Dreams and False Alarms

laying low

I am about a week away from starting BCP's so the donor and I can sync our cycles, for a transfer sometime in May.  I am exctied, and nevous and as you can see, laying low.

I'm not sure why. I think it is a well needed break from thinking about all of this stuff.  I'm feeling better than I have in a while. I started taking nortriptaline (v low dose) to help with my sleep disorder. It worked wonders for me when I was first diagnosed with Fibromyaligia, and after the series of rapid cycling flare ups I was having starting in January, I was ready for a break.

I went to a very interesting conference yesterday, and it has me thinking, again, about illusions.

In my last post I said that I found myself calling the egg donor "the birth mother" in my head. 

At the conference yesterday, the panelists and the audience were all wrestling with the psychological differences between birth mothers and donors.  One presenter coined the term 'birth other' which I think really does encompass the whole field from sperm donors to surrogates.

From a lot of different things said yesterday, I started to think about what it would be like to consider the egg donor the birth mother. No one suggested this directly, but through a lot of what was said, I started to think about all the ways, and boy howdy could this be controversial to say, that using donor gametes allows us to preserve the illusion, for ourselves, at least in part, that the baby we are carrying is made from our gametes and those of our partner.  But why not at least play with the idea?

Birth mother implies the person who gives birth, so it's sort of the wrong term, but this child, at least in part, could have been one she carried and raised, if not for the choice she made to donate her eggs. And she is a real person. A human, just like me. Just like our child will be. She is not a body part, or a cell, she's a whole person.  Just like a birth mother would be.  And yes this is different, the child will be in my body, it will be my blood sustaining and feeding it, and finally it will enter the world through the portal of my body, not hers. So perhaps we are both birth mothers? And both birth others?

I think what I'm getting at, in my usual round about sort of way is this: If I reduce her to cells, or just turn her into parts, I can much much more easily put aside my own mourning.  If she is real, if she is a mother of a sort, an 'other' mother, then my illusion that there is no one between me and my child is deflated. Now maybe, this isn't your illusion. I don't know. But I know for myself, part of what made the selection process so hard was that I couldn't find my whole self out there ready to donate her eggs. So I did the next best thing: I picked someone I liked, and who shared enough in common with me physically to give the child a chance at the illusion that we all belong together physically.  And sure, if I'd adopted, or if I adopt, that isn't a luxury I'll have the illusion of entertaining.  

So I suppose I'm mourning the baby who could 'pass'; another illusion to retire, another baby to say goodbye to.

What I am really looking forward to is the very good chance that there will a baby to say hello to instead of goodbye to.

whew.

I wish I could chalk it up to PMS

Oh wait, I can, but it doesn't usually hit this early.

I am a grumpy, angry mess.

My back, which went out, was in, and then went out in nearly the same way on Sunday, and is still out, and pretty painful. Because of my schedule, and some non negotiable items on it, I can't see my osteopath until Thursday.

I was curt with a friend of my mother's who offered me condolences on my miscarriage. I just couldn't be gracious. I just couldn't. I was probably more gracious than I know, but  I felt like losing my shit, and then she offered me some weird remedy. I just cut her off, I don't need any more helpful suggestions about how to get my body to do something it is just not going to do.

And I'm feeling jealous. Really jealous. You know you've been at the IF game for a long time when you are jealous of other people, whose numbers look WAY worse than yours, continuing to do cycles, or saying their not going stop or whatever. I don't know if it's really jealousy, I guess it's just being sort of nuts. Of course everyone get's to do what they want to do, and just because I've stepped off that particular train, doesn't mean jack.  If we had more time or money, I could probably do a lot more IUI's, and one might work. Or it might not. Or might, and it might turn out badly.  So yes, this is our choice, and it makes sense, but I think getting ready to cross this bridge is bringing up all the last bits of yuck around this issue.

I think also, not being able to move directly into a cycle has disoriented me. This whole process of trying to get pregnant, by any means necessary, brings up such powerful issues of powerlessness.  And in the DE process, we're coming up against that again. We have decided to put a hold on the donor we wanted, so pending the results from the cycle she's going to do in Feb or March (recipient may need to do a mock cycle, which will push it back), if she is still our number 1, and is medically cleared to cycle, she'll be our gal.  We are also still thinking about other clinics and outside donors, but that all depends on asking others for help, which may or may not be available.  So just more powerlessness, and having to rely on others for what many do with some or no thought at all.  Yes, yes, I know, I'm feeling bitter,and being bitchy, but that is what I have today. Bitter and bitchy.

