One foot in front of the other.

The migraine finally went away so I think my body is getting adjusted to being on BCP again. My period, on the other hand, was just not happy about it. All week my period has been yucky and just plain abnormal. Still, it's done with as of this morning. Not that you really need to know about that part of it.

I got a call on Friday from the pharmacy that is supplying the meds for my IVF cycle. I can't even comprehend the costs of some of these meds. The Lupron alone was over $600 without insurance; the Follistim was in the $1200 range. Thank god that RI covers these medications. We're only required to pay 20% of the amount because of state-mandated infertility coverage. I can understand now why people take a second mortgage out on their houses to finance all of this. I praise my lucky stars every day that we have such good coverage. When all is said and done, it looks like we'll be paying about $600 out of pocket for the medications. How's that for a 'co-pay'?

As you would expect from me, as soon as I knew that we were going to undergo IVF I went to the library and checked out all the books I could find that explained IVF, the successes, the failures, the methods, the medications. Everything I could get my little paws on. All of the books basically reviewed the procedure, the processes, what to expect and so on. But I kept reading them over and over, and I just wasn’t feeling satisfied with what they were telling me. And then, while I was talking to a co-worker about the process, I finally realized what I was trying to get from these books: validation. I was looking for one of the books to tell me that this was going to work for me. Obviously there is just no book in existence that is going to do that for me, so on Saturday afternoon, I returned all the books and that was that. It felt good to not have them around. It felt even better to come face-to-face with what I was searching for and to know that there was no ‘answer’ out there.

Now that I'm in my 'positive thinking' mode, I had a realization the other day. This may seem, I don’t know, pretentious, but I realized the other day that with almost every big life event that I’ve undergone, it’s always worked out in my favor even if the odds seemed stacked against me. With my wedding, it poured the day before and I mean poured. But, even though we were having an outdoor reception, I didn’t once fret about the rain. I just knew in my heart that it was going to be a beautiful day and, lo and behold, it was. When I was six weeks pregnant with E, I had some terrible spotting and I remember sitting on my couch, telling my best friend that I was done being worried about what was going to happen; it was just going to work out in my favor and I knew it. Then, while I was in labor with E, I hit that lovely transition part of labor and while the nurses and doctors kept saying “if you don’t progress any further in an hour, we’re going to have to take aggressive measures”, I knew that I wasn’t going to have to be c-sectioned. I just knew it in my heart that it would work out exactly how I wanted it to work out. And it did. I gave birth to a nine-and-a-half pound baby with only a small tear to speak of. It all just worked out.

So, why does this realization matter? I can't explain it, but I'm trying to get myself to that same point: where I just feel in my heart that this is going to work. No if’s, and’s or but’s about it. It’s not an easy place to get to, I’ll admit. Especially if you’ve had to suffer through heartache after heartache for 20 months straight. But I’m doing everything in my power to try to drown that negative, fearful, doubting voice out and let the positive, hopeful voice shine.

This is going to work. I am going to get pregnant again. I will be blessed again.