Dreams and False Alarms

A shot in the dark

We did an IUI this morning.  No ultrasound to check out the dimensions of my lining or my follicles, no trigger shots to give us the sense of 'perfect' timing, and no progesterone supplementation to screw with my mind and give me gas and sore boobs.

Like sex with one's husband, but so not.

I feel sort of...hopeful enough to go through with it, but not hopeful enough to worry about how the due date will inconvenience my hectic (hardly!) schedule in 9 months.

We're starting to seriously talk about DE, and when to do it. I want to do it sooner, Husband want's to do it later (me: start with cycle mid oct, him: start with cycle in Nov).  We'll probably do the latter--husband needs his time to get used to the idea, and of course, all this is dependent on the donor being available and agreeable to both of us. 

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Do you ever go through those phases that are just annoying? The kind where you feel it all freshly again; feelings you thought you'd mastered rear up again?  I think overall I'm doing better, but there are times when I look at Fa.ceboo.k and it feels like one more place where happy people show pictures of their children and talk about cheerfulness (not kidding on the last one, former cheerleader and cheerleading coach posted something about cheerfulness being infectious etc). I'm sure it is, but all I could think was "nice you can be so fucking happy all the time."  For a person who's been eating a lot of shit sandwiches for the last 3 years, I'm pretty happy, but ugh. Geeze. Yeesh.

And on the other hand, I want to have an easier, happier life, like other people do (cheerfulness weirdo not withstanding), and today I can't feel like I'm a part of that life; not to say they (amorphous they don't wnt me, they do!) but it just feel as if it hurts too much to know how easy (some)things are for others.

I think that resemblance talk just kills me.  I love it for a moment, and it's so true in many cases, but it just hurts to know our children will resemble us in many ways, but not physically, and as little as that will matter in the long run, it is a loss. 

One odd thing is that I can't seem to find an egg donor who resembles me. In many ways that's fine, it is less important to me than it was before, but it's just odd.  I sort of look like Ellen DeGeneres (big smile), Cate Blanchette (long face, sharp nose), Kate Winslet (Similar eyes, and holy crap we have the same boobs) and a little Princess Diana thrown in. Where the heck are all the egg donors who look a little bit like any of those people? All the women seem to have round faces and little eyes. Ok, that is an exaggeration, but really, what is up with DE and round faces around here?

Clearly, I'm all over the place, taking shots in the dark in many ways.  To sum up: IUI, feeling jealous, wanting to know why egg donors are roundy faced.

Meeting with Dr Calm tomorrow to discuss Donor Egg process. Oy.

In which I compare failing at IVF to The Chicken Ranch

Hi.

Sorry about just dropping out like that. I'm not sure of what to say, of how much I even want to know about what I'm feeling and thinking at this point. This could turn out to be a long post, or a short post...

I am crushed.  Yes, partially by the negative--even though I was ambivalent and scared of a positive, it would have also have been wonderful. I literally feel crushed.  I think that the weight of what I've been doing for the last three years, and in the case of IVF, for the last year and half, finally came down on me.  I think that my way of coping was to repress how hard it was (not completely, but enough), and to keep my eyes on the prize.  As negative and as anxious as I was, I really believed that IVF could help us, and my faith was renewed when we found out about the translocation--maybe I really did have the same chance as a lot of other nearly 39 year olds.  This last cycle seems to indicate that my eggs are kaput.  Whatever it is that they need to have produce a healthy embryo/baby is just not there. Maybe in 20 years they'll know what that is, but for right now, it's unknowable.  In some ways that is a relief--to have a knowable problem, and to not be able to solve it would be a different kind of hard.

Another way that this has all crashed down on me is financially.  At the beginning of the cycle I kept having the idea that infertility treatment is like the Chicken Ranch, a movie that those of you who took Women's Studies classes in the '90's can probably remember. The scene that has always stuck with me was the girl Mandy who at one point in the movie, after a particularly lucrative session, is talking about how great it is to be a prostitute, and then later when she's pissed off the madam or the owner is forced to the an 'around the world' for the cost of a lesser act.  She is crying, she is raging, she is humiliated, she is ultimately fired for her outburst.  I think that scene has stuck with me all these years because it so clearly illustrated how when you are doing something hard, with the idea that you will get something good at the end (money in her case, a baby in mine), the humiliation, the hardships, the endurance that it takes to just get through the damn thing is tied to the end result. When you don't get it, the reality of what you've just put yourself though comes crashing down on you like a ton of bricks. In the past there was always the next cycle, the next idea, the next last thing. And now it is over, and it is sad, a relief, a huge loss, and more than I can even articulate.

