All the feels

The app that is my latest obsession

This little Spring Fertility app is my latest obsession. Any time my phone pings during business hours, I immediately wonder if I got some new message or test result, and I also panic about any coworkers seeing my phone's home screen notifications. 

I don't know if I want to cry or do breathing exercises or furiously Google my next concern. Stress is precisely the thing to avoid, but I can't seem to think about anything other than this stupid egg retrieval process and my eleven suppressed follicles. Eleven: "low end of normal." Suppressed because that's what happens when you spend thirteen and a half years on birth control. The suppressed thing isn't a deal breaker - a month or two off the pill should shape things up. The low number just means I've got to cross my fingers and toes that those little gals are healthy. "Quality over quantity."

It's all rather confusing to be freaking out about something I don't actually have my heart set on. But there are a lot of layers, so welcome to my therapy session. We've got a lot to unpack.

I am a nerd. I love the idea of combining my genes with Nicolas's. This is really weird and nerdy, but imagining totally new cells with my chromosomes all snugged up next up to his makes my heart happy. I don't love babies, but I love the abstract concept of a half-me-half-my-favorite-person human. It's someone I'd mourned and accepted I'd never meet well before fully embracing foster parent life, so to have this tossed back into the fray creates a frenetic excitement.

Finances scare me. The price tag of this whole endeavor isn't exactly a recipe for avoiding stress to make healthy eggs. Why am I about to dive into something that will wipe out most of my liquid savings to potentially be exactly where I am today, just poorer? There is of course an answer: to have the peace of knowing I tried, to have explored an alternative route to parenthood compared to last year's stab at it. Because eleven follicles isn't a low enough number that there's no hope in trying. But imagining me in a few months with no healthy embryos and a very low savings account balance makes me feel terrified.

Aging is coming on too fast. I'm not ready for my internal organs to keel over and call it quits on me. 36 feels way too young to start dying, but statistically pre-menopause isn't that far away. I'm afraid part of me sees a successful egg retrieval as some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card that allows me to escape the first milestone in my body's steady march towards the grave.

I never half-ass anything. Foster care? Let me read all the articles, search every state's fost-adopt rules, find us that "perfect match" and dive in 110%. We all saw how that went. Now it's egg retrieval and I'm frantically trying to figure out what sort of lifestyle and nutritional changes will give me the best possible outcomes. "Take it as it comes." Have you met me??

I don't deal well with uncertainty. The outcome of this egg retrieval could be profoundly life altering either way. There are so many things to consider. So many contingency plans! The wheels just don't stop spinning.

Is this even ethical? If this egg retrieval and fertilization works out, is it even fair to make another human to whom I risk passing on my various neuroses and anxiety? And who am I to decide that another person has to exist in this world of increasing inequalities, political tensions, and global warming?

The wounds of last year haven't fully healed. Embracing this possible path to parenthood is forcing me to face down the disappointments of the past year once more, which twists the knife.

I'm scared of getting my heart broken. I know how it feels to lose a kid who was never really yours. New year, new flavor of pain-of-losing-someone-who-was-almost-your-child isn't exactly my idea of a fresh start.

It's tough to have to hide this journey. While I can share with friends, this journey isn't kosher for either of our families. On my side, if we do manage to fertilize any embryos, the Catholics will believe those babies already have souls, and I don't want to be viewed as committing some sort of heinous crime. (Remember the whole aim of avoiding stress?) I also don't want to get up their hopes or break their hearts. On Nico's side, the judgments around why we won't just try for a normal pregnancy aren't something we're prepared for.

Maybe word-vomiting all these feelings into this blog will leave my brain a little more quiet for bed time tonight.

Courtesy of (aka used without permission from) the Word Vomit podcast

Hoping your new year has begun with less anxious questioning of your entire life journey.