early morning of CD13, and lastly in the evening of CD13. That's the basic plan. It's what I did the first time. Seems like a good plan to follow this time, too. However, in an effort to up my chances at conception, I wanted to use more than one vial per insemination if possible. Strength in numbers. When you're making babies and dealing with "fresh" goods, there's just so much of it! Seriously. It can be a hot mess (literally) if your getting down without the specific aim of making a baby. When you're dealing with Pop-sicles however (frozen goods, if you will), you're getting a substantially smaller volume of goods and also you can't guarantee how well or not your Pop-sicle(s) will survive the thawing process to get the job done. So the logic I'm following is basically The More The Merrier.
The Pop-sicle gets thawed properly, and upon its foray into the Potential Baby Zone, more swimmers means they can play better defense. There are some swimmers that just aren't gonna make it. That is a sad, sorry fact whether you are using "fresh" or "frozen". Some swimmers are gonna get tired early and quite. Some swimmers are gonna get their heads turned around and get caught up in the surrounding lining area, all too anxious to penetrate something and not noticing that it's just a wall and not an egg. Some swimmers will get past all that and then take a wrong turn at the fork in the road (right or left fallopian tube - decisions, decisions).
And when a swimmer does make it to the egg, it's not just the strength and speed of that one swimmer that determines whether or not he'll be allowed in. The entire environment around the egg has to be altered chemically/hormonally, and that can only happen when the concentration of swimmers in the area reaches a certain tipping point. Even when that happens, only one swimmer can penetrate the egg, but it takes the consistent tap-tap-tapping of about 200 swimmers to convince the egg to let that one swimmer in.
Based on this science, research, and carefully constructed theory, I decided it would be a good idea to double up, so to speak for each insemination. The hard facts of reality, however, are that my bank account and impending international move made it impossible for me to purchase enough Pop-sicles to double up on all three attempts for this cycle. I already had two pre-purchased Bachelor #2 Pop-sicles that I'd traded in for Bachelor #1 Pop-sicles as soon as Miss T alerted me to his newly re-available status. I had then also purchased two more Bachelor #1 Pop-sicles, bringing the grand total to four. I'd have like to have bought two more (to have six altogether, and be able to double up for each attempt), but finances simply would not permit it. Ergo, the new plan was to do a PM ICI on CD12 with 1 pop-cicle; an AM ICI on CD13 with 2 pop-sicles; and another PM ICI on CD13 with the last remaining pop-sicle. It seemed like a solid plan, and it was....until the game changed on me.
You know what they say: "Men plan and God laughs." The Lord must have really been feelin' Himself this cycle because my plans got rearranged in a hurry!
As you know, on CD11 FedEx grossly mis-handled my box-o-cryotank. It was supposed to be held for me to pick it up at a FedEx Kinkos hold facility, but it accidentally got sent back out and almost got itself on a plane to Memphis. With the three-hour time difference between my location in NYC and The Bank's location in San Francisco, I was able to get someone very helpful on the line to mediate and light a fire under the FedEx guys to find my box and get it back to me PRONTO. So I did end up going home with my box-o-cryotank that evening, but upon arriving home, a test revealed a very positive OPK.
I usually don't get a bells & whistles positive OPK until CD12. I was already stressed out from the events of the evening, and also from just having done the whole apartment shipping process for my stuff to HK. I didn't want to throw myself off any more by stressing more and worrying about the timing of my (up to now) unwavering CD13 O-day. Plus, I was exhausted and hadn't slept for more than 8 hours combined in the previous 3 or 4 days. I went to bed with my box-o-cryotank where I could see it.
I woke up the next day and ran a few errands. I'd done an OPK at 9:30am, and I was still testing positive, so I decided not to panic and got on with the business of the day. I just kept telling myself, "Don't freak out. Stick to the plan." So I organized some things. Packed up/cleared out a few other things. Took out a whole lot of trash and recycling. Around 6pm, I did another OPK (still positive, but now the T-line was a bit lighter than it was that morning), and I prepped the area for ICI Round 2:1.
