Great expectations

I figured out how to post my pictures so I've got alllll day to write - I love my new job!  On with the storytelling!

I was giddy leaving the house last week.  Just thinking about having Drew all to myself for all that time had me walking on air and I was practically bouncing in my seat the whole flight over.  Drew was already in the area at a work thing in Lake Tahoe - some team-building retreat complete with team-building exercises.  You know, beer pong, beer poker, beer volleyball, beer jet-skis - all the things that boost morale.  He was going to meet me at the hotel and I didn't give it much thought as I was too busy fantasizing about the upcoming week.  I had it all planned.


We were spending one night in San Francisco, renting a car and driving to Petaluma where we would marvel at the beautiful scenery while holding hands in contented silence, occasionally chatting about profound things that would bring us closer together.  We would spend five blissful days in wine country, holding hands, walking among the vineyards in contented silence, sipping wine and murmuring sweet nothings into each other's ears.  Then we would return to the city and walk around San Francisco, having great dinners and holding hands while talking and laughing like the happiest married couple on Earth.  


Oh yeah, I was going to get pregnant too.


According to the app on my phone, I was smack in the middle of my fertile window and due to ovulate the Thursday after I arrived.  Given that I was getting there Tuesday night it was going to be tight but I knew it would work. I'd get pregnant, it would stick and we would call it Sonoma.  The fetus, not the real baby.


Never mind that I wasn't sure if the app was correct, as my cycles have only recently become regular again and I wasn't using the ovulation sticks to be completely sure.  Never mind that we were currently unable to go even one day without picking at each other or even full-out fighting.  Never mind that neither of us had really talked about trying again since the last miscarriage.  Vacation would magically fix all of that!  Just call me Cleopatra.


The first hint of reality was when I talked to Drew in the car on the way to the hotel.  He'd had so much team-building that he'd woken up on the bathroom floor.  That did not bode well for my plans as I wasn't keen on him puking on me while baby-making.  I hadn't made a big deal about it being my fertile window because I wanted this conception to be as natural and romantic as possible.  I wanted there to be no talk of ovulation dates, cervical mucus or ideal times or positions.  I wanted to pretend that we were normal, that we'd had no trouble and we were just a couple of married people on vacation and we were just going to happen to get pregnant!

The hotel was gorgeous!

Our room overlooked Union Square

Fine, their picture looks better

View from our hotel room

Ornate ceilings in the lobby

It was so swank and cosmopolitan!  When I walked in, I could hear foreign languages coming from all directions.  The warm lighting, the marble floors, the beautifully dressed people - it was the perfect start to our vacation.  I envisioned Drew coming down to the lobby to get me, freshly showered, dressed cute, smelling sexy and ready for us to go out on the town.  After all, he'd arrived earlier than I did.  Surely he'd had enough time to sleep it off and get cleaned up, right?

My whole face fell when he rounded the corner.  He looked positively filmy.  He was wearing his bright blue plaid swim trunks, his lawn-mowing shirt, slippers and a backwards baseball cap that barely hid his bedhead.  He looked every inch the hungover frat boy and I was so disappointed.  Now, the wife that I wish I was and the wife that I aspire to be would have smiled anyway, greeted him warmly and rolled with it.


I'm not that wife.


I further lost it when I saw he was limping.  During beer volleyball, he dove for a ball and scraped the hell out of his knee and it was oozing and gross and bloody and my stomach turned over.  Not because it was gross but because he had hurt himself.  I was instantly sick, upset that he hadn't told me the instant it happened.  I got an inkling of what it might be like if I ever had kids and they hurt themselves.  


We got to the room and I was quiet and laid in bed with him asking me what was wrong.  I told him nothing was wrong, that I didn't want to fight and I was just tired.  However, I can rarely keep that up for long - I'm far too honest and direct.  You might have noticed?  So it took roughly a minute and a half before I burst into tears, blubbering "Why don't you take better care of yourself?  You go away like this and it's like you only think of yourself!  You act like you're back in college, your knee looks terrible, why weren't you more careful?  Why don't you think of me when I'm not around? You're not alone any more, you have to be more careful!"


"Is that all?"
"Nooooooooo."
"What else is wrong?"
"I was supposed to get pregnant on va-caa-tionnn and now I'm not because you're all hung over and i-i-in-jured."  Dissolve into sobs.


At first he tried to make light of it, that it wasn't that big a deal, that I was over-reacting.  Never a good choice - making light of my feelings will only upset me more.  So then he held me for a while, apologizing for getting hurt and for having too much team-building and then we talked about the state of our relationship, how neither of us is in a good baby-place, that our vacation needs to be about us and not making a baby.  How we need to be friends again and relax and go more than a couple of days without bickering.


He was right and I knew he was right but I was heartbroken over being together during my fertile period and not trying.  Trying to conceive is like being addicted to gambling.  You're positive that this cycle will be it, and if not then it'll definitely be next cycle but you can't know so you have to play every single cycle because what if you sit out and that was the cycle?!  We already miss so many months because he's out of town so often and it was unbearable to think that we would be together and not take advantage of it.  I know I should have faith, that things will happen as they should in God's time, but in that moment all I could think is that we were losing precious time that we would never get back.


Yet I knew he was right - and I hated it.  I wanted the fantasy, of my beautiful wonderful husband on our wonderful vacation where we say and do all the right things and bond and come together in the purest love and make a baby.  I didn't want our messy reality, where we still haven't learned how to truly communicate, where we're still carrying the pain from our previous losses.  I wanted both - I wanted to go ahead and get pregnant and we could work on our relationship while I was pregnant.  Because that always works!  Hormones don't make you crazy, pregnancy isn't stressful, especially not pregnancy after loss!  No way!


Hi - we haven't met.  I'm Cleopatra, and you are?


Finally, after a couple of hours (awesome start, right?), we left for dinner.  Drew lived in San Francisco for almost a year so he knew a lot of great places to visit and he took me to one of his favorite restaurants, the Rose Pistola.  My face was all puffy from crying and my heart hurt but staying at the hotel would solve nothing so we rallied.  Thankfully the food was stellar.

House-made spinach fettuccine with fresh cherry tomatoes, 

mushrooms and Dungeness crab.

It was so fresh and light and it did wonders to lift my mood!

It was like my tomatoes but the whole dish tasted that way!

Drew had gnocchi with fresh green beans and sausage - I think?

I can't remember the meat but it was delicious.

Conversation was stilted but we both gave it a try.  We talked about what we wanted to do in Sonoma and Napa and I told him about the suggestions that I'd gotten from Tanja, a blogger I 'met' shortly before our trip.  She told us about a great place in Healdsburg that I wanted to visit.  Drew is a wine fiend so this trip was like his Disneyland and he rattled off a giant handful of places he wanted to see.  He started to loosen up as he talked about the wineries he wanted to see and told me stories about the ones he'd already visited.

Dinner ended with us having successfully evaded any hot topics and without me bursting into tears at the table, so I thought maybe we were going to be okay.

Except in San Francisco, it was cold.  In July.  And I wasn't ready for that.