It's 10 PM: Do you know where your embryos are?

Today was the first of two procedures that constitute the IVF process: egg retrieval. After a week or so of nightly injections and daily pills, my follicles (the thingy-ma-jigs that hold your eggs inside the ovary) were ready to be  aspirated.

I was a little nervous for the procedure, only because it requires anesthesia and a long needle being inserted into my nether regions. I've only been under anesthesia twice, once in fourth grade to have my adenoids taken out, and the other in high school with my wisdom teeth removal. Both are not fond memories, but this was easy. As soon as they put me under, I was coming right back out, and after ten minutes of being a little loopy and professing my love to the anesthesiologist (I literally said, "I just want you to know I really like you," in a drunken idiot voice), I was good to go. A little cramping, a little tired, but that's it. I would have even worked out today, but I figured I wasn't supposed to, so I didn't. Honestly, the worst part was that I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight last night. What?! Not even water! Ask my husband what I'm like when I don't get to eat breakfast or drink coffee. It's not pretty. But once I got a ginger ale and a Nutter Butter, I was happy as a... well, as a fat girl with a Nutter Butter in her mouth.

All in all, the procedure was a total success, except, of course, for the part where they only retrieved three eggs. I know that very few, if any, of my blog readers (ha ha ha- I think I still have blog readers!) know or care about IVF, so I'll spare you the details. The point is that most women end up with 10, 15, 20 or more eggs. Of course, you only need one, but the more you have, the higher your chance of having some really awesome embryos to choose from. More eggs also give you more eggs to freeze, so if the procedure doesn't work, you've already got some good embryos to work with. Three eggs doesn't give us a lot of wiggle room.

This is the first time since the process started that I've really gotten nervous. I'm afraid that none of them will fertilize, or that they won't survive until the transfer, or that there won't be any good ones to choose, or that they won't implant....blah, blah, blah. I can't really focus on anything other than being nervous about it, which is a terrible idea. I wish I knew how to turn off the worry button, but I don't.

It's also weird to know that in a doctor's office 45 minutes away, our potential child is growing- not in my body, but in a little dish. I suppose that knowledge should be freeing. There is nothing I can do physically to help the process or mess it up today. Soon, it will be my responsibility to house this embryo again, but right now, I'm sort of off the hook.

But it doesn't feel that way. It feels like there is a piece of me and Mike out there, and I have no control over whether or not it makes it through one of the toughest couple of days of its life.

So I'm trying not really to stay positive, but to stay neutral. Que Sera Sera and all of that. Whatever will be, will be. My girlfriend Amy likes to remind me to accept that there are thing beyond my control that I have to let go of. So, I will try to spend the next three to five days doing that as best I can.Stay tuned for more of me trying to stay sane/freaking out.

Post Egg Retrieval selfie- the drugs had me feelin' pretty good

I wasn't joking about the Nutter Butter

Balance

So, it's been a few weeks, but at least it hasn't been a month. I'm improving, a little.

Anyway, I went away last weekend. For three nights. For fun. Without my husband or my child. I know. Craziness. I've been away from her before, but only when Mike and I had a wedding or I had to go to training for work. This is the first time I've left her for more than one night just to have a good old time with my girlfriends. And yes, I did feel the obligatory mom guilt gnawing at me from the bottom of my stomach, but once I filled that puppy with Espresso martinis and lobster, that gnawing was replaced by another feeling all together. That feeling was "Freedom!" There. I said it. Staying up late, sleeping until 11:30 (are you serious?), and doing whatever I wanted to do during the day felt pretty amazing.

Even though I've only been a mom for three years, I have grown accustomed to the constant reminder of her presence. I always know where she is, what she's doing, whether or not she has pooped, if her hair is up or down (down- obviously), if she is wearing the Cinderella underwear or the Dora underwear (Cinderella- obviously), and even while we're both sleeping, it only takes one tiny "Mommy?" for my eyes to shoot open, ready for action. When you are a mom, you are always on-call, 24 hours a day.

I think that was the thing that initially freaked me out about motherhood. I had understood, of course, that this would be the case, but it wasn't until that first night in the hospital when Lost was over and I was ready to go to bed that I realized, "Oh my God. I don't get to just 'go to bed.' There is no "clocking out" of this job, no union to help me negotiate working conditions and personal days. No, there is only this very small and very unreasonable tyrant telling me I will never have five minutes to myself ever again!" This went on for quite some time. You've all heard the sob stories about my devil baby, so I won't bore you with them again.

But now, fully emerged from the baby fog, I realize that there is life after motherhood. That I can find the balance between my role as a parent and my role as a friend. This past weekend was about celebrating the end of single blessedness for my dear friend Alex, a girl I have literally been friends with for 27 years. Going away for the whole weekend seemed impossible when the idea was first presented, not because I didn't think my husband could handle Ella (he's always been better at it than me), but because it seemed like a lot to ask of him, and because, well, I am a mom now and moms aren't supposed to spend a weekend drinking booze and riding through P-town on something called a "Funk Bus" while their friend gets an impromptu lap dance by a stray lesbian off the street. Moms don't sleep until 11:30 and play Sexy Slang until the wee hours of the morning. But then I remembered that before I was a mom, I was a lot of other things, and namely, I was a friend who enjoyed the company of her girlfriends more than almost anything. This is a part of my identity, too, an important part of it that I want to cherish and cultivate, just as I want to cultivate the relationship with my husband and my child. The good thing is that these relationships have always felt stable to me, but it is the quality of those relationships that is tenuous. Partner, child, friend. I am lucky enough to have all of these things in my life, and I know that with that blessing comes an obligation to nurture these relationships every day. That's a lot to take on, but it's a job I'm lucky to have.

