Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is Meredith Kate and this is the backup plan, and I have waited until the very last second to record this episode because I wanted to give you as up to the date information as I possibly could. So it is the afternoon of Halloween, 2023. Now I’ve been taking a lot of tests recently. I’ve been taking pregnancy tests and I’ve been taking COVID tests because I contracted COVID on this trip to Washington. I have not had COVID this whole time Since 2019, I’ve somehow avoided it. I have driven cross-country multiple times, I have traveled multiple times. I’ve been to music festivals and conventions and I’ve avoided it. But one innocent trip to Washington, to Turkey based or with my best friend, and it did me in. The first couple days were really, really bad, and then time kind of stood still, so it had only been two days, but it felt like a week. The fever broke after the third day, I think. But man, guys, is this thing fucking lingering? I’m sure you could hear it in my voice. I feel so stuffed up and I’ve been feeling miserable, just mentally terrible. So I keep taking COVID tests and they keep coming out positive. The frustrating thing about the COVID is that the symptoms keep lingering and so do the positive test results. I’ve been holed up in my house and I’m getting cabin fever and I’m wishing that my agenda was more full. But now I’m starting to get that reverse cabin fever, where the idea of a full agenda gives me anxiety. So I’m just trying to power through this as best I can and I’m hoping that I’m going to be negative by the end of the week, because in Los Angeles there is a big event called the Prego Expo travels around the country and they’re having a special day for mom creators, which I am considering myself soon enough. So I’ll be going to that. It’s called Creator and Create Her, and that’s this Friday. So, god willing, I’m not testing positive at that point. Speaking of test results, should I put in a drum roll here? Should I put in a drum roll here? I’ve been taking pregnancy tests nonstop because as soon as I got the symptoms of COVID it was like well, fuck, what can I take for this? Is Paxilivid okay for pregnant women to take? There’s a Johns Hopkins study that says it’s great. There are other studies that say maybe not so much. So thankfully, my company offers a telehealth option for free, so I called in there and talked to the doctor on staff, who was really great, and I mentioned to him that I might be pregnant. He was like, oh, you had an IY or IVF. And I was like, no, actually Something a little more rudimentary. And he was like, oh my God, that’s amazing. My friends did that. It worked for them three times, which had me feeling very positive. He told me that because I had the booster two three weeks prior, that it wasn’t really necessary to do the Paxilivid he’s like, because whatever’s going on, it’s already moving through your system. He said if it gets worse, of course we’ll do something about that. But he said I think right now I’ll just give you something for the symptoms and we’ll give you something that’s pregnancy safe. So I’ve been on a cough medication and I’ve been on a nasal spray that is safe for pregnant women and I just kept taking pregnancy tests the whole time in hopes that I would get some sort of answer. I thought maybe if I’m sick, I don’t know, stuff in my body is going haywire and maybe I’ll get a result sooner than I would have. I don’t know. I was using those little Amazon test strips. I never really trusted them and so today I went to Target and I did a drive up for bags of candy for trick-or-treaters and pregnancy tests what could be spookier on a Halloween, correct? And I just took two tests. I took a first response, I took a clear blue and both were negative. So not pregnant this round. It’s a bummer. I don’t want to keep doing this, and the thing that I didn’t comprehend when I went into this was like how much of a let-down a negative result would be, because there’s nothing you can do about it for a period of time. So it’s not just like oh, you know, I baked this bread and it didn’t rise, so I’ll just bake another loaf of bread and you know I’ll have that tomorrow. No, it’s a whole month that you have to wait and worry and think and planning stuff out. A month in advance is difficult because life is hard, and so I’ve been going back and forth about. You know what am I going to do? Because at the end of the month I’m going to be traveling for like almost three weeks. I’m going to Florida to meet my new little niece and then going to Europe and after a riverboat cruise tour, I’m going to Disneyland Paris, and so of course, in my mind I’m like I want to drink Muld wine, I want to drink German beer, I want to go on roller coasters at Disneyland Paris, but if I don’t try this month, I can’t try next month because I’ll be ovulating in Europe. And that means two months that I’m