things that start with the letter p.

Period

As in: the thing I did not get. The thing I need to get to move forward in this journey.

Thinking back, I've had a handful of cycles this past year that were really, really light. I am guessing that they were actually anovulatory.

As in: without ovulation.

And then I started wondering if that period I got the previous cycle, the one that I thought came nine days late and was also fairly light and which also did not require many tampons - was that even a true period?

Perimenopausal 

As in: what I am. Or think I am. To be honest, nobody's used the "p" word in regards to me except me. But if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Provera

As in: the 10 mg pill that I am now taking to induce a true period. One a day for the next ten days.

Downside: new drug.

Upside: every time they give me progesterone, I start dropping weight like crazy. So maybe this will help me start to take off some of the estrogen poundage?

Patience

As in: a virtue skill I do not have. I hate that I'm back in the waiting game. I could get my period while on the Provera, immediately after I finish the Provera, or up to two weeks after that.

So now, after literally years of dreading the arrival of each fresh bleed, I want the bitch to hurry up and come.

Irony!

Plans

As in: what I try to make. Always.

Last night my therapist, whom we will call Chance, and I discussed my rapidly encroaching menopause (Me: "I have the reproductive parts of a 50-year-old woman, and I'm not even forty!"). He asked me how I felt about that (way to be a cliché, Chance!) and I said, "I mean, I've been expecting it. My mom went through it in her early 40s."

Then I told him, "Actually, if I'd had a biological daughter, for her 21st birthday I planned on paying for her to get her eggs frozen, just to buy her some extra time."

And Chance was like, "You really never stop thinking, do you? At least, you haven't in the time I've known you."

That's just how my brain works: I am always playing out scenarios, trying to get my head around all of the possibilities at once.

Pregnant

As in: what I am confident I will one day be.

Actually, that's a total lie. I am not the least bit confident about that. In fact, I'm scared as hell that I will never know what it's like to grow a tiny human inside of me. Ever.

Profiles

As in: the things that should be coming today from the clinic. Roughly seven of them. Our potential matches.

Will one of those embryos become our baby?