So, I relished the time with my girlfriends as much as I could, and when I got home on Monday, there was a smiling little person, no worse for wear, so excited to see me that she ran in front of my car, and I had to stop in the middle of the driveway, get out, and hug her. She wrapped her arms around me tighter than she ever had before and said, "I'm so glad you're home, Mommy!" She kept grabbing me intensely all week, saying over and over again, "I missed you Mommy. I missed you so much." And I took her in my arms, holding her little body against mine, and I relished that blessing, too.

Ella B taking over my spot in bed. 

You're Sick

One of Ella's big things right now is playing doctor, and she will frequently tell us that we are sick and that she has to check us. We are made to lie down while she shines her flashlights in our mouths and takes our temperatures under our armpits. She has to cover us with blankets and she especially likes it if we moan and stick our tongues out. Mike was lucky enough to be the recipient of some good old fashioned doctoring the other day. I had gone to take a shower and when I got back I found this. Apparently, when you are sick you need to be covered in several blankets from head to toe as well as stuffed animals, flashcards, and even a "grooby grabber" as she calls it which is one of those mechanical arms. The future of healthcare in this country is definitely in trouble if Ella B gets her hands on it.

My Hero (all over again)

I'm reposting this blog entry from last year because it pretty much sums up how I feel. Happy Veteran's Day, my love: 

Today is Veteran's Day and for those of you who don't know, my husband is a veteran. It sounds like a funny thing to call someone who is 31 (almost 32). Growing up, veterans were old men like my grandfather who wore military hats and talked about a war that happened a million years ago and didn't matter all that much anymore. Being a hippy pacifist myself, I never expected to be married to someone who was in the military or who had actually fought in war. And I never expected to have to explain to my daughter what it means to have a dad who is a war hero. Of course, she is too little to understand today, but one day, maybe on a day like today, I will ask her why she has the day off from school and if she knows what it means to be a veteran.

When you think about raising children, you think about how honest you want to be with them. You want them to trust you and to make them feel connected to you, but you also don't want to tell them every last detail about high school, either. You want them to hold on to their innocence for as long as possible, but to also educate them about the reality of life outside of their safe little bubbles. So, the discussion of war is a tricky one then. What does it means to be a veteran? It means that you have fought in a war. And what does that mean, to fight? There is the Hollywood version of war we're all use to, of course, but what does it really look like? It means things like- sleeping in the dirt, carrying an enormous pack for hours on end, writing letters to loved ones, sitting around doing nothing sometimes, being afraid, being tired, and it also means a lot of other ugly things that we don't like to think about.

So what do I want Ella to know about her daddy, the veteran? I want her to know that he did something harder than I could ever imagine. I want her to know that he is brave and strong (though she already knows this). I want her to know that the experience of war changed him, as it changes ever single person who experiences it, and that it isn't something to be taken lightly as I took my own grandfather's service for so many years. I want her to know that being a veteran will always be a part of who he is, but that it is only one part of the man who is her father. And I want her to know that I'm proud of him.

Relaxicab- an ode to my husband

If you know me and you know my husband, then you know how different we are. He's a math guy. I'm a word girl. He is the most innately athletic guy I know; I throw like an injured turtle. He likes to listen to music in the car. I like to talk, and play games, and plan our future, and discuss dinner for the next week.

These differences can often result in conflict (we're different about how we fight, too. He's a yeller; I'm a crier) and having different personalities and different upbringings can often make co-parenting a challenge. However, it can also help create balance and harmony, especially when you are "blessed" with a difficult baby.

Before Ella, or BE if you will, I was not nervous about having a baby. The pregnancy was planned, the preparations were in place, and I was totally ready to be a mom. I'd been babysitting since I was 12, I was a nanny all through college, and I had dealt with the whole dirty diaper-vomit-tantrum-night -time-whatever that a baby had to offer. Mike, on the other hand, had never changed a diaper and gagged when he had to empty a litter box. Out of the two of us, I was definitely more confident that I was the more adept parent and assumed I'd have to spend most of my time showing him the ropes of this whole baby thing while rolling my eyes and sighing incredulously.

And then Miss Ella B showed up, all crying and not sleeping at night, and nursing non-stop, and I quickly turned into a weepy, foggy sack of potatoes who didn't know what to do with herself or her baby. I didn't want to go out because I knew she would cry the minute we put her in the car seat. I never put her down because I couldn't stand to hear her cry. I didn't want to supplement with formula because I couldn't accept that my body wasn't making enough milk.

Enter my husband who so wonderfully and so annoyingly knows how to just R...E...L...A...X. Because, you see, the biggest difference between my husband  and me is that I worry and he doesn't. He's the kind of person who will say, "Why worry about things you can't change?" as if I've made a choice to worry, as if I get up in the morning and  think, "Hmmm, what should I do today? Relax and be content with life, or stress out? Ya know what, I think I'll freak out today and feel terrible." This drives me crazy, of course, but I have to remember that he doesn't know what it's like to be an anxious person, so I can't really blame him, and as frustrating as his disposition can be, it's the main thing that got me through those first six months of motherhood.

Because as cheesy as it sounds, he is my rock. He is that solid thing that keeps me (somewhat) sane and reminds me to "Keep Calm and Carry On." He is the one who would look at my tired face and tell me to go to sleep while he rocked Ella. He was the one who made me take her places even though I was nervous she would cry the whole time. He was the one who convinced me that supplementing with formula was not the end of the world. He's the one who made me sleep train her and do all the other hard things that I never would have done on my own.

And he's the one who watched his wife fumble through the first year of motherhood without any semblance of grace and simply said, "relax," and gave me a hug. And to my surprise, that was exactly what I needed.