Delaying Dr. B.

I'm supposed to make an appointment with Dr. B this month, the RE who will be overseeing everything as long as things remain uncomplicated and don't take too long. As I have been warned about the automatic medicalization favored by this clinic, though, I am not sure where we will draw the line with them. I don't want to be railroaded into a whole drug-injection-IVF path if I don't have to be. On the other hand, I'll be nearly 37 by the time we start and I am sure there will be no shortage of pressure to pull out all the big guns at the first hint of trouble.

I was supposed to make the appointment in January, and back in November that sounded like years away, but I have not called to make the appointment. I have not been blogging. I have not even really been commenting on others' blogs. Instead, I have:

-purchased 360 square feet of tile,
-planned our kitchen layout, complete with item numbers corresponding to a miniature diagram of the detailed plan I drew on the back of a Scrabble scorecard,
-researched bathroom sinks and vanities, a far more time-consuming process than one might think,
-made approximately 35 gallons of homemade dog food,
-washed the dogs,
-researched a trip to Madagascar,
-paid bills,
-gotten in touch with old friends and renewed latent friendships,

and on and on and on...

I think part of it is that there is little good news in blogland and the fact that so many people in my position (and younger) are having such trouble with conceiving scares me. If there is one thing I hate, it is not being superlatively good at whatever I am doing. I have ego like that.

Last December I spent an evening at a friends house for dinner. We ate dinner, swilled wine, laughed a lot. The next time I saw her in May, she was four months pregnant. Her second shot. She and her gf did some random dial-a-sperm thing and boom, now she's got a baby. I want to be THAT girl.

But so many people I follow in blogland have had enormous troubles, whether with conceiving or with repeated m/cs. I feel for them, but I don't want to be them. I don't want to spend my next year spiralling down a hole of self-doubt and recrimination (if only I hadn't spent my freshman year drinking; if only I had started doing this five years ago; if only I were straight; if only I hadn't had that abortion... if only, if only...) I don't know if it's a function of the small subset of queer-ttc'ers-who-blog or if it's really a problem of frozen jizz and a once-a-month shot. Probably both.

Another part is that I feel so unsettled, with gf and I living in this apartment that will be on the market in a matter of months, with the apartment we are moving into being little more than a pile of construction debris at the moment,
with furniture in boxes piling up in all the rooms, with the crazy number of animals, with the mounting bills, thanks to my karma-wreck ex-roommate not even ponying up her utilities before ditching me with five months' unpaid rent... everything feels like it's being held together by duct tape and bailing twine. And not well.

It feels reckless, crazy.

Also, the thought of spending what I know will be ultimately countless hours in the g/d waiting room and in the stirrups and peeing on countless sticks and having endless disheartening conversations with everyone from friends to doctors...

And I want a plan. I want blueprints. I want a timeline. I want assurances. I want a guarantee.

I will call Dr. B. I will. I just am not quite ready to jump onto the zipline at this very moment.