Guilt

The spouse loves me more than he ever loved DS. He said so, during our conversations of what to do next, and I was struck by guilt, because my own feelings are different.

Don't get me wrong, I love the spouse more than anyone in my life right now. But the moment I saw a heartbeat, I had an overwhelming feeling of unconditional love that surpassed any love I had ever felt for anyone before, the spouse included. It is extremely hard to describe. I am crying as I write this. I think I will forever cry whenever I remember my little boy.

There is an additional feeling that puts me to shame. I always wanted to be a mother, and I think I would have left the spouse if at some point he did not want to or was not able to be a father. It shames me to know that I would have hurt him so much, especially in the face of my own fertility issues.

We talked for a long time about adoption, fostering, donor eggs, embryo donation and surrogacy. None of those seem good enough to him (and not all of them seem good to me either, but I wanted all cards on the table for now).

What he wants is another FSH-HCG cycle followed by another IUI. Yes, that is what he wants, in spite of Einstein's definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results). I'm not really into it, but if this might bring him closure, why not? What's a few more pricks and bruises?

But first,  we have to visit my sister, who is still doing chemo. We're also visiting my in-laws in the same trip. After that, my brother in law will come and visit us. And then my parents are coming for Christmas and possibly staying until Epiphany, which we celebrate on January 6.

I don't want to cycle while traveling (ugh, I just conjured the image of a TSA agent confiscating my needles), or with guests in my house. I know, I know, tick-tock, tick-tock, the biological clock is running out of time and so on and so forth.

But to me, this cycle is kind of useless. My biological clock, as I see it, has already given up. So it really does not matter if I do it in January instead of November or December.  Hope has nothing to do with this cycle. This time, it's just Guilt.