Despite my firm conviction from the time my e2 dropped precipitously through my negative HPTs, that there was no chance that I was pregnant after my IUI, it still hit me like a ton of bricks when that result was confirmed. Unfortunately, failure has been a common thread amongst IUIers over the past month, with similar ensuing devastation (okay, devastation may be going a bit too far). Even though we do our best not to get our hopes up, somehow it seems impossible not to. The everlasting resilence of the human spirit. Or something.

I realized mid last week that there were two reasons this failure hit me so hard. First, although I wasn't expecting to get pregnant right away, I had been imagining that at this point I'd have been trying for six months, which is the amount of time it takes regular folk fertile myrtyles your average crack whore to get pregnant, so it was pretty reasonable for me to expect to be at this point. Not counting on cysts or dim-witted doctors or mutant sperm or the natural cussedness of the universe, of course.

Second, I'd started giving up. Baby-making the regular way went out the window a long time ago, when my stupid body forgot how to ovulate. Step one down. No Clomid for me - stupid body doesn't know how to make estrogen. Step two out of the way. So now I'm on step three (gonadotropins), and after three failures here, people usually move on to IVF. So I'm at the end of that road. With three out of four steps down the tubes (yes, pun intended. Bad one, I know.) I was already giving up on success with IVF. And after IVF there was nothing, because M had said that he did not want to pursue any other options, such as surrogacy or adoption.

Once I realized that I was feeling so incredibly sad because I was envisioning a future without any child(ren) at all, I decided I should talk to M about it. He'd been really worried about me, and kept asking if there was anything he could do to make me feel better. So rather than continuing down the bleak road I was on, I told him what I was thinking. He still thinks I'm being way overly dramatic and that we still have a lot of options to try, but did say that he would be willing to consider other paths if ART doesn't work for us. Which gave me back the future I'd imagined.

So I'm still a bit sad from time to time, I hate that I'm back on bcp again (especially because I've gained three pounds in as many days although definitely not eating nearly enough food to do that), but overall I've regained a sense of hope for the future. We're going to try another IUI or two, then if those don't work, IVF in January when my insurance will cover it. (Notice I said if, not when the IUI's don't work... trying for a bit of optimism!)