the laziest infertile

Sometimes I wonder if I want it badly enough. I want it, boy do I want it. My arms ache with the weight of their own emptiness. My house seems quiet and cold, regardless of the number of cats and blankets I cram into it. I yearn for the connection I see between mothers and their children - his fingers tangled in his mother's hair, her toothless grin as soon as mommy walks into view. But for all the wanting and waiting (and poking and proding) I sometimes wonder if I don't try hard enough.

I've done my time. I've crammed a thermometer in my mouth immediately upon waking. Over the course of any given month I've peed on dozens of sticks, oodles of sticks. (Sometimes I'd pee on random long, white objects frantically searching for lines of any sort. Good thing the hubby gave up smoking!) I've examined mucous of every texture and color and recorded their slipperyness or lack thereof in a color coded chart. We've screwed on a schedule, whether we wanted to or not. I even gave up saliva during intercourse to stop his sad little sperm getting stuck upon entry. (So not only is our sex not spontaneous, it's often not very good either...)


And yet, I am a lazy infertile.


* I refuse to make any sort of change to my diet. I quit reading Inconceivable and The Infertility Cure immediately upon learning that french fries aren't in the fertile diet.

* I gave up charting the moment I started seeing an RE, whether on a medicated cycle or not. The excitement of a temp spike isn't enough of a high for me anymore.

* I don't take my stims/Lupron/progesterone at exactly the same minute every day. I don't go hours off schedule, but there is nothing precise about my timing. I even did my IVF trigger 15 minutes late. (I needed that extra time to whine and whimper about how big the needle was!)

* We don't do it 3 times a day during my fertile period. Even before our MFI it just wasn't going to happen. We felt really proud when we were doing it every other day for 2 weeks. And these days the bar is even lower - if we do it once within 48 hours of O I feel pretty good.

* I go through phases of not taking my prenatal vitamins.

There. I said it. Even though I'm a MTHFR I don't always get my full dose of folic acid. Yes, I'm a terrible mother already. But the thing is, emptying bottle after bottle of prenatal vitamins has become a cruel reminder of where we are and what we've gone through. The pills laugh at me - sneer at me. With each swallow I hear them mocking as they travel my esophagus. "Who do you think you are? You're not getting pregnant, lady. Buy the geriatric supplements - at least you have an outside chance of needing those someday!" And I know I'll regret my disobedience if I ever do wind up with an off-cycle BFP. I know I won't need one more thing to wonder and worry about. But when it feels like my body controls so much of my life with no regard for my feelings and desires, I can't help but get some perverse glee out of exerting some control over it. Reminding that damn uterus who's boss.

And then quietly pleading with it to work.