One of my friends hosts an annual get-together the Sunday before Thanksiving for the girls to get together and eat soup. Sounds kind of lame, but it isn’t at all.
This year before the Annual Frienship Soup Night, I was debating whether I would tell my friends that we are starting the IVF process. I thought maybe M. and I would keep this information to ourselves so that there wasn’t any added pressure of people asking us how the cycle was going and whether it worked and all of that. I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to tell anyone. Then my friend asked the question at soup night when it was just her and me at the table. She expressed relief that I didn’t have to have surgery and asked if we then go back to the infertility people after the new year. I told her that we had already gone and that we were going to get started on the process, with transfer in January. I hesitated a little before blurting all of it out, but in the end I am glad that I told her.
Another friend heard us talking and asked about it, then another one (who is pregnant and at risk of blood clots, causing her to have to give herself shots twice a day) wanted to talk about giving myself shots. Then the whole group knew, which I was actually okay with. The three that either are now or have recently been pregnant all spent a year or more trying to conceive and understand thinking every month that of course, you are finally pregnant! That’s why your breasts are sore (it couldn’t be your period approaching, after all), and that’s why you are smelling your perfume so intensely this morning (it couldn’t be that you put too much on) and that’s why you have been really hungry the last few days (that couldn’t be your imagination). It was good to talk to them about the mental processes that I have been going through the last year-plus.
This gets in your head so much. I was knitting the other day – making a baby hat for my friend that I saw last weekend. And I thought to myself – maybe I will be making one of these for my own baby(ies) in February. It is so hard not to get ahead of yourself. Of course after we went for our ART consult and injection teach last week I did the math to find out when we would know whether the IVF worked. It looks to be right around Valentine’s day. Once you realize that, how do you not start fantasizing about telling your husband that you are pregnant over a romantic Valentines day dinner. I just don’t want to get too ahead of myself so that if I am not pregnant I will not constantly be thinking about what I “should” have been doing – the Valentine’s dinner announcement, knitting baby hat(s) in the winter time, etc. And since I know that they will likely transfer at least two embryos (as long as I have two to transfer) I keep thinking about how great it would be to have twins. This is obviously over-the-top ahead of myself. Either way I’ll be crushed if it doesn’t work. But, I hope that I can rein in my planning-ahead-expecting-success a little bit.
My friends were all very compassionate and understanding and curious about the process. It was good to be able to talk to someone other than M. about it. We haven’t spoken specifically about whether we will tell our parents that we have started the process. I would prefer not to. I think I will just be evasive so that they don’t constantly ask me about the progress. This is so different from some of my friends, who have gone to great lengths (including the most convincing fake-drinking I have ever seen) to make sure that their parents were the first to know that they were expecting.
