Sarah Fain Has Starfish Envy

A Question Of Faith

You want to know the worst thing about trying to have a baby without a guy?

Well, the second worst thing.

Having to count on other people to do the inseminating. 

There's a lot I can do on the prep-work front: eating right, exercising, getting acupuncture, taking herbs and vitamins, meditating, monitoring my fertility status, taking ovulation predictor tests.

But the actual inseminating?  

That takes someone else.  And at the moment, I'm feeling like that someone else is letting me down.

I love my doctor.  I even like her partner, who came up with the current plan of action. I just don't feel confident it's a very good plan.  And I feel fairly powerless to change it.

Now, who knows.  Maybe waiting three days after my fertility monitor first says I'm at peak fertility to even do a trigger shot is the way to go.  Maybe I won't ovulate on my own-- although with two follicles on my left ovary, both a perfectly good size, the chances seem good that I will, if I haven't already.  Maybe waiting until Day 17 and 18 of my cycle to do the IUIs is perfect timing.

But I kinda don't think so.

Which means that this whole cycle might be a bust.  I'm not even sure I should waste the sperm, frankly.

It comes down to faith.  Do I have faith in other people to do the right thing?  To make the right decisions?  To help me make this happen?

My only answer is this:  I really wish I didn't have to.

No, I'm Awake. Really.

The last few days, I’m having a really hard time coming up with interesting things to blog about.   I’m having a really hard time keeping my eyes open, really.  The naps I’ve been taking could easily enter the realm of the legendary. 

Before you jump to uterus-related conclusions, let me just say I don’t think this is a sign that I’m you-know-what.  I think it’s a sign that I’ve been running on extra-high speed for … well, way too long.  Months, easily.  Probably more like a year or… okay, two. 

I’m tired. 

It may not seem like things are calming down, what with the trying to get you-know-what and the remodeling and the blogging and the working on an outline for a YA book and the breaking of a movie with WP… but for the first time in a LONG LONG time, I’m not spending most of my time at my super-full-time job. 

I am, for the moment at least, experiencing that thing we TV writers love more than we love our mothers: hiatus.

For several weeks, possibly even (dare I say?!) a couple months, I will only be answering to myself.  And to WP, of course.  And to the vagaries of Trying to Conceive.  But compared to my usual life, that’s nothin’.

Anyway, a symptom of hiatus seems to be that at about three o’clock every afternoon my whole body goes, “Nap time!”  And then my brain checks my schedule, shrugs and responds, “Cool by me.” 

It doesn’t help that I’m trying to meditate, which is basically a gateway nap.  Every single time I close my eyes for a fifteen minute meditation, the next thing I know it’s two hours later, and I’ve been dreaming of soft, soothing voices, blankets of positive energy, and houses that represent… I’m not sure exactly what the houses represent, actually.  I’m always out cold by then.

And damn, it’s nice.

My Seventh Weekly Reading List

I've started four posts in the last two hours, none of which seem to be remotely cohesive, so while I work on gathering my thoughts, I will instead deliver my seventh weekly reading list!

But before I do that, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone for giving such deeply thoughtful advice.  To say I appreciate it is an understatement of massive proportions.  While I work on how to approach the long version, the short version is this: All went well today.  Doing it again tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.  

On to the reading!

I really love this Every Woman Should list.  The only thing I would change is "how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it."  It should be "how to live alone... and like it."  Or even "love it."

Today of all days, it feels appropriate to include this Marie Claire article on a Single Mom By Choice.  What with the J-Lo and Jennifer Aniston movies, and the articles in mainstream magazines, I'm feeling very au courant, I must say.

From Rowdy Kitten, this Simple Guide to Having Fun.  The more complicated our lives get, the more we need to be reminded that the simple things really are the best things.

And this is why I stopped internet dating.  Thank you, Huffington Post for the reminder.

Finally, my neighborhood has also hit the mainstream it seems.  Apartment Therapy LA is ALL ABOUT Echo Park.  At least in this one article.  

Read away, and I'll try to make the jumble in my head into an entertaining, thought-provoking post for tomorrow.

Key word: Try.

Questionnaires and Answers

Every now and then, my very favorite former boss writes up a clever questionnaire and sends it out to his pals.  The original idea was that we would all send our answers back to him, and then forward the questionnaire on to our OWN friends for THEIR answers.

Instead, a tradition evolved wherein everyone just replies all.  Which means that I'm reading all of my boss's friends' answers-- some of whom I know and some of whom I don't-- and they're reading mine. 

These questionnaires don't come often-- sometimes only once a year-- and I look forward to them.  The queries range from practical to deep to hilarious-- and since many of the respondents are writers, some of them of the rah-thuh well-known variety, the answers are always extremely engaging.  Reading what are often fairly intimate responses from people I know only by name-- and in some cases, only by email address-- is probably the closest I've ever come to reading someone else's diary.  (Turns out, diary reading is pretty fascinating.)

Anyway.  This is all to say that one of the questions on the most recent questionnaire was this: "What intimidates you?"  

My answer?   "Less and less."  

To understand the joy this answer brings me, you have to know that I used to to be intimidated by almost everything.  Slowly, over the last few years, that's been fading. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it partly has to do with moving through and learning from professional challenges.

Mostly, though, it's connected to my decision to have a baby by myself.  I kinda feel like, if THAT doesn't intimidate me, why would anything else?  If I can accept my singlehood and plan a life for myself and a child... everything else is cake.

Really, really, scary cake.  

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What intimidates you?