The High Tech Way

Ready for the weekend

This is week two for me on the new job, and (knock on wood) it seems to be going well.

So this week I stayed up late Tuesday baking cookies to take with me on my first trek to my new office (I mostly work from home.  But I thought I might be able to bribe new coworkers into liking me by bringing them cookies. Don't know yet if it worked.)  Then on Wednesday I took the cookies with me to the new office and then stayed up in San Francisco for my new company's holiday party where I did my best to be extroverted and introduce myself to anyone who would make eye contact with me.

(Meanwhile, David said that at bedtime Jack wandered the halls upstairs saying: "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy." in a sad way.) I didn't get home until 10.

Then on Thursday night after the late afternoon ultrasound, meeting David and Jack at Jack's favorite restaurant, Boston Market, and then finally getting home and everyone settled at around 8, I started to put together the scrapbook pages for the teachers in the infant room at Jack's school/daycare.  Each parent was given a page for each teacher to create a scrapbook of the year's memories that the director of the daycare would then assemble into books of memories for each of the teachers as an end of year/holiday gift. So I was up til 11:30.

I am so beat and uninspired today. Thank thank thank goodness that it is Friday. 

Ultrasounds, HPTs and anxiety

My new job has kept me alternately busy and tired in the last week, and away from this blog more than I would like to be.  Being the new guy is exhausting. You don't know the simplest things, like who will be evaluating your work and what things they will look at when they do it.  So you are just sort of guessing and asking a lot of questions of people who are already very busy.

I hate being the new guy.

However, it does have the advantage of keeping me busy enough so I'm not spending every waking minute worrying about whether this pregnancy will continue another day, or whether it may have already ended. 

It's been a week and three days since our six week ultrasound and this weekend I have not been feeling pukey at all.  This makes me so worried.  And it's when the crazy me takes over, thinking that I can somehow determine whether everything is OK or not by looking at the darkness, or potential lack thereof, of the test line on home pregnancy tests.  This exercise also gets expensive too.  And it usually just makes me more worried and more inclined to buy more of the damn sticks.  I am starting to realize, after so many many years of this, why some people call them "devil sticks." I always used to think that was a silly term, but now I'm starting to think it may have some merit.  Those sticks are crazy-making and budget-busting, and ultimately provide no answers about the ultimate outcome.

Tonight's stick seemed a little lighter than the one from two nights ago, and as I was sitting with Jack before putting him to bed I kept thinking about this pregnancy in the past tense.  How it would have been nice to have another baby.  How it would have been nice to be pregnant at Christmas.  How it would have been nice to -- well, you know what I mean.  I felt like I needed to get my heart used to the possibility that it may be over -- you know, and then if it turned out well I would be pleasantly surprised. 

I've thought about contacting my RE office and asking to do the next ultrasound tomorrow instead, or Tuesday. (It is currently scheduled for very late on Thursday afternoon.) But as I was wandering around the web this weekend I saw this old post from Julie about a momentary Zenlike approach she had to her own first trimester scans during her successful pregnancy. Her posts during this time were filled with the same kind of anxiety I find myself feeling now.  If only anxiety could be counted on as a predictor of ultimate success...

The daughter of our across-the-street neighbors stopped by late this afternoon, the one who found out about a month ago that she was already 3 months pregnant.

She wondered if we knew the outcome of our IVF cycle.  (She knew about it because she was the first person we'd asked if she could babysit Jack on the day of the embryo transfer.)  I hedged and hedged and said not really. But David old her the truth and showed her the picture of the ultrasound from six weeks (which truly required as much squinting as looking at a 9 DPO home pregnancy test).

And Elizabeth was full of excitement and congratulations. She is in her mid-20s, and was pregnant for more than 2 months without even knowing about it, so she and I approach pregnancy from different perspectives. She does not have personal experience with pregnancy loss, so it was hard for her to understand my reticence to joy and celebration. I told her my pukeyness had faded to nothing in the past few days, but her enthusiasm did not waver.

