My 3-week vacation, trouble in news.papers and good karma. Convincing myself that this donor egg cycle is destined to succeed.

Vacations away are always preceded by a flurry of shopping, laundry, packing, arranging a dog sitter, holding the mail, working ahead at the office, trips to the bank and making printouts of itineraries. When you finally arrive, you need that vacation.

Preparing for a vacation at home is a lot easier. Work ahead at work. Think about what you might do with your lazy days.

This year it's going to be a long vacation at home for me. It's not that we don't have anywhere we'd like to go -- or the money to go there, for that matter. But my husband doesn't have time off. And I need him to give me shots every night. I might be able to get away with doing one of the mini Lupron shots -- though I bet I'd faint. But once I start those progesterone in oil shots, there's no separating us for more than 24 hours at a time.

I'm not really good at lazy days, so unstructured time actually stresses me out. I'm sure I'll fill the calendar with plenty to do around Chicago. We have some museum memberships that we could put to good use. My daughter is old enough to take in a neighborhood or architectural tour and learn something. I haven't done one of those since high school. We'll hit the beach. Lincoln Park Zoo. Maybe a suburban pool. I'd like her to work on her bike riding. We'll stay up late and do some star gazing. I'd love to take a day trip to go hiking ... maybe someplace with a waterfall. There's the American Girl Place, too. We'll visit with friends, get ready for school, go see some movies. Squeeze in some scrapbooking, too.

Mixed in with all that will be the pills, the shots, the retrieval, sperm collection, embryo transfer and the beginning of my two-week wait. That's the part I dread. The wait. But I'm not going to try to write about the emotions of that. Instead, I'll send you to the most heart-breaking and insightful post I've ever read about the 2WW: http://infertile.org/infertility/the-two-week-wait-infertility-purgatory/

My 2WW will begin while I'm on vacation from a job in a troubled industry.
The last year at work has been defined by a couple of rounds of layoffs, added workload, decline in quality, bad morale. That's not the best environment for someone going through the hormonal ups and downs of pre-transfer and the anxiety that comes after transfer.
This three-week vacation was planned back in January when I thought I was going to do a February transfer. Luck just happened to place it at the optimum time for this first donor egg cycle.

It's one of those things that makes this all feel like this cycle is filled with good karma. It's keeping me positive.

And three weeks to play in one of the world's greatest cities ain't bad either.