Italian Almond Tart

Otherwise known as “thank.you.for.making.us.this.new.baby tart.” I took a joyful trip down to a tiny bakery on the main drag of our little downtown to buy this for J last Friday, which is when we found out that she’s carrying our child. Which is to say: she’s carrying our child. How amazing is that?

 

mercury in may

• I am so proud of J for finishing her MA (with flying colors, of course). I’m blessed to have been at both her BA and her MA graduations, though this one was sad, as I was supposed to be hugely pregnant with E, and not having her there with me to celebrate her other mama’s accomplishment was heartbreaking. I loved spending this past weekend with J’s parents, though, and they both gave her the attention and praise she deserves (which meant a lot).

• Our IUI this month went very well. It was (we think) well timed, and we both somehow found it in us to be laid back about the whole thing. (This is unusual for us, but we’re going with it.) If we’re successful in making our next child this month, s/he will be due three days after the one-year anniversary of losing Emmett. At first this thought made me sad, but now I find it astoundingly lovely. That would mean that for exactly one year, E was our only child. It would bring our next child to us in the early days of 2012, and, as our friend L suggested, perhaps 2011 was just for Emmett. We are calm in waiting, but full of hope.

• I submitted grades this morning, which means that, other than commenting on a few papers that students want back, I can finally put this semester to rest. It was a struggle to keep moving every day. To see the same faces, to have the same routine I had when she was still with us, before we became these people. We have some things to get through first (going to Charleston to help J’s mom through surgery, being with my mom during some upcoming tests, working fifty hours in five days for a conference at our university next week), but after all of that, my summer will consist of research for an assistantship (thankfully in my field) and writing for my dissertation. I think this shift will be healing, as will the bi-monthly summer supper clubs we host and the crop share we purchased from a local, organic farm. Good things ahead, I hope.

• We went to a hematologist to get more answers about my Factor V Leiden, and he contradicted everything we’ve been told thus far about the relationship between FV and fertility. He was also enough of an asshole – and we met him at a sufficiently vulnerable time – that I thought my wife might punch him. He was very condescending. Very dismissive. Not things that J responds well to, though I have to admit that she’s adorable when she’s pissed off and protective. Anyway, I will look at this in…I don’t know, a year or so? There’s a lot more to process first.

• I’ve recently discovered a handful of blogs kept by women who’ve faced/are facing infertility. It’s haunting how much their words sound like my thoughts. I’m grateful for these virtual spaces, and the way in which they give voice to people who are vulnerable, and who are bravely willing to expose that vulnerability. I feel like we’re able to help heal each other. Some of these women call themselves “orphaned parents,” and I understand myself better in those terms. They write: “I am a mother,” and I feel less ashamed for thinking of myself that way. Of course I am a mother. I held my child in my body. In my arms. I kissed her. And even if I hadn’t – if I’d had her for even less time – she would still be my daughter. Why do I let that reality be discredited because she was so small, because she didn’t live longer? Some women have done research I haven’t brought myself to do yet, and they offer quotes from doctors about how procreation is one of our strongest instincts. They write about studies that show that depression rates of infertile women are similar to those of women with HIV or cancer. They’re angry at a culture that, because it doesn’t know how to categorize this kind of loss, simply ignores it, and expects women who suffer from it to do the same. When I read the anger in their words, I feel like I’m given permission to feel angry myself. Some six million people struggle with infertility. With child loss. With feeling like failures. A few of these women even post pictures of the babies they’ve lost in the second trimester. Their children look a little like E. It’s astonishing how much we have to teach each other.

• I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t care how my children come to me. I don’t need them to be biologically mine. I’m devastated that my body probably can’t do this one, critical thing, but that grief is a separate thing, as is the still.terrible ache of not having our daughter with us. In addition to these things, though, there’s still this, and it’s like a hole going straight through me: I need the people I’m meant to parent. I need to know that they’re coming. I’m terrified that things will just keep falling apart, and I’ll never get to do this thing that I feel most called to do. I need my children.