On Friday afternoon I made an appointment for the first trimester prenatal genetic testing screen, also known as Ultrascreen, and a CVS for the second Monday in January.  And I also called my previous OB's office and left a message about getting an appointment there. Could it be by the mere act of calling the Universe's attention to the fact that I saw a heartbeat on an ultrasound 10 days ago by my arrogance of scheduling such appointments that I have doomed this pregnancy already.

I guess it's good that tomorrow is the second Monday of my new job.

A delicious limbo

Today I set the "Out of Office" assistant on my Microsoft Outlook to "gone forever."  I left voice mail greetings on my office and work cell phones that said today was my last day and please contact my colleagues instead.  I sent thank you e-mails to my colleagues and boss. I also sent them some of my contacts.  I turned in my Blackberry (yes, I had one of those for work, in addition to my personal smartphone -- what a geek I am) and my laptop. I turned in my office key and my parking garage card. I shook hands with my boss and gave a colleague a hug and I walked out of the office WITHOUT MY WORK LAPTOP.  I felt so light!  I felt like I'd lost a good 15 lbs!  And when I got home there was no work email to look at, no phone calls to return, no queue of tasks to complete. 

Right now is a delicious point in time. I am unencumbered by the day-to-day annoyances of employment.  And with a new job starting Monday, I am unconcerned about the financial ramifications of this current state of freedom.  There is no job right now to be worried about.  Sure, the new job will start soon enough with its own new set of worries and duties and irritations (and lots of rewards as well).  But for right now, for these next few days, I am not just on vacation. I am untethered to any place of employment.  And it's making my absolutely giddy.

I don't know that I've ever had a time like this before. I've either gone from one job to another (leaving one on Friday and starting the next on Monday and very possibly moving across the country and buying a new car on the Saturday and Sunday in between), or I've been laid off and although I had "time off" I spent that time freaking out about finding another job.

I must say, this situation beats the others in a big big way.   He he he he he!

And it's only lunchtime

Again today I woke up about an hour before I had to and stared at the clock again, thinking this time about my job situation until it was time for me to get up.

My first layoff was in June 2001 and I was close to landing another job that September, but then terrorists attacked New York City and Washington and someone was sending Anthrax in the mail and that pretty much put an end to anyone’s hiring plans that year. It was enough to shake my confidence in my ability to come out OK at the other end of something like this.

So last night I had a dream that I was back working for an old boss who never really liked me very much. He was telling me how much stressful work I would have to complete each week and how little he would pay me for it. And then at some point I looked down the street and saw a big landmark building collapsing. Could this be a layoff/job anxiety dream?

I just dreaded being at work today. My company was kind enough to send my severance agreement so that it arrived on Saturday. I haven’t opened it yet. But everyone has been very nice to me today and not overly weird and icky. (If you’ve ever been laid off you know what I mean. It’s like you have leprosy. Other people are afraid of catching it from you. They are sorry for you, though. Still, they have no idea what to say to you so they avoid looking at you.)

Then I heard that someone had called one of my references for another job I’d hoped to get (and my desire to get that job increased exponentially after I got Friday’s lay off news…) On the one hand, that this reference was contacted raises my hopes about whether this job will come through. On the other hand, do things ever work out that smoothly for me? Not for a long time. I don’t want to get too excited or happy, because things could go sideways fast.

Then David and I went to our favorite burger place for lunch. My head was just spinning with the stuff that’s been going on the past few days between my job situation and the IVF.  So when the owner, who is just a super guy, asked us how we were doing we told him our heads were spinning. And then we told him why.  Turns out he and his wife went through fertility treatments for 10 years and did three IVFs, the last one transferring eight embryos, with no success. 

He talked about the toll it takes on your relationship and said he could see how solid David and I are.  He talked about what the hormones do to the woman.  He talked about the emotional roller coaster, which in the long run is more damaging than the expense. He was ONE OF US.  He was crying, and it made me cry. He said they’d talked about adopting but his wife is not keen on that solution.  They would make awesome parents, they are such a wonderful couple.

My head was spinning even more by the time we left there. I was in tears. I just want to make it better for them, even though they have decided they are finished. I know that IVF and other fertility treatments don’t work for everyone, and it makes me so sad. I am sad for the people who would be such wonderful parents and have endured disappointment after disappointment with no light at the end of the tunnel.