Snapping back to reality

...aaaand we're back.  Seems like just yesterday we were leaving.  The truly sucky thing about vacations is that inevitably, they have to end and you have to return to your regularly scheduled life.  I've decided to divide this post up into three parts because it kind of runs the gamut and some people might not want to listen to me whine after just having returned from a week at the beach.  I'm not exactly inspiring a lot of sympathy right now, I get that.  So I'll start with the fun stuff, and if you want to stop reading when I get complain-y (about life in general, not the vacation), go for it.

The Good

Mexico was awesome!  We stayed in Riviera Nayarit, which is just a little north of Puerto Vallarta.  Our main reason for going there was the fact that I have always wanted to try surfing, but have been nervous about booking a full week at a surf camp somewhere.  I mean, what if I did one day of it and hated it and was stuck with it for another six days?  Puerto Vallarta seemed like the best of both worlds, since there is a good beginner surf beach nearby but it would still allow M and I to indulge our lazy streaks with a lot of lounging around time.

We spent our first two days just chilling by the pool or on the beach, doing some reading and a little bit of boogie boarding.  On day 3 we ventured about a half hour north to the beginner surf beach at Sayulita, which has a ton of surf schools to choose from.  We did a lesson with the awesome Papas of Lunazul Surf School and it turns out that I definitely didn't have to worry about not liking surfing.  It was the highlight of our trip!  After a half hour land lesson, Papas had us in the water and believe it or not, I stood up and surfed my very first wave all the way into shore.  It was amazing!  I managed to surf pretty much all of my waves and only wiped out a few times...thanks no doubt to the huge buoyant beginner boards we were on and the fact that Papas was steadying my board before telling me exactly when to paddle and stand up.  Doesn't matter.  I'll take it!

The surf was actually pretty heavy on the day of our lesson and we got intense upper body workouts from all of the paddling, pushing up, and general wrestling of the boards over the waves to get back out for another run.  After our hour in the water was finished, we were both exhausted and hungry.  We had lunch overlooking the beach and I'm pretty sure I ate my body weight in guacamole and chips.  We also went for a quick stroll around Sayulita itself, which is a really cool little hippie/surfer town with a super chill vibe.  If you ever get a chance to go I'd highly recommend it.

We spent the next few days recovering from our board rash on the beach, and went back to Sayulita the day before we left for another round in the water.  This time we were on our own and the ocean was pretty flat, so we had a lot of trouble a) catching the waves and b) staying on them.  I think I've caught the bug, though...surfing is definitely something I want to do again!

And for those of you keeping score, last time I said that I'd be accountable for my vacation workouts by logging what I did while I was away.  I'm happy to report that for our seven days, I got in five 30-minute cardio workouts on the various machines in the hotel gym.  Go me!

The Bad

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about our vacation itself.  The only crappy part is that it kind of reinforced my negative feelings about my body.  While I stuck to my workout plan, things were less stellar food-wise.  I knew they would be.  There's only so many days a girl can look at hot, fresh donuts with sprinkles and then choose fruit for breakfast instead.  And I really tried not to beat myself up about that, since for the most part I ate a pretty balanced diet.  Also, luckily our resort had a good mix of old and young, so I wasn't entirely surrounded by slammin' twenty-something bodies.  But some of my summer clothes were already ill-fitting when I left, and that didn't get any better as the week progressed.  So now I'm in this place where I'm feeling chubby and gross and like I need to go on a diet, which I really really didn't want to do.  I wanted to focus on health, not size!  But I'm just not there.  Calorie restriction looks to be in my future, at least up until I start my FET.

The Ugly

 

The ugly is that, well, it's over.  This vacation that I had been so looking forward to as a reward after months of infertility treatments is now done.  As we were packing our suitcases on our last day, all I could think about was that we had to go back to our crappy infertile lives in cold dreary Toronto.  I just couldn't help it...I started to cry.  I felt like I'd just had an awesome dream about giving birth to a beautiful baby and then woke up to realize that no, I'm still just infertile old me with my shitty eggs and a dismal chance of ever getting pregnant.

I get that this sounds totally whiny and ungrateful, and I'm not expecting any sympathy.  I know that a lot of people don't have the luxury of jetting off to Mexico for a week on the beach.  I just spent seven wonderful days with by best friend and love of my life in a sunny paradise, and here I am complaining?  I sound like a total spoiled brat, which makes me feel even worse.  Why can't I be happy with the amazing things I already have?  Why isn't any of it enough?

I know I should be excited about our upcoming FET.  But instead I'm terrified.  I'm scared that our embryo won't survive the thaw, and that if it does we'll just get a BFN.  I'm not even seeing far enough ahead to worry about a chemical pregnancy or miscarriage, since I just can't seem to visualize ever getting those two pink lines on a test.  And if it doesn't work...well, we're back to where we started.  We're back to crappy eggs and no baby and we have to start all over again.  While I was on the beach I wasn't thinking about any of these things, and if they crept into my mind for even a second I was able to shoo them away.  But now they're back with a vengeance.

While we were in Sayulita we passed a surf shop with a chalkboard sign out front.  That day it read, "Life is like a wave.  You can't change the way it breaks, but you can change the way you ride it."  It's a great sentiment, but it's just not always that easy.  Sometimes it feels like no matter how you ride it, it's going to throw you headfirst off your board and toss you around before scraping you up on the sand, sputtering and coughing.  That's kind of how I feel right now, and I'm not sure I'm too anxious to get back into the water.