THE MOST IMPORTANT

See that photo in the top right-hand corner of this blog? That's the hubs and me on July 4, 2012. One year ago. This year, we had virtually the same day we had 365 days prior -- we got up early to run the Watermelon 5K, we shared a meal with Philip's family in Mount Dora, and we ambled down to the lake to enjoy the fireworks with the Hueneke clan.

It was a lovely day, but I can't help it -- my thoughts always turn to infertility at these annual events. A year later, and we're still not pregnant. I sat and watched the fireworks in 2012, thinking wistfully about how fun it would be to share this holiday with a family of our own, and I sat and watched the fireworks in 2013, thinking wistfully about how fun it would be to share this holiday with a family of our own.

I love the Fourth of July fireworks so much -- the unabashed patriotism, the long summer night, the childhood nostalgia, the sheer wonder of these artful explosions in the sky. But how many more times will I have to watch them with a quietly heavy heart?

Philip and me in 2012

Philip and me in 2013

I had Friday off too -- a last-minute surprise from my company's CEO -- but I worked all day from home anyway. I finalized my feature outline (yep, same feature I bellyached about a week ago), I caught up on emails, I worked on updating my résumé (which I hadn't touched in six years). By the end of the day, I was wracked with stress. So much remains to be done before we leave for South America in a mere nine days, both at home and at work, all under heightened pressure and major uncertainty.

While I worked inside, Philip and his brother worked out in the garage, going through their father's belongings -- a task at which they've been chipping away for over a year. It's an emotional, overwhelming endeavor, not to mention just a lot of tiring physical labor out in the Florida summer humidity.

By the end of the day, Philip and I were totally beat.

Stress is the absolute worst. It's this invisible weight, and it's inescapable. The moment I awake in the morning and remember everything that's going on, I feel dread to the point of nausea. It's terrible.

This morning wasn't any different, but Philip suggested we go for a run, and I agreed it would be a good release. But halfway through, I had another crying meltdown (par for the course these days). "Why is everything so HARD?!" I wailed like a child out in broad daylight, blowing my snotty nose into my shirt. "Running is hard! Work is hard! Trying to have a baby is hard! Preparing for Bolivia is hard! Going through your dad's stuff is hard!"

Philip was amazingly patient with and encouraging to me, and we managed to finish the workout without further incident.

We also made some major headway on Bolivia prep. We went through old letters from Carmen, our sponsored child, making notes on key people and interests in her life (conversation starters), and we brainstormed gift ideas for her and her family.

Then we went out and freaking shopped till we dropped. Like, we just crazy-shopped our brains out.

It was pretty cathartic, spending all that money. (For me at least. I think Philip was feeling a bit panicky about our upcoming credit-card statement.)

Shopping for Carmen was so very exciting. To think of things she'd like and enjoy, to imagine her pleasure at opening these gifts and using them -- painting her nails with her friends, writing about teenage crushes in a pretty journal, carrying her pink Adidas drawstring backpack to soccer practice -- made me so happy, happier than I've felt in weeks and weeks.

We went bonkers buying stuff for her because it just made me feel so good to focus our energy 100 percent on doing something special for someone we care about. It felt like we were doing something that mattered, that was pure. It was empowering and humbling; it was purposeful; it was good and right and true.

Gifts for Carmen

And unlike all the irresolution of infertility and work, it's a sure thing that on Wednesday, July 17, we will meet this girl with whom we've been corresponding for nine years, and we will get a glimpse of her day-to-day life in South America's poorest country. It's becoming real, and it's awesome. And it's so much more important than anything waiting for me in my office cubicle.

Carmen, age 7, when we first started sponsoring her in 2003

Our most recent photo of Carmen, age 16

So here I am, at 1 in the morning, thinking about what's important. (I'm wide awake because we brilliantly had Starbucks for dinner.) Being some big-shot bridal editor doesn't seem that important. Traveling to tropical islands to go snorkeling doesn't seem that important. Any job that requires extreme amounts of my time -- whether it's time away on travel or time spent continually taking on new responsibilities while never being able to shed old ones -- doesn't seem that important.
 
Starting a family seems important. And in my case, starting a family requires a lot more time, money, effort and emotional reserve than it does for 90 percent of the population.

My mom texted me yesterday: "I am feeling that when you get back from South America, you will dive into the fertility treatments again and probably have a whole new life beginning for you."

I can't even tell you the thrill that thought sent through my gut. To just pour all of my resources into the quest to build a family, to not let anything -- stress, work drama, travel -- stand in my way: What freedom! What purpose! It was the course I was on for the first half of 2013 before I got derailed, and while it seems so distant now, I want to get back on that road.

It's the most important.

I don't know the way back to that road. There are no directions; there's no clear map. But at least I know now where I need to get.

Have any of you experienced this conflict -- a job that's too demanding to coexist with fertility treatment? What did you do?

TOO MUCH

I had another crying meltdown on Friday night. It had been a hell of week, every day feeling like at least two. We're on deadline with the magazine, which is a very stressful, overwhelming time even in normal circumstances. I typically have to work late, there are a million last-minute fact-checking details to keep straight, and everyone starts to ride on everyone else's last nerve.

