On My Mark. . .

For me, one the hardest parts of infertility is the lack of control, the feeling that I can't do anything to help my situation. In all other elements of my life, I am a proactive person. When something isn't going right, I take the necessary steps to make it happen. Infertility is the first challenge that I have come up to where it doesn't matter how smart, funny, nice, etc., I am, or how clean my house is, how many friends I have, whether or not I have a good job, or am a good wife and "mother" to my furbabies. There doesn't seem to be a magical combination of anything that I can do to ensure pregnancy or that I won't miscarry. It seems that the only thing I can do is something that I was never very good at: be patient and wait.

There is a lot of waiting in a cycle. Waiting for your period to end, waiting for ovulation, waiting for the right time to have "timed intercourse," and finally, the waits of all waits, waiting to see if it worked. So infamous is that last phase of waiting, that it even has its own name, the Two Week Wait. Any infertile worth her digital HPT knows what the 2WW is and has lived through her life in hellish two week segments for longer than she can remember.

Even if you are not in an active TTC cycle, there is a lot of waiting involved. For me, it was waiting for three months in between my second and third loss, then waiting for that third loss before I could get help from a specialist. Then, it was a two month wait to get into the specialist. Then, when I was there, raring to go, it was still a wait to get into the doctor's schedule and make sure that the tests were at the appropriate time in my cycle. More waiting.

For a few glorious days in a TTC cycle, however, there is a flurry of activity. There is a sense of doing something for the cause, of accomplishment. There is much to do Cycle Day 10 - 14 between follicle check ultrasounds, injections, and then of course, the IUI and any extra activities you throw in to make sure conception takes place.

This is where I am, on the eve of activity. I have hope for this cycle, I really do.