Really?...I give up

Today I found out that I didn't get a job* that I worked really really really hard to get. I felt like a had a really good shot and, in a lot of ways, it would have been as close to perfect as we have dared to dream lately. Needless to say, I'm very depressed about this and it makes me feel like a failure. The funny thing is...it got me thinking.

There were two things that I expected to achieve in my life. The two expectations where, in actuality, my long-term dreams but I didn't really consider them dreams because so many people achieve them with relative ease. One was to have a family; make love to my wife, get her pregnant, and have children. The other was to go college and graduate school in order to get the sort of job I always wanted. Now, this job is not "rock-star" or "football-star" or some stupid unattainable bullshit like that...it's not to be a billionaire or anything like that.. It's a job that most people would guess is readily achievable....as it should be considering it requires a fucking Ph.D. and, once you get it, a shit load of work and relatively modest pay.

Well, as this blog attests: the first goal/dream/expectation is not to be**, and evidently the second goal/dream/expectation is not to be. There is "always next year" regarding the job...but the writing is starting to appear on the wall in a darker and more readable shade and it is pointing to either (1) lowering my job expectations even further then they've already been lowered or (2) switching to "plan B" (after I figure one out!) and convincing myself that it is better than "plan A" would have been.

Somewhere along the line the following transformations occurred.
Expectation --> Goal --> Dream
My expectations in life became goals as I grew up and realized you don't get everything you want. Then goals became dreams since we could never seem to achieve our goals.

Lately, the most apt phrase to describe my thoughts is "How did I get here?"

* In principle, I could still get it but my chances are very very very slim.

** I know I know I know. Our goal is to be parents and adoption allows a person to parent in a very satisfying and beautiful way...but I'm fucking feeling sorry for myself right now and I just do not want to fucking hear it!

Honesty is the best policy...right?

Ok, the title is hyperbolic. But I still think the point of this blog is for Intended M and I to be honest and understand our feelings about lots of different things. That said, IM is likely to be pissed or disappointed or annoyed with me for this one.

We're going on a trip in 3 weeks or so to a so-called "developing country". Intended M decided to start birth-control-pills so she doesn't have to deal with having her period in an uncomfortable situation. It makes sense and I understand her point.

The weird thing is that I find it frustrating*. It's so stupid. We are literally getting our fingerprints taken today in order to jump through one of the adoption hoops** and I'm finding myself frustrated because IM is going to be on BCPs for the next month and so there is absolutely no chance of her getting pregnant in the next month and likely a month after that. Crazy! We've been doing the naughty unprotected for YEARS and I still get frustrated when she's on BCPs? Really? I also get frustrated when we can't seem to do the nasty when she is likely ovulating. Again, really? It also used to happen when she took BCPs to ramp up to an IVF cycle. What do I think is going to happen? A miracle? I think it's pretty much evident through examples all over the world and in our own lives that miracles do not exist. It's pathetic.

* I also find myself sad and frustrated when IM starts her period. Honestly, it's pathetic. I just have one of those personalities such that if something is not literally impossible then I think there is a chance. It may be a 1 in a million chance but it's a chance. I'm like fricken Lloyd Christmas, "so you're telling me there's a chance."

** A quick question to all you mothers out there that gave birth the old fashioned way. Did the state and federal government take your fingerprints and do a criminal background check on you before you were allowed to take the baby home?

Location, location, location

Yesterday, Intended M and I are at Barnes and Noble checking out travel books for an upcoming trip. I was having a pretty depressed day and feeling like life was unfair--yeah, boo-hoo, life is fair compared to what? Anyway...back to this post. Intended M thought "I'm gonna go see what type of adoption books they have", couldn't find them in self-help, asked an employee (or probably team-member as they're corporate overlords like them to call themselves!), and was told they were in the Family-Health section. (I think it was family health...something like that.) So we go over there...me reluctantly since I was just not in the mood for this sort of thing yesterday...and they have (1) a totally weak selection of literally about a dozen books and (2) they are right next to all the "What to expect when you're expecting"-books and the "How to be a super breast-feeder"-books (are there such books?) and (3) there was a woman in that section sitting on a chair breastfeeding her baby with her doting husband attending to her and (4) it was right next to the Children's book section. Really?!?!