• A friend of mine posted this on her facebook wall this morning: “It’s full speed ahead everyone. Mercury is now direct and the planets are aligned in our favor.” I have no idea how much power Mercury has over our lives, but if there’s a chance that some planetary shift might signal an end to the barrage of bad news that has been our 2011, then color me “full speed ahead.”

 

.april showers.

Yesterday was a strange day in what has been a strange week in what has been a strange year. We had about a 70 degree yesterday, a little warm for our area, but not unheard of. In the afternoon and evening we had terrible thunderstorms, and then, suddenly, we had deafening hail. Immediately after the hail, a tornado was spotted in the next town over and I was shuttled into a locked backroom at my favorite coffee spot. I sort of expected a rain of frogs after all of that weather business. Sheesh.

But it does metaphorize the week that I’m having. It’s proving to be a study in opposites. In the good news column is the fact that I’m done with my Master’s Degree. I don’t actually graduate until this Saturday, but I turned in my last writing project today, so I am out from under the albatross that is this semester. Though things have been very difficult this year, this week marks the culmination of what has been a very enjoyable three-year graduate program. I’m grateful to R and to all of the faculty, family, friends, and mentors who have made this a safe and expansive period in my life to grow as a scholar. It’s been well worth the time (even if I am now unemployed).

The very difficult news this week is that my mom has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. This is a big pill to swallow, for all of us. My mom lives out-of-state, so we’re planning on traveling south sometime next week for the surgery. We don’t have a lot of specifics yet (she’s waiting on additional pathology, as well as an MRI tomorrow morning), so we’re in a holding pattern until they are able to schedule the surgery and assess the stage of the cancer. I feel awful and helpless being so far away (and, you know, not having any medical expertise). I am grateful that she has good health insurance and a highly specialized team of doctors to work with in her city. And I’m grateful that R and I have the flexibility to be of help to her in the coming weeks and months. I know that she’s feeling scared, and I just wish that I could know how this will all turn out. I do trust that she’ll be fine, that this is a “fixable” diagnosis, but I hate being in this liminal space. Our family continues to welcome thoughts and prayers as we walk through this new chapter.

2011 certainly has offered no shortage of difficult news to have to digest, process, and learn to live with. It would be lovely if the Universe saw fit to give us some good news soon, but I know that’s not how this whole life thing works. In the world of TTC, and in addition to graduation this weekend, we are also anticipating inseminating (Cycle 3) over the weekend. In the interest of time and money, we’ll just be doing one (hopefully) well-timed IUI this month. We’ll keep you posted…

 

schroedinger’s grief

I have a student writing about Quantum Physics (in Kurt Vonnegut) this semester, which means I have been thinking about Schroedinger’s Cat (the 1935 thought experiment), and Copenhagen Theory, and Multiverse Theory: the tiny pieces of these complex ideas that I sort.of.but.only.just.barely.and.not.really.at.all understand. If any of our readers are scientists, I apologize in advance for my sub par use of these theories. My Quantum Physics comes almost exclusively via literature (Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing The Cherry especially); thus it probably bears little resemblance to the Quantum Physics of the, you know, physics world. Still, these ideas have been dancing around in my head of late, mixing with those I hold about grief (taken from theory and from popular culture). I want to write some of them down in the hopes that they’ll begin to make sense.

This afternoon, J and I hung out for a little while with some friends in their backyard, and I found myself espousing (for the thousandth time) the non.uncommon (and probably annoying) principle of coping that is, essentially, “think how much worse things could be; we’re really quite blessed.” This has been an important idea for me as I move through this new (with.Emmett.and.her.death) reality. I have had meltdowns wherein I feel like a cursed person – and I think that’s both normal and totally okay – but I try not to live in that space because I sense that doing so makes me blind to the suffering of others. In that space, I’m not my best me because I’m not compassionate. In that space, I think that my suffering makes me different from other people. When I’m aware of others, I think my suffering makes me like other people. I’m happier when I feel this sense of connection, so that’s what I strive for. In Precarious Life, Judith Butler writes, “despite our differences in location and history, my guess is that it is possible to appeal to a ‘we,’ for all of us have some notion of what it is to have lost somebody. Loss has made a tenuous ‘we’ of us all.” I like the “tenuous ‘we.’” It’s the only way I know how to love the world now.