Also, one of our cats is quite ill. She's got toxoplasmosis, and maybe something else. She's only 7 months old! WTF! and it seems like one of our other cats is developing the same illness, which may or may not be toxoplasmosis. Husband and I are getting tested as well, oy. I'm pretty sure if she dies from this, I'm going to lose my mind. I know, she's a cat, and cats die and blah blah blah, but REALLY! REALLY! A translocation? Miscarriages? 3 1/2 years of  fucking futility. One cat dying when were on vacation,and another dying the morning we were going to take her to the vet (after they sent us home from the all night vet saying there wasn't too much wrong!!!!!!!!!).  Husband and I are just frazzled trying to stay on top of her condition, and worrying about the next one to succumb. I can't go to sleep because I'm scared she'll die in the night.

I'm not an angry person, and I'm not a person who is comfortable being angry, so this is really uncomfortable for me.

I think when the coordinator told us that someone else had signed the donor we wanted, I just started to crumble.  Whatever it was that was holding me together, crumbled.  I know that bad things happen to good people, and all that, but at the moment, I'm feeling overwhelmed, and persecuted, and just exhausted. Oh, and no chance of a vacation to recharge, nope. Need to save all those ducats for our cycles. GRRR.

The Verdict is in

Triploidy. Basically, the baby had 3 sets of chromosomes (69 instead of 46), most likely from letting two sperm instead of the one.  I sort of imagine my old dithery egg getting confused, and forgetting she'd already let one in...

As sad as this could be, it is also actully a relief. My worst fear is that we would have miscarried a genetically normal child.  That would have meant that something was up with my uterus, or blood or something, and that would mean DE would be a more perilous endeavor.

Dr Calm recommends moving on to Donor Eggs, and that is likely where we are headed. Although Dr Google says that Triploidy is not dependant on a mothers age (one of the few), given that we don't know what felled Sparky (likely the translocation, but that is just our 'choice' to believe that in the absence of data), and that I didn't get pregnant with the Donor Sperm in the last IVF, that it's time to cut our losses and jump on the DE train.

Husband and I haven't had any time to talk this over, but I'm assuming that after my cycle in February, we'll be in Lupron land.

I am remarkably relieved.  I was also worried that they wouldn't be able to culture the fetus, that's what happened with Sparky, and to not know twice would be awful.

So come on period!  Let's have one of those nice short cycles you are famous for and get this show on the road.

The somewhat big-ish meeting with Dr Calm

The big news is, there is no big news just yet. Dr Calm doesn't have the pathology report yet, so she wasn't able to tell us WTF happened with Fishy (that is what we named this one, after the fact).  We did tell her that we didn't want to know the sex, and she made a note of that. Unless it is clear that it was related to Husband's translocation, we'll be looking at ye olde eggs as the culprit.

Also, my darling doctor friend looked up my harebrained Vitamin K theory and said this:

"Vitamin K is a cofactor which allows your liver to make certain blood clotting factors (actually factors that allow you to make blood clots AND ALSO factors that dissolve clot - keeping you in balance). There is no scientific data that I could find that suggests that having too much Vitamin K makes you hypercoaguable (while having too little Vitamin K definitely puts you at risk for bleeding as your body can not make its normal clotting proteins). The amount of clotting factors is highly regulated and no matter how many times over the recommended dose of Vitamin K you take, your liver won't make more clotting factors than you need.

Love again,

Your friendly neighborhood M.D."

And yet another omnipotent "I'm the cause of all bad things" theory bites the dust. It's ok. I wanted less reasons to blame myself.

So back to the visit: I was wanded, and my uterus is clear of clots (unlike last time, when there was one that was allegedly going to come out with my next period, but instead got me a hysteroscopy after an evening of hemorrhaging).  Also, all's quiet on the ovarian front, so I'm thinking we may not see a period until about 6 weeks from the D&C which was on 12/16, somewhere near the end of January.

I have to wait two cycles before I can do anything uterine related, so that is clearly March-ish.

Also, we decided to not go back on the DHEA. She isn't impressed, and I don't need another pill to take.

We talked about Donors in their program, and things of that ilk.

Basically, no matter what the pathology report says, the decision we make will be based on what we think we can bear. 

-If it was Husband's translocation, and my FSH is below 10, can we bear to do 3 more IUI's?

-If it was my egg, can be we bear to say "Well, at 39, the miscarriage rate is 20%, so let's roll the dice?"

-Or do we go to the bank, write the big check and say "Donor Eggs better work or were SOL on the pregnancy front."

We won't be able to put it all together for a few weeks, and in some ways, we'll just need to let it stew. Nothing like time to make things clearer, eh?

