To pee or not to pee pre-beta. I mean, on one hand, it’s a waste of either $17 for the peestick (unless you’ve gotten the cheapie Internet sticks) or $20 for your copay or some random amount for blood work if you have no insurance coverage. If you’re pregnant, you don’t think twice about this waste of money to run a test after you know the answer, mostly because this second test not only answers yes or no, but provides you with more information. But if you’re not pregnant, it smarts to know that you could have purchased a 15-minute seated massage for the cost of having your heart broken a second time. I mean, truly, the negative pee stick is the heart breaker. The beta is simply the pair of steel-toed boots kicking the shit out of your heart after it has been already ripped still-beating from your chest.

Not to be dramatic, or anything.

I do pee pre-beta and this is why. The rest of the cycle is so different from anything in the non-infertile world, from the daily injections to the fact that I sometimes have seven different people looking at my hoohaahooterus and none of them are my husband. But learning that I’m pregnant when it actually does work–that’s the one thing I still can control. I can still pee on a stick like every other woman in the world (except for the ones who live in peestickless areas), even if I know that the results of a pee stick are at best meaningless (I mean, it only tells you hCG is there, it doesn’t tell you how much or if it’s doubling or any of those things) and at worst deceptive. Sometimes pee sticks lead me to believe that other things are going to happen–namely, a pregnancy–but that is a post for another day.

I am also terrible at waiting. Sometimes, Josh attempts to avoid talking about my feelings. He will try to put it off by telling me that we will have the discussion “when he gets home.” For whatever reason, he does not like it when I call him at work to talk about my feelings if my feelings involve something he has or hasn’t done. I then spend the entirety of the afternoon waiting to talk about my feelings which means that I obsess about them at 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. and 4 p.m…all the way to 8 p.m. when he arrives home and I am about to burst from the anxiety. Knowing that we’re going to discuss it in the future doesn’t allay my need for now. To know right now how things are going to be resolved. I am a big fan of now and not such a fan of later.

Therefore, even if I know that my beta will give me more information and better information later–just as Josh will give my feelings their full attention if I just wait for later–I sometimes would rather just know now. Or have that discussion now. Even if those results or that discussion do not yield the answers I wish to hear. Sometimes the anticipation and waiting are worse than the knowledge. Especially when waiting doesn’t actually yield a different result–just a delayed result.

Which is just a very long way of not only musing about peeing on sticks, but my admittance as I enter into treatments again this week that I will be peeing on sticks pre-beta. So Josh should go stock up on them during his next Costco run (he does the Costco runs–I’m too scattered to do well in a store that is that large and that full). I have not figured out yet how to handle the positive and negative discussion that will results from peeing on said sticks. Real people from the real world really read this real blog. And I would love to be able to tell them prior to reading it along with everyone else. I am still trying to figure out the logistics. Stay tuned.

Your thoughts–do you pee pre-beta? Why or why not?

Oh–and I added a poll on the sidebar. Be a doll and answer it for me. The “why” behind the question is coming soon, I promise.

Addition:

I’m not saying the negatives are easy to see. But if I’m going to hear a negative over the phone, I’d rather learn it myself in the privacy of the early morning pee. It’s interesting how everyone has a different way of getting through the sting.

There was always something familiar about him; something I couldn’t quite place though it felt like I knew him from somewhere other than my television screen. And then one night, Josh and I were watching the Food Network and I squinted at the screen. “I think I kissed that guy,” I tell him.

“Really?” Josh asked, doubtfully, even though he had heard tale of my promiscuous kissing stage of life.

Oh, come on, don’t we all have a promiscuous kissing stage? Where we stick our mouth against any and all who come in our path? Anyone, anyone, middle school?

A trip to my parents house and a rummage through some boxes yielded the evidence.

I had a celebrity makeout session. With Duff. When we were 13.

The evidence (and I feel badly posting this for Duff’s sake, but to be fair, I am embarrassing myself too by posting this photo from our awkward middle school years):

Duff in his grown-up, Charm City days:

Of course, I could be totally wrong and there could have been a different Duff that I made out with on my Israel trip. Though, you know, how many Jewish Marylanders named Duff (or Duffy, as he was known on the trip) who resemble each other closely could possibly exist? But if I am wrong, then I apologize to the Duff of cake-building fame for counting him amongst those who passed over my lips during the aforementioned promiscuous kissing phase.

The irony, of course, is that Duff is known for using rolled fondant. What was one of my many infertility distraction activities?–cake decorating classes. And what was the one class I missed because the mean chick who sat up by the teacher announced her pregnancy when she was three minutes pregnant and proceeded to rub my nose so badly in her hCG that I spent the rest of the evening crying in the bathroom and then skipped the next class?–rolled fondant. I know that you can find these coincidences anywhere if you stretch hard enough, but it really feels as if things have been coming back full circle in my life as of late. I have many more posts like this brewing–though no others that has tales of my kissing whoredom with celebrities. All of it just makes me wonder what happens next. Nu? I mean, if my life were a movie and this many stories were being neatly tied together one after the other, you would expect something momentous to be on the verge of happening.

