F You Finances!

I've spent the last 24 hours feeling especially hopeless.  Hopeless about money, hopeless about my future, hopeless at my chances of ever becoming anything in life.

There's a new focus.  By the time I'm 45, I want to be raising 2 kids.  So my current 35 year old self has some choices to make.

Do I tread softly trying to save my financial future at the risk of not having those 2 kids, or do I say fuck it, throw all caution to the wind and go for broke?  Literally.

I'm going for broke.  I'm going to extend every line of credit, take out whatever loans are available, and go into whatever debt it takes.

If it's a choice between living in a tent the rest of my life while the debt collectors try to hunt me down and having my kids versus keeping my house and manageable credit card payments with no family to bury me when my time comes, I'm getting those kids.

I'll be making a new appointment with my IVF doctor to determine what my smartest reproductive choices are right now regardless of the financial choices.  No more of this "well, you have a good chance with the embryos you've got, let's see how that works out."  NO.

No more draining the bank account one attempt at a time hoping to save money in the long run.  That's the decision we made a year ago and it didn't work out for us.  If we had prepurchased the 3 attempt plan, we would still have another attempt in the bank for not much more that we've already spent.  I will NOT be looking back on this moment in 5 years having done the same thing over and over again and have nothing to show for it.

I will do whatever it takes to get the money in my hands NOW so that I can prepurchase a plan that has the most attempts for the best price.  Without further details, I believe that's a program that offers 3 fresh attempts and 3 frozen transfers for a discounted price by paying up front in a lump sum.

The success rates that have to do with age are based on the age at which the embryos are created.  So I'm going to spend the next year doing as many fresh attempts as it takes to get pregnant and freezing any extra embryos that are created.  If the next three attempts fail, I should have plenty of frozen attempts banked by then.  We got 5 embyos out of the last attempt.  We implanted 2 and banked 3.  If that pattern keeps up for three more attempts, I'll have about a dozen embryos frozen when I was either 35 or 36.

So if one of the fresh attempts works, and I have my first baby, my 40 year old self will have better embryos to work with in order to try for my second child.  And since stress is one of the factors in success, I will have less stress knowing that I have more attempts if this one doesn't work, so my stress will be a lot lower, thus my chances of success higher.  If it costs me more to have that security and be successful on the first try than than it would have been to take the cautious option and being stressed out the whole time....I'm perfectly happy with that first successful attempt costing more than 3 failed ones.

I simply refuse to look back on this moment and say I made smarter financial decisions, but dumber reproductive decisions.

So I'm risking it all.  My house, bankruptcy, starvation, whatever it takes.  In my life, having children is more important to me than anything else in the world I hold dear - except my husband.  If it's a choice between my husband and my kids, I'll choose my husband.  But if it's a choice between money and my kids?  I'm choosing kids.

This is the opposite of everything we've ever known.  We are both the responsible, don't get in over your head types.  There are going to be times when I'm going to regret doing this to my credit rating, but I'd rather regret being broke than regret being alone.  K is trepidacious, but when it came right down to it, he's on board with this decision.  It's dumb, it's not the wisest thing in the world, but it's a considered, eyes wide open decision.

So now that the decision is made, there's only one question left.  How do I go about being this dumb as intelligently as possible?

I'm terrified.

Damnit, it feels new again

I was plugging along pretty well there for about a week.  Yup, back to my old self.

I don't know what's got me today but I feel like I'm brand new to this grieving thing again.

I spent the day in the pottery studio, merrily ignoring my brain and just making big ole mugs and goblets.  Actually got quite a bit done.

But as soon as I'm in the house, I'm obsessive again and I'm crying.  And it's 2:30am, I've taken my sleeping pill hours ago and it never even made me drowsy.  I'm terrified to lay down because as soon as I stop obsessively web browsing, I'm going to cry again.

Maybe it's because I'm having brunch with extended family in the morning.  It will be the first time I see aunts/uncles/cousins/grandma since it happened.  Everyone knows so I'm probably going to get a lot of sad faces and "how are you?"  I have no idea how to respond to that.  "I'm in the middle of a complete and total nonfunctioning breakdown, but how are you?"  I'm not even sure just how fast the news spread through my family, but the gift basket from one branch arrived on my doorstep a day or two after it happened so I'm thinking pretty damned fast.

