Six Times and Plan B

I go in tomorrow for a follicle check. I can feel the pressure in my lower abdomen, so I know they're growing. Hopefully they've grown enough and the ultrasound will be good tomorrow.

If that's the case, I will go in Wednesday for my sixth IUI. I changed the baby daddy again. This will be my third different one. I used baby daddy 1 for the first two attempts, and they suggested I switch because maybe there was an incompatibility. He was the music student at Berkeley in Boston.

Then for attempts 3, 4 and 5, I used the marketing professor at Johnson and Wales. Before attempt 5, I was looking through the donor registry and noticed a new person on there. I liked his profile and held on to his donor number, but stayed with baby daddy 2 for my attempt in March.

And so for this one, I'm going with the criminal justice major at Northeastern, the one who wrote in the "statement to recipient": Tomorrow could be the greatest day of your life.

I've been tossing it around in my head, what I will do if this attempt doesn't work. Part of the time, I want to give up. I want to get my body back to a size 12 and be done with the hormones, the being tired, the spare tire around my waist. And then part of me isn't ready to give up on maternity clothes, and feeling my baby kick. So I'll keep going, and if that means IVF and giving myself daily shots, then that's what it is.

But what I don't want to happen is that I've been trying for a year, and then I'm suddenly 39 and I've got nothing, so I've pulled out the adoption paperwork. I've gone through it, I've talked to my friend's sister who works in the adoption field, and next Saturday, I'm going to Rochester to a conference on international adoption. I can start that process while I'm trying this way. And hopefully it won't come to that, but it may. And in the end, that will be okay, I think.