Look! It's the Washington Monument!

I'm aware that this blog is all over the place. It's called The Xpat Files, but I don't think I'm a very good expat blogger. I certainly don't do anywhere near as good a job explaining Switzerland as Sandra does explaining Korea, or Mausi Germany, for example. Heck, if you want to read about life in Switzerland I should in all good conscience just redirect you to This Non-American Life. I'm not really an infertility blog either; lord knows I'm no Julie or Karen. I claim to be an aspiring writer, but I don't post my work, such as it is in this Era of Sleeplessness, like Christina. I appear to suffer from a blogging identity crisis -what is it that I want to be - and lack of direction that mirrors my life outside the computer. So if I have readers who wonder just what sort of blog this is supposed to be, the answer is I don’t know either. But rest assured that at least you’re getting a true reflection of my real world self. I may be scattered, but I come by it honestly.

I’m trying to fit the different pieces of my life - expat, mother, writer, wife, sometime weaver dealing with secondary infertility - into a coherent, dare I hope for pleasing, whole both online and off. Based on available evidence, I’m not entirely sure the project is going all that well, either online or off, but I’ll keep plugging away at it because, really, what the alternative? So I’m jagged around the edges, so the puzzle pieces don’t quite fit together yet. That’s okay. I tell myself that it’s okay. Most days, in my heart of hearts, I have to confess that I don’t think it’s okay, that I think I should be there already, wherever there is. Published author, self-important political speech writer (hey, I lived in DC, I considered it. Not, probably, as hard as I should have, but I considered it), accomplished weaver with a twelve-shaft loom, whatever. Somewhere. I should be somewhere by now, right? I should have something to show for it all. I have tried over the years to find some comfort, some truth, in the saying “the journey is the destination,” but I grew up with “the journey sucks and furthermore the destination will only disappoint you” sort of parents, so this effort has only been partly successful. (Besides, when the journey includes needles and gonadotropins sometimes it does, in fact, suck. Unless it ends at Small Boy. In which case it’s pretty okay.)

I’m trying to figure it all out. And I’m scattered. I know that. And all of those scattered pieces are going to show up sooner or later on this blog. And that means that sometimes, like now, you’re going to get blind-sided by a post about fertility treatment. I can’t not write about it. Infertility has been the most visible landmark on my horizon for three and a half years now, appearing around every bend in the road, lingering in the rearview mirror no matter how many miles I think I have put between myself and it. For those of you who know D.C., it’s like the Washington Monument – it seems like you can see the damn thing from everywhere. There’s just no getting away from it.

Now instead of running away from it, I’m running back towards it. Dr. L recommends a frozen embryo transfer (FET); he has a lot of confidence in The Hockey Team. (Actually, I went into that appointment assuming that we were obligated to use any frozen embryos before we created more with a fresh cycle. I don’t know where I picked up that little piece of misinformation, but it seems like the sort of regulation Switzerland would impose. I was wrong. I would be allowed to do a fresh cycle but Dr. L feels good about an FET, and I do too.) It will be a medicated cycle (no needles this time around, however) and following transfer I’ll use the same round of progesterone support – Crinone (again, thank heavens, no needles)– as last time. I’m superstitious – since last time gave us Small Boy I’m all for not changing a thing that doesn’t have to be changed.

In order to get all of this started, I need to wean Small Boy. I have mixed feelings about that but since I don’t have a choice, I’m trying not to waste my time on mixed feelings. I try not to think that if the FETs fail and we never have a second child I will have cut short the only breast-feeding relationship I will ever have in my life. No, I try not to think that. I try not to think about my secret belief that my experience nursing Small Boy, which has been so blissfully easy and problem-free from just moments after his birth, which has been a source of endless comfort and delight for both of us, was nature’s apology for the less than easy act of getting pregnant. That, after all of the trouble, I deserved at least that much; and that it’s ending now. I try not to think about that.

Of course, while not thinking about it I have also managed to not act on it – there is no way he’ll be weaned by my next period, which means we can’t begin with an FET then. So we’ll start the month after that, except Dr. L is on vacation; the month after that the lab where members of The Hockey Team wait to be called up to the Big Leagues is closed; the month after that Dr L is gone again; the month after that R and I had hoped to take Small Boy to Yellowstone Park, to the headwaters of the Madison River, to his birthright; and suddenly it’s October. How is it possible that we left Dr. L’s office with the assurance that we could start immediately and we’re going to end up starting in October?

The journey is not the destination. My destination is a second child, and it just got farther away.

Is that the Washington Monument I see?