I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.  If the DE/DS cycle doesn't work, we will be broke and still without a child.  I realize that may sound like catastrophizing, but just because we came out on the wrong side of the odds this time, doesn't guarantee we won't again.  Someone has to make up that 40% who don't get a baby with DE--I really fucking hope that isn't us for once.

It is getting pretty hard to keep taking money out of the savings account and telling ourselves that it is going to get us anything--pretty soon there won't be anything to take out...ugh.

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While I am grateful for what we do have (each other, our kitties, some version of healthy, a good job (husband) and a job that I love, I can't help but feel all that we don't have at the moment, and the dwindling resources we have to get a child. If we were to stop all this pregnancy stuff, and move to adoption, the cost would be about the same as a DE cycle, and the wait would be 2 to 3 years.  I know that county adoptions move faster, but not always as fast as people think.  It could still be 2 to 3 years.

I feel very isolated--not because people don't care, but because it feels so impossible to explain how profoundly and utterly lost I feel at the moment. And I don't want to hear that it isn't the cards I'm dealt, but how I play them. I want to hear "This hand sucks, and that's all there is to say."  It isn't that I don't want to feel hopeful at some point, but right now this is just fucking awful, and there isn't a silver lining.

I know that eventually I will feel better, but I think at this point I am really feeling the damage this has done to me. And I think that is reasonable. It has kicked my ass, and no amount of endurance has changed the fact that no matter how much we spent, or how hard I tried, or how good I was, or how stoic I was in the face of failure after failure, this didn't work, and it's not going to work, and it was harder than most people can ever imagine. I have been through some very very hard times in my life, but the difference was that I could do something to change them. I could leave my ex-husband, I could go to college, I could go to therapy, I could find a better man. I can't do anything about this. This is what it is. It is just over, broken, fucked, unfixable.  No child, no matter how they come to us, will change the facts of the last 3 years.  They may soften the blow, fill us with more joy than we can imagine, but this is immutable.

This is the end of an era. This is the end of IVF. This is the end of the idea that I can be helped. This is the end of feeling like every penny is worth spending if it gets us our child.

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Compared to most people, I don't have a lot of pregnant friends and baby showers to contend with.  But a friend and his wife are having a baby in November, and their shower is in a month.  I looked at their registry and thought "You two are missing so many really important things, and have way too many of the 'hyped but useless' stuff on here."  I felt so...annoyed. Here I am, having collected and observed, and thought through all this stuff for YEARS, and I'm still on the fucking sidelines.  In the end I bought them two things that I know have been lifesavers for my friend with twins, and left it at that. They'll figure it out, and I don't have to do a thing.  But ya know, it just killed me to do it again, to buy a gift I'd like to have for myself, to have for my child. And here I am again on the sidelines.  In this case, it was pretty painful, probably because of where I am (duh), but also because I feel so invisible. With my friend who has twins I don't feel invisible, and that makes it so much easier to really get in and enjoy the babies. With most people though, I'm just invisible. Of course I don't have to be but, what do you say? "I'm so happy for you, but I just got a negative pregnancy test for a cycle that cost 12K and buying you a baby gift is pretty much going to rip a little more of my heart up." No, I don't say that. I buy the gift, Husband and I lean on each other for support, and leave as early as possible.

Argh, I'm rambling.

We went to a bbq on labor day, all of the people there have kids. We didn't know 2 of the couples at all. The host and another couple were more of known quantity.  Somehow the subject of 'snowflake babies' came up, and embryology, IVF and all sorts of other things were just being mangled. Husband and I both just sat there dumbstruck. I knew that If I said something it would come out somewhere between a strangled cry and bitchy, and I just couldn't do it. The host is a dear, and she has been nothing but a true friend through this whole awful ordeal, but it struck me just how hard it is to be in 'mixed company'--I have limited myself so much to people who are in the know, that I've forgotten how hard it is to be with regular people who don't have to know the intricacies of embryology, or cryopreservation or the difference between IVF and insemination. 

