The Post in Which I Barf Stream-of-Consciousness (and over-analyze dragging my feet)

If you must know, I am stuffing my face full of ridiculously pungent and overpriced cheese as I type this (literally, I have one hand typing, another shoveling).  And that's just one handy tool I have in the box of self destruction I use to handle life. I also have a bottle of wine and bitching, best used together. Sometimes I have self pity, jealousy and sitting immobile for hours on end while I stare into a computer screen. I'm not sure it's what the folks over at W.eight W.atchers had in mind, but for the moment, it's getting me through.

So, yeah, I've totally fallen off the wagon. I was doing really well with the weight loss thing for a short time. In fact, I might have been doing too well. I had dropped 7 pounds in 2 weeks (not nearly what I had gained in the solitary month of December), but I think I wasn't in the place to maintain starvation-mode so I dove head-first off WW and into things like chocolate macadamia nuts and stinky cheese. I can't say I'm incredibly proud of myself at the moment.

Although it was never suggested by my RE to lose weight (but really need to), our cycle was the main catalyst prompting me into that one (and only) WW meeting. It was run by two nauseatingly bubbly women who were obviously drinking the koolaid and I wasn't sure I could stomach that every week, so I never returned. And then I started to question: is losing weight right before a cycle really a good thing? I mean, we've all heard about the body shutting reproduction down when times get too lean (in fact, I have a personal story to this effect). I guess this wouldn't have been a question had I approached it with more moderation, but obviously this reasoning was actually my attempts to find an excuse to abandon my post. And abandon my post I did. It began with a bowl (and I mean BOWL) of guacamole and descended from there.  I'm just wondering how I'm going to have the emotional restraint to put the breaks on this descent.

Because that's exactly what it is. Emotional.  I am an emotional eater. You can always tell when things are really tough for me by the numbers on my scale.  And then part of me questions just how badly I really want this cycle. Am I sabotaging my chances by binge eating? Is this actually an expression of my ambivalence of going into the cycle at all? I know I will not go forward unless I have uncovered every stone because, from where I sit, this is it. The last chance, the ultimate gamble. If I don't do acupuncture or am a handful of pounds bigger than what I think I should be (or other factors in my control), I don't know that I will have enough peace of mind to go forward. That means that with every bite of stinky cheese, I am that much farther away from the cycle. As far as I'm concerned, I am making the choice to keep moving that date out. But is it really that simple? And am I really doing it all that consciously?

I think I am scared of the day when this cycle comes to be. Not because I fear the cycle itself, but because this is it. All hope will either blossom or end there. With our FET, I talked about the frozens as being suspended possibilities. For 3 1/2 years I held onto them and just like that, whatever future they might have promised was gone. But for those 3 years I drove past my clinic's exit with the secret hope in my heart that my child or children were waiting to be realized and in what seemed the blink of an eye, that long-held hope was gone. But I knew at the end that there was more possibility to see another miracle happen. This is different. There likely will never be another chance after this. So much weight on one moment in time. And it really is just one moment. A moment alone with the E.PT. A call from the doctor. All of it, your heart suspended for so, so long, hanging on just tiny seconds. I almost don't want them to come.

And then, at the same time, I want it to be over with. I want to live my life again. I want to grieve or celebrate, whichever is meant to be. I want this hell of infertility to be more subdued because right now it's tearing me to pieces again. I had a reprieve with the pregnancy and birth of my son, one in which I was ready to wear the "I kicked inferility's ass" t-shirt loud and proud, until I realized I actually hadn't. Not yet. As long as I still had a bone to pick with IF, as long as I wanted to still add to my family, then the fight was still on. For a little while I got a chance to step outside of the ring, but here I am again, bloodied and bruised. I'm certainly in better shape than I was before I had G, but in a way this one took me by more of a surprise because of an unspoken message that once you have a baby, IF rolls off your back like rain. Not so. I was broad-sided this time, not expecting the punch to the gut with all of the recent pregnancy announcements because they certainly hadn't smarted nearly as much when G was in his infancy.

I've come a long way since we first were diagnosed and yet years of processing and even one child later and I am surprised to find that IF is still not something that my 'veteran' status can easily handle.



PS. The stinky cheese was uh-mazing.