Moving Forward

My m/c was three weeks ago today, and I am finding it easier to find joy in the daily things I used to, before this cycle began. I am celebrating the tiny things, like being able to exercise, have sex, not obsess about how an embryo is doing in or out of me every second, how each day is less and less a struggle to fit into my regular pants. I am also able to celebrate the infinitely great things, like playing with my kids, reading them books, snuggling with them. I cry a little bit when I admit to myself how hard these past months have been. And cry a lot when I think of what I have lost. But what I still have is admittedly so good, and it keeps me moving forward.

The end is near, but still so far away

It is November 1st.  Fall is typically my favorite season, but not this year.  

This year, I was surviving another round of IVF.  A frozen embryo transfer to be exact. I had so much strange anxiety as the summer began to wind down.  Typically I rejoice as temperatures drop, and kids go back to school, and pumpkins start appearing, but this year, those things held no joy, just mild distraction.  

My slump began at the end of July.  I had embraced the conclusion that surrogacy was not for me.  I had jumped into it naively thinking that outsourcing the pregnancy would also outsource all my grief and emotions about infertility.  The hoops I've jumped through, the failures, the tears.  Of course, through the break-up with Rachel, I learned that adding another woman to the mix multiplied everything about the experience.  I was only counting the multiplied joy, not the multiplied heartache.  

The disaster of the breakup emboldened me that I was in fact cut out for going one last round.  At the time the surrogacy contract was underway, I'd decided to pay the $4000 to have our 5 embryos genetically tested.  Two came back with multiple chromosome abnormalities that would have resulted in miscarriage.  Three were genetically sound.  Of the three, two were female and one was male.  In spite of caring deeply about my embryos, I fight to not turn them into my children.  It compounds the failures and in my mind, turns them into deaths.  I anticipated that knowing their sex would again, overly personalize and humanize the embryos, and it has. 

Doctor Faulk, who is avidly pro-life, and understands we are too, told me I needed to know that these are not humans.  They are simply cells, with potential, under perfect circumstances to become more, some of the time.  He gave me an irritating pep talk as I sat crying and broken across from him, that I could not let THIS, infertility, break me, because life had a lot more that was both hard and great ahead.  I tell myself this all the time, so it wasn't what I wanted to hear, but perhaps I needed a reminder from a third party.  He is right.  He is right. But that has never made applying the advice easy. 

I had my water ultrasound at the end of July, started my calendar, with injections beginning at the end of August and a transfer on September 21st.  We decided through the counsel of Dr. Faulk to do the "full kitchen sink" protocol that had magically resulted in Weyland.  This included the additions of daily injections of heparin, an ingestable daily steroid, and intralipid IV injections a week prior to, and after the transfer, as well as monthly until the 20th week.  We also threw in the Neupogen wash, that I have used since I have began my "success" of at least having chemical pregnancies, on the path to Weyland.  Some implantation is better than no implantation in my book, and there has been correlation between the wash and at least making it to chemical pregnancies.  With Weyland, I also insisted on duplicating the "Thrive" study by injecting subcutaneous Neupogen daily to 9 weeks.  I had had a failed fresh, single embryo transfer when I participated in the study in January-ish of 2014 (it was a free round of IVF!) but I stimmed very poorly, and still don't know if I was given the drug or the placebo.  Replicating that study was very expensive, at an additional $6000ish for nine weeks worth of drugs, and ultimately the study was cancelled due to poor response among trial participants.  In light of all that, the clinic recommended I not do that, and I decided to risk leaving that out.  

This was an incredibly difficult cycle for me.  We had decided to do a single embryo transplant of a female, leaving two in case I failed this cycle and decided that we were game for a surrogate for our very last round ever.  Part of me was sick that THIS couldn't be our last.  In many ways, I was hoping that more of the embryos had been chromosomally incompetent.  The thought of dealing with the two remaining embryos even with a happy pregnancy on this one, was not an optimal outcome for me.  It just meant prolonging my torture.  I have repeated many many times over the last few months, "I want to be done with this chapter of my life as much or more than I want another baby."

This FET worked, but my betas, though doubling as they should, were mysteriously low.  So I agonizingly tried to distract myself in between the every four day blood checks I had for the three weeks AFTER the harrowing ten day wait.   Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  The days ticked by in slow motion.  I have never felt so much grief and stress and dread.  Finally my seven week ultrasound came.  I went to it alone, and as the doctor found the black hole of the sac, I knew before she said anything that there was no heartbeat.  There wasn't anything.  I had a blighted ovum on a PGS embryo, which I thought should have been impossible.  The embryonic sac had formed and grown, but the genes inside, which we know were there, vanished. 

I hate to lose my composure in front of the staff.  They don't like the sad news either, and I want to make it to my car to cry as I need to, in privacy as I need to, but that sad black hole, where a flicker of a heartbeat should have been was too much to take.  I had been through hell.  For nothing.

