Bad timing

Yesterday, I went for my day 3 bloodwork and was given the go-ahead to start birth control.  I was very disappointed to discover that they do not taste like pez.  My nurse sent me a preliminary IVF schedule this morning.  This is really happening, folks.  The first few weeks of the schedule are easy enough to follow.  It's the last week or two when things will be a bit up in the air depending on how I respond to the f.ollustim.  As soon as I get a bunch of follicles at 16mm I trigger and then have the retrieval 36 hours later.  The clinic usually does a 5 day transfer, but will go earlier if the embryos don't look very strong.  Normally, I'd be okay to go with the flow, but there's supposed to be a family get together during the week in question.

My mother has been with a really great guy named Roger for close to 4 years now, and they've been living together for a little over 2.  They're almost painfully cute together.  He has a son and daughter, both a little younger than Elizabeth and I.  Last October, my mother and Roger arranged a weekend at the beach for all of the children and their significant others to meet.  It was a great idea, but the timing was hard.  I had just gotten my first BFN in September.  I ended up missing what should have been my second try to be at the beach.  To make matters worse, Roger's daughter was there with her adorable 2 year old son, and she was visibly pregnant with her second.  I was moping and feeling sorry for myself for the first BFN, and then had to watch my mother adoring her first grandchild, and doting on her pregnant stepdaughter.  I'm not very good at hiding my emotions, so I know my mother picked up on my grumpiness.  Unfortunately, she had no idea why I was in a foul mood, because Elizabeth and I have not told anyone we're TTC.  So my mother probably though I was being antisocial for no reason, or that I was unwilling to accept new family members.

Now, my mother is planning a repeat of the beach getaway for this October.  And it's almost certain that I'll need to be at the clinic that weekend, either for monitoring or retrieval.  There's a very slight chance that the schedule will work out so that I can trigger on a Saturday morning, spend one day at the beach, and then race back to the clinic for the retrieval.  But it's highly unlikely that it will work out so easily.  No, I think the most likely scenario is that I pretend to  suddenly come down with swine flu just before the beach weekend and have to back out.  Yeah, I'm concerned that my mother might suspect that I'm faking the flu and get upset.  I know this weekend means a lot to her, so I feel really guilty about the possibility of backing out at the last minute.  I can only hope she understands, and forgives me once I finally get pregnant.