When the hell with this stuff just be a bad memory?  I'm exhausted.

IVF: It's all fun and games until someone spends their life savings and doesn't get a baby

I had a few days of hope that maybe this cycle had worked, but on Tuesday, that started to shift.

To recap the reasons I had hope:

A compacting embryo on day three

Pink spotting on day 5 and 6

Tender breasts that couldn't tolerate an underwire

Zinging cramps that I remembered from my pregnancy with Sparky

On Tuesday I had the distinct feeling that things were shifting and not in a positive way. My breasts felt less tender, and seemed to be deflating. I told myself that it was probably my imagination. But on Wednesday, I had the distinct dropping progesterone feeling of feeling weepy about everything, and the breasts were clearly smaller and not sore. Last night I didn't even need to wear my sleep bra.  I'm going commando right now, and not a tender spot in sight.

Of course there is nothing to do but wait until Sunday, take the pills, do the shots, but in my body, it feels like it is over. Please don't encourage me. I just don't want any encouragement.  This is the pattern my 3 early pregnancies had the first year we were trying. If I wasn't on the progesterone, I'd probably be bleeding by now.

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I am ambivalent about this. On the one hand I am extremely sad, and exhausted by this whole process, and on another, I'm sort of well, not exactly relieved, but something like relieved. When I did think I was pregnant I found myself feeling ambivalent about how I would feel about a positive result. In one way it would be wonderful, but in another, it would be excruciating.  I have lost faith in my eggs, and their performance with the donor sperm was the final nail in that coffin.  Using my eggs feels like putting broken embryos into my body to die--not to live. To be pregnant this cycle, with my day three embryo (since only one of 5 was of any quality) would be terrifying. If I were to make it all the way to the second trimester, I would feel that I had to get an amnio because until I got those results I wouldn't be able to feel confident that the baby was healthy. 

For the last 3 years it mattered to me that my eggs could be proven to be strong, healthy, and good. They felt like an extension of my own strength, health and goodness. For most of my life I've been consumed by my own fears and feelings of defectiveness, but at this point I feel that I am strong, healthy and good, but my eggs aren't. I am ready to let go of my eggs, and ready to let go of this phase of my life.

And this is where the title comes in: If money were no object, I'd be doing DE/DS cycle by November at the latest. But financially, it makes more sense to do 3 IUI's with my eggs and donor sperm and to see if one of them works. Why? We've never tried that--all our data comes from translocated sperm and IVF, and maybe I'm one of those people who's eggs don't develop well with extra gondrapins.  Also, a monitored IUI costs 1K, a donor egg cycle costs 25K. If we get lucky, and one of my eggs decides to be a superstar, we'll have saved 25K. 

The worst part of this is that I don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it at all, but I will.  I will be vigilant, and responsible. I'll go to acupuncture, and pee on sticks every morning, and I'll refrain from taking all my favorite meds for 2 weeks (flex.eril, amb.ian, suda.fed).  In the long run I know it would be easier for our child if they had at least one genetic link, but really, I just don't want to do it. I don't want to use my old tired eggs. I don't want to go through this any more. AT ALL.  I will do this, but don't ask me to be hopeful, or to like it, or to believe in it.

I feel grumpy and cornered. I am cornered by logic and reason, and good sense, but in terms of what I want, I don't want this. It has gotten to the point that I don't want a child who shares a genetic link with me--I want this to be over.  Yet, money doesn't grow on trees, and there isn't more money coming from where the last chunk came from, so we can't just do what feels right, we have to do what is right all around. ARGH.

Pregnancy training wheels

Why must bad things happen? Ugh. Mo and Will, and Sprogblogger. Just utterly heartbreaking.

