Christmas Wrapping-Up

Now that Christmas is over, I have time to actually sit down and write about it.

On Christmas Eve, I worked til about 1 pm (don't even get me started) and then we had another family dinner, this one hosted by Shrike's sister and her partner.

Shrike's grandparents had gone home with her aunt and uncle on Sunday to spend Christmas with them, but the rest of the "immediate" family was there (we use that term pretty loosely, to refer to four generations), along with Shrike's sister's partner's brother, his (female) partner, and six-month-old Baby K (or Baby C??), who are visiting from San Francisco.

After dinner, we went to the Christmas Eve service at their church. Normally, I'm not one for church, but a>it does seem appropriate to go on Christmas Eve, and b>this is a Unitarian church, so 1>we can hold hands and 2>they don't expect us to actually believe anything specific. Oh, and c>there are cookies afterward. So I actually kind of like it.

After church, we went back to the house to visit some more, and while we were gone, Shrike's sister's partner's other brother and his grownish son had arrived from North Carolina.

Shrike's sister and her partner have just finished (well, mostly finished, there's a bit of painting left to do) some major renovations on their house, expanding the kitchen by several feet and installing a new master bath.

At one point, the brothers were upstairs looking at the new bathroom, which is above the tv / playroom, where GodzillaBoy, our 10-year-old nephew, was playing. He must have heard them walking around up there, because he came in and announced that "I think I hear something on the chimney!"

We told him that if it was Santa Claus, he'd better hurry up and get in bed. He started saying his goodnights right then, and the next thing we knew, he was in the bathtub! I suspect it was a bit more challenging to get our 7-year-old niece down for the night.

When we got home, we gave in to tempation and went ahead and opened our "stockings," had some eggnog, with a little "nog" in it, and them some hot chocolate, featuring a bit of the butterscotch Schnapps that Santa had brought Shrike, and called it a night.

On Christmas day, itself, there were no official family celebrations, since Shrike, her mom and her sister all had to work. We walked the dogs in the morning, opened our real gifts from each other, and then went out to Denny's for lunch. (It was the only place open.)

Shrike went to work in the evening, and I just hung out and spent most of the afternoon reading the book that Shrike gave me, Embryo Culture: Making Babies in the Twenty-First Century. (Bonus: One of the doctors who is quoted in the book is the one who did our first IUI!)

Yesterday, I went down to my RE's office in the morning, for an ultrasound to check my uterine lining (it's nice and thick) and bloodwork (it all looked good, whatever that means).

I also talked with a financial person, trying to sort out where things stand with my insurance. According to the insurance company's website, it looks like they have approved all my IUIs (although the RE doesn't have the money yet) but that they have rejected all of the monitoring ultrasounds and bloodwork for the October and November cycles (#4 and #5), as well as one monitoring appointment for cycle #3 (what the fuck?) and the beta for cycle #5 (you gotta be kidding me!). So, the doctor's office will be contacting them about that.

Also, it seems that the RE's office has applied "adjustments" (to write off the amount above the insurance company's made up number, of which they pay 50% and we pay 50%) to some charges, but not all.

She said that she would have them look into that, because once those adjustments are applied, (and when they get the rest of the insurance money) we should owe a good bit less that the $800-something they are showing right now.

However, as I was driving to work, she called to say that now it seems like maybe they aren't in-network after all, in which case any applied adjustments were in error, so she doesn't want to be too pushy about that, for fear, that they'll take them off and we'll owe more. Shit.

Of course, this would not be an issue if I had a real freaking insurance company, that anyone had ever heard of.

From there, I went in to work for about four hours, then home to pick up Shrike for the final Christmas event - a big party at her sister's house.

Most of the family was there, plus pretty much every person that her sister or her partner has ever met, I think. I think they were expecting about 100 people, and it seemed like at least that many.

It was catered, and they had real live people playing Christmas music. (A couple from their church, I believe - him on xylophone and her on cello.)

Very fancy. Puts our parties completely to shame.

Baby K was there again and, although there was a lot more competition this time, I managed to steal her for a good portion of the evening, and get another "baby-fix" .

Of course, as with any "fix" the only problem is the crash at the end.

In addition to Baby R and Baby K, there was a whole pack of them at church on Monday, and talk of nothing else.

Being a Unitarian church, the Christmas Eve service touches on that whole Baby Jesus thing, of course, but there's also alot about celebrating birth in general. One year, the sermon was about "every birth is a miracle" and this time they lit candles for each of the three babies who's been born into the congregation this year. (The same three who were there that night, I assume.)

Which, as you can imagine, is a little tough for me.

At Christmas last year, we'd just made the decision to start trying to get pregnant, as soon as I had insurance. We knew that my job situation probably wouldn't be resolved in time to actually have a baby by now, but we certainly expected that there was a good chance we'd be pregnant.

I know that five attempts is really not much, in the grand scheme of things, and that we're about to really increase our chances, by going to IVF, but it's still hard, given that I had all intentions of being great with child by this Christmas, but here I am, still just watching it all, and holding other people's babies, and thinking "maybe next year . . . ."