I cried as we both tried to talk science and "what to do next".  Anne Marie Martin had been my nurse practitioner since I moved to Utah Fertility Center on my second try, back in 2008 or 2009, so she knows me well, and knows what I've been through.  I could tell she was really upset too.  There were actually two sacs, fused together, with a line down the middle, but this wasn't a fetal pole.  She didn't have answers for what this was, and said she had only seen it once or twice in her career.  I asked her is there was ANY chance a heartbeat would exist if we checked back in a week.  She shook her head to say "never" without having to say it out loud.  We discussed my options for miscarrying and I left the office with a prescription for Cytotec in my hand. 

This was Thursday October 20th, and I was flying to California with Lowell and the kids on Saturday for a Quickbooks convention.  I didn't have time to have a D&C, would have to pay for it out of pocket anyway, and didn't want the unknown of miscarrying at the convention.  I had my own prescription filled as I wandered, despondent, around Target.

I had miscarried at this stage before, but done so naturally, so I was scared of the meds and googled to know what to expect.  I set up a station in our hall bathroom with food and drinks and pillows and towels, and changes of clothes, and sad tupperwares to hold my miscarried baby that never was.  It was an impressive set up, and didn't even need to be fully utilized.  I took the pills vaginally at six pm, and began bleeding around ten.  I passed about five large strips of tissue, but none that resembled anything like the alien spawn that was my miscarried seven week fetus of the previous miscarriage.  I caught a few samples that are frozen in my freezer alongside some popsicles.  The pains were like labor in intensity, but I've never had the pleasure of taking as much hydrocodone as I could during real labor, and on this go around I didn't even try to hold back.  My only limiter was how much pain medication my stomach could tolerate.  It felt good to not feel.  It was a welcome break.

Here I am, two days shy of two weeks from the doomsday ultrasound.  Today I am grieving, but it feels as healthy as sickening sorrow can.  I am watching the 20 pounds I gained in water and snacks slowly slide off.  I am allowed to exercise again, and enjoying it.  Last Friday I woke up feeling strong and happy for the first time in months.  I had returned to being me, at long last.  I think the extreme stress and duress I felt in this cycle, coupled with the sledgehammer of hormones combined to create a similar situation to post-partum depression.  

Now I am waiting for my beta HCG to return to zero so I can start my next, and final cycle.  It was 3500 or so at my last test before the ultrasound, which in my gut I knew was foreboding, and yet when I expressed my concern, I was met with hopeful platitudes and assurances, by Tanya, my plan of care nurse who has also been through the weeds with me.  As of last Friday, I was down to 141.  Still a long way to zero, and I am now only spotting each day, but each spot, I hope, is getting me closer to zero.  My goal is to know whether I am pregnant by year end.  One, because I need to sign up for health insurance again, and pregnancy vs. no pregnancy is a huge factor in what type of insurance I need.  Secondly, and most important is that I would love to be done.  forever.  with the pain of infertility treatments.  I just had my 12 year anniversary of trying to conceive, and every part of me is aching to retire.  

I don't talk much about my sons here.  This is the repository for my pain, not the place where I count my joy.  But make no mistake, there is so much joy in my days because of those two boys.  I have already won the infertility war.  I am ready to exit the battle field, and start living life free from this hell of trying to create humans, and just focus my time and effort and money and heart on the two I have.  I am ready for the hard and the great lies ahead with the family I have today.

New Year. New IVF. New Mood.

I really wish I had kept up on the events of the past year as a lot happened.  Technically, most were bad.  But I also wish I had kept a journal of the small miracles that kept me going during this dog of an infertile year.

For the record my son is now 2 years and 4 month old.  We've been starry-eyed for baby number two since taking home the first from the hospital.  It was a dream come true, and I secretly bought into the common notion that having a baby cures infertility.  I have seen it happen to so many: Once the first baby/hurdle is overcome, siblings will follow.  Nature and universe will it to be so.  Perhaps the universe and I are on two different schedules.  Or more likely, I am still just a mule.

For the record, since my son was 10 months old I have endured the following:

August 2012.  FET. 2 embryos.  1 didn't survive the thaw.  Other didn't take.  Failure.

November 2012.  New shared risk contract.  Awesome stim, awesome embryos.  4 frozen. 2 Transferred.  Tiny, confusing chemical pregnancy, beta at a 7 for days. Failure.

Husband lost his horrible job.  I went back to work.  It was really difficult to switch roles and begin work right at the beginning of busy season. However our life has been better since he lost that horrible job.

