Dreams and False Alarms

Ortho Novum Vs. My Pituitary Gland

I went for my saline sonogram, and got to meet with the lovely Dr. Calm. The good news is that I have a lovely uterus (thank you! I've been using sunblock and moisturizer since I was 18, oh wait, that's my face...), but the bad news is that even on a stupefying dose of estrogens, I still managed to make a follicle on my right ovary.  I'm not surprised. I found myself counting the days of my cycle last week because I could have sworn I had some ovarian pain.  Yup--that's me the persistent ovulator, or at least follicle maker. This propensity to ovulate has been a source of considerable annoyance during this whole infertility debacle--all the systems are firing! Where's the baby?  The saline sonogram was unremarkable, she stopped when I said ouch, there was a little gush of saline afterward, and then some mild cramping the following hour.

On the Mirena IUD I had cysts, on the Nuva Ring I had cysts,  and then when they put me on the BCP's to help with the cysts, I made more cysts!  My ovaries DO NOT like to be bossed around. Hopefully when I go in next week the cyst will have resolved;  I'm pretty confident it will, when I had them before, I'd trundle off to the hospital between the first and third day of my cycle, get an ultrasound (Holy crap that cyst is bigger than your uterus!) and then get some lovely morphine for the pain. Actually given how bad my shoulder hurts right now, some morphine would be lovely. But alas, I'll just have to make due with some ibu and a muscle relaxer. 

I am, understandably, disappointed.  I am hoping that my response to the Gonal F is as fierce, and that all this follicle making drive is put to good use.  The disappointment was also somewhat lessened by the fact that pushing it out a week will help smooth out some business trip kinks that were arising on my husbands part, and I got a nice sloppy scoop of coconut, chocolate dipped almond ice cream. Yum.

I'm off to make a Cooks Illustrated meat sauce, make a little salad and garlic bread and dose myself with some absolutely non-pregnancy safe pharmaceuticals to address the pain in my left shoulder.

Trash Pickin'

When I was a kid, my father was a contractor, so he was often out and about in his truck. When he saw  something good, perhaps put out for free, or just trashed, he'd pick it up. I had at least 3 or 4 rusty batons with dry and cracked end pieces. But as grubby as these things often were, I actually enjoyed having been thought of, and usually I didn't really care that it was rusty and crusty.  I too  have the trash pickin' gene: when I lived in Cambridge MA I got a lot of my furniture on Tuesday evenings. Instead of having large item pick ups, you could just put out anything. I remember one of my roommates needed a bike, so she went hunting around on trash day and found one that was quite serviceable. 

Fast forward 25 years or so, and my mother asks me "Do you know what this is?  It looks like a backpack, but it seems to be missing a piece. Your father found it out in front of the house, and no one claimed it, so we brought it in."  I couldn't believe my luck! I was an Ergo Carrier !  I checked to make sure they'd really given someone sufficient time to reclaim it, and once satisfied, I took possession of the ergo carrier and modeled how it worked. It seemed fitting that my father's first baby gift to me was found on the street.

Today I was driving home and I saw a semi-disassembled crib in a neighbors driveway. Before I even brought it up with my husband I internally debated whether or not I could bear to have a disassembled crib in the garage.  It felt like a  choice between withdrawal and disconnection and hope, and  I realized that  I needed to  give myself a symbol of hopefulness for the upcoming IVF.  Heck, I felt affronted by our Highlander because it was supposed to be a baby car--in the right state of mind I can be a raving lunatic no matter what the stimuli--at least a crib is directly related! So I drug it home, disassembled it further, and tomorrow were going to stash it under a sheet.  Of course I'll know it's there, but I'm hoping that the mere knowledge of it won't feel humiliating or like too much of an investment of hope. And if it does, I can give it away.  But it feels good to have been hopeful enough to make this step.

Putting the cart before the horse

So, one of the things you have to do before they implant* (bwahhhahhah!) blastocycst in your womb,is make a bunch of decisions, and initial a bunch of boxes.

Last week over a romantic dinner, I brought up said boxes, one of which was what to do with the (hopefully) excess frozen blastocysts** . I hadn't thought about it, and just assumed that donating them to stem cell research would be a no-brainer, and not much of a conversation.  But as we started to talk about it, it turned out we had very different thought processes going on about this issue.

My position, at the beginning at least, was that it was as if we were putting a child up for adoption, and that we would become genetic parents (b/c if it grows in some other woman's body, she is the birthing mother...oy so much to keep straight!), and that I didn't think I could bear to carry that around with me.  My husband, who is much more generous and loving than I am, argued that if anyone knows the pain of infertility, its us, and we could help someone out, why shouldn't we.  I was really surprised at how passionate he was about this, and how afraid I was that the child would come back and demand to know why we kept blast's A and B, but 'got rid of' C-H.  How was I supposed to answer that?  I didn't know it was you? You were at the far end of the dish?  And then I found myself convinced that they would be hurt in ways in which I'm terrified my own children will be hurt (read: Worried they'll suffer the same losses I've been slogging through in therapy all these years), and that I couldn't forgive myself if I wasn't there to protect them. It is interesting to me that they were blastocysts I was willing to give them to science, to obliterate them for their cells, but as soon as they implanted in another woman and divided and became real living breathing humans, they were my babies. My husband and I trudged though all of that without coming to any conclusion, however we did get to the point of imagining them finding us, and seeing the blasts-to-humans that stayed with us as not having gotten such a good deal, and running screaming back to their families of birth.

