Love to my ladies.

It's been a week since my last post. I'm getting lazy in my old age. Life has been continuing, progressing, despite my frequent desire to drop into the fetal position and roll under the nearest piece of furniture. My lows are still frightfully low but thankfully getting farther and farther apart. Some things have been very good. This past weekend, I got to luxuriate in the company of two of my dearest friends, S and L, in Boston. I travel to Nantucket for work fairly frequently (a hearty "thank you" for crying me a river and playing tiny violins) and make it a point to schedule weekend-long layovers at S's house in Boston. Whenever possible, L drives up from New York and we make a high school reunion out of it. This weekend we laughed a lot, ate great food, and drank a little too much. It was glorious. Where last week in Wisconsin I was reminded of who I was outside the hamster-wheel of infertility; this week my oldest and truest friends reminded me that we have all stuck together through very hard times before. In this pack of 6 girls - some of us who have been friends since grade school - we have seen each other through a sibling's fight (and win) against cancer, a bunch of shitty breakups, bouts of depressions, big and small family issues and a thousand difficult episodes in between that have faded into the past. I am so grateful to have their support now as always. I only wish I got to see them more often. I'm holding out for advances in the time-space continuum and Harry Potter chimney travel to increase the frequency of our visits.

This week also brought relatively good news on the miscarriage front. I have a hard time mentally framing any news about my miscarriage as positive, particularly in the face of my family's recent pregnancy pact a la Gloucester High, but anything that suggests that this could be over sometime in the next fiscal quarter can't be all bad. On Monday, 4 days after my methotrexate shot, my HCG levels dropped from 300-something to 93. On Friday, the date of my 7-day full blood panel, I learned my liver had gotten through the methotrexate with flying colors (hence the weekend cocktails) and my HCG went down to 57. That is barely pregnant. Just a little bit pregnant with nothing. Were I not consistently lightly spotting and still nodding off at work at 4 pm, I wouldn't know anything was amiss. My next beta is scheduled for this Friday. Come on single digits!

It has been a great relief to know that this miscarriage is finally on its way out the door. It will be an even greater relief when I stop spotting, perhaps ovulate on my very own (look ma, no trigger shot!), and get my period. Then we can get this show on the road and I can finally step out of limbo. When that time comes, I'll have to decide whether I want to start another round of IVF or hold off for one more cycle. Let me get this straight. I absolutely 100% want to do another round of IVF immediately. Preferably 5 minutes ago, however, I have to flush this foul methotrexate out of my system and wait for my period which in the past has never come when I called. For my first round, I was so careful. I cut dairy, gluten and alcohol out of my diet. I rested whenever I felt tired. I treated myself really, really well and I believe that it helped result in a pregnancy. My period and next shot at IVF will most likely come in early summer. Between work, personal obligations and lots of travel, June and July are going to be slammed for me. Should I be patient and wait for the perfect window (um, never?) or push forward with this next cycle? Ugh. I hate being a grown up. Why couldn't I get knocked up at some inopportune time like the other kids? 

Wait, who's going to remind me to stop planning for things (uterus, I'm looking at you) I have absolutely no control over? Anybody?