January 2013.  Frozen embryo transfer.  2 thawed. 2 transferred.  PREGNANT.  Awesome betas.  Then weird betas.  Then no heartbeat at six weeks.  Check again at 7 weeks.  Still no heartbeat. Confirm on March 15th, an enormous tax deadline, on a 15 hour stress filled workday interfacing with a whiny client, that I have indeed miscarried.  I smiled and acted kind and professional to clients and coworkers that whole day with only one hour long break to sob silently in the public bathroom and dry out my wrecked face.  I would never want to relive the two weeks of hell I endured in limbo wondering if I had a live or dead baby in me.  But whenever I feel doubt as to my ability to survive hard things I remember that day.  I am strong.  And as future horrible events came to pass and I felt like I might lie down and die, I eventually remembered that day, remembered that I am the strongest person I know.  

A D&C would have been lovely, but I decided I couldn't afford the luxury of a day off work.  I would have chosen differently if I'd known that I would still be chronically nauseated even with a dead baby.  It was the bitterest of pills.  Nauseated to my fingernails 24 hours a day on a 70 hour work week.  I miscarried exactly a week later.  My sister coached me through what it would be like, and I planned to head home when the bad cramps and bleeding started.  Sitting at my desk my cramps were their very awful, but totally normal level, and I remember groaning in my head "if my cramps are this bad I hate to think what the miscarriage will feel like".  Then I stood up to go to the printer, and my baby fell out into the Depend I had been wearing "just in case".  Shocked, I walked to the bathroom, pulled out the Tupperware I had hidden in my purse to capture the baby for testing, dumped it into the container, stared at it for a really long, wide-eyed while, hid it in my purse and then went back to my desk to turn off my computer and leave.  It is VERY noticeable to leave work at 2pm in busy season.  I told a manager "I am going home because I am sick" and by the time I reached the word sick I was shaking.  My voice and body.  I told her I had a miscarriage sitting here at work and couldn't work another minute.  To her credit she covered for me professionally and kept it completely confidential.  She was the last person I wanted to tell, but in that moment I realized the ridiculousness of stressing about work to extent that I had gone NASA style for a week, and had miscarriage remains hanging out in my purse like leftover lunch.  

 Because this was technically a second miscarriage my doctor talked me into the full panel of genetic testing on me, Lowell and the fetus.  This $4000 testing would cover every scientifically known reason as to why this was happening.  Apparently very few people are as desperate as we are, so no one at my infertility clinic seemed to know what to do with the baby.  It was a horrible circus getting them to accept my Tupperware.  It took over two months to get the results back.  I tested negative for everything of consequence.  My doctor told me that I was in the fraction of the fraction of people who truly have a problem that science can't even test yet.  Yay.  

August 2013.  Another fresh IVF.  Surprisingly poor stimulation.  I have always been a rockstar at this part, and they thought they might even have to cancel the cycle.  They put me on the max follistim dosage allowed.  The "old lady" dosage.  This was depressing and brought about new anxiety, but in the end I had one great and one medium embryo to transfer.  PREGNANT.  But low Betas.  Spent another tortured week with young nurses telling me I should be hopeful, as I waited to hear what I knew to be more failure.  Finally on September 15th I found out that I had again miscarried.  This one was so early that I just had a normal sad period.  

At this point I have two frozen embryos and one more fresh and one more frozen attempts on my contract.  I am so emotionally wrecked and depleted even thinking about going through the torture of another round I cry at the very thought.  Technically I am supposed to use my frozens next, but it doesn't seem right to put my "children" in my poisoned body.  I decide to forgo my free frozen, and go directly to my last fresh round.  My last IVF ever. Thinking about the fact of this being the last is both simultaneously the most heavy and most relieving concept I've ever grappled with and my poor mind can't handle it.  My losses have accumulated.  I am disturbingly happy and functional in my day to day life, but just under the surface is pain so intense it scares me.  The doctor suspects that my endometriosis  is why the last stim went bust so I have the choice of a laparoscopy, or three months of Lupron injections.  I chose the Lupron.  I have started the drugs for my January 2014 round.  

As I retype I get lost in the awful parts, and I forget that I meant to document the lessons of this terrible time in my life.

I would have thought that I would be feeling the love during all of this struggle, but from my standpoint, God was noticeably absent this year.  That compounded my pain, and I frequently asked Lowell whether my past conviction that my life is easier because of my testimony in Jesus Christ was actually wrong.  I didn't question my testimony, I was just experiencing so much pain that had no relief, had prayed so hard, been so disappointed and was not feeling any help or love at all.  So in essence, I believed I had a loving Heavenly Father, I just was broken hearted that he was not loving me.  