I had checked my four vials to confirm that they were actually Bachelor #1's four vials and not those of some random Donor X. Check! I had two sets: two vials from an October 2010 donation, and two vials from a December 2010 donation. I decided to use one of the October vials for this attempt (I wanted to save the two more recent vials for my "double-up" attempt the next morning). When I opened the box-o-cryotank, I noticed that the tank itself was marked PRS-024. Since 24 is my favorite number (don't ask me why. It just is...), I took this as a good sign. Let the games begin!
Box-O-Cryotank
Same as before, I used my clumsy leather Home Depot garden gloves to gently remove one vial from the tank and plopped it down into a Marshmallow Fluff lid (I'd packed off pretty much all my other kitchen stuff to HK, so you know...any port in a storm!). It did its one-minute wait til I could touch it without getting frostbite from the sub-freezing liquid nitrogen temperature it had been kept at up to this point.
I've obscured my donor's ID number to protect
my family's & donor's privacy...and also to keep
others from ordering my stuff & putting him out
of stock when I need him most...just sayin'.
Then I unscrewed the cap and screwed it back on (but not too tightly), put the pop-cicle into a zip lock baggie, and put said baggie into a cup of luke warm water. I put a the Fluff lid on top of the cup and set the timer on my cell phone for 10 minutes. I used the thaw time to put a little more air into the air mattress (bed's on its way to HK already). I got into my comfy clothes - an insemination ensemble as it were. I fed Precious Roy and gave him two "herbal calming chews for cats" in the vain hope that he might settle down a bit and not impede the process too much. I'd ordered a tube of PreSeed, so I proceeded to PreSeed in preparation for the evening's proceedings accordingly. And not a moment too soon: the timer on my phone went off.
I lifted the baggie out of its tepid bath and extracted the pinky-sized vial (all liquidated and no longer a pop-sicle). It wasn't cold to the touch at all and the contents seemed to move around freely enough inside. I unscrewed the top from the vial and opened the oral syringe provided, pushing the tip all the way to the bottom of the vial. I slowly raised the plunger and filled the vial with Bachelor #1's swimmers. I then up-ended the syringe and did the tap-tap-tap thing to get all the air bubbles to the top. Gently pushing down on the plunger, I expelled the air bubbles (and a few swimmers), and let the few brave kamikazi swimmers drip onto the lens of my Ovulite Fertility Monitoring Microscope. I checked to see if the swimmers were actually swimming: YUP!
(Insert Flight of the Conchords Season 1 soundtrack here) Conditions are perfect. It's Business Time....I lay down on the air mattress and got under the covers. I lifted my bottom and shoved the fluffier of my two remaining pillows just below my sacrum. I put my knees in the air, making the air mattress look more like a 4-year-old's living room play forte, and I inserted the syringe. Slowly, slowly, slowly pushing in the plunger and releasing Bachelor #1's swimmers in the general vicinity of my cervix. Since I had used the PreSeed, I didn't take the "extra step" because I didn't want my body's own chemistry fighting with the pH of the PreSeed and confusing/harming the swimmers. I just kind of lay there and let the swimmers do their thang...and I think they did. A few moments later, I experienced some cramping. Not anything forceful or particularly painful even. Just some uncomfortable little twinges. I took it as a sign that some clever and industrious swimmers had found their way onto the right path since women who IUI at the doctor's office often report slight cramping after their swimmers are placed directly inside their uteri. Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
The deed done, I lay on my back with my knees to my chest for a good hour or so while watching Martin Lawrence's First Amendment Stand Up on Netflix (funny stuff). I watched one or two other movies and then fell blissfully asleep dreaming of chubby brown babies...This is the part where my plans intersected with God's quirky sense of humor...
ICI Round 2:2
Overnight, I woke around 2:30am...I had a weird feeling that I couldn't quite place. I went to the bathroom and went back to bed. The next morning, I woke with a start at 6am to the sound of my cell phone's customized alarm signal: "*s, wake up. Beep. *s, wake up. Beep." (repeat). I reached under my pillow for the thermometer and sleepily put it under my tongue, eyes still closed tight against the morning light filtering in through the blinds. 97.6 F, a full .51 degrees higher than CD 12. It may have been my middle of the night stupor trying to tell me that I was ovulating just right then. With no time to waste, I hopped out of/off of bed/air mattress and ran to take another OPK. It was negative, but with a very faint, almost non-existent line. I had in fact ovulated over night. Time to get to work!
