it's been 14 days since my last confession

What do you want to know?
We are in snowy KCMO visiting relatives.

Yesterday we had breakfast with a lovely fellow IFer and her husband  which was absolutely delightful. Great to have lots of things to talk about and so much in common as well as IF. Good luck, Kim  - with your January cycle and BFP! I'm rooting for you!!! Can't wait to come back soon  and see you and your babies running around the farm! I hope ours will be running around with them!

To tell you the truth,  it was almost a relief to have  some kind of end to the months of  waiting to do this whole donor egg thing. The decision, the surgery, the two donors canceled  and then finally the perfect donor and the perfect embryo and the perfect lining and then a big fat nothing. It wasn't the end we were hoping for but it was a punctuation mark that signaled something finite; that we could stop, take a breath and just pause for a while. The long long first donor egg cycle was over.

And what starts again is the glimmering of hope and promise that keeps all us IFers going again and again and again. For me the odds are still good; the doctor thinks that there is no reason I should not get pregnant this time around.  ( I bet you've all heard that one before!) He was supportive of the decision to transfer one embryo the first time, and now says that this time around he would add more estrogen suppositories ( mm mm good!) and transfer two frosties. He went over the quality  of the remaining 7 embryos and nearly all of them are really good. For lucky me it seems that even though this kind of hope borders on a  kind of  addiction that so  many of us succumb to, at this point is does not seem to be leading down the path of total dependency. Yet. But not because I am better or smarter, just because I got the good odds for now.

I've been reading some of your blogs where some of you, my dear blog friends, have been contemplating the end of this leg of the  journey, the end of  squinting at the elusive light at the end of the tunnel, the end of the hardship that we inflict on our bodies and our minds that we put ourselves through all in the hopes of the elusive good outcome, to be the one exception to the rule. It is an excruciating place to be; it is palpable from reading your blogs. There  also seems to be some hint of  freedom in this decision, of escape from the joy  of being lifted up in the waves and the torture of being  dashed onto the rocks. I don't want to oversimplify it - or sugar coat it - but I do want to honor those of us who are making these decisions, and to say, I am with you; I am standing beside you; I am here.

I want to say congratulations to EB who has a long awaited BFP!  Glamcookie, on the birth of her beautiful son, Shane, a big woo-hoo to Heather, who was the one who helped me decide to transfer one embie ( as she did herself) and who is now expecting twins!!! Journey Girl for her recent trip to Thailand on her donor egg journey which culminated in a fantastic Christmas Present, and after a mega productive  cycle that had us all on the edge of our seats Noodle girl   who is now in the one week wait.  Sending so much love to a little turtle  who after an interminable wait, is still needing  to see a  zero on her HcG test  after her miscarriage. And  to all of us  trudging through the trenches of IF,  I wish us something better;  peace, transcendance, acceptance, BFPs, an end to tabloid journalism about IF ( that's for you, Stephanie!) universal health-care, mandatory coverage for IF and world peace. Yeah, Santa, if you're listening, that's what's on my list!