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Why pregnancy training wheels? Well, we did our first home insemination on the 2nd of August, and it feels to me like I am practicing 'being pregnant'. Or maybe, practicing being 'normal' about the idea of being pregnant.  I was only a little bit of a wreck leading up to the LH surge, which happened nicely on Day 11, meaning a day 12 ovulation, which for a day 10 ovulator like me, is practically just like a 'normal' lady.  I tried out testing in the afternoon, but it was a big fat fail.  I was trying it out under the assumption that if I was doing a home insemination, I'd want to try to have a better idea of which 24 to 36 hours to aim for, but me and the afternoon testing were not a match. So, bright and early on August 1, I finagled myself an ultrasound and found that I had an egg on each ovary, both mature, and a lining over 7, which for me is like a lining of 8 for a regular lady. I decided to do the the trigger shot, and I absolutely know I ovulated between 10 and 12 Sunday. The pain was unmistakable.  Next day I started the endo.metrian. Much better than the greasy ones I did last year, but they do make for a runnier than usual undercarriage. Ahem.

I am so glad that we did a home insemination. It was like a pregnancy would be a bonus, but the real process has been being able to practice how it would feel to be pregnant, using donor sperm. And I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised at how it feels. I'm also surprised at how little I think about it being DS. I have found myself day dreaming about our future baby, and remembering about 3/4 of the way through that we used the DS.  Ahh. What a relief. I was worried I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it.

Overall, I'm thinking that I'm not pregnant. I am definitely having the progesterone side effects of slowed digestion (raging heartburn and nausea after lunch and until bedtime), but no breast changes. However, I'm not feeling too freaked out by this. Actually I'm not feeling freaked out at all.  I think that is why I said "pregnancy training wheels". It feels to me as if I am practicing what it would feel like to be pregnant, emotionally. And I must say, I wish I'd felt this way 3 years ago. Yeesh. So many years lost to anxiety, without even an appetizer of excitement and joy.  As bad as I feel about this for myself, I feel even worse about this for Husband.  He was normal and excited 3 years ago, and I was a wreck.  Better late than never?

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What does the future hold? Well, in the immediate term, it holds a pregnancy test on the 16th, though I may just POAS for the heck of it, and an IVF as soon as my period shows up during the week of the 17th.  We decided to push ahead and do the IVF in August, and then if it doesn't work, we'll be ready to move on.  Moving on may mean a few IUI's, or it may be donor eggs, or it may mean IUI's while we search for the right donor.

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About donor eggs, well, oddly enough, I'm back to cruising around DE sites and looking at Donors. Why? Well, I'd like to be ready if the IVF doesn't work (or it works and I miscarry, way to be positive, eh?), and I'm the type of person who likes to be emotionally prepared. One of the disadvantages of my emotional style is that I'm not all that good at repressing, even when it might make me feel a bit better, but the good part is, I'm usually ready to do what it is I'm doing because I've been processing it for so long before I get there! 

On Friday I logged in to my clinic's database and started looking at donors. I looked at one that I'd bypassed before and realized that she has eyes very similar to my husband's, but blue. She looked like my cousin's husband (but blond), and most oddly, what I thought our daughter would look most like.  Isn't that funny? I'm looking for my husband's characteristics in the egg donor, when I already looked for them in the sperm donor...But I've never seen a picture of him. I have the clinic's word that there is a resemblance, but still, I loves me some Husband, and his eyes are especially beautiful.

What surprised me the most was how excited I felt. And how sad I felt when I remembered that our IVF might work, and that we may not have a DS/DE baby at all. For me, that was such a reassuring and exciting moment. I'm ready. I'm ready for our baby, however she or he comes to us.

Bring it!

A funny thing happened on the way to the blog...

Hi Y'all!

I've been a little sparse with the posting lately. I'm no sprogblogger, but I do try to maintain a little something for you all to read. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the blog, it has started to feel like this is too private to write about...so, what to say?

I'm here at cycle day 3 or 4, depending on if you start counting at spotting or full flow. I find that I don't count until full flow, I only have 3 day period, and somehow that throws me off...Anyhoodle, I will be doing major LH stalking this cycle, trying to narrow down the timing for the 24 hour LH surge window. We'll be doing a home insemination, unless it doesn't feel right to us, but we are both really wanting to do it, so that should carry us through. 

We're going away for 4 days to a lovely house overlooking the ocean. We'll cook, drink, sleep, canoodle and read (at the house and on the beach), and then lumber home wistfully and wait till the egg makes her appearance. 

If this doesn't work we may do an IUI next month or just move onto an IVF. We talk to Dr Calm today. I'm sure she'll leave it up to us...darnn personal choice.

In other news, I bought a used reclining Dutailier rocker. I know, crazy. But I don't believe in jinxing, so why pass up a good deal. It is so comfy.