This being my last chance to try getting knocked up until possibly Christmas (or maybe even until next year), I took a hold of myself and made a decision. I was only a few hours past the exact time of my ovulation. It would take the egg at least 4 days to make it out of the fallopian tube, but good swimmers could get to the egg just started on its journey in anywhere from 45mins to a few hours. I decided to use all three remaining vials and make my CD13 morning insemination my last. The more the merrier. Strength in numbers. Right?
My friend K. was right to nick-name me PlanB. I am very adaptable to change! I didn't waste a moment. I put on the kettle to boil water for morning oatmeal and tea. I pulled out and heated up a little bit of Japanese unagi over brown rice from the night before. I brushed my teeth and washed my face. Changed into a slightly different insemination ensemble. Oatmeal & tea covered and steeping beside my pillow (and unagi foil-wrapped and warm inside the toaster oven), I fed and watered Precious Roy and gave him two more "herbal calming chews for cats". I inflated the air mattress a little bit more (always some bit of leakage and sagging overnight, right?).
donor ID is obscured because
blah, blah, blah...(see comment
under ICI 2:1 photo)
As I opened the box-0-cryotank, it was all I could do to get the three remaining pop-sicles out without my über-hyper kittie jumping into the box and turning himself into a cat-sicle! Mission accomplished! Plopped the three into the Marshmallow Fluff lid and gave them a moment to collect their thoughts and pose for a photo. Then, one by one, I unscrewed the caps and rescrewed them again (but not too tightly). I placed all three into the zip lock baggie and then into their warm bath to relax and unwind whilst I set the timer on my phone and tried to get myself to do the same. With a little over a minute left on the clock, I proceeded to PreSeed one last time. "*s, wake up. Beep. *s, wake up. Beep." Go time.
I removed the triplets from their bath and saw that they were all sloshing about quite nicely in their vials. One by one, I filled three 1cc syringes and set them aside on a clean paper towel. One by one I tap-tap-tapped the air bubbles to the top and expelled them from the syringes, the last of which I smeared onto the Ovulite lens. Swimmers are GO!
I carried the three syringes over to the staging area and set them down on the paper towel next to my pillow. I lay down, put the fluffy pillow under my bottom, and tented out the bed covers by putting my knees up to my chest like before. I turned my head to the right and reached out for a syringe. I said a prayer and inserted the contents of the three syringes in close proximity to my cervix one...by...one. And I waited. Like the evening before, I felt some cramping after a few moments. A few moments after that, I felt it again. GO SWIMMERS GO!!! And Godspeed to you! And who knows? Maybe my plan needed some shaking up. I mean, I was so positive about the perfection of my timing last time around, and clearly that didn't turn out as I'd hoped. Maybe this is the right timing for my body to make babies. Maybe this is the right Bachelor for my body to make babies with. I planned. God laughed. Maybe 9 1/2 months from now, God & I will both sit back and laugh at all the unscheduled events that took place that made a certain chubby, brown tiny human of my dreams possible. We plan and God laughs. God plans and we stand back in bewildered awe...
And here I am...at CD19-7DPO. Smack in the middle of the Two-Week Wait. I've dutifully applied progesterone cream to soft-skinned areas of my body (inner-arms, inner thighs, belly, etc.) twice a day since 4DPO to keep my levels up, keep my LP from shorting out and starting AF, and make my insides a hospitable place should anything fertilized want to snuggle in and stay for a while. I leave for France on 16th July, exactly one week away (and just one day after AF is projected to arrive). Technically, I'm supposed to wait until Friday to test, but I need to be sure before I get on a plane and stew about it for 12 hours in flight. So I've decided to HPT on Thursday, and I've already made an appointment with my GP to get a prescription filled before I go, so I'm going to request a pregnancy blood test that day as well (regardless of what the HPT says...at only 13DPO, it may be too soon for an HPT to pick up, but a blood test should be definitive by that point).
Lots to do in the meantime...so just anxiously (but patiently) waiting...Tic-Toc...Tic-Toc...Tic-Toc...
...Stay tuned.