As anyone whose been reading this blog for any time knows, I like to stay one step ahead of the current situation.  My preparation for the meeting was to spend a an hour and half absorbing an adoption agency site that a friend directed me to (email me for the name, if you want it). I read over the letters to birth mothers, looked at the pictures, and found myself edging towards a funk.  We are not athletic. We don't come from cookie cutter happy families, we are not Christians, we don't live in a suburb, and we are not obsessed with cleaning products. Ok, the last one was from a profile that sort of freaked me out, the woman asks for cleaning supplies as gifts! I'm at least a little more approachable than that!

Anyhow, I started composing a letter to a birth mother in my head. At first, had more in common with David Sederis's Christmas Letter from the Pierce's, but as I went along, I realized, we are pretty awesome, and if I were a birth mother with a sense of humor, and a wish for an honest couple who loves, respects and LIKES one another, we'd be a shoe in. Try it. Try writing a letter to a birthmother, and you might just find out how awesome you are. 

So, it seems one must say something about 2009.

So here goes:

2009 was truly one of the absolute worst years of my life. It was the year I faced and worked through what it meant to lose this life long dream of easy motherhood, of being genetically related to our children, and the loss of my husband's genetic relationship to our children.  It was one of the Dark Nights of my Soul. And yet...and yet, it has strengthened me in ways I would never have allowed myself to imagine as I was in that cold hellish place. Also, I have made some amazing friends, and I have allowed others to see me at my most vulnerable, not so easy for me.

So, yes, 2009, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. So long and thanks for all the growth. I hope 2010 is less personally...challenging, yes that is the word. 

A new kind of limbo

I don't know if I'm delusional, or dissociated, but I am not as slayed by this miscarriage as I was the last. Either that is good, or that is bad, I can't figure it out.

I know I was more willing to enjoy the moments where I felt happy, and careful to not project myself too far into the future. Maybe that helped, or again, maybe I'm to out of it to feel like I should. Or maybe, this is ok. I wish I knew.

Tomorrow we meet with Dr Calm. Either she will have results from the analysis, or not (or not ever, as it was with Sparky). I really hope she does, we need some sort of way to make a choice about what to do next.

One thing I intermittently obsess about is whether or not my calcium supplement might have killed the baby. I know, sounds crazy,but it had 500% of the vitamin K the of the RDA, and I have a minor clotting issue (one copy of MTFR gene) and vitamin K 'helps' with clotting. Ultimatly, unless Dr C comes back with "baby was fine, but we found huge blood clots" it's probably just another way for me to try to have some sense of control in this situation. I also feel like an ass for not reading the bottle. I never would have taken it if I looked at it, but alas I didn't. Shit. Ya know?

Husband and I don't want to know the sex of the baby--I guess it would make it too real for both of us. Maybe not letting him/her be real is our defense against being totally slayed by this.

We are looking at two donors. One has had 3 great cycles with varying numbers of embryos to freeze, and all cycles have resulted in babies (twins and singletons) and the other has 3 cycles, a 4th is under way, but even though she's had live births with all of the cycles, only one of the cycles has resulted in frozen embryos. Somehow to me this just doesn't seem good. Sure it could be a sperm issue--but all three? Ok, maybe couples with sperm issues are drawn to her...

Warning:Petty Details Mentioned that Make us look Shallow.

The choice seems clear based on previous cycle data, but there is an appearance issue--the donor's mother has olive skin, and Husband and I are fair (although he's got dark hair), and oddly enough we are worried about the child feeling as if they fit with us, if the they do have the olive skin. He told me about a former work co-worker of his whose parents both had fair skin, she had olive skin, and throughout her life people commented on it. Since we are able to choose, should we choose an option that doesn't create more attention? And then I think, no matter what, we can't choose what is going to happen, how the genes will combine.

Ultimatly, I just like the donor with FE's better--since it's all fantasy anyway, I have a sense of her as sweet, well our doctor said she was a sweet person, so maybe that is in there, but I 'like' her.

Also, as I said in my last post, we may find out that my husband actually got me pregnant through the usual means, and scientifically speaking, trying with my eggs isn't a crazy idea.

For us, the question is what can we stand. Can we stand to try with my eggs and withstand the terror through the amnio? Or do we need to stop this madness, spend all our moula on DE and just get on with it.

At this point, I don't want a baby from my eggs more than I want the DE baby. I just want a baby. I want to get on with the loving and growing and being a mother part of this mishigas.  I am very good at being infertile. One more miscarriage and I earn my "Habitual Aborter" badge (sorry, gallows humor).

