If I can't be pregnant, I'll be --

Since Joey and I decided to change uteri, she has been the one talking with the RE's office. It wasn't a well-thought-out plan, it just happened. So today our super-sweet IVF nurse called me and asked in her most tentative voice if Joey, the doctor and I are "all on the same page." It did not occur to me to think that the RE's office would wonder if Joey was sneaking around to cycle without my knowledge. I had a moment when I imagined myself feigning shock and dismay. *Gasp* Yes, my partner is resorting to subterfuge to steal our donor eggs. I assured the nurse that I am, indeed, onboard with Joey being the basket we put our eggs in. Then I had something of an out-of-body experience. I heard myself reassuring the nurse that I feel happy and confident with the new plan. I sounded so calm, composed and wise that I felt as though I was listening to someone else. With Joey and online, I pour out my unattractive emotions. Publicly, I whip out the "everything happens for a reason" persona. I despise sympathy for myself: emotionally guarded, who me?

I had a few people ask about whether we are staying with donor eggs even though we are changing carriers. Yes, for several reasons. 1) Joey's eggs are an unknown entity. They may be fine but they haven't worked so well with all the IUIs or at-home attempts. 2) We have already made our peace with using donor eggs. After making that internal shift, we just don't care about the genesis of our eggs. 3) We have already paid for this cycle. If we switched to traditional IVF, we would have to pay several thousand more dollars.

Incidentally, we are looking at a transfer in the beginning of March.

My out-of-body experience made me think about what characteristics I will take on now that I have had to jettison a part of who I planned to be. Some of my considerations:

• I will become brooding and mysterious. Problem is that a name like Cindy does not lend itself to "brooding" or "mysterious." My name is much more often associated with peppy cheerleaders or the Brady family.
• I will write deep, emotional poetry. However I am not a teenager anymore and frankly, I suck at poetry.
• I will become disillusioned with life and will speak entirely in pithy, angry phrases. See considerations 1 and 2 for all the reasons this idea just sucks.
• I will use my free time to pick up a hobby. Ok, but it is hard to translate a hobby into a new reason to live. (Perhaps an overstatement)
• I will become the ultimate in zen. Within the next year, I will mature to be like the bastard love child of Buddha and Jesus. Problem is that I can never maintain the flashes of zen I see and no one could stand me if I lived in complete enlightenment. Let's face it, perfect is boring.
• I will use my free. non-pregnant time to get back into great shape. If I can't be pregnant, then by gosh I will be HOT again. Good-bye TTC weight. My ass re-joined the gym today. Okay so getting back into shape is hardly original and is less than a profound experience for the soul. But I plan to look damn good when I am toting around our baby. I want strangers to say, "We can't believe you are a new mother. How did you get your figure back so quickly?"

So this is it.

This is my version of an acceptance post. I have not found my inner Zen. I am not thanking the universe for allowing me to learner deeper lessons of being a potentially uncurable infertile. I have not become wise and more spiritual. But I am still living, still breathing and I can see all the reasons to be thankful for the life I am living. 

I also really really (ad infinitum) want and need Joey to get pregnant. My fear at this point is that she will not. Nothing has worked in 3 years and the place we stand metaphorically is a crossroads. Either this works and we are parents or this does not work and we take some serious time away from TTC, perhaps forever. We have been having conversations about getting serious about adoption either way. And we have been trying to imagine our lives in a way that is not always hinging upon our next attempt, our current attempt, getting over a failed attempt or saving for another try. You know, real life.

This is our watershed moment and I am mostly peaceful about it. At moments I even begin to talk about us having  a baby and how we will manage this or that. Joey gets all weird when I do that. I think she is feeling a great deal of pressure to pinch hit. I know she has done all she can to give me the baby I want in the way I wanted it. And now she must be feeling the weight of another maybe loss or failure so I am trying to begin 2010 with a new sense of expectancy for her. I want her to have a sense of peace so that this next donor cycle does not feel as though she needs to hold her breath from start to finish. Of course I know that she is also worried about how I will feel if this cycle does work and she gets pregnant- meaning I watch her get what I wished for. Poor Joey, I am quite a complicated woman to live with. She needs to fear both failure and success.

So in the end, we stand as we began. We are still very much in love and I suppose that is a pretty fantastic place to begin a year.