The plan, as has always been my general framework for a plan: I have super-regular cycles and almost unfailingly ovulate on CD13. So the idea is basically to inseminate once in the evening of CD12, again in the early morning of CD13, and lastly in the evening of CD13. That's the basic plan. It's what I did the first time. Seems like a good plan to follow this time, too. However, in an effort to up my chances at conception, I wanted to use more than one vial per insemination if possible. Strength in numbers. When you're making babies and dealing with "fresh" goods, there's just so much of it! Seriously. It can be a hot mess (literally) if your getting down without the specific aim of making a baby. When you're dealing with Pop-sicles however (frozen goods, if you will), you're getting a substantially smaller volume of goods and also you can't guarantee how well or not your Pop-sicle(s) will survive the thawing process to get the job done. So the logic I'm following is basically The More The Merrier.
The Pop-sicle gets thawed properly, and upon its foray into the Potential Baby Zone, more swimmers means they can play better defense. There are some swimmers that just aren't gonna make it. That is a sad, sorry fact whether you are using "fresh" or "frozen". Some swimmers are gonna get tired early and quite. Some swimmers are gonna get their heads turned around and get caught up in the surrounding lining area, all too anxious to penetrate something and not noticing that it's just a wall and not an egg. Some swimmers will get past all that and then take a wrong turn at the fork in the road (right or left fallopian tube - decisions, decisions).
And when a swimmer does make it to the egg, it's not just the strength and speed of that one swimmer that determines whether or not he'll be allowed in. The entire environment around the egg has to be altered chemically/hormonally, and that can only happen when the concentration of swimmers in the area reaches a certain tipping point. Even when that happens, only one swimmer can penetrate the egg, but it takes the consistent tap-tap-tapping of about 200 swimmers to convince the egg to let that one swimmer in.
Based on this science, research, and carefully constructed theory, I decided it would be a good idea to double up, so to speak for each insemination. The hard facts of reality, however, are that my bank account and impending international move made it impossible for me to purchase enough Pop-sicles to double up on all three attempts for this cycle. I already had two pre-purchased Bachelor #2 Pop-sicles that I'd traded in for Bachelor #1 Pop-sicles as soon as Miss T alerted me to his newly re-available status. I had then also purchased two more Bachelor #1 Pop-sicles, bringing the grand total to four. I'd have like to have bought two more (to have six altogether, and be able to double up for each attempt), but finances simply would not permit it. Ergo, the new plan was to do a PM ICI on CD12 with 1 pop-cicle; an AM ICI on CD13 with 2 pop-sicles; and another PM ICI on CD13 with the last remaining pop-sicle. It seemed like a solid plan, and it was....until the game changed on me.
You know what they say: "Men plan and God laughs." The Lord must have really been feelin' Himself this cycle because my plans got rearranged in a hurry!
As you know, on CD11 FedEx grossly mis-handled my box-o-cryotank. It was supposed to be held for me to pick it up at a FedEx Kinkos hold facility, but it accidentally got sent back out and almost got itself on a plane to Memphis. With the three-hour time difference between my location in NYC and The Bank's location in San Francisco, I was able to get someone very helpful on the line to mediate and light a fire under the FedEx guys to find my box and get it back to me PRONTO. So I did end up going home with my box-o-cryotank that evening, but upon arriving home, a test revealed a very positive OPK.
I usually don't get a bells & whistles positive OPK until CD12. I was already stressed out from the events of the evening, and also from just having done the whole apartment shipping process for my stuff to HK. I didn't want to throw myself off any more by stressing more and worrying about the timing of my (up to now) unwavering CD13 O-day. Plus, I was exhausted and hadn't slept for more than 8 hours combined in the previous 3 or 4 days. I went to bed with my box-o-cryotank where I could see it.
I woke up the next day and ran a few errands. I'd done an OPK at 9:30am, and I was still testing positive, so I decided not to panic and got on with the business of the day. I just kept telling myself, "Don't freak out. Stick to the plan." So I organized some things. Packed up/cleared out a few other things. Took out a whole lot of trash and recycling. Around 6pm, I did another OPK (still positive, but now the T-line was a bit lighter than it was that morning), and I prepped the area for ICI Round 2:1.