not doing anything. And I’m 38 and I’m it feels like I’m wasting time if I don’t just jump right on this. So yesterday, when I thought my period was coming, I called my mom and I called Michael and I have to say Michael actually gave me the best perspective and it was really sweet and he said you know, I don’t think we should do it this month because if you get your period on vacation instead of a positive test result, I don’t want that to ruin your trip in Europe. And that was just the way that he was thoughtful about my feelings just felt so comforting and like, yeah, I am doing this alone, right, like I am choosing to be a mother on my own. But the more and more we get into this, the more Michael says really thoughtful things and considers my feelings in a way that I don’t know. Sometimes it just kind of bop around life and you don’t think that people care about you as much as they do, and then they say something a certain way that it’s like illuminating about the way that they feel about you. So that made me feel better about it and that gives me time to really think about, like, what do I wanna do next? Do I just want to use a syringe next time and turkey baste all over again, or do I wanna do something a little bit more scientific? I’ve never been an IVF fan. I’ve never wanted to do IVF because I felt in my mind that if it’s not happening, it’s not meant to happen and it feels like playing God a little bit, and that’s just been my uninformed perspective on it for a really long time. I’ve met people who’ve done IVF and you know I wouldn’t dream of judging their circumstances. And now I’m at a point where it’s like, well, should I do that? Do I wanna do that? And is that a shifting perspective for me as I grow older and see what the world’s made of? Or am I compromising beliefs that I’ve had for a long time? I don’t know. It’s something I have to kind of investigate a little bit further. I do think maybe, like an assisted IUI situation probably gotta be better. I think there are a lot of options that I’m not even aware of right now that I really gotta think about and maybe talk to some professionals about. And so with that, I do wanna announce that I’m gonna take the whole month of December off, because at the beginning of that month is when I’m gonna be on vacation and then my mom’s gonna come home with me for the holidays and we’re gonna be zipping around and being festive around town and then Christmas comes up and everything and there’s not gonna be any new news. I’m not gonna be in a place where I have something new to share. So I’m just gonna take that month off and really like simmer and contemplate all my choices and then come back in the new year with a big bang pow ready to go road map. This isn’t goodbye right now, because we still have a whole month of November and, like I said, I’m gonna go to the Prego Expo. I’ve been looking forward to meeting people there. There’s still some folks I wanna talk to in interview and have some lovely little chats with for the next four weeks, but once December comes, I’ll still be posting on social media accounts and I’m sure I’m gonna have some YouTube content from the trip my mom and I are doing together. I just bought a new camera for that. I’m very excited. So I’ll still be around, but we’ll just take a break from the podcast, eat, drink and be merry and then come at this feeling a little bit stronger and more resolute in the new year. So thank you everybody for your kind thoughts. I mean this doesn’t feel like a total loss because I was in such good spirits about it and I felt so much better and stronger and every step is a step forward. Every decision is a step forward, like it’s still. Just because it didn’t happen this time doesn’t mean that it didn’t prepare me for the next time, and that’s where I’m at. That’s just if there’s, you know. So, since you can’t send me happy fertility thoughts these next two months, please send me healing thoughts so I can get this congestion out of my head. The first thing I did after I took those two pregnancy tests and they both came out negative was I took a pseudofed, and I don’t even know if pseudofed is not allowed, if you’re pregnant or not, but I was just like trying to avoid shit. I appreciate all of you and you know, keep following on backupplanpod on Instagram If you have any questions or thoughts or you know previous experience. You can always email me at info at backupplanpodcom and keep reading and reviewing on iTunes. That’s really helpful. I think I had some weird activity on the podcast this week. I had a lot of people listen to the sperm procurement episode, episode number five A lot of listeners in Iowa and suddenly I’ve got like a couple of one-star reviews. So I think that I don’t know what that’s about, but you can counteract those and give me some more five-star reviews. Really appreciate that. What a week, guys. What a week. Thank you all and see you next week.