Fortune

I've been relatively silent for a while, because things have finally started moving around behind the scenes. After our first embryo transfer failed, I was absolutely devastated, as were my husband and son. It was exacerbated by all of us being apart for much of the summer: our son went to summer camp, and my husband went back to work in Colorado, waiting for the next update so we could book his return flight.

We did an ultrasound and the doctor said my period should start within a couple of days. And then a week went by with nothing. And then two more weeks. They had me come to the lab in San Francisco for some detailed bloodwork and another ultrasound, and figured out that despite the birth control ring, I had still ovulated, so our plans were delayed until my body could reset itself naturally.

Add in some particularly upsetting news about my job, and it made for a pretty lousy month of July. 

But early August, things started finally moving, and we had our second embryo transfer a little over a week ago. Everything went very well leading up to it and during the procedure, and the first round of bloodwork earlier this week went well also - although admittedly, that one is just testing to see that the medications are effective, and we had excellent results back in June also, before failing the 10 day post transfer lab test for hCG.

Last time, I had a feeling that it hadn't worked. I've had some minor symptoms but they had kind of faded the closer we got to the 10 day mark. It didn't help that I got in my own head also, taking home pregnancy tests to try and peek at the results. I can't decide if it made getting the definitive failed transfer update from the doctor easier or harder to hear - I was still devastated, but at least I was expecting to be.

This time, I haven't taken any tests. I've been tired on and off, and definitely a lot of soreness and tenderness the last few days. Maybe it's psychosomatic, my body giving me the symptoms because I'm so desperate for it to have worked this time. 

In any case, I'll get my results on Monday, and then we proceed from there. If it looks good, there's more testing to follow. If it failed again, I had a discussion with my husband about postponing the transfer of our final frozen embryo until November or December when I have more recovery time and more schedule flexibility. Even as it is, good news or bad, my semester starts Wednesday and I've got to lead a couple of classes with a smile on my face regardless of whatever updates I hear on Monday.

If this one failed, my goal is to spend this semester recommitting to my bariatric program. I've been on hold since April, trying to just maintain my weight to have a baseline of understanding during the IVF process. Between the medicines, the sadness, and the anxiety, I am up about 10 pounds from my lowest, not awful but just something to manage. I'd love to really buckle down and get under 200 before the next embryo transfer, give me a goal and something to work towards, something to think about other than shots and medications and periods and ultrasounds and everything else that's been consuming me for the last five months.

But of course, the best case scenario is that the tiredness and the soreness after real and this worked, it really worked, it finally worked, and we have something to celebrate instead of more embryos to grieve the loss of. I'm about 48 hours away from the test result phone call, and it's going to be the longest two days of my life.

After the embryo transfer, my husband and I stopped in Chinatown so I could show him a fortune cookie factory that our son and I had stumbled on when we were sightseeing last year. It was just a sweet little pitstop, I was a little bit sore and just wanted to take it easy for the drive home. But it was a nice place to walk for just a few minutes, get a treat, and have a souvenir of our day in the city, even if the embryo transfer didn't work out in the end.

Last night, my husband texted me. He'd opened one of the fortune cookies he brought back to Colorado with him, and found this message inside.

We've been obsessed with messages and signs and winks and nudges from the universe, anything that helps comfort us in such an exhausting and emotional time. And this felt like a tremendously nice whisper from heaven, especially since yesterday was his mother's birthday.

If it worked this time, I am exactly 4 weeks today. And I'm trying to hold onto that milestone and love it tremendously into real existence. All the signs and winks and nudges have been here we're ready now for the confirmation.

Napkins

One of my least favorite social media trends is people who are eating things in their cars. Usually it's folks in a front seat, showing off some new fast food offering or limited time special they are reviewing for their followers. I understand their goal from a professional standpoint: sample the product as soon as you get it so it is still the best temperature. I think there's also a purpose to being in the car instead of at home or somewhere else, because it seems maybe more genuine and spontaneous, whereas something recorded at home may have been rehearsed or altered and the reaction may not be as sincere.

I find these tremendously triggering, though. My associations of eating in the car are overwhelmingly negative. The times when I have been my most depressed or upset, I would frequently self-soothe with fast food or secret groceries that I would shovel into my mouth as quickly as possible before getting home and being discovered. It wasn't about hunger, satisfaction, or even enjoyment. It's about feeling something other than the numbness of depression, it's about feeling full of something other than sadness.

A few months after my bariatric surgery, my son sneezed in the car and reached into the storage console for something to blow his nose. He was surprised to discover an unexpected consequence of my surgery: we no longer had an emergency stash of napkins in there, accrued from all the secret drive-thru trips. It was funny in a sense, not necessarily a non-scale victory but definitely an interesting effect I hadn't anticipated.

All of this is to say, right now my console has a lot of napkins in it. It's not entirely depression-driven - there has been a lot more eating on the go, all the trips to the fertility clinic and the lab, plus the summer camp drop off and then the pick up. It's been a couple thousand miles on the car just in the last few months, hours and hours at a time. Sometimes I'll pack bariatric-friendly snacks - every trip, I can definitely be counted on to pack a caramel protein shake to mix with a coffee. But there's usually at least one meal that I have on the road.

I still can't eat a lot at once, the surgery works the way it's supposed to. So even when I go out somewhere, my choices still have to be reasonable. It's more about my emotions and the things driving me to go out instead of packing something consistent with my goals, or just waiting until I get home.

Part of my emotional eating issues involves food hoarding. My family struggled financially when I was a kid and now as an adult, my default panic reaction is to surround myself with food. Even if I'm not eating it immediately, I gather it - stock the fridge and pantry in case of issues. My brain feels calmer with a freezer packed to capacity. My anxiety about scarcity is quelled and this itch in my soul is scratched.

I've been really struggling with mental health this last month, with worries about my job and our future here in California, concerns about my health and the IVF process, missing my son while he was at camp, and feeling really really frustrated with my weight - feeling out of control, in a way I haven't felt since before my surgery.

So I'm not really surprised about the state of the napkins in that center console. I'm just at a loss of mental energy to figure out what to do about it.