Short shameful confession

It is time that I owned up to something I haven't really discussed here yet, but which I've known for a while.  In order to give Fate ample time to engineer my spectacular comeuppance — perhaps, say, something involving my house burning down, my son getting lice, and all my donor's follicles being empty —  I will say it now, before I hear any word from the clinic:

I really believe this cycle is going to work.

Now, I'm not stupid.  I know from witnessing the heartbreak of friends inside the computer that donor egg IVF doesn't always work.  And from my own experience I am well aware that even the most favorable statistics don't apply to an individual.  But I also know that my particular flavor of infertility doesn't prevent me from getting pregnant when embryos make it into my body.  So I think there is some reason for optimism.

But this is an optimism utterly unbecoming to a veteran of any standing.  Believing has no bearing on it.  Christ, that's what newbies think, along with the idea that if you have an IUI on a special day — birthday, anniversary, National God You're Adorably Naïve Day — it'll be more likely to work; or if you say the alphabet as you pull out a long stretchy gob of cervical mucus, the letter you're on when it breaks is the initial of your baby-to-be; or that wanting, or even deserving, has anything to do with anything.

And yet stubbornly, to my own appalled wonder, I do believe it.  It's nothing like "having a feeling about this one," as so many well-meaning friends tell so many agonized infertiles.  It's more that I can't think of any immediately obvious reason it won't, and that I'm currently and uncharacteristically disinclined to go looking for one.  I simply refuse to try.

What an asshole I am.  If this cycle doesn't work, I face not only disappointment but the consequences of my own hubris.  And since it is now my very public hubris, all I can ask is that you be kind.  (If it does work, be as unkind as you like.  I probably won't notice; I'll be too busy pressing that priceless skein of mucus into little Spinnbarkeit's baby book.)

Posted by Julie at 01:38:53 PM in Minnesota nice

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Short shameful confession

It is time that I owned up to something I haven't really discussed here yet, but which I've known for a while.  In order to give Fate ample time to engineer my spectacular comeuppance — perhaps, say, something involving my house burning down, my son getting lice, and all my donor's follicles being empty —  I will say it now, before I hear any word from the clinic:

I really believe this cycle is going to work.

Now, I'm not stupid.  I know from witnessing the heartbreak of friends inside the computer that donor egg IVF doesn't always work.  And from my own experience I am well aware that even the most favorable statistics don't apply to an individual.  But I also know that my particular flavor of infertility doesn't prevent me from getting pregnant when embryos make it into my body.  So I think there is some reason for optimism.

But this is an optimism utterly unbecoming to a veteran of any standing.  Believing has no bearing on it.  Christ, that's what newbies think, along with the idea that if you have an IUI on a special day — birthday, anniversary, National God You're Adorably Naïve Day — it'll be more likely to work; or if you say the alphabet as you pull out a long stretchy gob of cervical mucus, the letter you're on when it breaks is the initial of your baby-to-be; or that wanting, or even deserving, has anything to do with anything.

And yet stubbornly, to my own appalled wonder, I do believe it.  It's nothing like "having a feeling about this one," as so many well-meaning friends tell so many agonized infertiles.  It's more that I can't think of any immediately obvious reason it won't, and that I'm currently and uncharacteristically disinclined to go looking for one.  I simply refuse to try.

What an asshole I am.  If this cycle doesn't work, I face not only disappointment but the consequences of my own hubris.  And since it is now my very public hubris, all I can ask is that you be kind.  (If it does work, be as unkind as you like.  I probably won't notice; I'll be too busy pressing that priceless skein of mucus into little Spinnbarkeit's baby book.)