IM mentioned to me the other day that a couple we know (they are loooonnnngggg time friends of ours and nearly the same age among other similarities) are TTC. Trying To Conceive.
Riding my train to work this morning a thought popped into my head, for no good reason: If this cycle we are doing right now fails--and it certainly has a good chance of failing considering our previous record--and our friend gets pregnant, I don't know how I'm going to deal with it.
The thought literally made my heart sink in that anxious way. You know that feeling? That emotion that makes you want to simultaneously curl into the fetus position and run as fast as you can for the hills? That emotion that makes you want to "check out" of your life and start anew? That feeling that made Forest Gump start running? That's what I felt when this thought came creeping into my brain. To make matters worse and more complicated I am very unhappy, guilty, and frustrated that I feel this way regarding somebody we love having success. Not only success, but the realization of a dream most couples share. It is certainly our dream. Ah, but there's the rub, right?
I fucking hate this!
...our next step if this cycle doesn't work is relatively obvious. We are running out of options after all. Adoption...another donor cycle...another fresh cycle? Childfree is not in our future...we are not a childfree kind of couple (not that there's anything wrong with that...we're just not). Even though the next step is pretty well established it fills me with unhappiness and anxiety which is 99% due to just sheer fatigue. A normal human being simply cannot fail repeatedly at something they long for with such passion without long-lasting detrimental effects. Post-traumatic-stress-disorder? Seems about right.
How's that for melodramatic? What was my "mantra" again?
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Officially started
Last night I game IM a shot of delestrogen and the cycle is officially under way! It sucks that the tears she was crying had nothing to do with the shot physically hurting, although I'm sure it did. She has had hundreds of shots by now. It is beyond old at this point and starting shots again for another cycle just reminds us that we've been down this road before and it ended in failure. Anyway....there's no need to be depressed just yet...there's always plenty of time for that later...so here's hoping for a successful implantation in a few weeks!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Well...it has begun
Today we went to the IF office to sign our waivers or whatever you wanna call it. I would prefer to just put my signature on file and mark my preferences once and for all. We've filled out these stupid forms about a dozen times and I'm just getting sick of it. Initial here..initial there...sign here. Fine. Do whatever you need to do to impregnate me wife! I'm okay with it!
Anyhoo, IM had blood work and an ultrasound. I'm sure everything is ok and depending on blood levels she'll get a shot, administered by yours truly, tonight to officially kick of the festivities. For a FET cycle IM has to take progesterone-in-oil and delestrogen (I think). They are both intramuscular shots and, hence, painful...and not very fun to give either. The progesterone-in-oil is the worst b/c it's a large dosage, hurts like hell, and the oil doesn't really break down well so IM will get knots and bruises....her bruises don't really show which is nice I guess but they still hurt. Let's just hope I don't hit a nerve (LITERALLY!) on accident. The whole point of the meds is to prepare her body to be pregnant since it's not a natural cycle and she won't ovulate so her body won't be ready. I'm sure we've blogged about the details before and I'm losing interest in these types of things anyway. I know way too much about a woman's cycle considering the fact that I'm not a medical doctor. Plus, I didn't become a Dr b/c I'm just not that interested in this stuff...so there! And, yet, I now know it anyway. Great. Still, though, the science behind ART is pretty amazing and fascinating.
Many things have to go "right" this cycle. IM's preparation via drugs hopefully goes well and she remains relatively healthy for the cycle. The embryo needs to survive the thawing process. Both embryos survived perfectly last time so hopefully this one will too...but you never know and it is a painful thought to consider that it might not make it. Pretty devastating. Plus, a bunch of unneeded drugs would've been taken. Then, the transfer has to go well. We've had potentially important issues with that since IM's pathway to the uterus is like a twisty path of death evidently...we've blogged about it before. So I'm hoping for the best and repeating the mantra of "Why not us?". It could work. Nothing says it can't and IM actually got pregnant last cycle...so it did work in a way. So this can work too. IM, of course, is taking the usual tactic of assuming it will not work since it hasn't after all this effort b/c she doesn't want to be disappointed when (if?...let's stay positive) it doesn't work. Whatever. At the end of the day our success or lack thereof for this cycle doesn't change depending on our fucking attitudes. The world is too cold and cruel for attitudes to matter. I know that as an incontrovertible fact through my personal experience. The "universe" doesn't fucking care about anybody one way or the other. Shit happens for random (but well established scientifically) reasons. It's not as if we don't have a baby yet b/c IM and I are not sufficiently positive and hopeful. I mean honestly. This isn't the fucking Secret. Oh wait...what was my mantra. "Why not us?" Ahh, there it is. "Why not us?" "Why not us?" "Why not us?" "Why not us?" ...
