Thanks for all the support on Tuesday. My smart therapist pointed out that 'losing' a donor is yet another miscarriage. That helped me so much. I was actually not too much of a wreck Wed through Friday. Husband and I had a good talk, and then I decided to start 'looking around'. The big outside donor sources didn't really have any donors I was drawn to, so I looked at a smaller, sort of 'corner store' agency, and found that they are less expensive, and I found a donor who looks a bit like me, is 23, has done a previous cycle, and the cycle resulted in a pregnancy. The not so good thing was that she had 15 follicles, but only 4 mature eggs, all of which became embryos (two transferred, two frozen, day three). The woman from the agency said that the doctor said he would use a different protocol next time. She also said another donor had a similar cycle with that doctor, and then went to a, and I quote "better" doctor, and had much better cycles. So, the agency has sent the records they have, and the donor is going to request her actual records from the other clinic and our doctor will review them. I hope hope hope that we don't have the same effect on this donor of focusing our attention on her and then Blamo! someone else is willing to move faster, and were ass-out again.
I have tried and tried to want to use the one donor at our clinic who is left. But when I look at her, I just don't feel drawn to her. Of course, using an outside donor is more expensive, so yesterday I went and asked my father for money. He has it to lend, and understands why we need it, and in the grand scheme of things, it is a small amount of money. But to me, it felt like a defeat. I can't even get pregnant without my parents help. Yes rationally this is silly, but I am one of those people who feel things on a very symbolic level. It feels like a failure of generativity. And yes, I know it is just money, and this is what family's do for each other, but still. To at least be able to pay for making your own child seems like not much to ask for. I have accepted that I will not make love to my husband and get pregnant, I have accepted that I will not get pregnant using IVF, I have accepted (sort of, more in a minute) that I need donor eggs to get pregnant. But to need money from them feels like a failure of this private act of making a child. It is odd, I have been able to handle having all these doctors and nurses and various other medical people in this experience with me, but somehow, involving my parents feels like a loss of autonomy. I feel humiliated. Utterly humiliated. To be clear, my father was nothing by kind and generous. But for me, it was a ding this piece of adulthood.
A friend a year younger than me posted an elliptical message on Facebook and asked people to guess, I guessed engaged, and someone else guessed pregnant. Turns out both are true. I didn't guess pregnant for a lot of obvious reasons, but also because she has always been ambivalent abut having children, I guess that's shifted. I'm feeling a new wave of disbelief that this is what is real, this is what is happening. I am not going to use my eggs ever again. It makes absolute sense in every direction to go to donor eggs, and frankly we can't afford to take any more time with my eggs, but it just seems impossible. Impossible that my eggs are this bad. I just can't figure out why I can't accept it. There is a loud screamy part of me that says "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are fine, this is crazy!" And then the part of me that can look at the evidence and say "Its time to move on" Sort of like a relationship that is bad, but not awful, and you think "I could stay, I could go, is it better out there? Worse?"
I think that borrowing money from my parents also makes this seem final. This is it; it has to work. If it doesn't work, it will take time to gather up the resources to do the next thing, and we are getting older and older. My husband will be 40 in June and I'll be 40 in October. How the fuck did that happen? How did we end up here with no money left , and no baby and looking down the barrel into this gun? It's sort of like when something bad happens, and there is a part of your brain that just wants to rewind and start over, and make it so that everything that just happened, never happened. For the most part I can stay in the present (not the moment, just 2010), but other times I feel like I'm reeling back 4 years and trying to find that juncture that would have taken us on a different path.
And then, I feel selfish and awful. My beautiful, smart, wonderful unique husband doesn't get to play this game the way I do. Sure, maybe someone else could have gotten pregnant with his translocation, maybe my eggs are just too fucked up, and someone else's would have done it, but no matter what, the likelihood that he would have had genetic offspring is low. And here I am wingeing because I don't get any more chances.
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In other news, I'm thinking of taking on a work project that will probably help me make some more money, but will also be a bit of a commute, and if I do get pregnant, I might not be in the best shape to do it, but for 3 years I've done as little as possible because I might be pregnant next month, and that has gotten me a whole lotta nowhere in my career. In Sept I took on another project and have made wonderful connection that will probably serve my personal life and my career very well for years to come. And I did that because I was tired of sitting on the sidelines waiting to be pregnant.
My back is getting a bit better, but it's still quite a mess. I've been taking a lot of Motrin, and it is helping with the inflammation. I'm hoping I can go to a Pilates Reformer class next week. It's within our finical constraints (unlike working one on one with a trainer), and it is the only exercise I feel safe doing, and it works for my back and my looks. I haven't had a bad fibromyalgia flare up like this in a few years, and good lord, I had forgotten how exhausting it is to be in constant pain. The Motrin is really helping with the inflammation, as is using my pelvic floor muscles to stabilize my spine when I turn over in bed. Yup, I have to wake up slightly to turn over or I'll hurt myself. No matter what else happens, I can get a steroid injection in my spine if needed. I did one 8 years ago and it changed my life. It's my escape valve thought, and safe to do when you are pregnant.