Dreams and False Alarms

Go give her some Love

Hey Ya'll, if you don't already read Eva at The Egg Drop Post, go give her some love. She got a negative on her IVF cycle yesterday, and it just plain sucks.

I'll write a post soon, I'm sure I can figure out how to translate the emotional morass we are in over her into something intellegble. But not today!

Am I Jonah or the Whale?

I had one shitty weekend. Good lord. I haven't felt that bad in months, maybe even a year.

I actually thought I was doing better (because, ya know,I'd made a list of everything I needed to do...as if that was full mental health!), but yesterday at therapy, I turned into a self lacerating disaster area.

I have this image of my therapist standing on the deck of a boat with a deep sea fishing pole, her feet planted against the rail, trying to reel me back in.

She said to me, a number of times "What did you swallow whole?" We tried out various ideas, but none of them reeled me back in.  As I left, I remembered that I'd read this post on Friday at Peter's cross station . Go ahead, read it, and then look through the comments, and find the one by Sara (not me).  The comments on this were awesome, and really spoke for me, and yet I was deeply impacted by this post.  I think this is what I swallowed whole.  Even though I had enough self awareness to read the comments, and respond off line to the author and to Sara, who I felt really captured a lot of what I wanted to say, there was still a huge piece of me that took in Shannon's criticism of ART and applied her judgment about entitlement and classism to myself.  It was as if she referred to some ART bloggers who are not cognizant of the choices they are making for others (their children), and because she didn't single me out and say "Everyone but Sarah at Dreams and False alarms is a jerk", I swallowed her judgment whole.  In some ways, I think this is because I am conflicted about our next steps (donor sperm, donor sperm/donor egg), and in another it is probably because I feel so overwhelmed by my needs, and my husband's needs, and to have a chance at gestating a child ourselves, and I worry that this  will somehow hurt our future children.

I have this unrealistic unconscious/and not so unconscious directive for myself as a parent that I have to anticipate anything that could potentially hurt my children and make sure it doesn't happen.  What I think hit me this weekend is that we are out of 'perfect' options.

Bad scenario number 1: My husband's sperm is unlikely to ever combine with my or anyone else's eggs and make a human.  

Bad situation number 2 : My eggs are not too likely to make much better use of donor sperm than they did of translocated sperm.  

Bad situation number 3: Donor sperm and Donor eggs--a child created solely for our convenience (uh, not sure that is the right word), and to meet my need of being pregnant. And to be fair, to provide some sort of biological and gestational continuity for the child themselves.

Bad situation number 4: We adopt a child through conventional private adoption, or through our county system, or internationally.  The myriad losses for a child in this option range from the complications of open adoption to the complete loss of any hope of knowing their genetic/first family.

It just seemed too much. And then Shannon's opinion that using ART is an act of entitlement...it just hit too many nerves, and caught too many of my triggers. 

So, is she wrong? Yes, and no. There are people who just don't think. But I am not one of them. I think so much, that I often  wonder if I should even try to have children because no matter how I go about it someone is hurt, and to hurt anyone in my quest to have a family is pretty unbearable. I think this was where I was really stuck over the last few days.  I couldn't see my way forward.

I remember about 15 years ago I heard a report on NPR about the Amazon Rainforest tribes being a hot new market for A.von.  I was appalled, at both the tentacles of capitalism, and the potential for millions of little bottles of A.von products to pile up and pollute the Amazon.  I mentioned this to a friend, and she too was appalled. We talked about in front of her boss, who was a really lovely woman, but had a totally different mindset about the world. She said "Oh! how nice for them! Now they can have all that good stuff too."  She didn't think about things in the same way that we did, but was she necissarily wrong? Or entitled, on behalf of amazon tribal women to 'ski.n so so.ft"  Somehow this story about A.von in the rain forest reminds me that I am not the kind of person who doesn't think about the effects of my actions. If anything, I over think my effects on my children.  

So, I'm going to try to stay in the game, and not take things so personally.  She is entitled to her opinions, and she made her choices because of who she is, and what makes sense to her.  I need to reserve the right to do the same, I need to reserve it for myself, and not feel implicitly judged because she has a strong opinion.  Oy.