I think that also, I'm starting to feel like a lady who could possible get pregnant, my eggs or no, something good is going to happen before January.

I'm keeping tabs on all of you, and holding you in mind.

Wound around the axel (lather/rinse/repeat)

The day I wrote that last post, we found out that our other older cat (Zoe's brother), has, in addition to his heart condition, cancer of the iris. Yeesh. Husband and I were both just flattened. We had finally started to feel like things were, if not looking up, at least not looking down. And then we got this news, and there went Hawaii.  Pfffffffffffftttttttt.

He was angry, and I just sat and read blogs and wept. It was a real live pity party. We ordered pizza, drank expensive tequila, and fell asleep on the couch.

And since then, it's been...kind of the same, but without the pity party and the tequila.

We have figured out a local cheapish vacation we can do, but it will not the be same as Hawaii. 

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In reproductive news I got my FSH and E2 results back: FSH 6.5 and E2 38. And then I proceeded to ovulate on day 11. Geeze. That got me all wound around the axel again.  I finagled an ultrasound (diagnostic, so the insurance will pay for it!) and I had a 19 m follicle on the left and a 6.0 lining. Not bad for me, lining wise, but it makes me wonder if a home insemination has a chance to work...ugh. the endless swirling leaves me wrapped around the axel.

I was only tracking so that I could have a sense of how well the fertility monitor was working with the DHEA, and so we could plan our home insemination (not an IUI! Just putting the goods in the vag and laying around for a while), which in turn screwed up our vacation timing. We have to come home earlier so we can get the sperm from the sperm bank before they close for the weekend. Oy.

Yesterday at therapy I was just wallowing in how fucked up I am about all of this; exhausted by being a good soldier and trying hard and all that crap. I think my therapist is even tired of me.

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One thing I find really difficult is confiding in my friends. Its as if I want to be 'all better' and then talk to them, but that is along damn way off, and they are often quite helpful! Today I talked with a friend who has 18 month old and a 4 year old, and it was so good to let all sorts of things tumble out, and to find out that in many ways what I'm worried about is normal, but amplified, but normal nonetheless.

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I do want to figure out how to be more positive--sometimes I wonder if the negativity is a crutch or a...habit? Not sure, but in someway I feel helpless to manage it, and that leaves me feeling hopeless.

BUT! Today I accepted and invitation to do something really good for my career in October, and I paid all the bills in my inbox and worked on the 'lowest hanging fruit' in terms of a part of my job I've been letting slide. Progress! One of my best friends since college is coming to town tomorrow, and we have plans for a seriously deep, girl talk extravaganza. And girl do I need it. And in one month we'll do our at-home-insemination, and that is pretty cool too.

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.

Holy F*#king Curveballs Batman!

No, I'm not pregnant.

My husband has a balanced translocation.

Holy Shit.

Last night Dr Calm called at about 5:30, and got a hold of my husband to tell him that he has a balanced translocation, and we need to figure out our next steps in light of the next IVF.

Oy. I'm in shock. My husband was oddly relieved; relieved to know that there is a reason all of this has been so hard.  But, as of last night, he didn't feel extremely distressed.  He's never been as tied up in all of this genetic stuff as I have, nor does he have a deep sense of defectiveness like I do, so who knows, maybe this won't hit him as hard as it hits me.  He may feel differently as time goes on (I mean in the immediate sense).  Basically,if this was going to happen to one of us, he's probably the one who can handle it with less drama and pain. Oy.

The recommendation is to do one more mutually genetic IVF, but do PGD on our embryos to see if any are normal and to transfer those.  And if none are normal, to move on to IUI with donor sperm.

Ugh.  Honestly, this makes me feel sick.  Just sick. I am so disoriented.

I am wracked with so much sadness.  With all of the grieving I've done about my own loss of a genetic tie, you'd think I'd be relieved that 'whoo hoo! my genes are still in the mix!"  Surprisingly, I just want him--I don't want no stinkin' substitute. 

Have I ever told you how much I love this man? I love everything about him, from his wacky curly hair to his big brown eyes, to his slender body, to his meaty hands and feet. I love the way he smells, and thinks. I love how loving he is, what a good good person he is, how kind he is, how wickedly funny he is. I love his eyelashes. I love his nose.  I tell him that he is beautiful, which he tolerates, but he really is beautiful.

