Benched

Just to be clear, I don't do sports. Don't play them. Don't watch them. Don't like (most of) them.* But somehow, this morning, sports metaphors are all that are running through my head. Benched. Out. Sidelined.

We're out this month. And I'm sad. It's complicated. The HSG was last Friday. One side open. I will ovulate this weekend. But the appointment with the new RE isn't until Monday. We had decided to do a what-the-hell last insemination (is that called a Hail Mary insem?) with the feminist clinic before switching to the RE. We decided to do this, not because we had extra money to burn/waste/shove up my hoo-hah/donate to the non-os finding folks, but because of the conventional wisdom that a woman is more fertile immediately after her HSG. Because one's tubes are (or in my case, one's tube singular is) all cleared out. Since we're not on the RE's team yet, we were going to go another round with the feminist clinic, just to get some sperm up there. A gamble, but it was our decision. So we quickly called to place an order. And our donor is sold out. Denied. Wow, did I feel like an amateur. Definitely not good enough for the varsity team. Didn't make the cut. Second string. Whatever. We knew we liked our donor, we knew he already had a reported pregnancy, we knew he had popular characteristics, we knew that things like this could happen, and yet we still hadn't ordered in advance. Damn. We tried to make a rush decision last night on a new, B Team donor. But rushing something like that didn't feel good at all. We did eventually find one we liked, but he has limited vials and is no longer in the program. So that could potentially mean no option for a sibling with the same donor. We didn't even know yet if that was important to us, but suddenly it seemed like a big deal.

Then I got a call about some work travel next week. Overseas. In a developing country. And suddenly this didn't seem to be making any sense. Trying to insem with a hastily chosen donor, packing progesterone and getting on a looooong flight and heading off to a place without good medical care with a maybe baby inside? So we've pulled ourselves out of the running this month. But I'm taking it really hard, since it looks like next month I will probably/likely also be out of luck too, visiting family at ovulation time. And suddenly I'm looking like the rookie that couldn't get it together to insem the two months directly following her HSG. Sigh. Why is this so complicated? Why can't I get a handle on it? And when am I going to get a new job and not have to keep accepting these consultancies that make me travel so much?


*Important exceptions being the Olympics (I get all gooey for the internationalism) and anything my sweetie is playing.