So the new kind of limbo is about not being a mess, not being sure, but just being here all over again. I also feel absurdly hopeful. Why? I have no idea. I guess the dividend of all this loss and growth is that I can more quickly dispense with the sense of humiliation and shame that accompanies these reproductive failures.

I talked to an old friend that just adopted, and she pointed me towards her adoption agency which looks great. It works with singles, same sex couples and us types (I won't work with one that doesn't), and has a very approachable website. Also, I think I could write a statement now--We rock, give us your baby. Sounds about right, eh?

I also had a bit of a spiritual epiphany on while listening to Fresh Air on Dec 23. Greg Epstein, a Jewish Humanist Rabbi, has a new book called "Good without God" and here is what he said about death and loss, which really resonated with me, and what I have come to feel more clearly over these last 3 years:

"Mr. EPSTEIN: And if you think God is mystery, well mystery is not a great source of comfort in the face of death. You know, at least I didn't find the mystery to be all that comforting when my father died or when I lost other loved ones and what I was really wanting was not, you know, the presence of a mystery but the presence of people to love me and care for me. And that's what I try to offer in the face of death to the members of my own community, is the sense that, look, there is no justification for the tragedies that happen. There is no good reason that we could ever come up with for why the Holocaust happened, for why innocent children are ripped away from us every single day, every minute.

There's nothing that one could say that would say, oh, this makes it better. Or there - you'll be rewarded in haven. No, it's not sufficient. And what, to me, the only thing that we can say is that we care, we love, we acknowledge. Death is real. It's final. It takes tremendous, tremendous courage to cope with. And we have to love one another because that's what we get. We get this world, this one shot."

I know for many of you God and Jesus are a great comfort, for me, it has never felt real. The closest I could get was the Jesus was one really smart guy who was very right about a lot of things, but I don't find comfort in God or Jesus. For me, I find comfort in the love of my community that acknowledges and helps me to bear my pain and loss, and in helping others to bear their pain and loss. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart, each and every one of you who has shared my pain, buoyed me with your humor, your anger on my behalf, and your gentleness with my heart and losses. I could not have gotten to this new kind of limbo with out you, and I am profoundly grateful.

A little time by the ocean

Husband and I are taking a financially ill advised, but emotionally well advised, 2 day trip to the coast. Ahhh.

Hot tub, vodka, books, naps. Just what the doctor ordered.

Christmas was rough, but oddly, as determined as I was to avoid my two month old great nephew (I know! CRAZY!), he was in a horrific crying jag and was not being soothed, so I sent Husband out to see if he could take a turn with the 4 S's. Worked like a charm, and when the two S's he was using wore off, I added swaddle, and put the little nipper to sleep. Yes indeed, I have mad skillz when it comes to baby wrangling. Must get own baby to use them on though!

Thank you again and again and again for all of the love and support. I'm feeling intermittently crappy, but there are lots of nice moments in between.

Happy New Year!

A couple of really nice things that happened yesterday

1. I got my "For Your Tears" handkerchief from Debbie Pucci, which of course, made me cry.

2. My sweetest co-worker, got my note about the miscarriage, walked up to me in the hallway and gave the longest, sweetest hug. Somehow that hug really reached me in a way that not much else has in the last week.

3. When I saw my chiropractor, who is also such a dear dear person, I told her about some of the digestive issues I was having since the miscarriage, which can absolutely be attributed to hormones, but also, to what she called the "Grief and Loss Diet." Which relies on a lot of cookies. Somehow calling it that made me smile, and also let me put a frame around it which makes it feel like I can set it aside after the new year.

4. We made reservations for sat and sun after xmas at a cabin overlooking the ocean--and we need some ocean right about now.

5. My kitten plays fetch, and presents her toy to be thrown. She might be a dog.

Surfacing, bobbing, gasping, blathering.

Friday was awful. It was that horrific crashing day when the progesterone really starts to plummet and your whole life flashes in front of your eyes while you wear 3D "your life is crap" glasses. Yeah, that good.

I raged at my therapist for telling me, earlier in the week, that I needed to rebuild my trust in my body, to which I politely replied, "Not until I have some reason to!"  I also said fuck a lot. A lot.  I said mean things about my 22 year old nice who just had her second child with her sort of boyfriend, who she allegedly doesn't like, and her  main goal in life to get tattoos and piercings. Oh, and don't even let me get started on the fact that she never even sent a thank you (even a verbal one through my mom who was at the baby shower) or a written note for the $100 Wal-Mart gift card I gave her--ya know, the place she buys her formula and diapers. For the moment, she can just suck it. Yeah. I'm feeling really nice.

