Waiting. The biggest universal of infertility treatment. There are so many kinds of waiting, many of them with their own acronyms. There’s the wait for your next appointment, for CD1 (first day of your period), the TWW (two week wait after ovulation or egg retrieval before you can take a pregnancy test). Waiting to heal from a surgery, or for your hCG levels to reach zero so you can TTC (try to conceive) again after a miscarriage. Waiting to save up for another round of treatment, etc.
With all this waiting, we have to come up with ways to pass the time. Mostly for me, that means immersing myself in my current life with a toddler, and taking on more side projects. But at the end of the day, I still can’t shake that “one step closer” feeling. I don’t want to feel like I’m just desperately ticking off the days, and it’s not until evening that I really even have time to think about it. But it’s undeniable. It’s there on the back burner of my mind, every single day.
So when the day draws to a close, I allow myself just a few minutes to celebrate the tiny milestones. Each pill that I took deserves a little check mark on my spreadsheet. Today I had an appointment to get my thyroid checked again, to make sure I’m tracking to get my TSH levels below 2.5 before I get pregnant. At this point my thyroid levels are somewhat tangential to growing a baby, but tangential is something. It’s just one small puzzle piece out of a thousand puzzle pieces.
The other strange thing I’ve noticed, is that I have the same feeling towards weekends that I felt while I was working. Even though my weekends are seemingly identical to my week days – a toddler doesn’t care! – they seem to pass quickly, and seem … I don’t know… just easier and more enjoyable somehow. I can’t explain it, and maybe it’s just my lifetime of training, that seven day cycle is deeply ingrained. So Friday is always cause for celebration, because it means I made it through the week, and there will be more milestones next week. On Saturday and Sunday, I really do feel like I can rest from searching for milestones. I can just relax and be in the present moment completely. Ideally, I don’t know, I would be enlightened enough to always live in the present, but I’ll take what I can get.