We're still in.

Well I finally got a surge on Sat night. A full-on LH surge with a smiley face and everything (I don't always get smiley's, even when all other signs after the fact indicate ovulation happened). Tons and tons of EWM. On CD26. Which is late, even for me. We went with it anyway as we'd decided we would try even this late if I got a super convincing positive. I felt so damn proud of that smiley. IUI yesterday at 10:00am and today at 8:00am, with the nice back-up nurse at the clinic. At least we don't have to worry about the 3 month storage fee.

Other than that, our weekend was primarily filled with a sick kid who wasn't sleeping, just in case we forgot what we're in for if this works...

About ready go call it.

CD24. Sensitive OPKs are still stuck in the same "almost positive" spot. I'm getting nothing on the cheapos. No smiley faces. Had EWM but not really anymore. Still no temp spike but it's looking like a no go.

Our clinic charges a storage fee if you miss three cycles. I already missed August due to work travel and now this one due to a stupid cycle. Like we need more pressure next cycle. I know they're going to offer Clomid but I'm not there yet. I know my body does this in response to travel and I also know that I am capable of ovulating on my own (OK, if you define "on my own" as 3+ acupuncture visits prior to ovulation).

The only good news is that I'm not making everyone else in my house miserable. I'm not even miserable. I just feel kind of apathetic and hopeless. This was our last shot at spacing less than 3 years. I used to really think we'd have kids closer than three years.

I was home with Leigh yesterday and she was taking her baby doll everywhere and keeping me appraised of it's state. It needed lots of naps. It had a bath. It "pooped in the tub" which she "cleaned up" and then put the baby on the potty. I was sitting with her on the couch and she ran off to get the baby, brought it back and said "baby sleep on your lap now" after which she tucked it in carefully (not very SIDS friendly, face down, blanket over head...) and instructed me "No wake a baby up...shhhhh."

Her baby kick came out of nowhere. Maybe she's picking up on what's going on, or maybe it is the arrival of younger kids in her day care class, but I couldn't help thinking about her as a big sister, and really really hoping she gets to be one...though we'll probably need to supervise her "tucking in" techniques.

Can We Get Our Sanity Back?

Lyn isn't kidding when she says she's a pessimist. I like to think of her as an "extreme pessimist." Throw any situation at her and she can tell you how it is going to go horribly wrong. Leading up to our wedding, we used to play a game called "Everything is Wrecked." To play, your partner names two completely unrelated things, like "fish" and "ice cream." Then you have the challenge of describing how the two elements combine to wreck the wedding. Lyn used to be absolutely amazing at the game.

I just asked Lyn why fish and ice cream means that we won't have a second baby. Lyn says, "I've been eating a lot of fish because of your new diet thing. Also I've been eating a lot of dairy my whole life and I refuse to pay extra for the organic milk. So if I actually manage to get pregnant, despite all of the hormones in the dairy that have surely made me infertile, then the kid is going to shrivel up and die because of the mercury in the fish." So you can see that Lyn's still got it after all these years.

Living with an extreme pessimist isn't easy. Living with an extreme pessimist who is trying to get pregnant is nearly impossible. Sunday night I got really mad because Lyn spent the evening freaking out about a variety of things. I tried to be nice and helpful several times (and once I even managed to be nice in a nice way rather than in a snarky way). But end the end neither of us could behave well enough, so we went to bed mad, which I hate to do (it's really hard to fall asleep if you are mad).

I wish that Lyn didn't get so self-absorbed and angry at the world when the TTC isn't working so well. But I understand why she does. It really sucks and that's not Lyn's fault. So maybe I wish she just kept everything inside so that I don't have to see it because it's pretty damned unpleasant. But that doesn't seem quite right (not to mention the fact that it would never work -- Lyn is pretty much an open book). So maybe I really wish that if she's not going to talk to other people about about the shittiness of TTC, she'd at least pour some of her nasty stuff out to the blogosphere rather than getting it all over me. OK, there's an idea I can live with.

Just to be fair, you should know that I'm an obnoxious optimist that likes to ignore problems until they go away. As mentioned above, Lyn is a pessimist, and when she encounters problems, she prefers to protest loudly while carrying a sign that says "The End is Near." This is just about the only difference between us, but it's a big one. Sometimes it works in our favor. I spout off a lot of crackpot ideas about the next great thing we're going to do, Lyn finds 75 reasons the next great thing is in the toilet, and then together we find a way to fix all the problems and actually get something done. We get a lot of things done this way that never would happen otherwise, either because I completely forget to think about anything practical or because Lyn couldn't get started because she's sure it'll never work. So it works for us a lot of the time.

Other times it works like it did Sunday. Lyn starts to gnash her teeth and roll her eyes about how she won't be able to do an insemination appointment tomorrow and, oh yeah, she's not going to ovulate anyway. I respond by ignoring the real problems and saying some variation of "It will all work out, honey." Lyn responds by blowing everything up in a desperate attempt to get me to acknowledge there's really a problem because she feels like I've left her alone in the crazy world of TTC. I repeat my same theme of "It will all work out," but through teeth that are clenching tighter and tighter.

Tonight, as I write this post, Lyn claims that things might go better if I don't, in her words, "just roll over and try to keep me happy." In particular, I think she'd be much happier if she wasn't the only one noticing and worrying about all the problems. That's fair.

So maybe we have a little bit of a truce. I'll try to acknowledge and investigate possible problems, making use of some of my natural optimism to keep us moving forward. We're a team here after all. Lyn, for her part, will try to put some of at that negativity out there for you legions of lovely readers instead of me (lucky you), and maybe be a little bit nicer.

[P.S. It's Tuesday morning now that I'm actually posting this. Things are much more cheerful around our house, but we are still waiting for those pee sticks to give us some love. CD 21 and counting.]