But I’ve also been thinking about what it takes to get to that place of connection. Because that process is painful. Butler also says (and I’m sure I’ve cited this here before, as it’s the theoretical backbone of my approach to grief, that “one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly for ever. Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation), the full result of which one cannot know in advance.” I buy this. Instinctively, it makes sense to me. The process of grieving Emmett is the process of accepting that I am this whole new person, that long as I might for the old me, the one who hasn’t been crushed in this way, that me is gone. I’ll never see her again. And I have no idea who I will become now. It’s as if (and here, clearly, is the Quantum Physics part) when she died, this whole new world was created in which I am this person. There’s this me I can imagine, the me who is still moving along in the world without having lost a daughter, but I can’t access her. I’ll never know who she might have become. Maybe she’d have been happier than me. Maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she’s out there facing struggles I’ll never know.

But though I can’t know “in advance” the “full result” of how this has changed me, I am not without agency in the shift Butler describes. Grief has changed me – and I have to surrender to being this new person (which means accepting; which means making peace) – but I have some say in what I allow it to make of me. There’s not the kind of power I’d like to have here, but there’s plenty. I can choose to feel connected to – and not set apart from – a world full of suffering. I can become more compassionate. I can be thrilled at the possibility of new life coming into being within my wife (which would not have happened if Emmett had lived). I can be ecstatic over a new child who would never have existed if my daughter hadn’t died. Maybe there’s a me out there still pregnant with Emmett. Maybe there’s an Emmett with feet. But those beings (real or theoretical) have nothing to do with me. And wishing they did is to erase all that was set into motion the instant she died (or the instant she developed the problems that would stop her from growing). I have no influence over those theoretical worlds, but I have influence over this one.

 

.6dpo dreams.

I had the craziest dreams last night. R insists that I blog about them because, supposedly, vivid dreams often accompany pregnancy. R had a crazy dream about being in labor during a terrorist attack during our two-week wait with Emmett. The dream from last night that I remember most concretely involved our close friend J. J had apparently incurred a huge amount of illicit debt because she had become addicted to taking dance classes (like, totally licit modern dance classes). In order to pay off her massive debts, she had taken to working on the side as an escort. I found out about all of this and was very conflicted about how to handle the situation. Cut to being at a folk festival that I used to attend in the summers in upstate New York. My deceased maternal grandfather was there trying to help out a friend of his who had died. Then, suddenly, I was trying to protect a tiny baby from a very angry yak.

I can’t be sure what it all means. But since I’ve decided to act “as if” I’m already pregnant during this TWW, I’m choosing to interpret it as the beginning of strange pregnancy symptoms. ;-) We’ll let you know how it all turns out…

Oh, and the yak did not get the baby…just a single sock.

 

four years, hypermasculinity, and a pretty swell catholic hospital

J and I met four years ago today. I was a grad student, and I guest taught a couple of Hemingway stories in my mentor/friend MD’s class. J was just finishing up her BA and was one of MD’s students. When I opened our discussion by asking the students what came to mind when they thought of Hemingway – what his public persona was – she was the first to answer. Thus the first thing she ever said to me was “hypermasculinity.”

We’ve had a stressful few days work wise, so we decided to take this afternoon off to celebrate our great fortune of meeting. We had lunch at our favorite lunch spot, finished eating just in time to grab a movie at our favorite theatre, and then headed to my midwife practice to fill out some necessary paperwork. We were having an incredible day, but when we pulled into that parking lot, we both felt the weight of all that had happened in that space. The act of parking there is traumatic. Though we did nothing wrong, the staff sees us (or it seems to me that they do) as high maintenance. Though they did nothing wrong, we don’t quite feel safe there. The trust is broken. Even the smell hurts.

