I think we're going to do it

Numbers have been crunched, souls have been searched, and now, plans are being made. We're going to try it. One more time.

Results

The clomid challenge test results did not suggest that my ovaries have gone kablooey yet. Dr. Google assures me that this is not particularly encouraging, but rather simply isn't DIScouraging. In other words, a normal-ish (my FSH on CD3 was "very slightly elevated", but my doctor isn't concerned) result doesn't mean anything, whereas a bad result is bad. So, I now have a decision to make.

Still alive, despite strange loss of words

Life is strange. I left Korea assuming that I'd be blogging weekly or more, as usual, about this, that, and the other, but somehow on the way across the Pacific, the cat got my tongue. Or fingers. And here we are, nine months later, without a single post.

The time lag is probably not coincidental. A lot of unexpected things happened in the immediate aftermath of my leaving Korea, and one of those things involved an accidental pregnancy (not mine) that took the wind out of my sails so thoroughly that I could barely breathe for a few months there. I didn't know that it was possible for me to feel so horrible about someone else being pregnant. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I really didn't feel like it was something that I could talk about on the internet, since the events that made it so hard for me involved loved ones who may read this blog, but since it was hard for me to think for a while without thinking about it, I found myself going silent. However, with the birth of a beautiful healthy baby girl today (not mine), it seems as good a time as any to close that chapter (well, OK, it was a very short chapter, having no actual words in it), and try to start again.

So, here I am.

Transitioning back to life in the US has been, well, interesting. In some ways it was surprisingly easy. I'm not as socially awkward among Americans as I had expected to be after several years away. In fact, people are often surprised when they hear my life story after knowing me casually for a little while. So I think I'm passing as normal, which, I suppose, is good.

Other things have been hard, though. After living in a cosmopolitan city where I was a foreigner for almost three years, it has been hard to readjust my expectations about the world views of the people around me. You see, I'm now living in a very small town. A very small, very white, very homogeneous town, in the South. And it's weird, y'all. Don't get me wrong. The people are nice, as in shirt-off-of-their-backs nice, holding the door even if you're 30 feet behind them nice, exchanging endless pleasantries nice, and seeming to genuinely care about the people around them nice. I'm undoubtedly the rudest person in town by a mile. But everybody around here seems to think that this little town is the center of the world. And as far as I can tell, it's not. I suspect that I would have felt dislocated just about anywhere, but I have never lived in a small town in the USA before, and really, small town America IS a different world from urban America. It's very beautiful here, but it sometimes feels like I'm in a foreign country, even though I'm actually in the US. Other times, though, it feels kind of good. I'm really not sure yet if I like it here. I guess we'll see.

Eggbert is now a big girl of 28 months. She talks, she dances, she climbs anything climbable, and she sings. She is the most delightful person that I have ever known. I remember when she was a newborn wondering if I would continue be as thrilled by the sight of her once I actually got used to having her around. If anything, I find her even more amazing today. She still does ask for her little best friend from Korea, though. I had no idea that it was even possible for a two-year-old to remember someone that they haven't seen for nine months, but it appears that she does.

Mystery is doing OK. He's one of only a handful of brown men in town, which took him a little while to get used to, but by now he just takes it in stride. At first, we both felt uncomfortable when people did a double-take at our family. Now, we don't even notice. One unexpected benefit of being in a tiny minority is that he gets huge smiles (usually coupled with nods or other gestures of acknowledgment) from every other person of color that he passes in a public place. I also get the smiles when I'm out with just Eggbert. The warm feeling that these feelings of instant connection give me more than make up for the occasions when total strangers approach me and Eggbert to ask me what country I adopted Eggbert from. As far as I can tell, I am the only white mother of a nonwhite child in the county that didn't form their family via international adoption. It bothers me that a) they think it's OK to ask a total stranger how their family was formed, b) they assume that all nonwhite kids are foreign, and c) someday, Eggbert will understand the question, and it might bother her a lot more than it bothers me. Often when I explain that she is my bio daughter, they seem embarrassed. As if the problem with their question was that it revealed that they thought that she adopted. And then that bothers me more. Oh well. My skin is thickening quickly, and given the size of the town, probably most people have figured us out pretty soon anyway.