I'd also had two Big Idea meetings during the course of the week about how to improve the magazine's blog and the print magazine itself, in which I felt a great deal of pressure to be super prepared and impressive and sparkly while trying to read my new boss' mind.

On Friday I was just so infinitely tired; I spent the day researching a feature and it was just taking way too fucking long, and I wasn't happy with my outline, and at 7 p.m. I finally admitted defeat and drove over to my best friend's birthday happy hour that had started at 6. I couldn't find parking, and I knew Philip and I were leaving that night to drive two hours to St. Pete for the weekend, and I still hadn't packed my suitcase. I was getting more and more frustrated, and then I saw it: a perfectly pregnant girl in a tight-fitting white dress and heels, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulder, holding hands with her man, on their way to some fancy babymoon date. And I started to sob.

Oh yeah, I remembered, I'm ALSO infertile! I had kind of forgotten about it for the moment, so preoccupied with all the intense work drama and the general nonstop pace of life. But the universe wasn't going to let me forget.

Finally I found a parking spot, and just as I pulled in, my husband called, and I choked out all of life's injustices over my cell.

In the end, he came out to meet me at the bar, all my girlfriends rushed to console me as soon as they saw me enter with the Look of Death on my face, and I drank some delicious wine. We got on the road to St. Pete at 10:30, which was retardedly late, but the drive went by quickly, and Philip and I had a ton to catch up on, having barely had a minute to talk all week.

I had a hard time relaxing on our weekend getaway. It rained on the beach, the Tigers lost, and work uncertainty hung over me like a cloud. But it was definitely still fun, and I did my best to be a pleasant companion to Philip and our friends who joined us.

I'm dreading the two weeks ahead of me, as it's all just too much to think about. Ship a magazine, then have another Big Idea meeting, then have an even bigger Big Idea meeting two days after that, then jet off to South America on a complicated two-week trip we've barely had time to plan. And oh yeah, the Big Announcement about who gets the promotion will happen when we're in the middle of the Bolivian salt desert.

Tomorrow Philip and I get inoculated -- a big check-the-box item -- and at some point we need to book a couple of tours, buy domestic airline tickets and purchase a backpack full of appropriate gifts for a  teenage Bolivian girl ... any ideas what's on that wish list?

I am taking off Thursday, and we're running the Watermelon 5K at 7 a.m. "Running" is probably generous, as my exercise routine has fallen into oblivion. But it will feel good to hopefully burn off some of this tension.

Even tonight I have a pile of work to do for a promotion I'm not sure I'll get at a job I'm not sure I want. Treatment Erika will be back in August (provided I dubiously use my leftover progesterone tablets to delay my period while I'm in South America), and I have no idea how she's going to mesh with Jetsetting Power-Editor Erika -- or if she'll even have to.

My future is a hazy question mark, which drives the control freak in me bonkers, and I lay awake at night asking myself and God, What do I want? What do you want for me? What are my options? What is even within my power to try? If it turns out I can't be a mom, do I want to keep climbing the ladder at this job? If I don't do that, what else is there? What life choices would allow us to just move to a lazy beach town and escape all this aneurysm-generating corporate and infertility nonsense? Would you ladies join me if I opened Infertility Island where you'd never have to see another pregnant belly in your life, and you wouldn't have to keep pretending your career is all you need?

And while I'm thinking these things, I just keep getting up and going to work and pasting on a smile and attending meetings because for now, there doesn't seem like any other choice.

CRYING IN THE BATHROOM

Yesterday two bloggers I follow got long-awaited news. One got a positive. The other got a negative. And I am crying in the bathroom at work. 

I am crying for the girl who had hung all her hopes on a promising new treatment protocol, only to have her hopes crushed. 

I am crying for the girl who had to go through five IUIs, three IVFs and seven frozen-embryo transfers to get the news she’d been longing for, but is still only cautiously optimistic. 

And I’m crying for myself, all dressed up in my wedges and my high-low dress, striving to impress my new boss, angling for this promotion with all the energy in my cells, working into the night, on the other side of the looking glass from six months straight of failed and canceled treatments, just wishing to God I could walk away from my current life, never looking back, and be a stay-at-home mom.

THE TIME'S THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

Holy Moses, what a week. It’s Saturday morning, and it’s the first time I’ve felt like a halfway normal human being in 12 days. I have so much on my mind, and it doesn’t really all flow together seamlessly, so forgive me if this entry is a bit scattered.

First I want to “publicly” thank Not When But IF for nominating me for the Super Sweet Blogging Award back on June 10. I feel ridiculously under-qualified for such a nomination, but thrilled nonetheless! I plan to more fully address the nomination and nominate others in a future post, but for now I just want to acknowledge that this happened, and also encourage everyone to head over to But IF’s blog in order to laugh a lot and hear someone much smarter, more articulate and more honest than me talk about the nasty but weirdly sometimes-community-and-strength-building world of infertility!