Because we’ve come to realize this in our recent visits, J has been in correspondence with a doula in town, who has recommended that we give the local Catholic hospital (and their practice of midwives) a try. We had never considered them before because, unlike our other hospital, they don’t include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policy. If they wanted to exclude the non birth mother, they could. Legally. Also, it’s a much older hospital. Less sexy. Less flashy. But the doula we know said that in her experience (which is substantial; she’s attended a number of births at both places), they’re actually wonderful with same-sex couples. In fact, one of the practice’s midwives is a married lesbian with a daughter. She also said that they’re a lot better about natural childbirth. Far fewer c-sections. More allowance for women’s own bodies to determine the pace of labor. A less invasive overall approach.

Encouraged by this, and saddened by our trip to our old practice, we decided to check out her suggestion. The hospital itself looks like this, which I find both lovely and threatening:

Our experience there was unexpectedly great. It isn’t as new as the other hospital. It lacks that bright, modern cleanness. While that would probably bother lots of people, we’re pretty okay with it. (We share an ability to love old, broken down things. To find charm in the outdated. Or at least I have that ability, and J humors me.) Also, it features a small kiosk of our favorite local coffee shop. And there’s more racial diversity, which makes us both feel comfortable. Most importantly, when we made our way up to the Birthing Center to ask if they had any literature about their facility, we were offered an impromptu tour. With no notice, the nurse manager met us within five minutes, and she spent an hour showing us around, assuaging us of our fears, introducing us to various staff (who she told to remember us, and who wished us luck conceiving), and regaling us with tales of her thirty-year nursing career (which began at Charleston’s medical school, of all places!).

We learned that they encourage women to labor in water (they have big tubs in every room), as research shows that doing so cuts down on medicated births. They have one of this state’s only skin-on-skin specialists, whose job it is to help families connect after birth. She assured us that I would be fully included as a parent, and she said that if I ever felt that I wasn’t, I should contact her immediately and she’d fix it. She showed us several labor rooms (which are more like hotel rooms than hospital rooms). We even got to see a new baby, a little girl born early (33 weeks) last week. She was doing great, dreaming and kicking away. The nurse manager then took us to the wing we’d go to if they were too full to let us stay in our labor room (which is their normal practice). And then she walked us all the way to the other side of the hospital, where we would go for our check-ups throughout the pregnancy.

So I think it’s a good fit for us. I had to fight back tears of joy about a thousand times. The pain of losing Emmett will be there with us when we bring another child into the world, and we’re not trying to avoid that, but if we’re blessed with another baby, the space and people surrounding his or her emergence in the world should bring more joy than sorrow. These people made us feel loved and supported. We can’t know if we’ll be blessed with a baby through J’s body, but if we are, I think we’ve found a birthplace.

 

turning left

When we started this process of building a family, we said two things:

• The first was that we wanted to avoid any unnecessary medicalization. We planned on trying for six months or so with unwashed, frozen sperm. At home. No doctors. No tests. No drugs. Just the two of us and a little help from a generous donor. It might take a bit longer, we said, but when it happens, it will have just been us.

• The second was that we wanted to listen to what the universe told us. To be guided not just by what we wanted (exerting our will over a magical and beyond.us process), but by what seemed open and available to us (surrendering to God/the universe/the accident of existence). To be willing to hear if a particular path wasn’t our path.

J is probably going to ovulate tomorrow, and after dealing for days with several small problems (timing, mishandled paperwork, incompetence on the part of our health center, mistakes and miscommunication on our part), we’re left with three expensive vials of unwashed sperm and no place to go for insemination. We didn’t handle this news well at first. This is the last cycle that could give us a child in 2011. If J got pregnant this cycle, she’d be due in December, on Christmas Eve, four days after our second wedding anniversary. We don’t have unlimited resources. And we’re so much more ready this cycle than last.

So we went for a walk to try to get some perspective, and those promises we made ourselves two years ago came back to me in an epiphany of recollection. I think of these obstacles (the ones that spring up frustratingly between you and your perfectly laid out plans) as brick walls, and I’ve always held to the “hit a brick wall, turn left” ideology. So what’s “left” of here?

