That would have been TOO easy!

As I'm staring at a negative pregnancy test 12 days since my IUI, I'm ready to call it.  Not surprisingly, it didn't work.

We had a 10-15% chance.  Why did that make me feel so hopeful?  I believed we'd beat the odds.  I gambled wrong.  Bye bye, $650 we spent on that IUI.  We bet and lost this round.

So... we're upping the stakes.  Medications.  This is such a double edged sword, because it gives us more hope at success, but the idea of twins petrifies me.  I don't like the increased risk of multiples that comes from taking fertility medications.  At all.

But at this point, it feels like our only option besides "wait and see" and seriously, after 18 months, waiting is killing me.  I feel like my entire life is wrapped around the idea of waiting for the possibility of being pregnant one day.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  Without medical help, unlikely.

I'm in the process of ordering our meds.  I'm not a fan of my customer representative I've been assigned at our pharmacy - she does NOT return phone calls, and often has to be hunted down via page after I've already left two voicemails over the course of three days.  I've given up on being patient - I call her directly and leave a message.  If I don't hear back within 1 hour, I call and have her paged.  I'm a customer, damnit, and they'll be making a lot of money off of me (hopefully more from my insurance company than out of my pocket, but either way).

I already have my progesterone (Prometrium) and my trigger (Ovidrel) and my Femara (generic brand Letrozole, 5 pills, 2.5 mg).  I'm waiting on my Follistim, which we are in the process of going back and forth between my doctor's office and the pharmacy and my insurance company to get the override approvals for the dosage prescribed.  Because it's such an expensive drug (think thousands of $$$) the insurance automatically caps it at 1 vial.  We needed the pharmacy to call the insurance company to request override, which they did (only after I called the insurance company, who told me that, so I called the pharmacy and asked them to, of course.  Twice.)  They overrode the prescription from 1 vial to 3, but the doctor prescribed 4, so I have to call the doctor to ask them to call the pharmacy to override that last quantity limitation.  I'm not sure if they will or not, or if we can ask the pharmacy to give me smaller vials so it fits in the quantity now allotted by insurance.  I'll fight that battle this afternoon.

Either way, my period will likely be coming tomorrow or Thursday.  I got my positive OPK on a Wednesday and went in for the IUI on Thursday, but I felt ovulation cramping late Wednesday night around midnight, so I wouldn't be surprised if my period comes tomorrow evening, even though I usually have a 14 day luteal phase and I'm counting the day of IUI as ovulation day even though it happened a few hours before, likely.  I didn't get an ultrasound with my IUI (it was out of pocket) so I'm not sure, and never will be.

I'll be going in for my baseline appointment on Day 3.  Which I'm grateful looks like it will be Saturday, since I just started a new job and don't relish the idea of asking for time off already.  And it means my husband will probably be able to go with me, and I always enjoy having him with me rather than make the trip alone.  Maybe we can check out an awesome barbecue joint nearby after the appointment?  That would be fun!

Because, you know, the doctor's appointment won't be fun.  We'll get instructions on how and when to take the medications, how to inject the shots (which, of course, I already looked up videos online so I'm prepared - I am not afraid of the needles, I'm afraid of the twins).  This cycle will be timed intercourse, so I still only have about a 10% chance of success, same as last cycle, but now with the meds, we add in the fun bonus (NOT) of 20-25% chance of twins and (gulp) 2-3% chance of triplets.

It's not that they're not cute and adorable, because they are.  And it's not that I don't think we can do it, because I know we could.  The twins would lack for nothing that a single baby would have - love, affection, good food, clothing, attention.  But it's selfish - I don't want the risks of carrying twins, the elevated risk of losing one or both in utero. Infertility has handed me enough of a burden to carry, I don't want to add miscarriage and loss to that list.  I also don't want the risks of premature labor, the challenges that face premie babies, the developmental delays.  I don't want the physical risks for me - the higher risk of gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, cervical failure.  I don't want to have to go through a c-section, which the vast majority of twin pregnancies are.  I don't want to have an induction because there's simply no room for twins to continue to grow.  I don't want an induction, period.