Fertility-wise, we're still in a holding pattern. We're thinking about making a trip to Korea this summer to try one final IVF cycle (while also visiting friends) before we admit defeat. When I mentioned this to my GYN, she suggested that I might want to repeat the clomid challenge test, just to see if my ovaries have totally given up, before we book the tickets. That seemed sensible, so I'm on day 2 of clomid now. For a second, I let myself think "hey, maybe the clomid will do the trick and I'll get pregnant!" And then I remembered that not only has it never done so before, but also that it's specifically contraindicated in women over 40 (ouch! I'm still not used to being one of those) as a fertility treatment because it ruins the uterine lining. I don't really know what we'll do if the results are horrible. I'm pretty sure that tears will be involved, but then again, it might help me to just face facts and move on. I guess we'll see. I spend a lot more time thinking about other options, including both adoption and donor eggs, than I used to. I think Eggbert would be an awesome sister.

The big goodbye

It's time to say goodbye.

No, not to the blog, dear reader. And also not to my dreams of another baby. But as of next week, Mystery, Eggbert and I will be leaving Korea permanently. I'm feeling a bit strange about it all.

The strangeness comes in waves. Sometimes I feel like it's not really happening. Then I realize that it is, and I just don't know what to do with that information. Am I happy? Am I sad? I'm not sure. For the past several weeks, I've been so focused on the details that I haven't had much time to think about what the move means for me.

There are some things about leaving that are bittersweet. I do feel sad to say goodbye to the city where Eggbert was conceived, born, and lived her first 19 months. It makes me sad that she won't remember our lives in Korea. I'm also worried that she might feel dislocated by the move. She's leaving the only home that she has ever known, going to a place where everybody looks different, the language is different, the food is different, EVERYTHING is different. Mystery, her toys and clothes, and I will be the only familiar things that make the trip. For me, moving back to the USA is a homecoming, but for Eggbert, it's a whole new world. On the other hand, the fact that we're leaving WITH Eggbert is just amazing. We came here a family of two, and are going "home" a family of three. So, in some ways, taking Eggbert to the US feels like a huge triumph.

There are also things about leaving that are just plain sad. I will miss my friends here terribly, as well as my wonderful colleagues. The job that I've been doing way was in many ways one of the best jobs that I could ever hope to have. While it has been challenging in many ways, it has also been an absolute dream in terms of flexibility and everyday working conditions. That is something that I will really miss. I will also miss Korean food, having everyday access to the few amazing palaces and monuments here in Seoul that survived the Japanese occupation, the Korean war, and the frantic wave of modernization that is still sweeping away much of the "old Korea." I'll miss the parks, the Han river, and the funny quirky things about Koreans that make me laugh while at the same time constantly making me question my own expectations and judgments about human behavior. I'll miss feeling safe and secure despite the fact that I live in a metropolitan area with a population of ~20 million.

I won't miss never knowing what on earth is going on. I won't miss the pushing and shoving. I won't miss the fact that strangers almost never smile or make eye contact (unless I'm with Eggbert, in which case everyone is suddenly Miss Congeniality). I won't miss the noise. The smells. The motorcycles driving on the sidewalks and nearly mowing me down. The raw aggression of the drivers. Feeling invisible yet completely exposed at the same time. Squid.

One thing that I do know is that it's time. I may not know how I feel about leaving, but I am ready to go. There are still a few boxes to pack, people to say goodbye to, and details to sort out (many, many details to sort out, alas), but barring major changes between now and then, when the appointed date comes, and we get on that plane, I may feel a bit wistful, but I won't look back.

New beginnings

Well, it's official. The beta was negative. I told the doctor that I wasn't pregnant before the beta, and once I described the bleeding to my doctor, she started shaking her head and said "I don't think you're pregnant either." Sometimes I hate being right.

