Cue impending due date freakout.

I am fully aware that some of you have been on the journey to baby a lot longer and with many more impediments than we have, and I will understand if you roll your eyes, mutter something about mountains and molehills, and snap this book shut, so to speak. But in the spirit of being honest and true to myself, I am sharing how I feel.

Last week was the week, and so now we're two week waiting. Although I've become better at doing that over time, this particular wait has an extra sharp edge to it because it is our last chance for another pregnancy before the erstwhile due date of the last one rolls around.

That ill-fated day is at the end of August, which is two months away. It would thus seem that we have two more chances before then and that my impending freakout is a bit premature. But we don't. Gilles and I won't be together for most of those two months, including the magic moments of each.

***

Since the last pregnancy ended in January, I haven't dwelled much on the due date or any of the other little milestones that would have preceded it. (The starting point of the third trimester, yes; but only in the context of haircutting.) I didn't think it would bother me that much when it arrived – but that was because never in my worst dreams did I think that I would not be pregnant again by that time. Whether you attribute that to optimism, naïvety, or just sheer stupidity, I fully thought that any pain I might feel about those vanished dreams would be dulled by the joy of another little dream in the making.

During one of the many "is it a miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, or a miracle waiting in the uterian wings to surprise us?" appointments that took place in January, when a doctor was advising us (yet again) to wait a few more days to be certain that the pregnancy really was not viable, I was concerned about the risk of wasting time should it turn out that it wasn't. I thought those additional two days, three days, however long it was we waited before the dropping hCG gave us a definitive answer – less than a week, in any case – mattered, because they represented an extra two days, three days, whatever, before I could be pregnant again, for keeps this time.

Two days, three days, whatever. I thought they mattered.

But they didn't. And here we are five months later, still with nothing except a bunch of used-up pee sticks, carefully filled-in charts, and angst-ridden blog posts.

***

Making the choice to be away from Gilles in both July and August was, yes, a choice – my choice; one I didn't necessarily have to make. But I found myself horribly torn between trying to have a baby and two other very important things. One is family; the other is career. And at a certain point, I need to tend to those two other very important things, too, even at the detriment of baby-making. Life is not just about well-timed sex, as much as it can sometimes seem that way, and this is the moment for me to look beyond that part to the others that make up a well-rounded existence.

It's only two months, and it's only two months after what has been only five months of renewed trying. I think we all know, though, that a time period that can be described as "only" in any other context is really not that when it involves waiting for a chance for a baby. But, really, it's not so much the duration but rather the timing of this unwanted break that is causing me to feel distressed about choosing to take it.

Perhaps that mystical second line will show up next week and put all this anguish to rest. It would be nice to have other things than this to freak out about ... like what color to paint the nursery. And by nursery, I do indeed mean the lesser-used half of the living room.

and by "lesser-used," I do indeed mean by humans, not felines.
(for those of you not familiar with cat yoga, this pose
is known as the "dead sparrow.")