Mind Games

I know that my chances of ovulating in the next two days, before Dr. B blows town for the weekend, are slim to none.

I know it, because that's what I've told myself eleventy bazillion times over the past week.

But still, I think that somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm expecting it to happen.

I'm afraid that the ridiculously naive, "all will be fine," pee-cup-half-full, Polly-fucking-anna part of my brain is still fully expecting me to ovulate in time, expecting to inseminate this cycle, expecting to find myself expecting in a couple of weeks.

The logical, consider-the-odds, precisely-measure-the-actual volume-of-liquid-in-the-glass part of my brain is, of course, telling me that I'm much more likely to ovulate on Friday (just missing her) or Saturday.

It's telling me that it was silly to even order the sperm this month; we should have just waited for the next cycle.

It's telling me that I should've taken Dr. B's advice to go with the RE from the get-go, rather than wanting to do "one natural cycle first."

What was the reasoning behind that, anyway?

Because we like Dr. B, and we were hoping for her to be the one to impregnate me?

Because, although we've been told that the chance of twins on Clomid is less than 10% and the chance of higher-order multiples is almost none, we're still a little nervous about that?

Because, on some stupid level, I feel like using Clomid is "cheating" and I wanted to at least see if I could do it "on my own" first?

D - All of the above?

Of course, there's still that huge third part of my brain that still feels like this is all just crazy-talk, and all just pretend and speculation and fantasy and that we're just somehow play-acting as "people trying to get pregnant."

In part, I guess it's hard to feel like we're "trying" if we haven't actually "tried" yet.

How can we be trying to get pregnant if there aren't any sperm around?

Maybe once we do our first insemination, it will feel a little more real. A little more like it's actually happening, rather than just something we're talking about and thinking about.

(Granted, talking and thinking about a whole fucking lot.)

I don't know when the possibility of actually having a baby might seem real.

On the one hand, everything we plan these days is based around the idea that I might be pregnant soon, and we might have a baby not-quite-as-soon.

We've already sort of made it part of our reality, even though it's not real yet.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem real at all. It doesn't seem possible at all.

I guess because I've looked forward to being pregnant, to having a baby, for so long - since childhood, actually - that it still just feels the same as that.

It's hard to convince myself that it's any closer to real now than it was then.

Maybe because we don't know that it is.

And, of course, there's that whole thing about how parents are grown-ups.

I don't feel grown up at all. Certainly not grown up enough to have a child!

And yet, the biggest question that looms over this whole process is whether I'm too "grown up" to do it.

Now that we're finally ready, have I already missed my chance? I can't even go there.

My logical head tells me that, given my age, given the one-try-per-cycle with frozen sperm, that we're in for a long haul here.

It tells me to expect several months of disappointment; to be prepared for the possibility of some really big disappointments along the way.

That damn Pollyana side, though, she's doing her best to convince me that I'll have a baby in my arms by Easter.

She's a cruel bitch, that Pollyana.

I'm doing my best to not let her set me up like that, but damn she tells a good story, and it's one I'd love to believe.

How, exactly, does one "hope for the best, and prepare for the worst?"

You would think I would have run out of "hands" and "minds" to hold all my different thoughts about it all by now, but I seem to just keep making more.

As soon as I think I've sorted out how I feel, some other, completely contradictory, feeling surfaces.

What's amazing is how I can manage to keep them all in my head at once. I must be a freakin' genius or something.

("Something" = "fucking nuts")