I had checked my four vials to confirm that they were actually Bachelor #1's four vials and not those of some random Donor X. Check! I had two sets: two vials from an October 2010 donation, and two vials from a December 2010 donation. I decided to use one of the October vials for this attempt (I wanted to save the two more recent vials for my "double-up" attempt the next morning). When I opened the box-o-cryotank, I noticed that the tank itself was marked PRS-024. Since 24 is my favorite number (don't ask me why. It just is...), I took this as a good sign. Let the games begin!
Box-O-Cryotank
Same as before, I used my clumsy leather Home Depot garden gloves to gently remove one vial from the tank and plopped it down into a Marshmallow Fluff lid (I'd packed off pretty much all my other kitchen stuff to HK, so you know...any port in a storm!). It did its one-minute wait til I could touch it without getting frostbite from the sub-freezing liquid nitrogen temperature it had been kept at up to this point.
I've obscured my donor's ID number to protect
my family's & donor's privacy...and also to keep
others from ordering my stuff & putting him out
of stock when I need him most...just sayin'.
Then I unscrewed the cap and screwed it back on (but not too tightly), put the pop-cicle into a zip lock baggie, and put said baggie into a cup of luke warm water. I put a the Fluff lid on top of the cup and set the timer on my cell phone for 10 minutes. I used the thaw time to put a little more air into the air mattress (bed's on its way to HK already). I got into my comfy clothes - an insemination ensemble as it were. I fed Precious Roy and gave him two "herbal calming chews for cats" in the vain hope that he might settle down a bit and not impede the process too much. I'd ordered a tube of PreSeed, so I proceeded to PreSeed in preparation for the evening's proceedings accordingly. And not a moment too soon: the timer on my phone went off.
I lifted the baggie out of its tepid bath and extracted the pinky-sized vial (all liquidated and no longer a pop-sicle). It wasn't cold to the touch at all and the contents seemed to move around freely enough inside. I unscrewed the top from the vial and opened the oral syringe provided, pushing the tip all the way to the bottom of the vial. I slowly raised the plunger and filled the vial with Bachelor #1's swimmers. I then up-ended the syringe and did the tap-tap-tap thing to get all the air bubbles to the top. Gently pushing down on the plunger, I expelled the air bubbles (and a few swimmers), and let the few brave kamikazi swimmers drip onto the lens of my Ovulite Fertility Monitoring Microscope. I checked to see if the swimmers were actually swimming: YUP!
(Insert Flight of the Conchords Season 1 soundtrack here) Conditions are perfect. It's Business Time....I lay down on the air mattress and got under the covers. I lifted my bottom and shoved the fluffier of my two remaining pillows just below my sacrum. I put my knees in the air, making the air mattress look more like a 4-year-old's living room play forte, and I inserted the syringe. Slowly, slowly, slowly pushing in the plunger and releasing Bachelor #1's swimmers in the general vicinity of my cervix. Since I had used the PreSeed, I didn't take the "extra step" because I didn't want my body's own chemistry fighting with the pH of the PreSeed and confusing/harming the swimmers. I just kind of lay there and let the swimmers do their thang...and I think they did. A few moments later, I experienced some cramping. Not anything forceful or particularly painful even. Just some uncomfortable little twinges. I took it as a sign that some clever and industrious swimmers had found their way onto the right path since women who IUI at the doctor's office often report slight cramping after their swimmers are placed directly inside their uteri. Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
The deed done, I lay on my back with my knees to my chest for a good hour or so while watching Martin Lawrence's First Amendment Stand Up on Netflix (funny stuff). I watched one or two other movies and then fell blissfully asleep dreaming of chubby brown babies...This is the part where my plans intersected with God's quirky sense of humor...
ICI Round 2:2
Overnight, I woke around 2:30am...I had a weird feeling that I couldn't quite place. I went to the bathroom and went back to bed. The next morning, I woke with a start at 6am to the sound of my cell phone's customized alarm signal: "*s, wake up. Beep. *s, wake up. Beep." (repeat). I reached under my pillow for the thermometer and sleepily put it under my tongue, eyes still closed tight against the morning light filtering in through the blinds. 97.6 F, a full .51 degrees higher than CD 12. It may have been my middle of the night stupor trying to tell me that I was ovulating just right then. With no time to waste, I hopped out of/off of bed/air mattress and ran to take another OPK. It was negative, but with a very faint, almost non-existent line. I had in fact ovulated over night. Time to get to work!
