PerchanceToDream

I’ve been putting off writing this post about Mother’s Day because I truly believe that mothers should be honored. And I hope to find myself in their ranks someday.

That being said, it’s been many, many years since I’ve been comfortable with the holiday. My own mother died when I was 13 and that pretty much killed any relationship I had to the holiday right there. Most years I’ve been able to hold my breath and force myself into the card shop to buy a card for my grandmother but that’s about it.

This year I’ve been ignoring it all together. It helps that my mother-in-law lives in the UK, which celebrates Mothering Sunday on a different day. We order flowers for her online and that’s fine. Aside from the constant barrage of commercials here, I’m usually able to look away. This was pretty much my method of coping with Valentine’s Day in years when I was single – rent a movie, drink some wine, wake up the next morning and it will be over.

I did used to stop and wonder though, whether advertisers ever thought about those who, for one reason or another, had no living mother. Perhaps they’d just lost theirs, how would those mothers day ads make them feel? My day job is in marketing, I get that it’s all about making a buck and that holidays like this one that pulls on our emotions are huge cash cows for the card and floral industries, but still.

This year, for the first time, I’m feeling the double-whammy of the day. We were never given an official due-date when I was pregnant but it would have been sometime in July. I suspect that we’d be having a bit of an alcohol-free celebration this Sunday had I not miscarried.

Due to not really want to face the feelings of that the realization and my recent whirlwind of travel and trying to make major life decisions (or in waiting for those in whose hands part of those decisions to call me – STILL waiting for a call from Mr. Company Owner who has been good about sending me e-mails of apology for not yet getting back to me but that’s not really the same as giving me SOME idea of what’s going on), I pretty much managed to blissfully put the day out of my mind, marketing e-mails and commercials included.

I know that I’ll have to call my 95-year-old grandmother to apologize for not sending her a card (her birthday is in 2 weeks and I swear I’ll make it up to her!). But now I have my dad leaving me messages reminding me to send his wife a card. Granted, this is nothing new. He does it every year regardless of the fact that she and I are not close in any way and have never lived in the same state much less had any sort of maternal/child relationship. He does it because she’d give him grief otherwise, even though a card from me is not going to make her day any better. But the lack of a card would just be one more thing to complain about.

I know my dad. He wants to keep the peace and usually I don’t blame him. And for his sake, I’ll send a gratuitous card that says nothing because really I have nothing to say other than that I want to scream at everyone who doesn’t understand what infertility and loss does to you and to your self esteem and how it shakes your whole belief system down to the core. But that’s not much of a sentiment for a mother’s day card, now is it?

I’m getting bored watching the phone not ringing.

I’d love to be happy and excited about my conversation with Dr. Celebrity yesterday.  And at some point I will be.

As soon as I can start making plans.

But at this point I’ve still yet to know what state I’m going to be living in when and if we get to the point of IVF (which OF COURSE I’m hoping we don’t need but it’s nice to know that it’s there if we do!)

I’m still waiting for Mr. Company Owner to call me and let me know (1) if they want me for the job and (2) if they can offer any sort of salary that I’m in a position to accept.

I called yesterday as requested and then followed up with an e-mail this morning that he answered with an apology for not calling back yesterday and a promise to “try to call you a little bit later.”  Unfortunately, like most business owners, his mind isn’t bound by normal office hours.  He could well call me at 10pm tonight.

In the meantime I replied to the other employer who told me that they have a new position opening up back in the Midwest.  I told him that I was in the midst of negotiations but was willing to talk in the meantime and he very nicely wrote that I should take my time sorting out whatever I needed to and then get back to him. Why I like the Midwest over NYC.  Here I’d already be out of the running.

So now, I’m sitting here watching the clock.  I know that we’re doing an IUI cycle starting next week but beyond that, my future is one big fuzzy blur until the phone rings….

After spending too much time the last 2 days watching the phone not ring, I’ve finally made process by speaking with Dr. Celebrity.

The upshot is this:

* Not surprisingly, he wants me to stop the very expensive and horrible tasting herbals prescribed by my acupuncturist with the start of the next IUI cycle (no surprise there).

* The NYS grants are approved and good to go.  At least from the doctors’ standpoint.  The grant coordination department hasn’t been given any of the new details yet so….

* My clinic is currently booking IVFs for as soon as June/July…..YIPES!  Well, I suppose if the next IUI doesn’t work and the job comes through I could at least get the IVF in before moving.  That being said, Dr. Celebrity has a thankfully lose definition of residency and it sounds like it wouldn’t be a problem for me to come back and have the procedure here and get the grant even if I’ve just moved.

AND….the best of it is that if we’re still here and we decide that we can’t afford IVF, he’d agree to a few more medicated IUI cycles.  You know, he could have said that a few months ago and kept me from freaking out about that!

So one major potentially life-altering call down….one to go……

Religion? Check

Personal debt? Check

Infertility? Check

Yup! We covered them all. And still it went well (at least I think it did).

The company is owned by a couple who are both musicians and businesspeople. The office is in an old house, the type with doors that open onto rooms that don’t seem like they should be there.  I almost needed to leave trail of breadcrumbs.

I was picked up by my one contact there and it was great to start the day with an already-friendly face. Of course, the first thing I see upon entering the house is that it is decorated in the artwork of the owners’ 6 -year-old daughter.  She and her much younger brother were present and accounted for during the interview.  There was even a playroom in the office for them.