It would be hard to pick which event hurt the most, but it may have been our August 2012 FET.  It was the most positive and hopeful I had ever been and when I unceremoniously picked up the beta from the hospital and saw it was zero my heart felt turned inside out.  Driving home crying and shaking my fist & yelling at God with baby Vincent happy in the backseat I was overwhelmed by rage and pain and decided I needed some radio to distract my thoughts.  Some lame pop song about sex or gansta rap was what I had in mind.  Instead I turned it to the sweetest, albeit weirdest song ever, Fireflies by owl city.  I love that song, but in this moment I was disgusted at my "luck".  I thought in my head how I loved fireflies in Texas, and how happy they made me.  How I don't have fireflies anymore, but I guess I have dragonflies and I do love those.  *Note that these are just the weird stream of thoughts that aren't significant at all, normally.  Quickly I found some gross sex song, felt marginally distracted, drove home and went about my life.  That evening I looked out the window and noticed about 20 dragonflies in the frontyard.  The backyard could have had 100.  Flying in beautiful squares.  I called Lowell out to witness them.  He loves them too and we stood there in amazement.  They were enormous and beautiful.  They were flying so deliberately, yet calmly and were so close I could see their patterns and colors as they passed.  It was other worldly.  Lowell loved the show and new it was a special gift from nature that probably would never be repeated.  But I knew it was so much more.  I knew my Heavenly Father saw me beating my fist in the air, heard me cursing him.  He heard my thoughts about fireflies and needed me to know that he was with me on one of the lowest days of my life.  I know.  

Unfortunately, as the dark events continued, that wonderful event served not to buoy me up, but to make me question even more.  "Why did You show me love in what to me was such a personal and undeniable way, yet continue to allow me to destroy my heart time after time after time?"  Having babies is a commandment!  It is a GOOD thing.  I am not asking for anything selfish or unnecessary.  I am not ungrateful for what I have.  Further, I would quit all this madness this very moment if I felt it were right to adopt.  That would be wonderful.  I am not being stubborn!  I will do what you want, when you want.  I consult with you every time I do this.  And I feel I get a "go-ahead" each time.   I just feel this major conviction that I need to go to the end of the infertility universe to make this next baby if that is what it takes.  But it is taking everything I've got.  In more ways than a person can imagine.  I know You know this.  So why the torture?  

As previously mentioned, I became fascinated and scared by how much I could function and even feel joy and fun despite the pain.  In the summer I had a 

Pain/Joy

This grief feels like it weighs 300 lbs.  And all of it is on my chest and shoulders. And heart.  So I am writing in the attempt to, almost literally, get some things off my chest.

I am back at the ugly place I haven't been in so long.  Where I am in so much pain, and so heartbroken and feel so much loss, that it is taking everything to just function normally.  I am back at the gross place of fearing that my sister is going to announce her pregnancy any minute now.  The announcement I was looking forward to just last week, because it would mean we would be expecting babies right around the same time again.  I hate when my pain threatens to stamp out my real joy.  

I experienced this duality of pain/joy after I had Vincent and was trying (and failing) for Weyland.  I discovered that joy does not vanquish sadness like people say.  You just learn to live and hopefully function with a divided heart.  Your eyes are opened to the fact that many people function this way, and it might in fact be more common than uncommon.  And the mysterious human heart becomes even more miraculous. It made me look at every person in the grocery store line differently.  Did they have a heavy heart too?  Were they dealing with extreme heart break while simultaneously out of milk?  It made me look at people who appear genuinely happy too.  Were they experiencing real joy while simultaneously mourning loss?  It gave me a greater appreciation for the human condition.  It helped me internalize those snippets you hear about being kind to everyone because you never know what they are really dealing with.  I'm tempted to call pain/joy duality "faking it til you make it" but there is nothing fake or counterfeit about the happiness and good parts of life that continue (thankfully) in tandem with the sorrow.  

I have a favorite family photo of me, Lowell and Vincent.  It floors me when I remember exactly how truly happy I was in that moment, and in my life at that time.  I also marvel at the picture because I remember perfectly what intense pain and sadness I was going through as well.    It was my first experience with pain/joy, and I remember that even though it was shocking to learn that joy doesn't eliminate pain, it was equally shocking to discover that the pain could not rob the joy. Not one bit. They were arch enemy superpowers doing their equal and opposite things, side by side in my heart, but not ever squaring off against one another.  Like they've known forever that they have to coexist, and it was me who had to quit expecting them to compete.  

So many days in the years since that picture was taken, I've glanced at it, and had the flood of thoughts above, and then realized I had in fact passed through those difficult days. I had made it. I was not "faking it" I was simply "making it until I could take it"  I'd learned a new lesson about life and came out the other side, not stronger,but feeling like I'd gained insider knowledge about the human heart.  I know, and don't want to forget, that joy always has a place in mine.

A Breakup

Long story short: I decided a gestational carrier was the new best move for me, and I found a wonderful person to carry my babies.

Gestational carrying felt like such a dramatic solution to my problem, perhaps overdramatic, and yet I felt like it was the best path to navigating my infertility Bermuda Triangle.  The three points of the triangle being: 1. The moral obligation I feel to give my embryos their best fighting chance at life.  2. Money  3.  The emotional cost of doing anything (including the emotional cost of doing nothing. Inaction is as much a burden as action, and Lowell doesn't understand that completely.)

