In the spirit of full disclosure, and in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Leery Polyp Productions presents the following:
Lest anyone believe that I have immediately righted myself, Weeble-like, from the crushing disappointment of the past few days, know this: I pause in the stacks, at work, and weep quietly until capillaries pop in my face. I spent Thursday sitting in my office making fruitless attempts to stifle the waterworks, since all the walls in that building are glass, and various researches, apparently clueless as to the fact that the small, enclosed room with desks and computers and a CLOSED MOTHERFUCKING DOOR was MY PERSONAL OFFICE, kept WALKING IN, without so much as a gestured knock, to ask me things I couldn't answer. You would hope that red eyes, soggy mascara-besmirched sleeves, and a wounded look would be sufficient to tip off an otherwise-polite wandering Scot to the impropriety of his actions, but friend, you'd be wrong.
Then again, Friday was fine, I was happy enough, feathering my nest with adoption plans and fantasies. Thinking about Budapest, relishing the idea of a break, rejoicing in my ability to stuff myself back into my old jeans.
Saturday was good, until it occurred to me midafternoon that oh god I'm not pregnant and probably won't ever be, at which point I again burst into tears, to be comforted by my husband until it was time to get dressed. Today is my beloved scientist's birthday, and we had plans to go last night to a swanky restaurant a few towns away (which incidentally delivered most amazingly, what with the honey-lavender glazed organic chicken with truffle and sour cherry reduction, oh god, and the goat cheese spatzle and watercress, and oh Lordy the desserts). When we left the house I still felt murky, subdued; but by the time we got there I'd perked up, and between dinner and dessert we talked some more about adoption.
And the amazing thing is that we feel exactly the same way about it, my scientist and I: that the best part of anyone that gets passed down, the true heritage, is in the daily acts of living, the love and kindness and depth of caring. Everything beautiful about my father-in-law, who passed away a little more than two years ago, will be handed down to our children, no matter how they come to us. Of course that made me cry again, but this was happy crying, and so when the waiter appeared to take our dessert order at that precise moment, I didn't mind so much.
So. We are going to do our two more allotted IUIs, because we need to, in order to move on. But after the final IUI, at the point when Dr. Sweety will nudge us toward IVF, we're going to stop. Reassess. Formulate our polite demurrals, because you know how REs are, bless their lab-loving hearts -- they do like to press onward. And then, having spent the four months it takes us to do two IUIs researching agencies, we can move. The fuck. On. We will have that fantasy to sustain us, that of taking home a baby who looks nothing like us, who is perfect and beautiful and REAL, instead of those hollow visualizations of me with a big belly, me pushing out a baby at home into a midwife's hands.
Because I can't do this if there's no real end in sight.