I have to admit that a part of me loved that.  A part of me was jealous that they’ve found a way to do what they love and, with the help of an au pair, have a family. A part of me was appalled though at the thought of getting to the point where we have to give up our dreams of having a child and yet having to walk into this virtual nursery school every day.

The interview itself was otherwise, pretty much what I’d expected.  We talked about the industry, people we both know, gossip, marketing, work-styles, etc. We’d already covered religion on the phone (the company is located in the heart of the bible belt and as I work for a Jewish organization, Mr. Company Owner probably thought he had to bring it up. It isn’t a huge deal for me but there IS a Jewish community there and, in fact, Mrs. Company Owner is Jewish herself.) and money (before we figured out how to cover the $700 plane ticket, I wanted to make sure that we were in the same ballpark.  That has yet to be seen - Their original thought of payment is about 1/2 my salary and there is no way I’m in a position to take that kind of cut.  The figures we last talked about are in the range of “We could do it if we never, ever, left the house”.  My hope was that meeting me in person would convince them that I was the only one in the world they could get with the mix of skills they’re looking for and they’d offer me something I could live on.)

When the topic of timing came up, I felt like I had to bring up our current fertility efforts.  My contact at the company knows what I’m going though and had suggested that Mr. and Mrs. Company Owner would be sympathetic.  Knowing that the Mrs. is 45 and has an 18-month old, I was guessing that they’d gone through it themselves.  Turns out she got pregnant on clomid (not sure if there was any ART involved). We actually laughed about this being the strangest job interview any of us had experienced.

I mentioned the stalled NYS grant, the IUI we have scheduled next cycle is this natural cycle doesn’t work.  I talked about how my RE often has people come in from out of town for IVF and my incredibly generous friend who has offered me a place to crash if I come back for it. Her only concern seemed to be whether I was worried that the travel might negatively impact the outcome.  She also said that she’d give me the names of her doctors.

After about 4 hours of talking in the office, we packed up the kids and went for an hour drive around so that I could see the various neighborhoods.  I fell in love with one that I think my husband would also love.  Reasonable walking distance from the office (or a 5 minute drive), tree-lined streets near a park, college campus and a 3-block stretch of lovely restaurants, shops and bars with sidewalk seating.  Whether we could swing the rent has yet to be seen.

Then we went to dinner. Because the kids were with us (and understandably tired by 8pm), we opted for a local southern place that is a bit of an institution and that had wonderful (if completely unhealthy) southern comfort food: fried apples, mac and cheese, chicken fried pork chops with gravy.  YUM!!!  Through this whole time Mr. Owner and I were continuing some semblance of an interview while Mrs. Owner was trying to keep the kids entertained. Funny how we always revert to those sex roles - She’s a very well-known musician with a very prestigious degree but her focus was on spooning mashed potatoes into the little one.  Ah well.

Anyhow, I finally got back to the hotel, called hubby and crashed. They’d booked me a morning flight on Friday so I didn’t have much time to do more than meet up with my company friend who took me on yet another tour and deposited me at the airport.

Mr. and Mrs Owner are performing on Monday but I’m meant to call them on Tuesday if I haven’t heard anything. In the meantime, Dr. Celebrity managed to answer a 2-page letter to me with an e-mail that ignored most of my questions, addressing the one issues I actually had a handle on, so I’m now meant to call him on Monday.

It’s gonna be a hell of a week.

Oh, did I mention that I came home to find an e-mail in response to a resume I sent out months ago for a writing job in the midwest?  I’m going to claim a camping vacation with no e-mail access and call him on Tuesday.  My mind is a little too full at the moment to fit that one in as well.

So my #1 hope at this point is that Mr. and Mrs. were so wowed by my skills and demeanor that they cough up more than they could have ever imagined paying for this spot.

Barring that….they offer us something livable, we get pregnant before I leave and hubby is able to find some sort of work-from-home job OR he gets comfortable with the idea of daycare at least part time so that he can bring some money in.

In a perfect world, MR. and Mrs. call me and say they want me enough to wait until January to bring me in so that I can resolve this round of fertility treatments and pay off my debt.  I’m not holding my breath.

In other news….I’m having post-ovulation cramps for the first time in my life.  I mean, it’s almost a week later and this feels quite like I did after my first medicated IUI.  I’m not getting wrapped up in that though (really!!!), pinning it instead on my new acupuncture regime, herbals and general stress.  Right?  I can’t imagine what getting pregnant naturally would feel like anyhow.

…before I leave town (yipes!).

Thanks to all who have commented and please keep doing so!!! I need all the ideas I can get at this point.

First off, I just received notice that the New York State Infertility grant IS on for this year. My contact at my clinic said that there are some contractual changes though that the doctors are meeting about on Monday and then she’ll get back to me, so we’ll see.

Should that all happen AND I get and take this new job….well, let’s just say that scheduling is going to be a real nightmare. But then again…I do tend to have everything happen all at once!

As far as your comments go:

preconceivednotions: Thanks for that link to CCIVF. I’m not in NJ but I am in NY (at least for the moment!). I’ve written them to get some more info.

Heidi: Yup - the COBRA thing would make perfect sense IF my insurance covered IVF. But it doesn’t. Just the meds. It covers unlimited IUIs which is what I’ve been coasting on but that won’t help going forward. I just can’t see moving and, at 43, doing that month after month at a cost that we can’t sustain.

Em: I’ve looked into INCIID - the only problem is that I’m almost 43 and I don’t know if I could wait the year or so that they estimate it could take.  But it’s been in the back of my mind to try anyhow….