Sad story short:  Me and the wonderful carrier broke up this weekend.  We had had an amazing first date.  We had both said how much we liked each other.  We were both giddy about the relationship.  We were both looking forward to the transfer in September.  And then she decided it was best for her young family that she not risk a twin pregnancy by transferring two embryos.  And I decided it was best for my family that I need someone to be willing to risk a twin pregnancy and implant two embryos.  And there you have it.  An impossible impasse.  And a very sad break up.

Someone posted a wise but cliche thing that went something like "If you would regret worrying about what you are worrying about if you died tomorrow, you should let go of it today."  Word.  But after some self assessment, this isn't something that I can let go of.  It is something that I will have to mourn.  And historically, my mourning has been allowing myself to get on the yacht chartered to Who Knows Where, with a path through the Bermuda Triangle.  You hope you land somewhere nice.  But the ride is out of your control, and sometimes you wonder and hope you won't die getting to the destination.

The Stroller

Well first, my calendar appointment went off without a hitch or a tear.  I did so well.  It was almost just an ordinary day.  As the nurse took my blood she said "You must be so numb after going through all this."  I replied.  "Yes, numb days are the good days.  I like numb".

Last year, as I embarked on my first FET after having my son I found a great deal on my dream stroller.  The Britax B Ready double stroller with 15 different configurations.  I thought it was a great idea because it was perfect for twins, or for babies 2ish years apart like mine would be.  So I was covered no matter the outcome - except for the outcome that actually happened.  The stroller ended up up sitting in its box collecting dust in my spare bedroom, the one that had been where my twins would reside.  So unused stroller, sitting in empty bedroom for a year, and still not even a pregnancy in sight.  Every time I walked in that room I'd see the stroller in the corner.  I'd give it the slit eyes and walk out.

For my own emotional health I decided to sell the stroller to my sister who is having a baby in just a few weeks.  (Days apart from one of my prospective due dates.)  She had had a miscarriage with her first pregnancy which was really, really sad.  It was a blighted ovum and she was nearly three months along when she finally started bleeding.  She called me in the middle of the night from the ER.  The ER doctor had done an ultrasound and found nothing.  NOTHING, and began to treat her as though she were crazy.  They insinuated that perhaps she had imagined she was pregnant.  She said "No, I was just with the OB last week.  Call him."  Upon confirming she really did have a whopping amount of HCG in her urine they were incredibly apologetic.  (Morale of of the story - same as I have always preached - regular doctors know NOTHING about pregnancy, OBs know NOTHING about infertility.  Beware.) 

My sister does hair, so I got a couple years of cuts and colors out of the stroller swap.  So no babies yet, but my hair is lookin good.

Will Seven Be My Lucky Number?

I am headed in to have a water ultrasound and receive my calendar for my 5th fresh IVF today (plus two FETs = 7).

I began my subconscious, yet ritualistic reading of fertility blogs yesterday, the re-hashing of past woes, and my assessment of both my mental state and outcome probabilities. 

All of this mental preparation is in hopes of having a smoother ride each time I do a round.  The reading (crying) over blogs yesterday was in hopes of getting the sadness out of my system prior to my calendar meeting.  I've had epic weep-fests in front of the nurse at the last two. At the others  I at least made it into the car before catastrophic meltdown commenced.   Strangely, these meetings (which often don't even involve shots or medical evaluations) are the toughest I face in each cycle.  There comes a point each time as I  contemplate my new calendar where the grief surges up from my stomach to my throat and nearly chokes me - I am not being metaphorical here.  This really happens.  I think my body physically attempts to vomit out the pain.

This appointment is the hardest because I am acutely reminded of how terrible this really is, and as I sit in a shell-shocked state the little voice inside me screams "Why are you doing this again!"

I'll have to mentally rattle off as many answers as I can to that question over the next few hours.  For now, the quick answer is I am hoping seven will be my lucky number.