I feel like I'm going to be sitting there, keeping my head down, eating my breakfast and avoiding any talk about my life because my life sucks donkey balls right now and there's simply no getting around it.  It's hard to visit with Grandma when I have absolutely nothing positive to say right now.  And her hearing isn't all that great so anything I do manage to say I'm going to have to say it pretty loud in the restaurant.

I don't think shouting "I miss my dead babies and I wish I could have them back" across the restaurant is a really swell idea.

And I'm probably going to hear stories of other relatives who went through miscarriages and went on to have happy babies.  Swell.  It's kind of ok when I see others stories on message boards, but I'm not sure I really want the stories so close to home.

Someone else being in pain doesn't ease my pain at all so why would it be comforting to tell me about the pain someone I care about has endured?  Telling me about that switches my role from the one who needs to be comforted, to becoming the comforter of their pain.  I ain't got that in me right now.

A relative sent me a very nice card outlining her journey.  Actually, I'm not certain how she's related.  Kind of a cousin of a cousin of a cousin kind of thing.  I don't think I would recognize her walking down the street but I'm familiar with her name and what branch of the family that she's closest to. 

I received this with mixed emotions.  First and foremost, she hardly knows me at all and she took the time and emotional energy to reach out to me.  That's pretty damned swell of her.  And there was a comfort in knowing I'm not alone.  On the other hand, she went through several losses before she finally got her son.  I'm barely surviving my first loss of 2 babies, I can't imagine going though this half a dozen more times.  Holy shit, is that in my future???  Once it happens once, it's probably going to happen again???  NOT what I want to hear right now. 

When others tell their stories of multiple losses, I kind of feel like they are trying to one up me.  I think we all know that game that we play on a daily basis of oh your day sucked?  Well let me tell you how much mine sucked worse!  Is that what's happening when people tell you how many miscarriages they had to endure?

By the way, I don't interpret this particular person as doing that.  Her letter was really very nice and when I have the gumption to respond with more than "I'm sad" I'll write her back.

Damnit, I've started crying again.  I'll be curled up in the fetal position on the couch if anyone needs me.

I'm just a failure

Feeling pretty hopeless today.

I've done exactly one thing right since becoming an adult.  I met and married my husband.

Everything else I've tried has completely gone to shit.

I really expected to be something by the time I was 35.  I never wanted to be a captain of industry or anything big like that, but I thought I'd at least have a career track, more money in the bank than I had in debt, I'd be a mom.

But nope.  Didn't accomplish any of those things.  I'm still applying for the same entry level jobs I was applying for when I was 20.  The difference is, back then, I got responses when I applied.

No kids to show for it.  As my business tanked over the course of the last 2 years, I figured oh well, I guess I wasn't meant to run a business, maybe being a stay at home mom and housewife will be the right direction for me.  And now I've failed at that too.

I don't understand why I have the brains and abilities to help others through their problems but I can't seem to see what it is I'm doing wrong myself so I can fix it.  Seriously.  When I'm in various forums and someone poses a problem, I'm usually one of 20 responses and the person always singles my response out as the brilliant one and the one that fixes their problem.

So why is it that I can point other people in the right direction, but seem to take the wrong turns myself?

I'm using all of my energy to tread water and I'm still getting swept out with the tide.  How can I ever get closer to shore when I don't even have enough energy to keep myself in place?  No matter what I seem to do, I go backwards.

Can't sleep

It's 4am, I've taken 1 1/3 of an ambien and I'm still not sleeping.

I'm back at my computer because the last thing I want to do is lie in bed and not sleep.  That leads to thinking.  Don't wanna think. 

I've been in this little bubble of denial that's serving me quite well actually.  It feels like I'm back at the beginning of all of this when we were still deciding between adoption and IVF.  The whole concept of having kids are vaguely in the distant future.  Much easier than feeling the recency of them in the past.

I'm a crier now.  I've never been a crier before.  But it's always just below the surface.  If anything doesn't go my way, I cry.  So I'm not doing much of anything significant.  I'm afraid that if I do, and it doesn't go right, massive meltdown.  So I'm keeping busy with random, unimportant tasks.