Save the dates

I didn't anticipate the need to write again so soon after the most recent post, and was expecting to take a little break to recover from the emotional hangover resulting from my blog broadcast of our infertility issues. However, as with many situations in life, things didn't turn out the way I thought. And this thing isn't necessarily good or bad, just not what I expected.

But enough ambiguity; what I'm referring to is the schedule for our IVF cycle. For no particular reason, in my mind, I figured we'd start taking the meds the first week of October, and, not knowing how IVF works, thought it would take a month to complete. So when the nurse called and said she'd devised a schedule based on a start date of September 24 – as in three days from the moment she called – I had a minor freak-out. This was a pretty silly reaction, considering that the nurse said the schedule could be changed, not to mention that the whole reason we're doing IVF is because having a baby didn't happen when we had planned. Our ETAF (Estimated Time of Adding to our Family) was off by two or more years; starting IVF earlier by a week or so should be NBD (definition for the non-texters: No Big Deal).

Thankfully, the nurse was patient with me, and Colin even more so. After a couple iterations, we came up with a game plan based on a start date of October 1. Of course, all of this could be a moot point if the ultrasound they do on September 30 shows a cyst or something else that would make the doc frown and say "Hmmmm." Barring that, the schedule, which imported nicely into my iCal and will set off alarms every time I'm supposed to get a shot, has tentative dates for the retrieval, transfer, and the scariest of all, the pregnancy test.

As October 1 draws closer, I'm praying for peace and sanity, both for my sake and for Colin's. Lately I've been stressing out about trying to know what to do/what not to do so I won't be stressed during IVF. So, to reduce the stress of figuring out how to avoid stress, it seems the best course of action is to maintain routine activities and simply be less of a perfectionist, for once. The baseboards can go without getting dusted for awhile (or ever, in Colin's opinion).

If this post sounds a little scattered, that's probably due to the 15 minutes I spent watching DirecTV's RedZone Channel, which has got to be the most ADD-enabling program on TV. I'm not sure when my next post will be, but I have plenty of ideas for infertility-related topics to discuss, including some good articles I found as well as updates on the support group we're involved in at church. And I might try to throw in a post or two about non-infertility-related topics, like what's going on in our college small group and what new TV shows we're digging this season. For now, I've got something better to do than blog – cheer on the Seahawks. Yet another opportunity to moderate my expectations.