Chris: Candace is crafty, that’s for sure. There is a saying that goes something like, “you can try to polish a turd, but in the end, it is still a pile of crap.” Candace violated this with our two week wait jar. The two week wait is exactly that, a BIG pile of crap. You go to the fertility clinic and have your transfer, so effectively you walk out of the clinic pregnant right? Then, you have to go home and wait for 2 weeks until your lovely partner’s blood HCG level is high enough to accurate detect. It sucks! The whole time you are interpreting every little thing. Did she sneeze that way before we had the this transfer? Is she blinking more than normal and is that a sign that she is pregnant…did it finally work this time? It can be mind-scrambling. So, you need a distraction. Candace came to the rescue with the 2 week wait jar.
Here is what you do: take a jar, grab some popsicle sticks and a felt marker, and start coming up with ideas for good (and probably inexpensive) distractions for the 2ww. Candace and I sat down and came up with about 30 or so. It can be anything but we tried to make it a mix of work towards getting our house in order and fun stuff.
We had things like:
A seafood dinner
Chinese takeout
Have a fertility “Chopped” contest
Sushi night, etc.
For things around the house:
Organize the kitchen cabinets
Clean out the CD’s and music case
Straighten up our overly packed closets
Easy activities were:
Movie night-“his” choice, same with a “her” choice
Go to the movies
Take our fur-baby for a walk and to the pet store (we named it “Rinky Dazzle Day”)
Play Cards/Game Night
Make homemade dog treats, etc.
Basically, we came up with everything we could think of that would distract us from the “elephant in the room” that was the menacing blood test coming up. The crazy thing is, some nights it worked, some nights it didn’t but we always had something to do.
A quick note on how to pull your activity for the evening: Candace and I waffled a little on how exactly we were going to interact with the 2ww jar. We decided that we would each pull out a popsicle stick the night before and pick from those 2 choices. Also, we decided that we could have 1 redraw each week. That way there is a little flexibility for activities that maybe would be impossible to do during the week, but we were not able to keep going back into the jar until we pulled exactly what we wanted. So for those of you getting ready for this terrible time, consider trying out the 2ww jar. Who knows, you may only be 2 weeks away from beating the snot of out of that dasterdly infertility monster. Good luck!
Thank you for sharing this! I am defiantly going to do this with my hubby on our next IVF cycle! Such a cute idea!!
When you wrote your last post about the definition of insanity I said Id remain hopeful until the beta…I tried doing the math on the 2ww, and thought it had been only a handful of days since the ET, and there fore you hopefully couldnt be ‘out’ yet. I think your post was meant more to detail what HELL that 2ww can be, (you arent being overdramatic about the sneeze analytics :)Ive dont that myself :)…but I wondered if it was your way of telling us that things werent looking great. BUT now Im filled with optimism again that you both are filling the 2ww with activities and most importantly HOPE. Keep us updated. Ive got everything crossed here for you guys still.
Lynn
PS…who ate all the posicles for the stick in the jar? 🙂
Lynn, So sorry for cliff hanger, we needed to get our thoughts together and pick ourselves off the ground. And also, thank you for your support and hoping right along with us. As for the popsicles, unfortunately for Chris (he has the sweet tooth) he did not get to eat his weight in them to give us our bounty for the 2ww jar. I cheated. I bought a package of blank popsicle sticks at our local craft store.
What a great idea, I’m going to have a 2ww jar too. Good luck to you guys.