Thursday, October 13, 2011

Our prescription: Patience.


There is something to be said about patience and my partner's lack there of. All good things come in due time. What goes around comes around. There's no use crying over spilled milk.

She prefers: The early bird gets the worm. You get what you pay for.

It is a challenging dynamic that we work together on daily in every aspect of our lives. I tend to be the more patient, laid-back half while she paces and strategizes about our next career/life moves. This is not always an easy combination of personalities. I will get angry and say that she is too neurotic and needs to calm down and appreciate the moment, while she will get bitter and say that I'm not proactive and I don't care enough.

I love grocery shopping, but not with her. I love walking down the aisles and picking up packages, reading the labels, thinking about what I could make and interesting flavor combinations. She, on the other hand, cannot stand the thought of being there in the chaos of Sunday afternoon and speed walks the length of the store, iPhone in hand with list. And then, when we're almost to the other end of the store, she'll say something like, 'I forgot the salsa. You take the cart and get in line and I'll meet you there,' as if beating the other people in the store who are just racing to the checkout was a matter of life or death.

This is not to say that I am perfect in my laxidasical approach to life. I would much rather relax in the morning on my days off, leaving any and all errands and tasks for the afternoon. Problem with that? I run out of time. By the time dinner rolls around, I'm still running about taking care of whatever it is that I should have finished already. My tasks run into the evening sometimes....all because I spent too much time drinking coffee, facebooking or blogging or talk-show watching. Why don't I do my errands and tasks first so I can be done with everything earlier?

Let's bring it back to baby-making. I try very hard to be optimistic and respect the fact that this is a process. She wants a baby now. We've done everything right. Why is it taking so long?

As we walked to our car following the doctor's appointment last week, I couldn't help feeling like a total moron. There I was with a crazy long list of questions and his response to many of them the same: be patient, it will take time. The false positive pregnancy test he said was nothing more than a faulty kit and it could've happened to anyone (why the hell our nurse contact couldn't tell us that, I don't know). Clomid has many side effects, some of which could actually be detrimental to baby-making (like reduced cervical mucus and a not-so-great uterine lining), so as a healthy woman who is ovulating regularly, it may not be helping (again, really? Contact couldn't tell us this?). The average heterosexual couple trying to get pregnant naturally has about a 25% chance of acheiving pregnancy in the average month. A couple using frozen sperm has about a 10% chance in an average month (and again, are you kidding me? Is our contact actually a registered nurse?). He gave us a better sense of the next stages of our journey: we'll do one more IUI without any drugs (for a total now of 6 attempts). If we don't get pregnant this time, we will do up to 4 more IUI's with either Clomid or Letrozole. If after that we're not pregnant, we'll consider IVF.

If nothing else, all of our somewhat simple questions were finally answered instead of skirted and avoided. Another tank of gas and a half day of work bites the dust. An email would have sufficed.

My period should start sometime in the next couple days. For the next two weeks, I am drinking coffee and relaxing for as much of that time as possible. Oh, and thinking proactively, for my partner's sake.



2 comments:

  1. stay positive my friend. im thinking of you guys.

    Also, i secretly have my fingers crossed you get twins... just saying.. haha

    -Your Florida Friend

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  2. I too have my fingers secretly crossed for twins!! Two for the price of one!!! HA! (or...me only giving birth once....also a bonus).

    Thanks Sam, miss you!

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