I feel like I took in all that his family is, the schizophrenic great uncle, the nutty and abusive great grandparents, the tendency for rocacia, being sweaty sleepers, and on and on and I said "all of this is distilled in you, and you are magnificent, and I want to know what will happen if we bring my brand of wacky together with yours." And now I have to adjust to the idea that that experiment is pretty unlikely to take place. PGD could pull off a miracle for us, but at this point, we only have one shot, and that means that the odds are low.  

Now, just because he has a translocation, doesn't mean I'm 25, and my eggs are guaranteed to do anything other than divide oddly, even with the help of someone else's sperm.  Ugh.

Ya know, I was feeling pretty fuckin' happy, and now I'm kinda fucked up again. Ugh.

We had some good laughs last night.  As many of you know, he's Jewish. He said "You can have the best of both worlds, me and a nice Jewish boy who went to Harvard and became a doctor and made his mother proud."  He also said, being a Jew, he feels like he's pulling from the team--we laughed that it was sort of a twist on the biblical practice of taking your brothers widow as a wife concept.  Ugh. High tech sperm widow. That's me. I pointed out that 'man in a can' can be gotten from anywhere, so we an search NY/Tri-state sperm banks and get the cream of the crop. Ew.

If the IVF doesn't work, we get donor sperm and do an IUI or two, and then move onto IVF again. Oh lord. I just don't want any of this. I feel numb.

(Oh, and sister in law, if you read my blog, please don't tell your mom. Your brother wants to do that himself. Please feel free to call).

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Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my last post. I thought a lot about what all of you said.

My therapist and I were talking about my relationship to motherhood, and how for at least 20 years it has been another form of competition with my mother, to prove I could do it better than she did, and to re-mother myself through my own child. As you can imagine, this would have been ok in some ways, but a total train wreck in others. Ultimately what was missing from that vision is me as the mother to my own unique children, with a side benefit of healing some of my own wounds. My own wounds were front and center, and this was a huge part of how I organized myself psychically in relation to mothering.  The loss of that narcissistic connection, meaning it is easier to make a 'mini me' out of a genetic child than a non genetic child, freed me up to consider where could I stand, and where did I want to stand in relation to mothering. So that's a plus.

Can anyone come and fix my wonderful husband's chromosomes? 'Cause honestly, that is all I really want.

Not getting on the train to crazy-ville

Well, we are on the ramp up to the next ovulation, and I had an attack of fiscal freak-out, and thought that maybe doing an IUI would be a good use of these rest cycles and a cheaper way to leverage our odds.  My acupuncturist thought it was an ok idea, and my husband, smart man, is more on the 'nah' side then the 'no' side. But after talking for a while, I realize I am feeling better now than I have in the last 4 years (yeesh, maybe 7), and I don't really want to get on the train to crazyville this month.

So I'm going to keep popping the DHEA, doing my Pilates (which is so lovely, I wished I'd started years and years ago), going to my acupuncturist, writing and enjoying my sex life without having it completely tangled up in TTC. That isn't to say I'm not going to follow the LH surge, and get busy at the right time, but it will be with my feet on the ground, and my eyes on my own future, not just whether or not sperm will meet egg and do the right thing.

For now, I'm booking a weekend away from me and my man--no I won't be ovulating, just because we need to get out of dodge, and this is another way of enjoying our life together. 

Have no fear, the train station is still open, and I have my ticket, but I'm not waiting for the boarding call right now.

OH! And I strapped on a major pair of ovaries and contacted a famous journalist about the octuplet mom fiasco and the effect on the perception of IVF and infertility stuff, and if anything comes of it, I'll crow about it in detail.

Take care my dears!

No time for a real update...

However there is some more good news!

FSH is 7.18, down .82 from last months 8.0.  Here's hoping that is a meaningful shift!

We are going to wait to do the IVF until April. We'll give it the full four months of DHEA, and another month of no-IVF-sanity.

My husband and I will be celebrating our 10 years as a couple anniversary next month--and we are going to go away for the weekend! No cat pillling for 36 whole hours.

And in other news, please go give some love to BeeCee; she just had her beta for her very last with her eggs IVF, and it was negative.

See you on the flip!