Big buts

This past week is a bit of a haze, but the good news is that I survived!!!  I mean that literally: I had to travel for work and I'm quite seriously terrified of flying!!  I do it anyhow, but only when I can find absolutely no other way to get there...  Anyhow, the trip was good overall, but I'm so glad to be home!!

Two other things of some noteworthiness happened this week.  Of course, to actually consider these noteworthy events, you probably need to have the noteworthy bar set very low, which, conveniently, I have.

The first noteworthy item is that I started crying over lunch with Ar.  In itself, that's not particularly noteworthy. It wasn't the first time I started crying to Ar over a delicious Baja lunch, after all.  Let's face it, it probably won't be the last.  However, this time it was because I suddenly found myself telling him I want to do IVF.  It just came out: I want to do IVF. 

It seems, as much as I am trying, I'm not quite ready to give up... not quite ready to accept "involuntary childlessness."

Involuntary childlessness.  That sounds so official, doesn't it?  Such a cold and official way to describe something so incredibly heartbreaking and life-changing. 

Life-changing?  That's a funny one too, isn't it?  How does - still not having something that you never had - change your life?

Ahh, yes - every IF question only leads to more. Suffice it to say, it is indeed life-changing.

Back to the lunch tears: I want to do IVF.  It's the next step.  I think, win or lose, it's what would at least make me feel like we tried everything to have a little ArHJ baby.  

But....  everyone I know has a big but.  Let's talk about my big but.

BUT, I do not see how we can possibly do it.  How can we possibly, in any sort of reasonable time frame, do IVF?

We would have to pay off our current RE bill and we'd have to come up with the money for what would be our next RE bill - and I'd have to lose more weight.  I started doing Weight Watchers about five or six weeks ago.  I'm doing pretty well (except during my work trip this week = ugh!), but I have a ways to go still.   Plus, I'm 41...  How long might it take to achieve these financial and weight loss goals?   Longer than I have, childbearing wise, I fear.

Yet I acknowledge this:  I'm not quite ready to stop, after all.  I want to do IVF.  I don't know what to do with that, though... it doesn't seem to be in the cards.

As for the second noteworthy item, I started taking Spironolactone again.  This was prescribed to me ages ago to help with PCOS symptoms - ok, one symptom in particular.   My RE had me stop taking it when I started up IF treatments again this past year, because it can cause some serious birth defects, apparently. I stopped it - oh, almost a year ago now.  Well, in the last couple months, I've been noticing that my so lovely PCOS symptom has been worsening again.  This symptom, which I seriously hate to talk about because it's made me feel like a freak most of my life (here's a hint: it rhymes with shmirsutism), has been something I have spent a lot of my life battling.  It may seem like vanity, but it used to make me feel quite awful, ugly, and unlovable. To be perfectly honest, there are some days it still makes me feel like that.  In fact, I was, once upon a time, quite certain that, because of it, no man could ever love me.  Thank God I was so wrong about that!!  I don't worry about that part anymore, of course.  Still, I don't welcome this symptom's worsening.  So...  I put myself back on Spironolactone.

BUT.... why go back on something that can cause birth defects, if I want to keep trying?

I don't know!!! I just don't know. Maybe because as much as I know I'm not ready to accept it (childlessness), I don't see a way around it... 

BUT, I can always go back off the Spiro again, right?  

Sigh.

But now, for the best BUT of all:

"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. BUT God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  (Romans 5:1-8)