This being my last chance to try getting knocked up until possibly Christmas (or maybe even until next year), I took a hold of myself and made a decision. I was only a few hours past the exact time of my ovulation. It would take the egg at least 4 days to make it out of the fallopian tube, but good swimmers could get to the egg just started on its journey in anywhere from 45mins to a few hours. I decided to use all three remaining vials and make my CD13 morning insemination my last. The more the merrier. Strength in numbers. Right?
My friend K. was right to nick-name me PlanB. I am very adaptable to change! I didn't waste a moment. I put on the kettle to boil water for morning oatmeal and tea. I pulled out and heated up a little bit of Japanese unagi over brown rice from the night before. I brushed my teeth and washed my face. Changed into a slightly different insemination ensemble. Oatmeal & tea covered and steeping beside my pillow (and unagi foil-wrapped and warm inside the toaster oven), I fed and watered Precious Roy and gave him two more "herbal calming chews for cats". I inflated the air mattress a little bit more (always some bit of leakage and sagging overnight, right?).
donor ID is obscured because
blah, blah, blah...(see comment
under ICI 2:1 photo)
As I opened the box-0-cryotank, it was all I could do to get the three remaining pop-sicles out without my über-hyper kittie jumping into the box and turning himself into a cat-sicle! Mission accomplished! Plopped the three into the Marshmallow Fluff lid and gave them a moment to collect their thoughts and pose for a photo. Then, one by one, I unscrewed the caps and rescrewed them again (but not too tightly). I placed all three into the zip lock baggie and then into their warm bath to relax and unwind whilst I set the timer on my phone and tried to get myself to do the same. With a little over a minute left on the clock, I proceeded to PreSeed one last time. "*s, wake up. Beep. *s, wake up. Beep." Go time.
I removed the triplets from their bath and saw that they were all sloshing about quite nicely in their vials. One by one, I filled three 1cc syringes and set them aside on a clean paper towel. One by one I tap-tap-tapped the air bubbles to the top and expelled them from the syringes, the last of which I smeared onto the Ovulite lens. Swimmers are GO!
I carried the three syringes over to the staging area and set them down on the paper towel next to my pillow. I lay down, put the fluffy pillow under my bottom, and tented out the bed covers by putting my knees up to my chest like before. I turned my head to the right and reached out for a syringe. I said a prayer and inserted the contents of the three syringes in close proximity to my cervix one...by...one. And I waited. Like the evening before, I felt some cramping after a few moments. A few moments after that, I felt it again. GO SWIMMERS GO!!! And Godspeed to you! And who knows? Maybe my plan needed some shaking up. I mean, I was so positive about the perfection of my timing last time around, and clearly that didn't turn out as I'd hoped. Maybe this is the right timing for my body to make babies. Maybe this is the right Bachelor for my body to make babies with. I planned. God laughed. Maybe 9 1/2 months from now, God & I will both sit back and laugh at all the unscheduled events that took place that made a certain chubby, brown tiny human of my dreams possible. We plan and God laughs. God plans and we stand back in bewildered awe...
And here I am...at CD19-7DPO. Smack in the middle of the Two-Week Wait. I've dutifully applied progesterone cream to soft-skinned areas of my body (inner-arms, inner thighs, belly, etc.) twice a day since 4DPO to keep my levels up, keep my LP from shorting out and starting AF, and make my insides a hospitable place should anything fertilized want to snuggle in and stay for a while. I leave for France on 16th July, exactly one week away (and just one day after AF is projected to arrive). Technically, I'm supposed to wait until Friday to test, but I need to be sure before I get on a plane and stew about it for 12 hours in flight. So I've decided to HPT on Thursday, and I've already made an appointment with my GP to get a prescription filled before I go, so I'm going to request a pregnancy blood test that day as well (regardless of what the HPT says...at only 13DPO, it may be too soon for an HPT to pick up, but a blood test should be definitive by that point).
Lots to do in the meantime...so just anxiously (but patiently) waiting...Tic-Toc...Tic-Toc...Tic-Toc...
...Stay tuned.
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