Stop the world and let me off...I'm tired of going round and round

From the title, you probably assume that this post is going to be about when to stop banging my head against this particular wall. And it might be, but this song has been going through my head for the last few hours, so I decided to unload this particular earwig on a post and see if it would cease and desist.

And yet, it seems meaningful.

On Tuesday husband finally got freaked out about using donor sperm. It was sort of a relief. I was feeling like the biggest freak on the planet for all the crazy, painful thoughts I've had about egg donation, and he seemed to be sailing through just fine. So on Tuesday he said that he needed to reserve the right to not be ok with doing an DS IUI this month. That made sense to me, but also made me quite anxious.  As you can imagine, checking for an LH surge every morning, and anticipating a soul searching discussion in the midst of flying out the door for an ultrasound and perhaps a trigger shot was pretty anxiety provoking.  On Thursday I said "How about if we just don't do it this month."  And I saw all the muscles relax in his body.  I had the sense that he wanted to say he wasn't ready, but felt conflicted about it, and wanting to please me he was holding out the hope that when presented with the real option he'd be able to do it. He wants to feel, going into any type of cycle (IUI or IVF) that if we got a positive, he'd be more happy than sad.  That makes sense to me, and for our possible children, I want that too.  I felt a sense of relief for about 12 hours, and then the sadness set in.

This is a temporary move, and I'm pretty confident that we'll do the IUI next month, and then possibly our real last IVF with my eggs and donor sperm in July, but I think that any month that passes with no possibility of getting pregnant makes me sad. 

Additionally, my friend, who is pregnant with identical twins will probably deliver in the next few days. She is getting excited, and part of me is excited as well, but another part of me is feeling really sad. Sad about being on the outside once again. Sad about not knowing what the next step will bring; sad about having so many new decisions to make, when 2 months ago, it seemed that the path was clear--rock strewn, but clear. Sad about the reality that even if the IUI works, or the next IVF works, that my husband and I will be grieving in the midst of happiness. So maybe that is the meaning of wanting to "get off."  Ugh. I'm just really feeling the sadness of this situation. It wouldn't be  solved by doing an IUI, it wouldn't' be solved by doing and IVF or starting the adoption process. It just stands alone right now.

In other baby news, I just became an aunt again.  My brother, who is 55 (I think), and his girlfriend/fiancée just had a baby last night, a little girl.  I want to be unabashedly happy for him. Heck I'd settle for not seething with jealousy, but I don't feel any of these things. I just feel sad and left out. 

I don't want to be this sad sack. I don't want to be this jealous hag. And yet I am.

I feel so badly for my husband. I wish I could go through this for him--I wish that all of the grieving I've done over the last 6 months could magically be transferred to him, and he wouldn't have to wade through this. But he does. And it kills me that we both have to wade through so much on our way parenthood. No matter how we build our family, there is grief involved, and that is a fact. If we'd started from a different point, or had different needs, this story might be different, but it it isn't. This is our process, and some days it blows.

I'm going to try to paint the doors in our hallway, and get some sense of forward movement that doesn't involve my reproductive tract.

What to say, what to say?

Forgive me blogosphere, it has been 4 days since my last post.

I, uh, well...hmm. There is so much going through my head and through my heart, it is a little tough to decide where to start.

Let's start where I left off last week:

To recap: on Wednesday I picked up the cryo tank of sperm from the sperm bank.  I had imagined them giving me the tank, but it was actually sealed with double tape into a big box, so my whimsical ideas for photographing it with a baby bonnet on it's cap were quashed. Also, it turned out I was pretty nervous about the whole thing. Husband and I had all sorts of conversations about what kind of apparatus to secure it with in the car--one doesn't want to let liquid nitrogen just bounce around.  In the end, the box fit behind my passenger seat, and I wedged a towel between the box and seat to keep the box perfectly upright and snug.  It had a 5 day charge, but I dreamed that it had defrosted overnight, and I went out to find the tank beaded with condensation.  So I hopped in my car at 8 in the morning to shuttle it out the clinic (about 30 minutes away through rush hour traffic!). I had no idea where the lab was in the clinic, only husband has been there to drop off his specimens. It was all very efficient and business like. When they took the vials out to show me I was surprised at how small they were, and then a huge wave of sadness broke over me. I was so focused on the logistics and not screwing up that the reality of what I had been carrying around in my car for 18 hours hadn't really sunk in. But when I looked at those little vials I felt another level of loss rise up and it surprised me. When I told Husband, he got it, and gave me a hug. What a man.

