LJ Idol Survivor: Final Immunity Challenge, Day 3

[flipflop_diva]

Monday, October 12

I dial the number that once was so familiar to me and that I hope will be familiar once again. It always takes a while to get through to the person I want, so I wait — heart pounding, stomach twisting — until I hear the extension I need and press it.

The call goes to voicemail so I leave my message.

“I’m a patient of Dr. Probst’s,” I say, after leaving my name and birthdate as instructed. “We’re hoping to do a frozen embryo transfer this cycle. My period started on Saturday.”

I leave my number and hang up.

Not more than twenty minutes later, the phone rings with that familiar looking number. I answer.

“We can get you in at 1:30 today,” the nurse says. I tell her that’s great and hang up.

I look at my phone and take a deep breath. This is it. Day zero. If this works, we’ll have a second child sometime next summer.

If this works.

I want desperately to look at a calendar, to figure out about when this little boy’s due date might be, but I won’t. I promised myself I won’t look until we know for sure the baby is viable.

Not that it stops me from doing math in my head. Based on how things went when we had Ellie, also from a frozen embryo transfer, this one should be due sometime in July, a bit past Fourth of July.

It’s so, so, so far away.

I try to remind myself that as much as it feels like it, summer babies are not really cursed in our family.

-

Wednesday, November 11

The phone rings just after noon. I stare at it for a few seconds before answering. I already know what I’m going to hear on the other end, and I’m as prepared as I can.

“I’m sorry, but you’re not pregnant,” the nurse will say, in a sad, sympathetic voice, telling me what the two negative pregnancy tests I took over the weekend already told me. I will tell her it’s okay, that we tried, that we now know, and that we still have Ellie, and that’s the most important thing.

I answer the phone.

“You’re pregnant,” the nurse says.

I sit there for a few seconds, sure I heard wrong.

“What?” I finally manage.

“It’s a positive,” the nurse says. “It’s a low positive, but it is positive.”

She goes on to say that the HcG numbers, which should be closer to 100, are only at 25, the bare minimum for considering a pregnancy positive. She says to go back in two days to get another blood test. She says to be cautiously optimistic.

I hang up the phone, and stare at it for a few seconds before I go to find David and give him the news.

There is still a chance for our summer baby.

I try not to think about the other babies who might have been. If I hadn’t had the miscarriage, back before we had Ellie, back before we ever considered IVF, that baby would have been born on Labor Day weekend.

If IVF had worked the first time we tried, that baby would have been born in August.

I’d always wondered then if maybe those babies were just not meant to be since they were coming in the wrong months. After all, everyone in our immediate family — my parents, my sister and family, my husband’s mom, my husband and me and Ellie — all our birthdays range from November to May. There are no summer babies.

I try not to think about that as I go to find David. Nor do I think about how very far away July is.

-

Wednesday, December 2

I’m nervous as I lay back on the exam table and wait for my doctor to insert the ultrasound wand. All the numbers have come back good — low every time, but always doubling like they should — but this is the real test.

Dr. Probst moves the wand around, and then there he is — an incredibly tiny baby on the screen.

Dr. Probst lets us hear the heartbeat, nice and strong and perfectly in line with what it should be. I feel like a weight is lifted off me, as I watch our baby’s heart beat.

Despite all the odds, he has come this far. He has made it.

My doctor is pleased. He tells us to come back in two weeks.

We head to the car with big grins on our faces.

I pick up my phone and find a due date calculator for IVF babies. I’m a little nervous to find out — it makes it seem so much more real, and part of me is still terrified that something will go wrong — but I promised myself that once we knew for sure he was viable that I would look.

I click the button. July 21. A little after I had calculated but close enough.

I tell David and then call my stepmom to tell her. A July baby.

Thirty-two weeks to go. It feels like forever.

-

Sunday, February 28

We drop Ellie off with her aunt and her cousins and head out. We’re somehow now halfway through this pregnancy, and there is absolutely nothing checked off our baby to-do list.

His room — the guest room up until now — is still full of boxes that were never properly unpacked when we moved in almost two years ago. His clothes, that I boxed up after Ellie didn’t need her baby stuff anymore, separated into obviously girl clothes and clothes that are more neutral colored, are somewhere in the garage, under other boxes that have also not been unpacked.