I remember when I was 25 it occurred to me that I had made it out of adolescence without getting pregnant, that I could relax about that being something to deal with.   The idea of putting up our blastocysts for adoption put me in the role of birth/genetic mother, and it freaked me out.  Really, what I would be is a birth other.  Birth other is a term that psychologist Dianne Ehrensaft came up with to describe persons involved in the child-making-process (surrogates, egg donors, sperm donors).  I've done some preliminary thinking about using an egg donor, and adopting, and even adopting an embryo.  Essentially I can easily imagine myself on the receiving end, but not on the giving end.  I know it is my decision, and it has to reflect my comfort levels and all that, but essentially I feel like a small, greedy, fearful person because I can't easily imagine giving  in this way. 

When I was a child I was always making comparisons between myself and my family members, looking for signs, looking for similarities. Sometimes I wanted them as predictors of the future, sometimes as a way to feel connected.  I know that part of this was because of the disconnected feeling in my family; I was always looking for ways to know I belonged.  But this is how the wind blew, and this is how I grew, and for the moment I can indulge my desire for genetic connection to my hoped for children.  My husband feels that your family is the family that raised you, and that is the end of it.  I know that is true as well; my cousin and I don't need any genetic connection to clean a kitchen in the same way, or to trim strawberries, but it is there.  In her book The Mistress's Daughter A.M. Homes describes going through her dead birth mother's apartment and finding money wadded up in her birth mothers handbag, just as she carried her own money.  Her mother was always chiding her for this habit, but it came as easily as breathing--it is a sensibility, a way of being that transcended her upbringing.  I love looking at pictures of my father's mother and seeing 'my eyes' and even knowing that she was a 'nervous nelly' gave me comfort as a child--this isn't just me, its a way of being that they recognize from someone else.  I don't know if our children will have that hunger, certainly my husband doesn't, but I feel distressed about creating that for another.

This is another one of those things about infertility, you have to think about so much, and it is so intensely personal.  When you get pregnant, even with a modicum of trying, certain things just fall by the wayside, and this is clearly one of them.

Perhaps I'm putting the cart before the horse.  In the end our decision is to wait and see how we feel, and to wait and see if we actually have any blastocysts at all, any to share. 

* For those of you new to the world of infertility, the news media and television shows almost always refer to the act of transferring a blastocycst into the uterus and 'implanting."  That is, of course, what you want it to do, but the act of transferring does not an implantation make.

**I'm turning into a regular Derrida  with the all the foot noting!  Ok, back to the reason for the footnote: This specific program wouldn't be a match for us in either direction, we're a secular-humanist-jewish family, so I don't think any right-to-lifers would pick us for their babies. We'd have to go private.

I've Been Meme'd!

I was meme'd by Cat.  Pretty exciting for me, an actual established blogger linked to me.

Here are the rules to the game:

1) Link to the person that tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least 3 people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6) Let the fun begin!

6 Non-important things/habits/quirks about myself:

1. I think a bed without pillows is freaky looking--I just can't take it.  I also cannot abide pillows without pillow cases--ick.  However, I have been broken of the habit of hospital corners (instilled by my lovely grandmother), my husband likes untucked, and he was persistent. Now I can't imagine sleeping with them tucked in.
2. I don't reflexively say "bless you" when people sneeze. My mother would typically sneeze about 20 times in a row, so somehow it was just never a priority. Now when people sneeze, I'm sort of late with the "bless you" kind of like an Asperger's  kid who has learned what to say in specific situations.
3. I wash or rinse my hands between just about every step of a cooking project, especially something saucy like enchiladas. I can't stand to have the feeling  of food on my hands. And I am obsessive about hand lotion. I always have one (or three) at hand.  For instance, next to my side table in our TV room I have 3: 1)unscented 2)lavender scented shea butter 3) one that I picked up at target that smells like lemon cake. It is extremely intoxicating.
4. I can't stand having anything gritty or hard in my mouth--dirt (in the form of trail in the trail mix), egg shells, fish bones. That is grounds for automatic gagging and spitting out.
5. I would like to be a Bree Van de Kamp *  in terms of household organization, but I'd say I'm actually some where in between Bree and Roseanne .
6. I love being prescribed medication--it makes me feel taken care of.  I have a lot of painkillers, left over from various maladies, and it seems like the combination of feeling taken care of by medication, and having lots of the good stuff around would add up to taking them, but I'm actually really conservative when it comes to pain control. Case in point: I was in the hospital for pain control for an ovarian cyst. They gave me my vary own morphine pump. I thought I'd be up all night pushing the button for the pleasure of it, but I tapered off around midnight, about 6 hours after my cyst burst.  Color me surprised.

All righty then! The next step is tagging some other bloggers.

I tag Gerah,Jenn & Cait, Arwen/Elizabeth

*Although, according to the quiz, I'm a Lynette

And were off!