My doctor knows that I'm leaving Korea next month, but I asked her whether based on my response this time she thought it would be worth it for me to try again in the USA, and she didn't even hesitate before saying "yes, definitely." She said that while my age is "not good," (you've got to love the directness, I am very fond of my doctor) my response and embryo quality were quite good for someone of my age, and that she definitely thinks there's a good chance of success if we persist.

That is food for thought, but realistically, we can't even think about cycling again for several months. The town that we're moving to is two hours driving from the nearest RE (who, weirdly enough, is also my old pre-Korea RE--he moved too). So, it would be hard to visit the RE without taking at least 1/2 day off, and of course IVF involves many many visits. Given that I'm starting a new job, and really can't be systematically shirking my duties like that in the first few months, I can't even imagine how I could cycle again before the December holidays (I will have two weeks or so off then.) Meanwhile, my ovaries will just be getting older and older.

Sigh. I'm not at all sure that we'll do it. We'll really have to think about our priorities carefully. We already are lucky enough to have an amazing Eggbert, and it might make sense to spend our time, energy, and money on the wonderful child and life that we have, rather than focusing on the child that we don't have.

Mystery is much less sad than I am. He is mainly sad because I'm sad, not so much because of the failed cycle. He is quite content with one child, although he agrees that it would be nice for her to have a sibling. Given that I'm the one that is old, and therefore the reason that we're under such time pressure, it is comforting for me to know that while my body may have failed me, it hasn't failed him. I just wish that I could convince myself that it hasn't failed Eggbert too.

Now would be a very good time to share the reasons that you enjoyed being an only child, or wished that you were an only child, or have decided to have only a single child, or really anything else positive that you might have to say about only children.

Enter the fat lady

I started bleeding heavily today (like a period). I hadn't been planning to do a hpt before Friday (the day of the beta), but given this new development, I thought it was best to start facing facts now. It was negative, of course, a vast expanse of blank white unsullied by even the faintest hint of a line.

I know that things could change between now and Friday, but I am confident that they won't. I just don't feel pregnant at all, and I had no bleeding at all with Eggbert. I think this cycle is over.

Not sure how I feel about it yet. So far, I'm not as upset as I would have imagined. We'll see if that comes later.

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Edited to add--it's now even heavier than a normal period. I don't think there is any question anymore.

There goes my cool again

I was going to write a post today about cosleeping and the safety issues concerning it, but then I lost my ability to focus, so you, dear reader, are going to have to make do with a status report instead. I'll try to get back to our regularly scheduled programming once my brain returns to normal functioning, whenever that happens.

I was doing OK until yesterday. Really I was. Going about my normal business, and only thinking about the contents of my uterus or lack thereof every few minutes. I had in mind that I would find out on Friday, and was doing OK with that. Then yesterday, I woke up with something that was not quite a headache, but also not quite NOT a headache, if that makes any sense. Then I remembered the hideous migraine that signaled the failure of my first IVF cycle. Then I realized that it was 7 days past the 3-day transfer, and that if it's bad news, it could arrive any second now. On my first cycle, I had the telltale migraine on day 8, and the spotting started on day 9. The more I thought about it, the more the evidence seemed to accumulate that the cycle had failed. I had an almost-headache. I didn't FEEL pregnant. I had cramps. Oh wait, the cramps went away when I farted (sorry, tmi), so they were probably intestinal in nature, and therefore don't count. Regardless, not looking good.

Then today I woke up with a clear head, and still no signs of spotting. Back to square one, but rather the worse for emotional wear. Unfortunately, trying to "read the signs" is a genie that doesn't want to go back into the bottle, so about 60% of my mind has spent the whole day analyzing every signal from every nerve ending in my entire, not insubstantial, body, which is exhausting. So far, though, the magic 8-ball continues to say "too soon to tell."

Beta is Friday. I hope I can keep at least the other 40% of my mind engaged in my day-to-day life until then.