it's amazing how quickly the first part of my cycle goes when i'm not giving myself injections every day. i barely even noticed, and suddenly i'm pre-ovulatory. i went to the doctor this morning and i have one nice, big, fat follicle about ready to go, so we're doing IUI tomorrow. they gave me the trigger shot before i left, which is also great because that's the worst injection of all (it hurts and makes me sore afterwards) so i didn't have to worry about doing it myself OR having a sore leg because they give me the shots in my arm. the doc said because of the timing we will only do one insemination this cycle, which is fine by me. and i love that it's happening on a saturday... much less stress and i can go home and back to bed afterwards!
in related news, i've really been enjoying acupuncture. and no, not just because the guy is a hottie. it is such a completely different experience than the fertility stuff that is happening at the doctor... it seems incredible that they both can be intended to serve the same purpose. the divide between eastern and western medicine has never been so clear to me. frank, my acupuncturist, was upset by the fact that the head honcho doctor said, "time is of the essence" at my last appointment. well, he was as upset as a buddhist can get. which isn't really upset. but he had a lot of things to say about it. he said anyone who would say that to a patient doesn't understand the mind-body connection: what he thinks is the most important aspect of it all. not that he doesn't see truth in the fact that older women tend to struggle with fertility more often. but he won't generalize just on the basis of statistics when there are so many unknown factors about each individual situation. he told me he hadn't even met his wife yet when she was 35 -- and they have one child and another on the way -- so basing something on age isn't an effective measure of success.
so he talked to me a lot about different perspectives and ways to think about this from a more spiritual way, very much from buddhist ideals which are familiar and comfortable to me. we talked about attachment and impermanence, and how my mindset can and does affect this whole situation. he said i should think of myself already on a parenting journey, and that that journey began the moment i decided that i wanted to try to become a parent and turned my body over to the possibility. he said everyone's experience is different, and this is mine. it may include me getting pregnant and giving birth, or it may take another path. but i should stop thinking that i'm waiting for the experience to begin, because i'm already in it.
accepting that there are endless possible outcomes to this adventure is actually very comforting to me. i thought that idea might make me anxious, but it had the opposite effect. there are many ways to build a family and to give back to the world, and i will find a way to do it one way or another. i'm not going to let this crush me. we're doing what we can with a lot of medical assistance -- miraculous stuff that i'm so happy they can do. but it's not the be-all and end-all. these next few months will determine a lot, and then this phase of our journey will be over... no one can know what will come next.
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