I donated blood last Tuesday. Somehow in the thick of it last year, between missy #2 and missy #3, I managed to donate 3 times. Donating 3 times in a year at the Blood Centers of the Pacific (BCP) earns you a personalized desk calendar. It's a clever idea. The calendar marks the days that you donated (in the previous year) as well as your birthday. Mostly what it does - extremely well - is to make me feel guilty every day when I look at it and realize that I haven't donated in months.
So, last week I finally reached the blood-letting inertia escape velocity. Why? Because on Saturday, I finally got my first tattoo. Getting tattooed makes you ineligible to donate for 12 months. The guilt was/is intense. Still, I'm thrilled that I finally took the first step in the body art process. On Saturday I started the first part of a multi-part piece. I had a catfish outlined on my lower right leg. Next will be a dragon fly, a frog and a lilly pad. Eventually, I want an entire pond scene. My tattoo artist laughed that for my first tattoo, I wanted an entire lower-leg sleeve. But it makes perfect sense to me. I have been planning and thinking about this tattoo for several years, but like so many other things, I've been postponing having it done in our effort to have another.
It's insane how many things that I've deferred or balked at in case we got (or actually were) pregnant: vacations, graduate school, career pursuits and of course, getting a tattoo. Likewise, there are so many things that I've held onto for the same reasons. Eliot's closets have been stuffed from floor to ceiling with baby stuff. Our storage area overpacked with the stroller, tricycles, the bike trailer and more. None of which Eliot uses.
I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I think it was the failed round of IUI we did in April/May. I did all the injections and ultrasounds and only managed to produce two mature follicles, and barely even that. So after I got my period, I packed up all of Eliot's baby stuff and gave it to a coworker. Boxes and boxes of stuff. I even gave away his Mountain Buggy. After that I got up the nerve to schedule an appointment for the tattoo.
I can't say that we've decided to quit. That's not the case. My coworker knows that we are trying and won't give away anything without asking us first. It's just that I'm so tired of the waiting. I need to get on with my life. Sustaining hope in the face of repeated and relentless failure is exhausting.