Anyhoo, IM had blood work and an ultrasound. I'm sure everything is ok and depending on blood levels she'll get a shot, administered by yours truly, tonight to officially kick of the festivities. For a FET cycle IM has to take progesterone-in-oil and delestrogen (I think). They are both intramuscular shots and, hence, painful...and not very fun to give either. The progesterone-in-oil is the worst b/c it's a large dosage, hurts like hell, and the oil doesn't really break down well so IM will get knots and bruises....her bruises don't really show which is nice I guess but they still hurt. Let's just hope I don't hit a nerve (LITERALLY!) on accident. The whole point of the meds is to prepare her body to be pregnant since it's not a natural cycle and she won't ovulate so her body won't be ready. I'm sure we've blogged about the details before and I'm losing interest in these types of things anyway. I know way too much about a woman's cycle considering the fact that I'm not a medical doctor. Plus, I didn't become a Dr b/c I'm just not that interested in this stuff...so there! And, yet, I now know it anyway. Great. Still, though, the science behind ART is pretty amazing and fascinating.
Many things have to go "right" this cycle. IM's preparation via drugs hopefully goes well and she remains relatively healthy for the cycle. The embryo needs to survive the thawing process. Both embryos survived perfectly last time so hopefully this one will too...but you never know and it is a painful thought to consider that it might not make it. Pretty devastating. Plus, a bunch of unneeded drugs would've been taken. Then, the transfer has to go well. We've had potentially important issues with that since IM's pathway to the uterus is like a twisty path of death evidently...we've blogged about it before. So I'm hoping for the best and repeating the mantra of "Why not us?". It could work. Nothing says it can't and IM actually got pregnant last cycle...so it did work in a way. So this can work too. IM, of course, is taking the usual tactic of assuming it will not work since it hasn't after all this effort b/c she doesn't want to be disappointed when (if?...let's stay positive) it doesn't work. Whatever. At the end of the day our success or lack thereof for this cycle doesn't change depending on our fucking attitudes. The world is too cold and cruel for attitudes to matter. I know that as an incontrovertible fact through my personal experience. The "universe" doesn't fucking care about anybody one way or the other. Shit happens for random (but well established scientifically) reasons. It's not as if we don't have a baby yet b/c IM and I are not sufficiently positive and hopeful. I mean honestly. This isn't the fucking Secret. Oh wait...what was my mantra. "Why not us?" Ahh, there it is. "Why not us?" "Why not us?" "Why not us?" "Why not us?" ...
Friday, October 16, 2009
Stories seldom told....
I meant to write about this quite a while ago but never got around to it. Since today I'm feeling quite lazy regarding this blog I figured I may as well say something in an attempt to jump start things a bit.
Emotionally I'm in that lame limbo...or purgatory is probably a better word...state where we are going to start all the meds here in a little bit for the next cycle. We have one frozen embryo left and are hoping to hell it works. Anyway...I don't want to write about how shitty I feel about everything infertility and how infertility feelings infect nearly everything else and start eating away at my ability to feel confident in other life areas and take pride and feel happy about my job and blah blah blah it goes on and on.
So...I thought I would give a Cliff's Notes version of a story. This kind of story is very seldom told because it's just too fucking terrible to repeat more than once or twice.