Assuming the pregnancy and delivery go okay and we end up with both babies healthy at home (which is lucky, with twins, and often involves a NICU visit first), it doesn't get easier.  I also don't want to have two crying babies and have to choose which one to comfort first.  And at what point do you put down a still sobbing baby to pick up his or her sibling, who has been crying the whole time you've been carrying the first?  I babysat for my friend's twins, and this was the most eye-opening part of it.  When you're playing with two babies on the floor and the doorbell rings, what do you do?  You can't carry them both with you.  So you have to choose - pick one up and put him in the crib and take the other one with you?  If there's no crib, you have to take the time to put the baby in a secure spot, like fastening the buckles on the rocker.

How do you put them to bed at night?  My friends would put their twins on the floor and lay between them, and then pick one up and put them in the crib as they fell asleep.  My dreams of walking around and soothing a crying baby would be difficult, as there would be another crying baby on the floor.  Or in their crib.  And how do you get two babies to go to sleep when one cry wakes up the other and causes a chain reaction?  Getting twins to sleep on the same schedule is very difficult (i.e. impossible) for the first few months, so sleep for the parents is impossible.  At least with one baby, you can catnap when they sleep during the day (which I'm quite good at!).  With twins, there's no downtime their whole infancy.  Breastfeeding is exponentially more difficult as you have twice the soreness and twice the milk demand and twice as time consuming.  How do you make sure you're making enough milk for two babies? It's survival time for parents, you don't really get to enjoy it (if there's any parent of twins out there reading this who disagrees, I'd love to hear it! This is just what I've seen/heard).

And if one parent has to go away for a few days for work (as my husband often does) -  that's pure panic.  Sure, every new parent is apprehensive about the first time they have no back-up.  But seriously, one person with two infant twins is pure panic-mode.  What if there's a house fire and you can't physically pick both wiggly babies up at the same time and you drop one?  What if you have to put them in the car?  You can't carry the babies with you to put them in the car seats at the same time - you have to bring one out while leaving the other inside.  My friends would bring the car seats inside, put both babies in car seats, and then bring both car seats outside at the same time and snap one in at a time.  Have you ever tried to carry two car seats?  It's HEAVY!

Selfishly, I feel like I would be sacrificing all my dreams of being a new Mom by having twins.  I wouldn't get the sweet moments of napping on the couch with a baby, or "baby wearing" and going about my day.  Every moment would be survival mode, full of poopy diapers, constant breastfeeding (as I'd still try to do that with twins as I believe in its biological advantage), baby-wrangling, crying.  So much for cloth diapers - that would be next to impossible to keep up with everything else.

I don't want twins.  I don't want twins.  I don't want twins.  That is not how I picture being a mother.

I REALLY don't want triplets.  We won't even go there.

And I feel like I'm jinxing myself.  At this crossroads, I either risk twins or I risk never being a mother.  It's a horribly unfair decision that I have to make, and I'm very angry at the universe that this is a choice I'm forced to seriously consider.

This month I will be choosing to take the meds.  And crossing all fingers and toes that I do NOT end up pregnant with twins.

I'm scared.  I'm really scared.  My dreams of getting pregnant without medical intervention have already been ruined.  I don't want my dreams of enjoying motherhood to be destroyed, too.  I'm feeling selfish and angry, and damnit, I just want ONE baby at a time, please!  And yes, I know I could "just adopt" (as horribly inaccurate as "just" is as an adjective) but I strangely want a biological child - I want to see my husband's eyes and my nose in a child we created.  Why is it that infertile people are made to feel selfish for wanting a biological child and not easily rolling into adoption as a quick "solution"?   And I don't want to endure months upon months of needles and pills and suppositories that turn my ovaries into grapefruits and my body into a science experiment. I don't want to put my feet in stirrups several times a month - I thought the annual pap smear was bad enough.  And I really, really, really don't want twins.

Why is this so difficult?!

I will have my first baseline appointment probably on Saturday.  And then a few days later I'll start Femara pills, once a day.  And then Follistim for a few days.  And then back for more monitoring appointments, until we're ready to trigger.  And then trigger, and then doctor-ordered sex.  And then we wait, again, two long painful weeks of hope and anxiety and denial and anger and fear.  Two weeks where every cringe or cramp makes my mind whirl.  And then likely, we do it all over again.  Or, if we do get that long awaited positive pregnancy test, my excitement is combined with waiting anxiously for our first ultrasound to see if we're expecting twins.  I'm not sure how I'll feel if that day comes, where we see two embryonic sacs.  I'm sure I'll be thrilled to see my children finally after so long, but the fear and sadness that they both came at once will be something I will have to face.  If that day comes.