Rosh Hashana 5777

Rosh Hashana starts on Sunday night. I've planned menus and did most of the cooking. The things in the freezer include: roast with vegetables; stuffed chicken with mushrooms, onion, and spinach; sesame cake; various vegetable kugels; challah; two types of meatballs; and meat/bean roll ups. On Sunday I plan to make salmon, honey cake, rugelach, simanim, and salads. I've prepared more than needed for just this holiday in prep for the rest of the season, when we will be hosting my in-laws in a few weeks.

With the new year starting, I feel like we have a new shot. New beginning. New start. Now that I have the schedule for our new FET I can't help but mentally calculate everything as bFET and aFET: before and after. We got tickets to see a Sebastian Maniscalo (one of our fav comics) the weekend after the transfer and I can't help but worry that trying to get to the venue close to after Shabbat might be too stressful. It's probably fine.

My cousin is getting married in Israel in December and we joked about hypothetically making the trip because we both really want to visit. Then it wasn't so much a joke as an actual conversation about whether we're able to swing that. It comes down to not really being able to make a decision until we find out if the transfer took. At best, I'll be pregnant. At worst... well, not quite ready to think the worst yet.

That's not entirely true. We've had multiple conversations about what comes next. Extensive, thoughtful, intentional conversations. If FET #4 doesn't result in a pregnancy, we'll have one final healthy embryo to transfer. Our beta would be the week before Thanksgiving, so we'll know by then whether it took or not. It means that we'll have about 5-6 weeks before the new year which leaves us with a few options.

• Option 1 would be to do FET #5 with our last and final embryo, which would probably be right around Christmas, but I think that the clinic is closed for that week for retrievals, surgeries, and transfers, so it would likely be scheduled for the week after. 
• Option 2 would be to hold off until after Jan 1, once I'm back on the new insurance, and do another IVF cycle before another transfer. It would likely not be until February, once they can verify the new insurance which takes 4-6 weeks.

It's a solid plan, with a lot of hope of continuing to try and try until it works. But thinking about it now and putting it in writing makes it depressing to think that the ERA didn't help at all and the change in protocol it initiated wasn't helpful. I know that if the November transfer doesn't result in a pregnancy then the next time we do a transfer, whenever it will be, will include an endo scratch. That was the last and final option that the doctor suggested at our June wtf appointment, and the only thing we haven't tried yet. It has a 50/50 shot of working and there's not enough science to back it up, but it's an option I'm willing to try if everything else fails.

I'm going into the Jewish new year hopeful and scared. Optimistic and guarded. This time last year we had just finished our first IVF cycle and were getting ready for our first FET. We were so, so hopeful. So naive. So sure that by this Rosh Hashana we would be parents to a 2 month old baby. We were talking not about IF but WHEN at that point. I don't think that I could have gone through what we did over this past year if I had known then what I know now. I don't know that we would have done all those cycles, all those shots, spent all that money, if we knew that in one year from that day we would be no closer to being parents. Sometimes it's a blessing to be forced to take things one day at a time. The enormity of what we went through would have been too much to bear all once.

Even with all that, I can't help but feel lucky. Hopeful. Excited. Confident. I don't know what it is that makes me believe that this will happen for us. I know that I might be setting myself up for failure, but if I have no hope then I have nothing. Over the past year, with every devastating call about FET results, the first thing I would do is mentally calculate when we can try again. It was automatic. I knew it would take time to heal and time to wait for my period and time to start again, but at least starting again was an option. Until we're ready to really call it quits, there will always be a 'starting again' option.

I hope the new year brings with it lots of happiness, health, peace, and babies.

L'shana Tova U'metukah -- here's to a sweet new year!