The two of us, alone, in our home. No doctor’s office. No flashbacks to all that doctor’s offices have meant to us this year. A lot less stress for J (which ain’t nothing in the conception game). A return to the long.ago.abandoned notion that trying to conceive can be fun. (Fun. It’s like a revelation.) A lower chance of success, sure, but not that significantly so. The studies I’ve read recently give each IUI try an 18% success rate, and two well-timed ICI tries a 14% success rate. We’re doing three ICIs at roughly 18 hours, 31 hours, and 40 hours after J’s Lh surge. We have excellent sperm samples (80 million per vial, with 50% post-thaw motility). We’ve done a lot of research in this department, so we know we’re good at ICIs. I know research doesn’t support this idea, but I’m not convinced that we’re not better off this way.

When we were first trying to make Emmett, we abandoned our plan for six months of ICIs pretty quickly, but that was largely because we were working with a donor with not.great numbers. Once we started down the IUI road, we just stayed with it, without ever asking ourselves if that was best. Now we find ourselves pretty far from the no.unnecessary.medicalization plan. But it doesn’t have to stay that way, so we’re taking a leap of faith. We could keep pushing against that wall, and it might yield enough for a Monday morning IUI at the clinic, but I believe in us. Where we started before all of this pain. All of this confusion. The terror and horror of loss. It was just the two of us planning a future, and trusting ourselves and each other with the weight of all that future meant.

So TTCers (and non-TTCers) out there: We could use all the encouragement you’ve got. Stories of successful ICIs. Times that you surrendered to a process that had gotten away from you. Tales of turning left, and what came your way when you did so. I have so much faith in J’s body. She is strong, and brave, and beautiful. I believe that the egg she’ll release sometime in the next 8-44 hours could contain half of the DNA of our second child: someone I would very much like to meet. And I believe that trust is just as important as science (though it’s infinitely less measurable) in this still.miraculous process of making a person. Any words of wisdom you have in such matters would be oh.so.appreciated, as all of our friendships and connections have been of late.

 

a pause in my optimistic, literary-centered, gratitude-driven voice

*This is a rant. Read it with caution. J said writing it would make me feel better. It’s too soon to tell if it has. I should probably delete it, but what the hell.*

I am still really fucked up. I try so hard never to let these things out, but this is supposed to be a record of this journey, and if I don’t say these parts, it’s a lie.

I have no idea how to be in this role. I’m not afraid that I won’t love a child that comes from her body as much as I will (as I do) a child from mine, but I am TERRIFIED that I won’t know how to fill this role, to support her, to make this all about her body. I am terrified, and that terror is made worse because I’m doing this at my worst when she deserves my best. I used to imagine the joy of this role. We would have our first child with us. I would mentor my wife. I wouldn’t be selfish. She, and our older child, and our new baby would be my world. I’m sure that was in part an illusion, but she would have had something better than this. This broken me. This is probably the only time she’ll get to do this. It makes me hate myself.

I hate this not being my body. We have not switched bodies because we wanted to; we switched because we pretty much had to. I still want to be pregnant so much I ache. When I started my period, I felt so confused. We were only one week into a two week wait. Bleeding made no sense. It is almost impossible to comprehend that my body has no relevance. I was on prenatal vitamins for over a year. I read everything. I did everything. For nothing. None of it helped Emmett. None of it will help this baby. I feel irrelevant.

I’m afraid friends won’t tell me that they’re sorry we’re not pregnant. I’m afraid they won’t think I’m as hurt as she is because it isn’t my body. I’m afraid of being left out.

She worked so hard to come to terms with the fact that in this state, she’d have no legal rights over a child I carried. I’m only just now facing that. I hate this country, this state, so much for making that true. I already have no biological rights. No genetic rights. And I didn’t choose that. This part insults me. What if this new child is somehow taken away? Will I never have rights to a child who lives?