ramblings about faith

This is not some lovely, well thought out post.  Just the ramblings of someone with a brain full of unfinished thoughts.   I am naturally a very spiritual person and that colors the way I look at life and my experiences.  I love to pray and am so grateful I have that outlet to express my daily joys, happiness, sadness, frustrations, really almost anything.  Something that is becoming a deeper mystery to me as life goes on is faith.  How does it really work?  I believe that real faith is a belief in something bigger and grander than yourself that serves as an anchor in life.  For me, I believe in God and Jesus.  I love them, and have had some sweet experiences that have convinced me that they love me, and I have had even better experiences that have convinced me of how much they love others.   So that FAITH (the kind in capital letters) comes easy to me, and is not very mysterious.  The other kind of faith, faith to make things happen...I don't get it.  I may have the concept wrong altogether.  I already mentioned that in relation to my infertility and treatments I feel I have used every possible algorithm of faith, and I don't feel like the outcome has ever been contingent on my "positivity" or belief of outcomes, or prayers.  Incidentally,  I do not believe positivity is the same thing as faith and I hate when they are used interchangeably.   So seriously, what is my problem?  Why am I not able to strong-arm an outcome with my tremendous faith (AKA hope)?  One little thought I had was regarding the bible verse that says that faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain.  I feel like I have had mustard seed sized faith - so why can that move a mountain but not make me get pregnant?  The thought I had was that one does not have faith in her ability to move mountains, or part the red sea.  One just possesses faith in God - and he moves that mountain.   So maybe there really aren't two kinds of faith.  Maybe faith to have a baby isn't actually a real thing.  It is just a hope.  Maybe there is just one kind of faith, and my desire to force outcomes with what I am labeling "faith" is really a lack of it.   But then how do I reconcile that I have been taught to pray for every good thing I want.  And I believe I have even been told that this can affect outcomes.  I am so confused.   Really, really.
This faith confusion is exacerbated by the fact that we are also suffering because my husband works for    one really bad dude.  Cruel.  Dishonest.  Dastardly.  We have been praying/begging for a new job for almost two years now, and though I am trying so hard to be thankful for ANY employment, and also trying to practice patience, the cumulative affect of the infertility set-backs and the job drama that I am totally understating have caused me to really want some relief.  Now please.  Thanks.  Again, am I focusing too much of my efforts on an outcome?  Again, I feel we have tried so many different variations of "help us endure this better"  "help us get tougher"  "help things get better"  "help us get the H out".
I will say that when the chips are down, and I remember to pray for some relief, I have always gotten it.  Always.  For me that wonderful comfort is so real and so surprisingly immediate at times.  I am just so down and so tired of this and feel if the real key to my own relief is having some personal epiphany than I am in big trouble because my confused mind feels closer crazy than to some gem of truth that will magically deliver me from these problems.

The Pain That Remains

Back again with so much to say and no idea where to begin.  I begin with the sadness that is eating me up.  I alternate between three things: wanting to die (don't really be alarmed) wanting to drive through the night to Seattle to anonymously smoke pot until I feel better, and pondering for hours on end what I am truly craving.  The vat of caramel corn I just made and killed wasn't it.  Why is it I must eat the whole thing before determining that wasn't it?

Here's the good news and why the food craziness is the only outlet I will use:  The Mule did indeed have a baby!  He is fifteen months old and does my soul so much crazy good it is dizzying.  I have to reluctantly declare that the peddled idea of a baby's healing magic (that I despised hearing) is indeed true.  I still maintain that it should be NO baby's responsibility to heal me, yet I have to admit that his magical little soul did just that.  Well sort of...

It was a shock to me that I really did take a live baby home.  I think so many years of bad trained me to not trust good.  It was hard to imagine a happy ending when I had no experience with things working out.  But they did (trumpets sounding) and holding our two week old in our bed, we both admitted how much we wanted another baby.  Right then.  So when my baby was 11 months old, I embarked on thawing his two embryo siblings.  I decided that since I now had banked one experience of fertility trials working out, why the heck not try the dangerous experiment of having joy, hope, faith, prayer, fasting, and more concerted positive thinking than I have ever before mustered?  I had it in me at the time, so I gave it all.  I even drew a poster of me with my two little embryos joining the family.  I hung it on the fridge. 

Only one survived the thaw.  One was implanted and (according to my HCG levels tested at nine and eleven days) sat around like stale bread on the counter until it was tossed out with my period.  Screw you positivity.  This loss was so hard to take because I had dangerously turned the embryos into my children.  They were from my baby's same batch!  They were his embryo twins.  Adding insult to injury was the incredible hope that we could pay the 5K or so for this procedure and poof!  - be the happy parents of three healthy kids, have a crazy few years and be done with the fertility induced state of stress and poverty that has gripped us for the last 9 years. 

We immediately jumped into another IVF.  This time my approach was that of a robot.  I had one exceptionally bad crying fit/meltdown when I went into the clinic to go over my plan of care, (it is just so freaking hard to even think of going through it all again) but after that, I was a lean, mean Arnold Schwarzenegger ala T3.  The compassionate robot.  Who knows why, but this time I stimulated really well, had great numbers at each stage, implanted two great looking five day blasts and had four good looking embryos to freeze.  All was well in the world.  And then I just didn't get pregnant.  It has been a week or two since this revelation.  I still maintain my robot composure on certain days, but Compassionate Robot is gone and Terminator the original lives in my body.  I want to drive into Target.  Right through the wall and past the Starbucks.  Sort of for the comic relief?  I don't want anyone to be hurt.  It just seems congruent with the circus inside me, so I dream that it would make me feel better. 