I’ve yet to go through all the bottles to make sure they are still good. I have no idea if the breast pump still works. We haven’t even put him on the waitlist yet for daycare.

But we’re finally doing something. We’re off to Buy Buy Baby to buy him furniture for his room. It took almost three months for Ellie’s furniture to come in once we ordered it, and if we wait too much longer, he will be here before his furniture.

We make a baby registry while we’re at it, adding clothes and socks and pacifiers and other things that he’ll need of his own. He’ll be able to use a lot of Ellie’s hand-me-downs when it comes to pack ‘n’ plays and baby swings and playmats, but not everything can be shared.

We find a cute crib and a matching dresser in light gray that will be perfect for his room and get them ordered. He’ll need a nightstand and a few shelves for his closet, but we can get those elsewhere.

We order his furniture — with an expected arrival date of about six weeks — and head back to my sister’s to pick up Ellie.

At least we’ve made some progress. And we still have twenty weeks to go. Plenty of time, right?

-

Sunday, March 21

I look over the photo and the text that we’ve created. We took the picture this morning, and Ellie was actually in a good mood. She smiled and laughed while David told her where to sit, and she cooperated for the most part.

The baby announcement looks super cute, I decide, so I take a deep breath and hit post.

I’m almost twenty-three weeks along and we’re just now putting it on Facebook. Our family knows and our closest friends know and everyone who read my LJ Idol Survivor entry about it knows, but Facebook is the last stop.

It feels like it’s finally making it official.

I’m not really sure why I’ve waited so long. Procrastination, I tell myself, but I think it’s more than that. For the longest time, I worried something would go wrong, but so far, everything is perfect.

I also worry what people will think. We were old by parental standards when we had Ellie, and I’m three years older now.

But it’s silly to worry what people will think. No one’s going to say anything, and if they think it, that’s on them. That’s what I tell myself anyway.

I click over to my baby to-do list and put a check next to ‘Facebook announcement.’

I try not to look at everything else that is on there. This kid is coming in sixteen weeks. It felt so far away, and now it feels so close. I’m not even sure where the time went anymore.

I’m also not sure that I’m ready. Not that it matters anymore. I will have to be ready.

I close my laptop. At least one more thing is done. Sure, there are a million more to go, but you have to start somewhere, right?






Nonfiction. Though if anyone has a way to slow down time, I'm all ears.


Our baby announcement we put on Facebook yesterday.




Thank you for reading! This was written for therealljidol: Survivor Idol! We're at the final immunity challenge now, so there's no voting. We just write an entry every day until only one person is left standing.

That said, if you want to read the entries, you can find them all here.

Comments

[murielle]

I love your baby announcement! Ellie is so precious!

What an ordeal, but I'm so happy for you and looking forward to hearing all about your little guy when he arrives.

*Huge hugs and blessings!*

[gunwithoutmusic]

Aw, that announcement is so cute! And Ellie does look like she's in a good mood. :)

My sister went through something very similar. She and my brother-in-law tried and tried and tried with no success for years. They ended up meeting with a doctor and discussing the possibility of IVF - my sister was absolutely ready for a child, and it seemed like the "natural" way just wasn't going to work. Amazingly, a few weeks before her IVF appointment, she noticed that she wasn't feeling good, and grabbed a pregnancy test "for shits and grins," as she would put it, only to find out that she had finally gotten pregnant.

She waited for a long time to say anything to anyone (except my mom, who she of course called immediately) because she was so worried that something might happen to break her heart again. My niece was her miracle baby. They're thinking about possibly trying again, but she turns 40 this year and doesn't know if she wants to go through all of that potential heartbreak again, so it might turn out that their little B is enough.

I'm so happy for you and I'm eager to hear the good news when July comes around. :)

[halfshellvenus]

Oh, Ellie is supercute! What a great announcement!

I'm so glad things are going well with your pregnancy, and that you're looking forward to Baby #2. I remember your entry about the trepidation of having just that single remaining opportunity, and the fear that it would not work out. This is such happy news!

[alycewilson]

Yay, congrats! Glad it's still going well. Also feel free to friend me on FB, because I don't think we're connected there yet.