This is SO MUCH HARDER than trying before. Even the moments of freaking out before. The moments of what.if.I.can’t. This is a whole new game. We both feel insane most of the time. It’s like waking up in a world with rules you don’t understand. You try to apply the rules from your old world. They don’t work. You feel lost. Shocked. Confused.

I want to scream “IT’S NOT FAIR!” at the top of my lungs. I hate that part of me because I’m not that person. I never expected fair. Nobody gets “fair,” and for that matter, my life is so much better than so many people’s lives. I’m here. The love of my life is here. How dare I feel sorry for myself? So I don’t. I suppress that selfish, self-pitying person. I hate her. But she still exists.

I don’t think people understand. I think people think there’s something wrong with me if I’m not better by now. Or that if we’re still broken, we should wait to try again, which makes me feel even worse. Incomprehensibly worse.

We wanted to start trying right after our wedding. That was fifteen months ago, and we’re standing here with nothing but a box full of things for Emmett and our grief and rage and inability to be the people we want to be. People go through so much worse, parents suffer so much worse, but I HATE that this is where we are. I hate it, and I hate myself for hating it.

It isn’t that the things I usually write aren’t true. But these things are true too. I hate that they’re true, but they are. I’m angry and selfish and unhappy. I’m all of the other parts of me too, but these parts are not small right now. I am not the best me. I’m not the best partner. I’m not the best friend. My friends are so generous, and I am so sensitive and guarded and ungenerous. I’m not the best teacher. I cried in front of my class the week after we lost her, and now I hold myself apart from those students. I have denied all of us connection out of shame and embarrassment. I got a teaching award yesterday, and I was embarrassed. Four years of putting everything I have into teaching, and I win an award now, when I’m only getting by. I feel undeserving of good things.

I am so sad she’s not pregnant this month. I am so sad I’m not 24 weeks with our daughter. I am so sad.

 

.a really good day.

The first of its kind in a long time, Tuesday was a really good day. Renee and I drove to the state capital (about an hour-and-a-half away) to have our first consult with a fertility clinic. I can’t tell you how good it was to be in a totally new environment, working with brand new people, professionals who deal exclusively with fertility and inseminations. This new clinic has an all-female staff and they were so incredibly wonderful, so compassionate with our loss and our cautious optimism toward the future. At one point, the Dr. looked at my BBT chart from this cycle and seemed optimistic about the prospects of our potentially already being pregnant. We joked that this could be a prophylactic fertility meeting! As it stands, today is 13dpo. No period, no temp drop, but also no positive HPT, so we’re waiting to see what the weekend will reveal. All told, R and I both felt wonderful about our future with this clinic. They are expensive, and we’ll have to drive out there once a month for the actual inseminations, but I think it will be worth it AND I think that we will be pregnant sooner this way.

Bonus, right next to the clinic is a PF Chang’s, which happens to be one of the only mainstream restaurants that R and I like to eat at. Our current city doesn’t have one, so it’s a treat for us when we find one while traveling. After a late lunch, we made a triangle of the state, driving another 90 miles to our favorite university town to hear a lecture by one of the most influential scholars in our areas of research (post-feminism and queer theory), Jack Judith Halberstam. Halberstam’s talk was inspiring (particularly to R’s nascent dissertation). Plus, we had the opportunity to speak with her for about ten minutes alone after the lecture. She encouraged R to e-mail parts of her dissertation prospectus so that they might dialogue about ideas via e-mail. Also, a woman had given Halberstam a single long-stem blue iris, which she wasn’t able to take with her on the plane back to the west coast. She offered the flower to R (blue irises have played a cathartic role in our world since losing Emmett), who explained briefly why the flower meant so much. Halberstam was incredibly compassionate with both of us, and she called me a pioneer for walking the butch pregnancy path. It was the kind of experience that totally solidifies why I love scholarship and academia so very much.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Halberstam’s talk in the last two days. She was articulating her concept of an anti-social, non-resistance-oriented feminism (what she calls “shadow feminism”) and how we can see examples of this through a multitude of cultural outlets. “Shadow feminism” is a sort of underbelly of traditional western liberal feminism and the patriarchal normative that such feminism resists. I’ve been thinking about this in relationship to the binarism present in the contemporary American LGBT movement. There seems to be the split between the assimilation movement that articulates a rhetoric of “we’re just like you” and the radical movement, which resists nearly all mainstream ideology. I find that R and I occupy a particular hybridization of the two. We strive to occupy normative spaces (marriage, family, academia, politics) in such a way as to destabilize and redefine these spaces. At the same time, though, we are resigned to the impotence of most radical movements’ ability to enact change in a globalized world. As such, we find ourselves on the outside of two major pulls in the LGBT world. But instead of lamenting our place, I find a tremendous amount of joy and freedom in occupying this subject position. I think this sense of liberation and loss of control is what Halberstam finds manifesting in “shadow feminism.” Perhaps, then, there is also a “shadow queerness.” Maybe we’ll get t-shirts. ;-)

