6dp3dt

6 days past a 3 day transfer, or 9 days past ovulation (9dpo). Still too early to get a positive, unless I was carrying a litter. And since I am not hoping to be carrying a litter, I won't test until tomorrow morning. When I will be 7dp3dt, or 10dpo, which is the typical time to get an early positive on a home pregnancy test.

I could bore you with the obsessive watching-for-symptoms craziness, but I won't. Except to say that there are some. Some signs. If one is obsessive enough to look for them. Which, apparently, I am.

This time around I have avoided the message boards, the calendars and for the most part, too much overthinking. I have been doing normal things, filling my days with kids and friends and work, and my nights with dance.

Politics

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

I :heart: Sarah Silverman.Thanks, Merlot Mom.

Vic, this one is especially for you.

Carrying Potential Cargo

Today we transferred three absolutely symmetrical, PERFECT 3 day, 8 celled embryos. Now, we wait.

On Sunday October 5th, I will go in for a beta HCG, which will tell us how much hcg is in my system, which will tell us if any of these little guys stuck around.

It's hard to resist the lure of home pregnancy tests. In the past, I've started testing about 4 days past the transfer, hoping to get an early positive. This time, I want to just wait until at least 7 day past a three day transfer (7dp3dt). That will put me at 1o days past ovulation, had I gotten pregnant the typical way.

HPT's are crazy making. In most of the other cycles, we have gotten really early positives that didn't make it. These are called chemical pregnancies. It's heartbreaking and exhausting to get those positive tests and have a negative or low beta. So, I'm going to try and hold out.

The typical pregnancy symptoms aren't reliable with IVF, because the hormones can mimic them. So, we wait for the beta. If it's a positive number, we go back two days later for another blood test, to see if the numbers have doubled. If the numbers have doubled it's a good indication of a viable pregnancy.

These are the best any of our embryos have looked. I'm feeling really hopeful!

Tomorrow

Tomorrow we will put in rapidly dividing little 3 day embryos.

Please be thinking fertile thoughts for us all.

I know I've said it before, but I really want it to work this time. Really.

This has been my favorite poem since about 8th grade

  i like my body when it is with your
 body. It is so quite a new thing.
 Muscles better and nerves more.
 i like your body. i like what it does,
 i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
 of your body and its bones, and the trembling
 -firm-smooth ness and which i will
 again and again and again
 kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
 i like,, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
 of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
 over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

 and possibly i like the thrill

 of under me you quite so new
                       --e e cummings

Vulnerability

In all honesty, friends, it terrifies me.

The absolute intensity that this thing, this Tango, awakens in me is terrifying.

That serpent of passion is coiled pretty deeply inside me. I thought we had found a way to coexist. He had his space, and I had mine. Occasionally, when all the conditions were right and safe, we might play a little together. But always with protection, never too close, always barely touching fingertips. Controlled.

But all bets are off now. He dances to the music, and when I am looking or when I'm not he coils himself around the little figure that is me that coexists in this body and he takes me for a ride and I just don't have any say.

I always knew he was bigger than me. I always new that if it came down to a contest between Passion and Personality, well....Passion would win hands down. And if it came to that, it would be ok because all else would be obliterated. There would only be the aftermath to deal with.

But this music, this dance...it is pulling and twisting us together and I'm finding that the passion and the personality are not as separate as I thought. And it terrifies me. I liked that neat tidy package, and nothing feels neat or tidy anymore. I feel like I am in this spiral of release and fill, and I have no say in it whatsoever. And more, I don't want to have any say. I just want to give in and go.

And in those moments, like tonight, it is glorious to go.

and the aftermath is frightening, because I'm trying to clean up and separate and reorganize what was torn open for me...and there's just no map for this.

and the only solace I can think of is to bury myself even deeper. To hope it opens me even more.

the nature of bliss

I thought it would be joy. I thought it would be light. I thought it would be like a summer day. But it wasn't.

It was aching. It was yearning, and it was melancholy. Oh, there was joy in the connection, in the awakening, in the sharing of each other, but there was more. I didn't realize that the bliss would be like that moment before we tip into orgasm, where our eyes lock with the intensity of knowing we have chosen to go over the edge together, that we've chosen to bare our souls naked to each other and there is nothing to hide, nothing to hide from.

And I sit here dazed, surprised I made it through the rest of the night. Because the tears are flowing down my cheeks, the aftermath of the bliss washing over me.

and a kernal of fear. What if he didn't feel it too? What if this is a story I'm making up?

Does he make us all feel this way?

And with that bliss, I was done. I couldn't even think of another dance with someone else. Anything else would have been empty, shallow, surface. So I sat and watched, completely contented.

I love this love affair on the dance floor. I love the shy newness of learning each other, and the places where we go deeper, a bond that grows with each step. And I think, do all the women he dances with feel this way? Do all the women he dances with walk away feeling beautiful, sexy, special? I suspect they do. And this pleases me. How wonderful that he makes each and every one of us fall in love with him, and feel as if he's fallen in love with us!

And I want to give this back. I want every man that embraces me to walk away from our dance feeling special.