One of the most complicated things about this process of using donor sperm, is that there is a part of me that feels wildly hopeful, probably for the first time in 3 years (yes, I managed to get so freaked out during the early TTC, that I practically ruined the fun), and another part of me that feels resigned to it not working, and yet another part of me that feels guilty for having this chance. I suppose it is survivors guilt setting in. 

---------------------------

I bought a new fertility monitor on Amazon, only $125! My old one lost the ability to detect the estrogen surge--and it wasn't a personal problem, my friend who is now 33 weeks pregnant with identical twins never got an LH surge with it--clearly the machine was wrong!  I get up every morning and remind myself "Second uri.ne of the day", since that is what they told me to do. Today is day 8,and I'm still in the low fertility sector. Hopefully the DHEA will deliver a nice day 13 or day 14 ovulation of a nice juicy egg.  I'm really curious to see what my lining is like with DHEA, but without all the stimming drugs. My feeling is that if I can't make a good egg on my own, and my lining is still slim, we really need to focus our energy on IVF and not dink around with IUI's. See! I almost have a decision tree forming!

----------------

My friend who is 33 weeks pregnant with identical twins (just sex, not sub q shots involved) is in the hospital being monitored for pre-eclampsia. When she went for her OB appointment on Wed her blood pressure was high and she has some really impressive edema in her legs and feet. They gave her the blood pressure medicine which totally worked (WHEW!) but the steroid shots they gave for the twins lung development made her pancreas a little wonky (totally normal side effect), so she had to stay in the hospital for the weekend. They she was looking good on a lot of fronts, but that she had too many combined risk factors.  We spent the evening with her and husband last night, eating Korean take out, talking about politics, goofing around and having a pretty damn good time for hanging out in a cramped hospital room.

I must say that the crazed ideas I had about wanting twins are completely put to rest. One please. She works from home, has been monitored really closely, has a great diet (to deal with the gestational diabetes), and is still stuck in the hospital hoping her babies will cook for a minimum of another two weeks. It's just really sobering to realize how risky a twin pregnancy is. In her case, there was no avoiding it, the egg just went crazy dividing, but in my case, especially if we use donor eggs, I can avoid it. I know, and have spouted, all the reasons to go for twin pregnancy when you have limited time, limited resources, and have been trying to get pregnant for YEARS! However, it is damn scary. She and her husband are resourceful, and have each other, but it is just such a scary scary time for the 2 (4) of them. 

In good news, they are being monitored closely, the twins are close to 5lbs each, and she is responding well to all the treatments, so indications are that they will get to stay in the best incubator possible for a good long time (like until June 8, pretty please!)

---------------------------

How many of you know of Ayelet Waldman?  She was quite a phenomenon a few years ago when her essay about loving her husband more than her children was published in the New York Times.  I remember reacting quite viscerally to it, but more as a child than as a mother. I think I was reacting out of my own sense of pain in terms of my wish to feel secure in my mother's love. However, that issue had nothing to do with my parent's devotion to one another, but rather with my mother's depression, which if you lost your youngest child at age 14 and had a baby on the way, I challenge you to not jump off a bridge. I'm just saying.  I'll take insecurity over dead mother any day. Anyhow, back to AW.  So over the years, like the 3 I've been battling infertility, I've often returned to the ideas she raises in that essay. I suppose you could say that because I don't have children, I'm not qualified to comment on this, but whatever. I pay my $8 a month so I can say whatever I want to say. Where was I?