 

.calm night.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. R has done a really nice job keeping up with the blog, but I find myself shy to write here sometimes. It’s almost 11:30 on Sunday night. Our house is very quiet. R is curled up next to me reading. She’s fighting off a nasty head cold, so she’s feeling kind of crumby. Our boy cat is using his magical healing properties (equal parts purr and annoyance) to try to help her recovery efforts. I scrubbed the house from top to bottom yesterday in an effort to reclaim our space from the ten or so construction workers who’ve been tramping about all week (we’re having some renovations done). The HEPA filter and the dishwasher are running in the distance creating a very particular, comforting white noise. Right now our house is the epitome of calm and safe.

It’s still so easy, though, to think back to eight weeks ago. To think back to those nights and weeks where nighttime spelled horror, fear, panic, anxiety, and sleeplessness. Nighttime is when we lost Emmett. It’s the ambulance out front at one in the morning. It’s when we couldn’t get a Dr. on the phone. It’s all of the bleeding and medication routines and insomnia and loss. As difficult as the grieving process still is on a daily basis, I am beyond grateful to be through that terror. I am grateful to not be so constantly afraid. There are people in our peripheral world who are walking through terror this week. Amidst all of the global turmoil and devastation following the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdowns in Japan, there have been a number of local heartaches. My cousin lost her life partner this past Wednesday. Also, we have blog friends who are walking through open heart surgery with their infant son. My whole heart goes out to these kind and generous people as they face down massive grief and emotional obstacles. Their stories offer me perspective on my own. I know that it is cliche, but it’s easy for me to forget how connected (through joy, through grief, through fear) all of our individual lives are in this collective, human drama. It’s a humbling prospect, this living thing.

Another humbling prospect is (or isn’t) happening inside of me as I write. We’re now in the second-half of my first TWW. I knew that this experience would be much more muted than when we were getting R pregnant. It is. But I still find myself excited at different times throughout the day. On Tuesday, we have our first consult with a lesbian-friendly fertility clinic on the east side of the state. We were on the fence about keeping the appointment, but I think that there might really be something to having new environs and new faces helping us out. Also, they have a really high success rate with their inseminations, so perhaps it won’t take us as long to get pregnant. I think that would be a boon emotionally and financially. On Tuesday morning I’ll take an early pregnancy test (three days early) just in case we can save ourselves the trip! On the one hand, I know that it’s unlikely that I’m pregnant: it’s only our first try, I’ve only been tracking for two months, our IUI wasn’t as effective as we would have liked. But on the other hand, I think our timing was spot on, our donor has very high fertility, and my fertility should be quite good considering my health and family history. I guess we’ll know one way or another in six short days.

In other news, I finish my graduate degree in six weeks. I’m fervently on the job market at current, which (when combined with the unknowability of the conception front) makes my near-future pretty hard to pin down. I’ve decided that there is a lot of freedom and excitement to be found in these unknowns. At least that is the less-stressed approach I’ve decided to take. R and I have always worked and we’ve always been able to find work when we’ve needed it. I trust that this won’t be a different process. We’ll be sure to update later in the week once we’ve been to the fertility clinic. Until then…it’s time for some sweet sleep.