This week is almost half-way over!

I can't really complain, because yesterday was a holiday for me, and it was SO NICE not to have to go to work. I did chores and ran errands and met up with a few friends (one with a new baby, the other pregnant). Best of all, my knee feels much better. Still gimpy, but better.

I'm feeling surprisingly calm about this "cycle" (not sure I should really call it a cycle, since the IUI was cancelled). We did our first HCG booster injection Monday night, and it went really well. We're getting to be pros. Unfortunately, this new brand of HCG that we're using seems to regularly cause that annoying reaction of a big raised red spot that's a bit painful, but it's pretty minor all in all. Tomorrow is the last booster injection and the start of progesterone. I'll have, I think, 10 days of progesterone before I get to do a HPT.

It's weird to be so hopeful and yet so calm and zen at the same time - hopeful because of the progesterone and the good reaction to the clomid, zen because we cancelled the IUI so it's totally understandable if it doesn't work. I like it. It's a nice place to be. (It would be nicer if it was already next Wednesday, but you can't have everything).

Yesterday afternoon I met up with my friend with a new baby, one of the few who know we've been trying, partly because we started trying around the time they started trying for the second time. I don't know exactly what happened with their first try - surgery and a miscarriage, not sure in which order and if one caused the other. This friend is very "all-natural", into homeopathy, organics, and so on. I agree with her on a lot of things (I think plastics and non-organics are probably pretty bad for babies, for example), but she is religiously zealous about that kind of stuff. She once encouraged me to stop taking antibiotics for a tick bite after they really upset my stomach. She doesn't believe in taking any drugs that aren't strictly necessary. She had a totally natural childbirth, and doesn't believe in medical intervention unless it is, again, strictly necessary.

I was a wimp - I knew I couldn't tell her about the clomid and HCG and IUIs. She was surprised that we were already seeing a fertility specialist, especially since our tests showed we had nothing wrong. She didn't understand why we would need treatment if nothing was wrong. I was afraid of being judged. I only told her about the progesterone, explaining how I spotted before my periods, which could indicate a problem, and that this could possibly be the fix we were looking for. She was pretty understanding about it, but I could tell she didn't particularly approve.

The whole episode was an eye-opener for me. It made me see how and why some people don't approve of fertility treatment. In this case, I don't believe that her opinion would be that if we can't conceive naturally, we shouldn't have children. It wasn't a religious problem for her, it wasn't "God's plan". I know if she was in this situation, she would be researching herbs and looking into homeopathic alternatives. I also know that if testing had found problems, she would address them sooner or later. But I could tell she thought we were being impatient, we wanted instant gratification. We couldn't just let nature take its course.

So that's Wednesday morning - lessons learned, a less gimpy knee, and hopefully a fun weekend looming on the horizon.