I know that there is a malignant kind of loving between parents that excludes children, and that is not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about my love for my husband, and how it is so different, and so much richer than it was 3 years ago. I can say with a lot a certainty that if you'd asked me 3 years ago I would have thought that we were lucky to love each other so deeply. But now, and in someway I am not sure where we will put this little human we make. I love him so fiercely, so completely that it surprises me. And yet, I know that we will love our child(ren), and that the experience of that love will open parts of my heart that I don't even know exist. But his man, this man who is my soul mate, the one person who loves me, get's me and enjoys me in my multitude of flaws and faults won't be unseated by a child.  I think that 3 years ago, it may have been more of a struggle. I so needed a baby to heal my own wounds. I might have pushed him out of the way (although he would have fought me tooth and nail!), and now I'm confident I won't.

I think I'm going to be a 'bad' mother, but in the best sense of the word.

------------------

Babies!

Last night as we left our friends hospital room two newborns were at the nurses station while their mother showered or something. My husband and I screeched to stop in front of their isoletes  They were so tiny and so perfect. Their little ears were a marvel.  I could have scooped one up and walked out with it and been ecstatic to have a baby. Don't worry, I 'm not contemplating baby stealing, but rather that I worry so much about "his/mine/ours", and I would have gladly scooped up a Vietnamese baby and walked out a the hospital a happy woman.

I thought to myself "If something works with this donors sperm, how could I not be completely taken with that baby?" Clearly, there are moments when I can stop thinking, start feeling, and imagine good things.

Gulp

Today I pick up the cryo canister of donor sperm. I have to keep it upright at all times. Gulp.

Shall I take a picture of it all seat belted into the back seat?

Wish me luck!

You had me at "mother is more controlling"

Thank you so much for all of your kind words about my last post. It felt really important to write it, and to honor this piece of our grieving.  We are feeling our way though it, and trying to figure out the next steps.

We met with Dr Calm on Friday. She said that there isn't really anyway to assess my egg quality beyond the fact that I'm 38. The fact of the sperm problem clouds any data we could have hoped to get from this cycle. For the moment we know that we are going to do two IUI's with donor sperm. I have to take two cycles off between IVF's (because I can't do Birth Control Pills), so that will either work or it won't, but at least there will be some forward movement. The next decision to make is whether to do an IVF with my eggs, or move on to donor eggs. At this point, I just have no idea what is the right decision for me, and for us.

However, we did decide on a new donor. We both ended up with misgivings about the first donor we picked. None of the misgivings are scientific, or even rational, but we both just had a feeling of 'wrongness'. Luckily I had only bought a vial and spare, so we hadn't sunk too much money into this guy.

Part of the difficulty for us is that we are both dedicated to having a Jewish donor who has Jewish ancestry on both sides, as my husband does.  There are a lot of partially Jewish donors (uh, kind of like our kid will be), but not Jewish-Jewish donors. 

One of the things that I realized is that I was sort of put off by how most of the donors described their families as 'perfect' and 'loving' and 'always supporting them'. I know, that is a weird reason to be put off, but some how it didn't seem authentic to me. But hey, what are you gonna do?  Well, I got lucky. One of the sperm banks I was checking out had a portion of their long profile where they ask the donor to characterize their family members personality traits. He checked off "more controlling" for his mother, and I thought "ok, this is realistic!" Not that a mother has to be controlling, but that it seems impossible to me that everyone has a perfect family. Which gave rise to my theory that mama's boys like to whack off into jars for money. I wonder what journal I could get that published in?

Otherwise, he had some other characteristics that resembled my husband in terms of abilities and interests, and the photo matching person said that he and my husband had a resemblance. So with my heart in my throat, I sent in all the paper work and voila, we are now the proud owners (?) of 4 vials of sperm. 

CD 1 was yesterday, so the IUI will happen sometime between May 13th and May 16th. I keep having to remind myself that this could work. We are both so habituated to failure, that the thought that we might actually do something, that might actually result in our intended goal seems unbelievable. That isn't to say that I'm counting on it, but that I am shocked at how used I've become to doing procedures and anticipating a negative outcome. I know, welcome to infertility, where's your 12 thousand dollars?

Sparky and the Panda's are still in our minds as we go down this next piece of the road. I still find myself in that phase of grief where you forget that the reality isn't changeable, the dead will not rise.

One thing we will never lose, no matter how much money we send down this particular hole in the ground, is how much we love each other,and how precious this quest is.