Everyone ALWAYS says to not read the TTC forums while you’re in the 2ww. I’m sure they’re right, it totally makes sense that it would only make me crazier to read about possible symptoms, people getting BFPs, people having m/cs at 14 weeks, etc...but of course that’s all I’m doing all day long! I’m obsessed! It’s just that, when this is all I want to think about, I love reading about other people doing the same.

I’ve also been doing some perusing, though less, of sperm bank websites in case we need to try again next month*, to pick the next donor. When I ordered last month for this, our first try ever, I knew our preferred donor had an extremely limited supply...but I didn’t bank on him being completely gone within 2.5 weeks of my first order! And he’s not on nw’s site anymore. I’m toying with the idea of emailing them just to confirm he’s really gone, but how batty will they think I am? I just honestly didn’t think anyone else was interested in him since I’ve been prowling donor catalogs for many moons now and saw him on there, listed as “limited supply” every single time. Y bueno....

So my first desire is to go with someone else who has a similar ethnic background to him, but I haven’t had much luck with that. The only other ones I’ve found have been 1)on other banks, meaning they’re crazy more expensive, and 2)not completely of that ethnicity–like, only 1/3 or 1/4 or something. (Yes, really 1/3. I don’t know how that works exactly, but maybe it’s a least common denominator or something...). One I saw today was even “1/64" of the ethnicity we’re looking for. Seriously? What IS that, even? Why even bother putting that? (Seriously–what is 1/64? It’s six generations back, if I’m doing my math correctly, right? So dude’s great-great-great-great-grandmother or -father was of this race. We’re talking someone who was born in approximately 18-oh-something. Literally over two centuries ago. Wow....yeah, not impressed.)

(As I was just trying to figure that out I did the calculations using estimates based on birth years for my mom and grammaw [my grammaw’s birth year I only ever remember because she was born in the year of the titanic disaster :)] and realized my grammaw was 37 years old when she had my mom. In 1949! I could be wrong, but I’m thinking that was a quite advanced age for that time period. It’s getting up there even now. Heck, I’m 32 and already staring straight into the face of statistics like “after 30, your chance of getting pregnant with normal hetero BD goes down to 10-15%” or something horrible like that. So anyway, my point is that I will now take this as a good sign–apparently the women of my family are fertile. Now, I have no idea what other reproductive endeavors my grammaw attempted (mom is an only child), and I know my own mom had at least a couple m/cs. But I’m going to not dwell on those things, and instead will just visualize grammaw esther’s 37-year-old ovum barging out of her ovary one cold pittsburgh day in late November, 1948, with a baby on its mind and its arms wide open for the swimmers. So to speak. Actually, it was likely around thanksgiving (mom’s b-day is 8/27) so maybe it also had cranberry sauce on its mind. But I digress.)

*regarding thinking ahead to next month. I’m not doing it out of negativity about this month, I swear! It’s actually a positive thing for me, because this month didn’t go exactly as planned (when does it ever?) and to avoid feeling stressed out because this is our ONLY CHANCE EVAR, I like to think about next month just to remind myself that we’re still in the game. Also because of a recent financial shakeup, I actually did think this past cycle was going to be the only shot, but I ran the numbers again yesterday and it turns out we can try once more this year. So there, capitalism! :P

and in regards to this month’s feelings...I mean heck, I’m only at 3dpi! Literally anything could happen still. Well, not really...that is one of the main frustrations, I guess, the fact that ‘anything’ already DID happen, or failed to happen, and that’s it. It’s not like I can send any positive vibes or eat something fertile-y or follow some other piece of TTC advice at this point and it would make any difference....this past weekend was D-day and the attack on the beach is long over with, the allied forces come and gone (let’s see if I can let go of the military metaphor already, geez!)...I just won’t know who WON for another 10 days or so! That’s the annoying part. Clearly this is not an original thought; I’m sure gajillions of women have had this same frustration that we can’t find out if the deed is done or not until two weeks afterwards...I guess it’s kind of like how the star betelgeuse is 643 light years away (give or take 146 light years), so if it were to blow up, we wouldn’t know until 643 years later. Meaning, it could have ALREADY blown up, in 1492 or 1776 or yesterday, and we just don’t know about it yet, or it could happen tomorrow and earth wouldn’t find out until someone who is 1/67,108,864th me was staring up into the night sky. Same basic principle here. Whatever happened at my not-quite IUIs...happened. Y ya esta. I just am waiting for my pony express telegram to get here to fill me in.

So in the meantime, I’m interestingly going back and forth. I’m not crazy excited or completely depressed (yet...check with me at 11dpi!), so I wouldn’t say I’m awash in emotions yet, but I’ve been fairly regularly going back and forth between expecting positive and negative outcomes. Like, half the time I think about it and I’m like, this could really happen! There is absolutely every chance in the universe that it did! And then the other half of the time I’m thinking it’s totally normal for it not to work, there’s not a huge chance of it, I would be quite flabbergasted if it works. And with each extreme my thoughts swing to, I totally believe it. I am completely convinced that I’m not pregnant. And then I’m completely convinced that I totally could be.

It’s not even worth saying that I don’t have any symptoms at 3dpi. But in case you were wondering, I don’t. Also, some women get preggers without ever having any. See what I mean? Back and forth.....