We have an infertile friend who is in somewhat the same situation as us. (By friend I suppose acquaintance is better but IF brings people together on a different level.) Her situation is easier than ours (in that they have not been at this as long as us) and harder than ours (her family situation is much more pressured and frustrating). Anyway, she and her husband decided to do a donor cycle. Of course, as documented on this blog, this decision is agonizing and long and hard in itself but they did it and chose a donor they were happy with. The did a cycle and everything worked splendidly. She got pregnant with twins! Of course, twins is not what you want because there is a higher chance of complications but...whatever...people have healthy twins all the time. Well, as shitty luck would have it they lost one of the twins quite early on....but late enough that they were able to hear two heartbeats...so this I'm sure was a devastating loss. Then...as luck again would have it...she lost the other. This time, however, was much further along. IM knows how far along (I can't remember) but it was far enough that she had to go under the knife, as it were, to take out the fetus. I suppose in a warped sense it could've been worse and she could've been asked to deliver a dead baby. I literally cannot imagine how they are dealing with this loss. So many compromises of dreams and compromises of entitlements--simple things 90% of people get automatically--are made before a person even gets to donors. Then a whole new set of compromises and grieving the loss of a whole other set of dreams kicks in. Then, if the cycle works, a sort of miracle occurs (honestly, the more I think about a successful donor cycle the more astonished I am with the....miracle of it all). To have that brutally taken away is something I wouldn't wish on Satan himself. There are no words to comfort them and there is nothing I or IM can possibly say. Not to mention the very real fear that something like that could happen to us.
Women that get pregnant through IVF or donor cycle IVF do not have normal pregnancies. Not that they are full of complications necessarily but the naive joy that 90% of women experience during a pregnancy is always rudely taken away from infertiles by fate and life. That's one of those hard things to learn personally and harder to explain to somebody else. It is also at the root of how a successful IVF cycle DOES NOT CURE INFERTILITY. It does make you a parent though and that's ultimately what we are all hoping for!
Emotionally I'm in that lame limbo...or purgatory is probably a better word...state where we are going to start all the meds here in a little bit for the next cycle. We have one frozen embryo left and are hoping to hell it works. Anyway...I don't want to write about how shitty I feel about everything infertility and how infertility feelings infect nearly everything else and start eating away at my ability to feel confident in other life areas and take pride and feel happy about my job and blah blah blah it goes on and on.
So...I thought I would give a Cliff's Notes version of a story. This kind of story is very seldom told because it's just too fucking terrible to repeat more than once or twice.
We have an infertile friend who is in somewhat the same situation as us. (By friend I suppose acquaintance is better but IF brings people together on a different level.) Her situation is easier than ours (in that they have not been at this as long as us) and harder than ours (her family situation is much more pressured and frustrating). Anyway, she and her husband decided to do a donor cycle. Of course, as documented on this blog, this decision is agonizing and long and hard in itself but they did it and chose a donor they were happy with. The did a cycle and everything worked splendidly. She got pregnant with twins! Of course, twins is not what you want because there is a higher chance of complications but...whatever...people have healthy twins all the time. Well, as shitty luck would have it they lost one of the twins quite early on....but late enough that they were able to hear two heartbeats...so this I'm sure was a devastating loss. Then...as luck again would have it...she lost the other. This time, however, was much further along. IM knows how far along (I can't remember) but it was far enough that she had to go under the knife, as it were, to take out the fetus. I suppose in a warped sense it could've been worse and she could've been asked to deliver a dead baby. I literally cannot imagine how they are dealing with this loss. So many compromises of dreams and compromises of entitlements--simple things 90% of people get automatically--are made before a person even gets to donors. Then a whole new set of compromises and grieving the loss of a whole other set of dreams kicks in. Then, if the cycle works, a sort of miracle occurs (honestly, the more I think about a successful donor cycle the more astonished I am with the....miracle of it all). To have that brutally taken away is something I wouldn't wish on Satan himself. There are no words to comfort them and there is nothing I or IM can possibly say. Not to mention the very real fear that something like that could happen to us.
Women that get pregnant through IVF or donor cycle IVF do not have normal pregnancies. Not that they are full of complications necessarily but the naive joy that 90% of women experience during a pregnancy is always rudely taken away from infertiles by fate and life. That's one of those hard things to learn personally and harder to explain to somebody else. It is also at the root of how a successful IVF cycle DOES NOT CURE INFERTILITY. It does make you a parent though and that's ultimately what we are all hoping for!
Monday, October 5, 2009
...update...
One of the main points of this blog (to us at least) was to document this so-called journey of ours. So, in that spirit, here's an update.