Second I want to report that there’s nothing really to report about work so far. The long and the short of it is that I’m competing for a promotion under a new boss, and to me, the only acceptable outcome is that I get it. But I won’t know anything for a few more weeks. In the meantime, my time in my cubicle is a nonstop, exhausting flurry of not only trying to ship a magazine, brainstorm brilliant ideas for how to change and improve pretty much everything we’re doing, and accentuate my intelligence and hard work, but also highlight my incredible charm, charisma and leadership magnetism — all while my competition is trying to do the same.

As someone who is by nature a shy introvert, it takes quite a bit of effort to prove that I am capable of being outgoing, outspoken and confident in high-stakes work settings — which I AM — I’m just saying, it takes all the energy I possess. In other words, I had no energy left this week for things such as emptying the dishwasher, eating square meals, blogging and brushing my teeth before bed.

I would also like to confess that while I sounded very convicted about my passion for travel writing in my last post, I was also on an airplane after just having taken a yoga class ON THE CARIBBEAN SEA. Forgive me if I was riding a bit of a high. At 10,000 feet, my thinking always tends to be clearer. Then I get home, and I’m sitting at my computer in my ordinary surroundings, and suddenly things seem a lot more confusing.

My loyal reader Blue Rose has this perception of me as being so strong and resilient, when the reality is, I spend about 95 percent of my time second-guessing and feeling ambivalent and sorry for myself. I do love working at a magazine! I do love traveling! I do love opening a blank Word doc to create something new! I’m amazingly blessed to have lived this jet-setting, creative life, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful. But I fucking want a baby! I want it more! I’ve been working at it for years now! That’s why I was willing to bench myself for seven months, and why I’ll do it again in the fall.

But now there’s another problem. My new boss doesn’t know about my treatment. And going after a big promotion at any cost while going after a pregnancy at any cost doesn’t exactly jive. Being a woman is shitty in this way, infertility or not. Plus there’s the time out of work for appointments, the extreme moodiness and fatigue brought on by the meds, the work happy hours/networking opportunities where it’s highly conspicuous if you don’t have a drink in your hand … I’m even hesitant to write about all of this with much candidness for fear that people at work might be reading. I’m only semi-out of the closet about infertility and this blog, but who knows.

So there’s that. There’s also the issue of me completely sucking at taking a break from trying to get pregnant. When my cervical fluid showed up on cycle day 13 of this month, I was overjoyed! CYCLE DAY 13, BITCHES! That never happens! A strong ovulation, all by my lonesome, with no medical intervention?! It’s a miracle! AND, get this — it was a Saturday! Hooray for relaxed, spontaneous weekend sex!

I didn’t mention to Philip that I was ovulating, which made me feel manipulative and sneaky, and made me question my motives when I started to get frisky. But why tell him and ruin everything by piling on the pressure? So for a week I carried my little secret that we had in fact had perfectly timed sex. (When I finally broke the news, he laughed and said he was glad I didn’t tell him. Phew.)

And actually, the two-week wait flew by faster than ever since we started trying. With the life-consuming Hunger Games going on at work, I barely had time to think about what cycle day it was.

Notice I said barely. I did manage to fret about what on earth I’ll do if it turns out I finally strike pregnancy gold the minute I finally get the promotion I’ve deserved for years.

But of course, worry, as usual, was unfounded. I took an HPT this morning after dreaming last night that I took one that was miraculously positive, but alas. Same result as always.

Which, I remind myself, is OK. I’ve got a lot of other concerns on my plate right now, not to mention a very exciting trip to South America that is commencing in three short weeks. Holy shit, where did the time go? And I thought I was going to paint my hallway. HA.

In positive news, I returned to yoga after an entire month away. We were able to secure a new space at my workplace that is far less ideal than the old one, but it’s there, for which I’m infinitely thankful. And I went back to the class over lunch on Thursday — stiff, knotted, stressed, dehydrated and emotionally spent, not to mention sans mat and hair tie. Doh. Luckily, there was an extra mat, and even though my hair was in my face the whole time, I felt like a million bucks afterward.

My exercise regimen had fallen to pieces lately, and I was remembering my old routine with deep nostalgia. Sure, I had been struggling to get pregnant, and sure, I was being held back at work, but I had also been cycling through this very healthy, life-giving weekly rhythm of yoga and boot camp and running and evenings with my husband and weekends with our friends.

In the past few weeks, all of that had fallen by the wayside, and I had been feeling like the pre-acupuncture shell of myself who was only hanging on by a thread. So after that yoga class, I was relieved at how quickly I could feel centered again, how fluidly some perspective returned.

Talking to my dad about all of this drama on Father’s Day, he said God was clearly moving in my life. The statement really struck me, because I had been feeling the opposite. How was everything I wanted so miserably challenging to get? Why was I having to fight so hard for every goal? Where is God?

But my dad’s comment shifted my thinking. Life is changing. One way or another, in a few months, my old reality will be gone. I’ll have been promoted into a position that allows me to fully spread my wings, or I’ll have moved on to something completely new. God is not letting me stay static in a less-than-ideal work situation, in which I was largely just biding time. Maybe he has bigger purposes for me after all.

So, I’ll try to rest some this weekend. I’ll try to work a little, play a little. Next week is sure to be another rough one, duking it out in the arena.