Today, at approximately 11am I was duly informed of the end of my most recent cycle, and the beginning of a whole new chapter.

I called all of my closest friends to let them know--I wished I had that reaction to my first period!  I was much more shy about that one. Anyhow, let the games begin.

Period

Hellooooooooooooooo...where the heck is my period.  It's not pregnancy--just one of my longer cycles (my longest is 27 days instead of 24).  I have never been so impatient to start my period; well maybe in 7th grade when I just wanted to get the worry over with.  Do you remember checking your underwear, ala "Are you there god, it's me, Margaret?" Or maybe the one I was really scared by was "Deanie"  I was terrified of it running down my legs.  I can safely say, after a good long while at the menstruating stuff, that that has never happened to me. 

It feels like I'm in line for the roller coaster, and I'm close to the front of the line, but the line has stopped moving.  Oh well, it'll come.

Off to send the shared risk folks a butt load of moula.

Doctor Doctor

I lost a post! Although it sucks, at least it means I'm a real blogger!

Ok, so we changed RE's.  I was kind of freaked out about it, because it seemed mean.  Doesn't that seem silly?  Our first doctor, lets call her Dr Hyper seemed ok, but she did manage to insult my husband during our first appointment. We were both so freaked out it was hard to tell how we felt about her, but he did feel insulted. I just thought she'd made a bad joke--but bad jokes are insulting, so if she was serious or joking, she pissed him off.  And then, there was the hyperness. It wasn't as apparent in the office, but the follow up phone calls were just too frenetic.  However, I'm a nice girl and I don't like to make waves, and what if we were wrong...

Luckily my husband is not a 'nice girl' and he was more able to hold onto his misgivings.  After a little nudging, and concocting a good cover story for why we were meeting with another doctor in the practice, we called. Of course we needed an appointment on short notice, so that didn't help. But we were persistent and pleasant, so they fit us in on Monday.

Going in to this we were less freaked out that we were the first time, but Dr Calm was just so much easier to be in the room with.  She re-reviewed our paperwork, and had a different take on ICSI--something the other doctor hadn't mentioned.  That felt positive.  So we left and we felt calmer, and that seemed like important data.

However,  I was still suffering from good-girl-itis the next day when Dr Hyper called to check in and see where we were with the IVF cycle, and if we had any questions. She also assured me that I could choose whichever doctor I wanted to be my primary.  She was still frenetic, and I still felt unsettled talking to her, so after we hung up, I dialed the front desk and put the process in motion to changing from Dr Hyper's caseload to Dr Calm's.  Whew. 

It shocks me to think of all of the times I've waited until the last moment to make a change that fits my needs better. Yeesh.

Why it's hard to ever say the right thing to an Infertile

Amongst infertiles it is a known fact that the degree of asshattery goes way up once you let it slip that you are struggling with getting pregnant, or undergoing infertility treatment.  On the one hand you have your clods: people who just say asinine things, such as "if it's meant to be, it will happen."  and "Have you gone on vacation?" and other obnoxious things of that ilk.

On the other hand you've got people, often women, but occasionally men on behalf of their women, who once they hear you are having trouble say some variant on "It was so easy for me I practically thought about getting pregnant and it happened."  I don't get the point of this.  I tell you something is hard for me, and you tell me how easy it was for you. We are not talking about jacks people, this is a bit closer to the bone than that.  Yesterday I did have a lovely experience that counteracted one of these moments of asshattery.  I went to a luncheon with my mother, and sat with her and a dear friend, and that friends niece. We started talking about children, I said the minimum (like, trying for a year, starting IVF next month, blah blah blah), and then she said "People told me would be hard, but I got pregnant on the first try!"  Just as I was about to take a deep breath, and let it go, my mother's friend spoke up and said "Yes, but it is very hard on people when it doesn't happen easily. My son and daughter-in-law have been trying for a year, and its just very very hard."  And then she looked at me as if to say "I headed that one off at the pass kid."   It's moments like that that keep my from withdrawing completely and saying I have a contagious disease.

And then, on no hand, you've got the people who get it right some of the time, like normal humans, but because as an infertile you are constantly changing how you feel about it, and where it's hitting you, they get it wrong some of the time.

Case in point: For most of the last year, during which I was a mess of epic proportions, I would often harp on the theme of fairness. One lovely friend who had been so positive and supportive, and listened to my ever changing theories of why it wasn't happening, saw me in passing, asked how things were going, I reported the usual, and she said "It's not fair."  I said "I know, but it doesn't help me to think that way right now."  And even though I handled it well, and spoke from where I was at,  it still managed to hit me in my wound. 

Infertility is a wound, it gets you where you are most vulnerable (i.e. mine is preoccupation with defectiveness), and then you feel rage.  I felt angry at this friend for not getting it just right, not knowing that I wasn't in that state of mind at that particular moment, and putting me back in touch with that part of me that is all wound.  Ick.  So clearly, that one was all me.  I was the asshat.  Luckily I was only an asshat on the inside.  Is that called internalized asshattery? No that would be different.

Oy.  What a pain this infertility shit is, eh?