On to yet another embryo transfer.  Had yet another ugly cry meltdown when I went in for the plan of care yesterday.  I said to the nurse "I have had nine embryos put in me, and of those only one worked" and by the end of the sentence the emotional damn had broken.  It is so hard to think about and say, and it is so hard to describe to someone who hasn't been there why that is such a loaded sentence.  But those little embryos that hold so much hope for life die so quietly, taking so much of my money, so much of my heart, so much of my faith, and lately I fear, so much of my sanity and humanity.  I am the most scared when I wonder what of me remains.  

So about that healing I spoke of...it is real.  It has allowed me to wander Costco and linger in the toy section without the acute pain that such things once caused... I enjoy buying baby shower gifts now... I find myself thinking of how fun it will be to go to Disneyland together someday.   I am no longer childless.  That is the wound that my baby healed, filling it in with the best joy I have experienced so far in life.  The infertility pain stays with me because I still am, and always will be a mule.

This blog does suck!

It's not really a blog if you aren't bloggin right?

But I have to say it's been a great and necessary vacation to not think about fertility every moment of every day. And to my mother who thought a pregnancy that would be the magic that "healed me" and who drove me batty for insinuating such bologney - OK you were kind of right... That's all I'm willing to concede at the moment.

I am now 27 weeks along with no blips, problems, etc. I am even feeling confident enough that I am selling my leftover IVF drugs and buying a crib. This feels real people!

Here are some of my thoughts at the moment. Does a baby make all the stuff I've been through worthwhile? I am not sure, and though that sounds awful I will tell you why I hesitate to endorse these measures:
I have often heard smarty pants people call lottery tickets a "tax on the stupid". And I agree. Lottery tickets are an epic waste of money and I wouldn't dare admit I were buying them and consistently losing. However, does the winner consider them an epic waste of money? OF COURSE NOT. So there you have it. I won the IVF lottery on the third round, and I know my judgement is impaired. I feel the only advice I have to give on the "was it worth it front" is a resounding "proceed at your own risk".

Also if you happen to know anyone venturing into IVF land, I have some drugs I want to peddle to them.

Return of the cramps

I have been wondering what is up with my strange periody feeling - especially since it has been going strong for about five days now. I feel my usual dull achy, crampy stuff going on plus strange sharp pain and stuff. It hasn't been worrying me too much, but it is surprising and weird that it seems to be gaining momentum.

Once again, I love the internet. I checked up about cramping in early pregnancy and found out that though cramping can mean bad things like miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies, it is also very common in people with endometriosis. Most endo sufferers said their symptoms got much worse for the first trimester and then chilled out after that. Though I am totally not loving how much its been hurting me to pee the last few days and the other nonsense, I must admit that I really like feeling something. Many people don't even know they are pregnant at a meager four weeks. For me some early discomfort is totally worth really feeling different.

Feeling...positive

Last night I was dreading getting bad news today. I was also dreading good news, because good news means an even bigger let down in the future.

Today I got the good news: I am officially chemically pregnant!

And I am going to take a cue from a very wise friend who had some losses and really feared getting excited about a new pregnancy only to wind up broken hearted. She figured you may wind up broken hearted whether you live it up in the mean time or not. She also figured that whatever time a little embryo or fetus is going to get, it deserves to be loved, deserved, wanted and celebrated. I just couldn't agree more, and am thankful for smart people who grapple with things before I ever have to. It makes things so easy on me.

Thanks for all your wishes and your prayers, and please keep em coming! Second blood test is in 10 days, and we can have the first ultrasound around Jan 16th to see if its one or two. I am voting for two. I figure if I am trying to be positive I may as well go all the way.

Test Day Tomorrow

I have my pregnancy test tomorrow morning and find out the results probably before 5pm. I haven't had any spotting yet, and I had figured based on the last two tries, that my spotting would have shown up on Christmas day at the earliest, and the morning of the test at the latest. It is getting weirder and weirder to not have any bad signs when I go to the bathroom. Is it just way late? Is this setting me up for worse disappointment when it comes? I am just trying to force time to pass so I can know for sure.

The Transfer

Yesterday I had my embryo transfer. Two gorgeous blastocysts. It is so crazy to think that those funny cell blobs already have all the ingredients to become people. They already know if they are boys or girls. Fascinating.

I am now just lying about, mentally ordering my uterus to be hospitable. I am finding it so much easier to be hopeful this time. I guess I know what the sad news feels like, and I know I can live through it, so why not give my all to hoping?

We also had two slightly less perfect blasts that they were planning on freezing.

These embryos are either going to attach in the next 36 hours, or not - so think sticky thoughts for me please!

Old Dog

Have you ever watched movies about animals where there seems to always be an old wise dog and then a young, yippy, hyper dog? I can only think of Homeward Bound off the top of my head, but I think this is a familiar genera and theme.

Well I am the old dog. Yes I love to think myself wise. But more its just that I have been going through this crap for so long I find myself barely tolerating the young infertility pups nipping at my ears while I am just trying to chill on the ground.