The last cycle failed in a miscarriage. IM almost had to take some sort of miscarriage inducing drug to...well...what's the word...force a period and hope everything came out on it's own. Otherwise, a surgery (D&C I guess) would have been necessary. Everything, however, went fine and we didn't have to do anything besides let it happen on its own... and we are thankful for small blessings. After the period she went back on b.c.p.'s b/c the Doc wanted to take a look inside her uterus to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. This last Friday, IM had the procedure which is non-trivial to some extent since it requires anesthesia (a lot like an egg retrieval) and they put a scope up through the cervix into the uterus and look for polyps, fibroids, scarring, and anything else. She passed with flying colors! So, that's good....and bad in a way since we have no idea why she miscarried. I guess sometimes shit just happens and there's no explanation. Besides, had something been wrong she would've been looking at another surgery. The one bit of news is she evidently has some sort of polyp in her cervix which can't really be removed without risking real problems and it doesn't really affect anything anyway. What it does do though is it makes it hard to put a catheter up the cervix into the uterus for embryo transfers...which IM has always struggled with. The last couple times it has been a painful and frustrating exercise as the Dr is trying to insert this catheter up there again and again. Then the Dr has had to switch to a harder catheter which, as our luck would have it, has lower success rates...I guess it is more likely to damage the embryo on transfer. Then there is also the issue of IM's pain and cramping as the Dr tries to shove this catheter up her cervix....there is the potential that this cramping hurts the chances of the embryo implanting. Sooooo...because of this surgery, IM's cervix is dilated (from the surgery and will stay that way for a while up to the transfer hopefully) and the Dr mapped out the route through the cervix to the uterus in great detail. Apparently you go straight in and take a sharp 20 degree right turn! Whatever.
Well, with all of that done we have the green light to go ahead with our last embryo which is literally chilling out waiting to be hatched. The transfer is set for Nov 11. I'm trying to be positive and imagine it working but it's very hard since we've had so many repeat failures. The upshot with this whole endeavor is that if this doesn't work we get a boat load of money back since we are on a shared-risk plan (that will soften the disappointment a little bit I suppose). Also, that means the Dr is highly motivated for this to work too :)
...alright...I'm not in the mood for anything more.
The last cycle failed in a miscarriage. IM almost had to take some sort of miscarriage inducing drug to...well...what's the word...force a period and hope everything came out on it's own. Otherwise, a surgery (D&C I guess) would have been necessary. Everything, however, went fine and we didn't have to do anything besides let it happen on its own... and we are thankful for small blessings. After the period she went back on b.c.p.'s b/c the Doc wanted to take a look inside her uterus to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. This last Friday, IM had the procedure which is non-trivial to some extent since it requires anesthesia (a lot like an egg retrieval) and they put a scope up through the cervix into the uterus and look for polyps, fibroids, scarring, and anything else. She passed with flying colors! So, that's good....and bad in a way since we have no idea why she miscarried. I guess sometimes shit just happens and there's no explanation. Besides, had something been wrong she would've been looking at another surgery. The one bit of news is she evidently has some sort of polyp in her cervix which can't really be removed without risking real problems and it doesn't really affect anything anyway. What it does do though is it makes it hard to put a catheter up the cervix into the uterus for embryo transfers...which IM has always struggled with. The last couple times it has been a painful and frustrating exercise as the Dr is trying to insert this catheter up there again and again. Then the Dr has had to switch to a harder catheter which, as our luck would have it, has lower success rates...I guess it is more likely to damage the embryo on transfer. Then there is also the issue of IM's pain and cramping as the Dr tries to shove this catheter up her cervix....there is the potential that this cramping hurts the chances of the embryo implanting. Sooooo...because of this surgery, IM's cervix is dilated (from the surgery and will stay that way for a while up to the transfer hopefully) and the Dr mapped out the route through the cervix to the uterus in great detail. Apparently you go straight in and take a sharp 20 degree right turn! Whatever.
Well, with all of that done we have the green light to go ahead with our last embryo which is literally chilling out waiting to be hatched. The transfer is set for Nov 11. I'm trying to be positive and imagine it working but it's very hard since we've had so many repeat failures. The upshot with this whole endeavor is that if this doesn't work we get a boat load of money back since we are on a shared-risk plan (that will soften the disappointment a little bit I suppose). Also, that means the Dr is highly motivated for this to work too :)
...alright...I'm not in the mood for anything more.
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