But this post is not just to let you know that I had a two week affair with an adolescent pre-cake maker. It is also that I read my journal that was stored along with my photos on the trip and I need to report (though I’m sure this isn’t a news flash) but middle school girls are mean. They’re just mean. And it could be fair to say that so much of the way I try to live my life today stems from how I was treated as a middle schooler. I did not have an easy time on that trip so I would like to take a moment to publicly thank Duff for holding my hand when I needed someone not just to stand beside me, but to hold my hand too. Especially but not limited to coming down from Masada.

Perhaps that is the good that comes from feeling so unwelcome by the three girls that I originally shared a room with on the trip (I ended up switching room by the second day). They make you want to create the blogroll from hell so that no one needs to feel as if they’re alone as they’re stumbling through the Land of If.

A toast–to mean girls who change how you live, to promiscuous kissing phases (which are a lot less dangerous that other promiscuous phases), and to my celebrity makeout session. Every girl should have one.

Which celebrities have you met? Either pre-or-post fame?

Directions:

1. Open a second tab or a second window and open up my blog a second time.

2. On the second version of this post, click here.

3. Listen to Ajde Chaje (bottom one of the four songs).

4. Dance around the living room.

5. Leave it playing while you come back to the first tab or window to read the rest of this blog entry.

Pretty catchy, right? I’ve listened to it several times today; one time actually stepping away from the computer to dance around the living room. It is like this musical version of my nervous energy. By now I’ve figured out that it’s a love song by clicking on that hyperlinked lyrics space, and you can hear the earnest amazement of a person fall in love. But I listened to the song and imagined an entire Middle Eastern brass band walking behind me into the RE’s office, my own musical entourage, who would announce without question my mood each time I stepped over the threshold. A sort of slow dirge-like tune for those sleepy, early morning blood draws and a pull-out-all-the-stops, over-the-top number for transfer. And this song seemed the perfect accompaniment, with its jangling energy and quick words for that initial re-consult appointment. The first time we went to the RE, I was nervous but excited. This time, it’s more of a nervous dread knowing that will happen next. Did I mention that I really hate needles?

But let’s ignore that for a moment because I still have a few more days to stress before the appointment and I’d hate to get it all out in one post.

Still, this image will be in the back of my head while we’re discussing my apparent lack of ovulation:

Just me and my entourage of ten-plus Middle Eastern brass band players announcing my mood. May get crowded in that small office. They may need to wait in the hall during a wanding.

Actually, I found my perfect waiting for results song by the same artist. Click here and go to Spiral Flower (the first song). If you click on the lyrics link, it states: “Be still… there is a rising spire of light from within this strange, deceiving spiral flower.” I am fairly certain that you can’t get closer to the truth if you tried*.

Speaking of music, you have all seen this, right? Makes for a very different Christmas to know the voice is helping fund IVF.

Can I go back to the topic of imaginary friends? Back to Sonly and your Lulu who lives in a tree and your invisible mice who speak in an unusually high voice?

I spend a lot of time wondering what sort of people the Wolvog and ChickieNob will create. Will it be a collective friend they share as they do toys, spoons, and stuffed animals? Or separate friends that are gender-specific? Will their imaginary friend fill the gaps left by their sibling or will they simply not need one? Will a flesh-and-blood constant playmate trump the lure of an invisible one?

What does it say about the fact that I had so many imaginary friends? An inner circle of four, a larger mass of undetectable acquaintances who came with me on road trips or sat with me at the lunch table? Was I lonelier than most? More creative that the average six-year-old?

The New Yorker published an essay about five years ago about Charlie Ravioli, the imaginary friend of Adam Gopnik’s daughter, a harried New Yorker who never had time for his creator. Olivia regaled her family with stories of Charlie Ravioli, forever blowing her off to jump into taxis, skip coffee dates, and not return calls. What does she gain from an imaginary friend who is too busy for her? And on that end, I should berate myself for not making poor Sonly suffer from premature ovarian failure so she could keep me company in the waiting room while I wait to be called back for blood work and a wanding.

And then there is the Internet–bulletin boards, chat rooms, and blogs–that have created liminal friends. You’re not imaginary because you truly exist. But you’re not entirely flesh-and-blood because–with the exception of a few bloggers–I never meet you. You’re this liminal friend, somewhere between the real world of people I can hug and the imaginary world of people I create. And stranger still is when the real world and Internet world collide in the case of meeting bloggers or having real friends start writing.

You know that you’re not imaginary, but the reality is that unless people meet you and can vouch for you, you could be a creation. Meaning, you could be a 14-year-old boy living in Kansas simply pretending to be an infertile 30-year-old woman living in New Mexico. The choice for creation is built into the medium of blogs–I go into each story with a lot of trust, especially if you are discussing things that I don’t think the average 14-year-old boy would know (hormone levels can be looked up on a number of sites, but unless you’ve had an internal ultrasound, you probably wouldn’t know that the sonographer slaps on a little condom-like thing on the wand. Unless you’re the 14-year-old son of a sonographer). But I also know there is a chance that you could turn out to be a hairy man hot to discuss FSH with infertile women (ooooh, oooooh, tell me how high it was, Mel. Oooooooh).

