Trying to find the right words: Adding estrogen to the mix

Tonight I start estrace, estrogen tabs that I have to take orally and vaginally. I also take a baby aspirin every day. These things are supposed to help build my uterine lining to make a cozy spot for the embryo(s) to nest.

My husband is on antibiotics to clear up some sort of bacteria they discovered in the sample he left after his visit to the clinic collection room the other day. (It's nothing to worry about, I'm told. And, no, it's not an STD.)

Of course, we are still doing Lupron, prenatal vitamins and folic acid supplement.

What all this means is that we are moving forward. Our donor (remember, I'm calling her Tanya) was in for her baseline appointment today. She has some fluid in her tubes, but nothing that should stop us from proceeding, I'm told.

The nurse told me how much she loves Tanya. She's reliable and responsible and funny and personable and dedicated -- that's what they say at least. Makes me wish I knew her for more than the 20 minute phone conversation from a few months ago.

I wonder if she wants kids of her own some day.

When she first filled out her application with the donor agency, she said she had been feeling depressed because her boyfriend was serving in the military. I wonder if they are still a couple. I wonder how he is doing and whether he's safe.
I wonder how many children have been born from her donor cycles. Her sister also is a donor. I wonder how many children she helped create.

All this focus on the donor has a purpose. It's time for me to begin crafting a letter to her -- to find the perfect words to tell her how I feel about her gift that allows us to try to pursue a dream.

As a writer, you'd think that the words would come easily. But they don't. It's not because I can't express my feelings. It has more to do with the combination of conflicting emotions: excitement, fear, anxiety, hope.

I can only equate it with something that happened two days before our wedding, Thanksgiving of 1997. We wanted to write our own vows. For my husband, the words flowed easily. He's a great writer, certainly the more talented of the two of us. I could not clear my head of all the details of planning the wedding, designing the program, putting finishing touches on the seating chart, writing the checks, worry about what my mother would think of the '70s disco band we hired, etc. etc. I couldn't write vows that carried any of the real emotion, passion, excitement and love that I was feeling.

So I cheated. We both read the vows he wrote. And they remain the most beautiful vows I've ever heard:

I promise to find a new reason to love you each day.
I promise to keep our home filled with laughter.
I promise to continue to challenge you, as you do me each day forth for the rest of our lives.
I promise to give you the comfort and support you need when life has been hard, and help you see that even in the times that try our souls, your hand need only open to feel mine there.
Most of all, I promise to be a better person each day and be worthy of the love you have given me -- a love I will never take for granted, or diminish, but will cherish and nurture as long as I live.

On top of the conflicting emotions, there are the drugs and my work and everyday life with a busy 8-year-old. Maybe my brain is just too clogged -- like it was that night in 1997 when we set out to write our vows.

Maybe it will clear up at the end of the week, when I begin a long stretch of vacation time.

Or maybe I'll cheat again ... and have my husband write the letter.