Also, if you are my friend IRL, I can't imagine you will be able to take this any other way than to be hurt, but it is really painful for me to open your holiday cards. Please keep sending them, in the part of me that isn't burned into a little black cinder, it is nice to see how your children have grown, but the rest of me just weeps. Weeps at the sight of all of that adorable abundant child-ness.  If we don't have a baby by next year, I'm seriously considering sending a picture of our cats. I know I could just not look at them, but I want to. I want to be normal and happy, and enjoy other peoples happiness, but when you are coming off a miscarriage, or a failed IVF, it's just a little hard to be rational.

So back to Friday. I feel, and especially that day felt, like a colossal failure. My work, my business, my reproductive organs, my everything.  I just had no place in me that felt good at all. Ok, that isn't completely true, my husband, my marriage and my cats were exempt from that shit storm.

The reason I most likely miscarried is a chromosomal abnormality. It's the most common reason for a woman my age. Furthermore, husband and I thought I'd be ovulating a little later in my cycle than I did, and we were, shall we say, injudicious with our timing. So there is a possibility that for once, at the ripe old age of 39, I actually might have gotten pregnant by having sex with my husband. Hopefully the baby wasn't too far gone, like last time, and they'll be able to culture some of the cells. It would be good to know if it was the translocation, or just old eggs. No matter what the reason is, we still lost our baby, and choosing what to do next is daunting. If it was the translocation, do we take another whack at donor sperm and my eggs? If it wasn't do we chalk it up to regular 39 year old miscarriage (oy) risk, and try donor sperm, or do we just throw in the towel and go for DE.

Sprogblogger, proceed with caution...

AND THEN...what if that doesn't work. It doesn't work for 20% of people. Yes, I am allowed to think about that. We have been on the wrong side of every fucking statistic we've come up against, why should this be different. We can't afford to do shared risk--it's 31K plus meds, plus donor compensation. Yeah, we'd need a serious cash infusion to make that seem even reasonable. So when I said in my last post that DE was the bottom of the financial and emotional barrel, I didn't mean that we didn't value it, or even feel like it was our best bet, it's just that it's our last chance at pregnancy, and anytime "last" is in the equation, it takes on enormous weight. Of course, after we rob a few banks we could do adoption (even county adoption costs money--they don't just give those babies away).  Yes, I am feeling a little angry and bitter.

Yesterday was better, I did the laundry, I made some very thick bean soup, I baked some bread, and caught up on some movies and TV shows, attend at all times by at least 2 of my three cats.  Little furry bundles of love.  Many multi cat households struggle with the relationships between the kitties, but our kitties are very compatible. We have two boys and a girl. The girl kitty is 6 months old and so cuddly and playful. There are times when Husband and I just marvel at how lucky we got with this little one.

Today I am determined to get a tree. Part of my funk on Friday also feeling like I didn't have the energy to do it for us any more. Husband major holiday tradition involves Chinese food, not too hard to honor. Over the last three years I've tried to set the stage for welcoming a child into our home, I've made some stabs at holiday traditions, but they all get squashed under the weight of all of this fucking loss.  So, today I going to drag him away from his desk, where he sits to make the all important money for all this fruitless baby making mishigas, and try to have something resembling a good day.

And I'll probably cry some more. But oddly not for the baby itself, the way I did for Sparky, who seemed so real, so inevitable, but for all the faith I've lost; for all the time that has passed; for all of the fear I have about all of the next steps; and most of all, my fear that I'll never recover. That even if we do finally get our child, I'll always be this broken, sad shell of a mother.

Thank You

Thank you so much, each and every one of you who has commented, sometimes twice, to let us know that you are with us in our pain and loss.

I am numb. I may be angry, but I'm not quite sure who or what I'm angry with. I can't cry. I cried more on Monday than I have Tuesday and Wednesday combined.  I just feel shut down.

At this point what I am most sure of is that I am weary, and that husband is weary. We hardly let down our guard through the whole 7 weeks--each of us was waiting for a bad thing to happen, and when it did, it felt as if the inevitable had come to pass. Of course, that's hindsight, but still, we are so battle weary it is hard to really believe that pregnant means baby.

We are at a crossroads. Hopefully we'll have the genetic results in two weeks, hopefully there are some results to be had. The last time it was too late and nothing could be learned from the culture.

We are looking for the money tree, wishing that doing DE didn't mean scraping so close to the bottom of both our emotional and financial reserves.

Thank you again for all of your support--it means the world to us.

No heartbeat

The baby died sometime last week. D&C tomorrow. Heartbroken and numb.