Officially Official

After some paperwork bullshit at the lab yesterday (we suspect - but didn't think of this until we'd left - that Shrike's orders were probably misfiled, thanks to our ever-so-mystifying hyphenated last name) Shrike repeated her beta today, and it was actually negative this time.

Of course, we knew that it would be, but that didn't make it much easier to know for certain,

I think, for me, that the hardest part of it right now is that I am not one who is very good at giving up, so I keep finding my mind spinning scenarios by which we win the lottery or there's a follow-up study, or someone at the clinic decides that they just love us soooo much they want really want us to have another baby, and we get one more cycle for free, this time with PGD, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Or maybe the hardest part is trying to break my brain of automatically thinking in terms of "when Shrike gets pregnant . . . " and "when we have the baby . . . ."

Or maybe it's how Peeper has suddenly gone from calling the female of her "Kissing Bears" couple "Curly Bear (That's Baby Bear's little sister, on Sesame Street. There's a long clip about her being born. Peeper loves it.) to carry around both of them and saying "Mama Bear not have a baby yet."

(Sidenote - Then she makes them kiss. I asked "What are they doing?" and she said "Dey kissin an huggin." "Why are they kissing and hugging?" "Acause dey wuv each udder." Awwww.)

She's not all sad about it, just very matter of fact, like "Hey, this scene is from before Curly Bear was born," but still I find myself wondering how much of this has she understood.

She's definitely aware that we've been sad lately. (Not all the time, of course, but off and on for, oh, the past ten days or so.)

On Thursday, the day of the actual beta, I was crying and I told her "Mama's sad, baby," so she asked "Why you sad, Mama?"

I told her that "It's grown-up stuff, and I can't really explain it to you, and everything is going to be fine, but right now Mommy and Mama just have to be sad for a while." She gave me a big hug, and then went right back to playing.

I'm sad for us, of course, but I'm also very sad for her. I know I've heard many only former-children say how much they enjoyed having all the attention and the resources, but I can't imagine having grown up without my siblings, and I can't imagine not having them now, and I really wanted that for her.

I guess we'll just have to spoil the hell out of her instead.