A new chapter.

So. Life has been... full.

Puppy licks. Interspecies interaction. Neighborhood strolls. Showers hosted. Work events. So much support from my loved ones that I walk around in a constant state of humble gratitude. Because life has also been... weird.

Hospital visits. Anesthesia. So.many.injections. Ultrasounds. Side effects galore. Crazy-science-magic. The weight of my own body on itself only barely equalling the emotions of it all.

Right. I haven't mentioned it here yet.

We started IVF.

And because the best place to begin is probably the most surreal place, I'll offer the following:

This is what $3,743 worth of medication looks like.

That's a lot to put in your body over the course of a month. And when the docs later realize they forgot something and tell you it'll be another $380, you don't even bat an eye, because that's actually cheap compared to the stuff piled on that table.

IVF is a lot like IUI, actually... on steroids. And we should know, after three IUI failures. The promise of IVF is bigger, though. There's more certainty, more knowledge, and yep, more money. Lots more.

A dear friend of mine asked me what I felt like the worst part of IVF was. Did it represent a failure, a scary next step, the feeling of wasting time, the amount of medication, or was it the money that got to me most? And without skipping a beat, I said money. Our health insurance is fantastic for everything except this. We are 100% out of pocket for IVF, which is how we ended up spending $4k in meds. Add on the actual cost of treatment, monitoring, procedures, and high-tech lab work? We basically bought a car at our fertility clinic.

The bottom line, though, is what we'd rather have in our lives more than a child. The answer, of course, is nothing. Not a new deck, a landscaped yard, less student loan debt, or more savings. Not any of that. Yet still, it burns. I wonder why our cost to conceive is so high, when other people's is, say, the cost of a wine cooler. In my worst moments I whine about the inequities. Especially since even now, after doctors have watched T's sperm successfully fertilize my eggs in a lab, we don't have any more answers than we did before. "Unexplained Infertility," still.

So these days we're laying low. We're eating at home, playing with the puppy, watching baseball, and reading books. Outside of the side effects, it's not a bad place to be, really. Our days are quieter than before, but in a nesting way rather than an empty way. We're full of hope, because our chances are better than ever.

Is hope worth the cost of my beloved old Subaru Forester? I doubt it. But is a child? Absolutely.

To be continued.