35.5 weeks

I haven't updated this blog in close to two months. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, I just haven't known how to frame it. It's especially hard when two of the women whose blogs I used to read on a regular basis had negatives/miscarriages from their last cycles. I feel immensely grateful and lucky to be experiencing pregnancy. It's funny- there's this whole pyramid of how bad it can be. There are the women who come crying to RESOLVE groups about how they can't stand the thought of doing an IUI. Then they get pregnant the first time, and I'm like, oh cry me a river. Sorry you didn't get pregnant from a romantic evening of wine and dining, but you GOT PREGNANT. With relatively little expensive and invasive procedures. And then the next step up- IVF. While IVF sucks, and is expensive (I should know about both of those- I did it three times), I can only imagine how amazing it would have been if that had worked for me. Not to even mention those for whom it works the first time, and they have frozen embryos for the future.  I know it's not easy for either of these groups of women, but it's definitely a bridge I crossed a long time ago.

The final frontier in assisted reproductive technologies often feels like donor egg, though when I really think about it, it can go much beyond- for example, using a surrogate. Or moving to adoption, by choice or by necessity. So while I still strongly believe that anyone who wants a child badly enough will find a way, provided they have a supportive partner and the financial means (neither of which is small potatoes), there are so many different roadblocks and challenges to overcome for some women and couples. I count myself as extremely unlucky to have needed donor egg at the ripe old age of 32 (I'm 33 now, but was 32 on the day of transfer- and had been trying to conceive since I was 30 years old), especially when I never actually received a conclusive answer for why three IVFs failed so horribly.  But when you're in the infertility world for awhile, you realize how unluckiness takes all shapes and forms and degrees. And then I look down at my belly and thank the universe and my donor that I am able to sustain this pregnancy, no matter how much it took to get here and the tears and draining of money and greying of hair that have resulted.

This journey is not over yet. I am 35.5 weeks pregnant but no baby is here yet. I find it very difficult to connect my stomach to the idea that one of these days, hopefully 4.5 weeks from now, a baby is going to be laid in my arms. He won't be my genetic material, but he was grown and nurtured by my uterus and my healthy food choices and my love and my sheer determination to bring him to this world. I think it will be utterly surreal. I have watched my friends from RESOLVE go through the transition to being mothers, and I can't quite translate my growing stomach to this eventual event. But I know it's coming. I feel my stomach roll and see it ripple and I remind myself it's not gas- it's a human being in there.

Still, life right now is totally surreal. My hormones have mellowed a lot from when I used to cry all the time (see my previous entry on my very emotional birthing class), but I still occasionally tear up when I walk by the room we've decorated for him, or when I think of being able to introduce him to my mom and dad, or when I look through the photos of this whole journey that I am collecting in a special folder on this laptop. My physical discomforts are very minor compared to many women, and I hope birth will be the same way, but ultimately, I just feel so grateful to be experiencing this. Oh, I get tired and cranky, and I worry about daycare and money and the actual process of giving birth, but mostly, I just still am in disbelief that I am going to be a real mom someday soon. I cannot wait to sit on the couch and do nothing but hold him, and thank my lucky stars that something finally worked.

I don't know if I will continue to update this blog. I guess I will put something on here when he has safely arrived, but mostly, I just go to work, come home and sack out on the couch, and count down the days to meeting him. My infertility journey is not over- I still have fertility jealousy when women seem to come by new babies so easily, and I get uncomfortable when people want to talk too much about my pregnancy, and I know that I'll have to endure clinics and ultrasounds and shots if we decide to do this again, even for a frozen embryo transfer. But mostly, I just hope and pray that anyone else struggling gets through this too, and that it was all worth it.

Signing off for awhile, then. Good night.

His room, in progress