I hope I haven't lost my compassion - because I don't think I will EVER change my opinion that the first two years were the worst. But I find myself not being very helpful with my young infertile friends. I find myself mostly just listening to their barks or whines, and then offering nothing to them, because what I have to offer is my truth, my experience, which will A: be completely different than theirs, and only frustrate the situation. B: Be so depressing it won't serve to help at all.

If I were to tell my truth to the puppy it would be: You are annoying. You are over thinking. You are over-stressed. And you will have no control over your annoying, over-thinking, stressed out ways. And not one second of doing this, or not doing this will create a baby. And there are so many ways to have a baby, but for some of us there are more ways to not have a baby. For some this journey will be acute, and short, and for some it will be a marathon, and there is no predicting what course you will get. If you make it nearly to the end of the marathon - you may end up looking just like me. Old, lazy, tired, and maybe wise in the worst ways. I think this is why I just have been keeping my mouth shut lately. Nobody wants to be an old dog. I am not the poster child of happy fertility sagas.

Lessons

H got two job offers this week. Here in our hometown, so we won't even have to move. It has been completely anti-climatic. This has been my hearts desire for 6 months, occupying every worry and every hope, and now it seems that problem has been solved. I don't think I will dare celebrate or let my guard down, um well, ever? Do you ever feel like something is safe or permanent after that? Or is the point that your job isn't the thing that should give you safety, purpose and permanence? I would say we have done some painful work of finding those things in the shelter of our own house and relationship. So I am happy (so happy) for him to be employed, but really, the only thing I think I will ever take from a "career" again is the paycheck (and yes I am very, very thankful for that too).

I don't feel like listing all the lessons I have learned in the past year. It would be obnoxious and preachy, and also, I am not far enough out of the woods to declare that those lessons were great for me, and totally worth all the pain. Not even close to being that evolved yet. Just suffice it to say that the lessons are there, and I will digest them at some later date.

I wonder if a pregnancy would feel this anti-climatic too. I am really scared of miscarriage. Much more scared than of just getting my 80th negative.

I have about 5 good looking embryos still, and will transplant on Friday, then another two week wait. Back into the woods...

It was a good sign!

They got 27 eggs out of me! I didn't even know I was capable of that. We got news today that 14 have fertilized. I am so excited and we are really crossing our fingers for some actual day five blastocysts to transfer.

The happy news also takes the edge off the fact that I look like a manatee right now.

Oh I am so bloated

That's all. Just getting big a poofy. I think it is a good sign.

IVF #3 Underway

This one will only be two weeks of injections instead the whole month. They say it is more aggressive because they have cut off two weeks of Lupron prior to the stims. I guess shortening the Lupron suppression will give more oomph to the stims. We’ll see. I will be done around December 15^th and get the results by the end of the month.

I can’t believe how “no big deal” this is becoming. But I still just want it to be all over so badly.

I told a person from church what my timeline was and she was pretty sympathetic to the fact that I would be getting the news around Christmas time. This had occurred to me, but really, take your pick as to which day would be the worst, because at this point I think I have had them all. My birthday, his birthday, anniversary, anniversary of “trying”, Thanksgiving, on the day of a baby shower I was throwing, on the day of my niece’s birth, many, many days of people announcing their pregnancies… I have been getting the kick in the gut on a monthly basis for over six years now. The bright side, I guess, is that is has gotten easier to handle. I think the worst days were the ones in the first two years. And contrary to what one might think, this has not made me feel isolated or lonely, it has opened my eyes to how many people live with sad things and still do their best to have full, happy lives.

The Fat Pant Intervention

I haven’t written about this because it’s one of those events that are not even slightly humorous in the moment. I have gained 20lbs or so since January.

To set the scene: We are at the very end of a long day, of which we have spent at least 5 of the last 4 hours together. I am in my work clothes.

H: Babe, you don’t look comfortable. I think you need to buy new pants this weekend. I am just concerned about your comfort.

Me: (Rage and humiliation swirling in my head and heart, but trying to keep cool because I have foolishly asked for his honesty if ever an intervention such as this was needed) I am not very comfortable, does it look like I am smuggling Christmas hams in my pants?

H: Mmmm…. (biding time because he is afraid to answer)

Me: (losing it) OH MY GOSH. HOW BAD DO I LOOK? AND HOW LONG HAVE A LOOKED THIS RIDICULOUS AND YOU DIDN’T TELL ME. HOW LONG!!!

H: You don’t look bad, you just don’t look very professional. I don’t really want men to see you.

Me: What the hell!

Me: (Calming down, again recalling that at some crazed point I thought marital honesty about my body was a good thing) So are you saying I look like a mall worker?

H: Yes

End scene.

Epilogue: I bought new big girl pants. Was very upset about it at first. Have now discovered that buying new, looser fitting clothing is almost as good as losing weight. I am indeed more comfortable now. And I am still married.