Day 15 or so of stims ...

I am not sure why I have quite so little to say about this cycle.  I think that it's just a tad dreary to realize that despite the only intervention I can control (my weight) and all sorts of wishful thinking, my body is as ever ... slow, at best.  We're on Day 15 of stims with no distinct end in sight.  Down to daily monitoring from every 48 hours, which does give me hope. 

My morning dashes to the clinic are nothing but annoying, brusk, interaction-less interludes except for the occasional conversation with my doctor.  It is astounding how the men and women in such a packed waiting room can studiously avoid eye contact but I have yet to witness so much as a hint at small talk in the waiting room.  The clinic conveniently has you write down the reason for visit so I don't even have to say hi to the receptionist, and the shuffle from phlebotomist to ultrasound tech (no repeats yet.  A different tech every time.  Whee!) makes this entire endeavor seem even more clinical and surreal.

Oddly we have now told many of our local acquaintances, in part because I expect to need a good deal of help making the 9 am lab cut-off if JD ever goes back to work (thank you GOP for being ever so family friendly as to take away our only paycheck).  We have not, and will not, tell either the kids or our immediate families until there is some news to share.  I also haven't really bothered to tell my long-term friends since it tends to be an awkward conversation.  It's hard to strike the right note of optimism when talking about someone else's fertility treatments over e-mail, and most of our close friends have yet to even consider starting their families.  And there is just the absurdity of being so lucky as to jump back in to all of this for Project 3.0.

So yeah, chugging along but not much to report.

Chugging along, very sleepy

Well here we are at CD 6 with not all that much to report.  I fall asleep everyone night at 7:15 with the small peoples because I am so low energy.  I also fall asleep every time I sit down to read to them mid-afternoon.  Also, flu-like muscle aches.  Just plodding along.

The thing is that last night I read my usual 50 or so blog posts (by no means all IF related)and I saw only a single mention of the government shutdown, and that a passing concern about an agency's money running out soon.  I know that we live within a weird little warped zone around the nation's capitol where small incidents are writ large (needless to say there was yet again a very high police presence in our neighborhood this afternoon and our afternoon ice cream playdate was delayed because of police presence.  Fun times), but it is hard for me to separate those external factors from all the anxiety of cycling again.  Needless to say JD has not been to work since Tuesday, and while it is lovely to have some help at home and we dutifully spent his first morning off scrubbing the basement and cleaning our back "yard," it also adds another layer of uncertainty to all of this.  And of course makes my trivial complaints about a self-induced period of hunger even more slightly obnoxious.  And yet, despite my concern I am not really in a position to take much action.

Of course this afternoon I went to visit a friend with a new baby.  And while baby was lovely and my jealousy of the baby was running at a reasonable rate, it was everything else that set me off (and does of course help me stay the course on 800 calories a day).  The lovely grandmother who graciously served lunch to visitors.  The new mother (and I do mean very new) who accidentally let her nursing top ride up and stood there comfortably in front of a room of visitors exposing her bikini-read body.  And of course the off-hand comment about how hard it was to manage all of the visitors and the month of food delivery.  I am of course skipping over things - the bed rest, etc. but it was a bit hard not to wonder what I've been doing wrong on the way home?