Which makes you liminal–that state between two places.

Josh comes home at night and asks me about my day and our ensuing discussion includes the usual–what I did, who I saw, what I ate. Funny stories from the Wolvog and ChickieNob. A grand idea I have to convert the basement into a classroom and hold my own informal preschool in the house. The usual. And then, as I’m chopping vegetables for a salad, I tell him about the real people in our life as well as all of you. What’s happening with Julie at work. So-and-so got a positive last week and her betas are doubling. This chickie is miscarrying and I couldn’t stop crying when I read the post. That girl bought a camper and it totally made me want one.

On one hand, you are so real that you are lumped in with my discussion of the flesh-and-blood friends who pass through our house. But on the other hand, we don’t really know you.

Along with celebrity gawking, is this the grown-up equivalent of the imaginary friend? With celebrities, you read a story about them in People and you think you know what sort of person they are based on twenty paragraphs. In the blogosphere, we have scraps of information about a person and fill out a whole life in the holes and spaces. You look kind in your picture and you say the right things when I’m down and you write so emotionally about your own journey that I fill in the blanks. I think I can imagine how you’d act when placed in certain situations (oh, she’d be so quiet–or–she’d kick his ass twelve ways to Sunday), but the truth is that we can barely predict the actions of close friends.

I think these ideas come to a head when you meet the blogger you’ve been conversing with for months. Or when I posted my picture last month and suddenly, you have a face to put with the words. Perhaps, I’m not how you imagined me and of course I feared that seeing me would be a disappointment. I’ve met about twenty bloggers by this point and none of them are how I imagined them either (though it was never a disappointment). What does this universal discrepancy say about the state of these friendships?

And at the same time, why are these liminal friendships easier and more fulfilling sometimes than the ones we have with the face-to-face people in our lives? They are the poor woman’s equivalent to the 24/7 therapist. We see therapists not just because they are excellent in pointing out patterns or helping us make sense of our emotions, but because they are the one person that we can speak to without worrying about how our words are affecting them emotionally.

I’m not talking about being thoughtless in your speech (saying, for instance, “I just hate all blond-haired people” to a light-haired therapist); but when I went to a therapist, one of the first things she told me was that her office was the space to discuss everything that I felt too guilty to lay on Josh or my friends or my family. She didn’t take my words home with her as my friends did and beyond that, she didn’t take my feelings personally as a friend is liable to do. If you say to a friend, “I’m lonely” it is also a statement about their performance as a friend. Or, they take it that way. But a therapist can hear “I’m lonely” and keep it simply as a statement of loneliness.

And that is what the liminal friends of the blogosphere absorb–the words and thoughts that are too large, too messy, too emotional to share with those actually around us. They’re not more valuable than face-to-face friends any more than therapists are more valuable than family. But they serve a different role. At least, until you meet them and they become a weekly coffee date (as well as someone you drag vacuum shopping) and then end up on a strange new plane between reality and the ether.

It is this constantly moving spectrum from imaginary friends to partner/spouse, with the
internal blocks–the real-life friends, the blogosphere friends, the ones you meet, the ones who remain faceless–constantly shifting in status, moving closer or farther away from the ethereal quality of imagination to the solidification of the well-known partner/spouse.

I talk about wishing that Sonly was in the waiting room with me, but the reality is that you are that circle I will carry with me into the office next week, the ones who will sit with me in the waiting room, sigh with me as the feet goes into the stirrups, tsk at my unshaven legs (seriously, Melissa, it’s winter but still…), remind me to jot
down my hormone levels. And I hope when you are sitting in the waiting room, that I can sit beside you–at least in imaginary form, at least in a liminal state between imaginary friend and someone that you can email when you get home. I hope I can be good company.

New list below! We’re onto the final group, Group C:

Welcome to the eighth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Start Date: October 31st
Post Dates: December 10, 11, and 12
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about all upcoming tours and book events.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Handmaid’s Tale. We’ve broken down the current tour into three groups. This is the final list).

Group C:

My Journey to Motherhood (Courtney)
Tired of Waiting (Holly)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
Candy’s Land (Candy)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
Confessions of a Paranoid Parent (Paranoid)
The Road Less Travelled (Loribeth)
The Duchess (Duchess)
The Dunn Family (Erica)

Even if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #9 is a non-IF book (otherwise known as a pepper book by the Barren Bitches) The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. The next 7 book tours or so all have author participation so you’ll also be able to interact online with Karen and ask your questions about her book.

The Details: Tour #9 will start December 13. Participants will read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler. On Wednesday, January 16th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on January 17th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on January 22–24th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #9, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The next few tours are always listed on the new upcoming and past tours list. Happy reading.

Also: upcoming book event! January 9, 2008 at 8 p.m. (Wednesday night): online chat with Darci Klein of To Full Term. Read the book beforehand and bring your questions-OR-simply come and hear this discussion. Information will be emailed prior to the event, so if you plan on joining along send an email or leave a comment below specifying the To Full Term discussion (8 p.m. is based on the American EST which is UTC -5).