Now, I don't expect people to be completely sensitive and I suppose in some book publisher sense it is totally normal to put adoption books along side these others, that is, I'm sure at some big publishing house, the publishing-arm that publishes pregnancy books also publishes adoption books. But Barnes and Noble is trying to SELL books. There is a different calculation involved--location, location, location! I doubt the male impotency books are right next to the "how to look good naked"-books for young hot women!

Needless to say, we didn't look through their crappy selection of adoption books. I was thinking about why their selection was so crappy and figured it was probably because they don't sell many adoption books. I wonder why? :) I also thought about telling them...or emailing them...or whatever...but then I figured...who cares?

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting.

Baby Clothes and Baby Steps

A couple weeks ago, Intended D was looking at some stuff on cafepress for some reason and stumbled across some adorable baby onesies with funny things written on them. I've been really working hard on being optimistic now that we have begun the adoption process. (we sent in our homestudy application last week!) I told him he should order a couple of them because they were so cute. I said: “When we want them in the future, maybe we won’t be able to find them!” And a couple days later, I discovered Intended D had indeed ordered baby clothes!!!!! You cannot imagine my shock when I opened the package.

Over the years, Intended D and I have known a lot of couples (mostly women) out there who began collecting baby clothes, baby shoes, baby whatever as soon as they started trying to conceive (ttc) . Hell, my sister-in-law bought a pair of baby Air-Jordans before she was married OR pregnant! (And unfortunately for her, she had 2 little girls whose bows and ruffles probably never matched the Air Jordans. They are probably still sitting in a box somewhere. Tough times….) I digress…

Back in 2002/2003 when we started ttc, we made 2 big decisions related to our planned critter: we bought a video camera (yes, VHS.…) and we bought a more reasonable vehicle with better mileage and 4 doors. Both seem like big purchases but we thought they were practical in the grand scheme of things. Somehow in the beginning, we resisted buying any baby clothes because it seemed premature until we knew whether we would have a boy or girl... and besides, we didn't have a ton of space as apartment dwellers. Anyway, as our reproductive journey turned into an infertility journey, we nixed the idea of investing in any other baby paraphernalia. It was just too heartbreaking.

Four years ago when our niece was born, we bought her a little t-shirt that had a Muppets-theme to it that Intended D and I both thought was really funny. Turned out it was too tight for her by the time we gave it to her. And rather than sending it back, we made a big decision. We kept it. Partly because we were both too lazy to pack it up and send it back. We let it take up space for a while, it collected dust, and finally decided we'd just hold onto it. We boxed it up and put it in storage. At the time we were doing IVFs. That shirt is still sitting in a box somewhere. I’m not certain where it is but I know we kept it.

From time to time Intended D has looked at baby onesies and t-shirts-- when we were doing the donor cycle and thinking about the possibility of twins, he was looking at silly ones like shirts that say "I'm with stupid" that are pointing at each other. Most of the time though, through our infertility journey, we've avoided looking at baby paraphernalia. It's just too painful. Most of the time we feel like we'll never have a baby. So purchasing clothes just feels so pathetic.

My friends I have made in the adoption world keep telling me that the great thing about adoption is that at the end of the day, we WILL have a baby in our home. Intended D and I have struggled to really believe that. This experience has had so many disappointments that we don't believe in ANY GUARANTEES. But I am so happy that Intended D purchased those two onesies -- he bought 6-12 month sizes so that we'll definitely be able to use them. It feels like such a big step to actually allow ourselves to "dream" again-- to believe we might be successful despite all the failures. We are maybe, just maybe, on a path to believing that adoption might actually result in a baby.

For now I'm not sure what to do with those shirts, but I'm glad we're keeping them.

This morning on NPR...and two posts in one day!

I woke up hearing this this morning...being read by Garrison Keillor which made it a little odd. Intended Mommy was still sleeping.


Useful Advice

by Catherine Tufariello

You're 37? Don't you think that maybe
It's time you settled down and had a baby?

No wine? Does this mean happy news? I knew it!

Hey, are you sure you two know how to do it?

All Dennis has to do is look at me
And I'm knocked up.
Some things aren't meant to be.
It's sad, but try to see this as God's will.

I've heard that sometimes when you take the Pill—

A friend of mine got pregnant when she stopped
Working so hard.
Why don't you two adopt?
You'll have one of your own then, like my niece.

At work I heard about this herb from Greece—

My sister swears by doing quai. Want to try it?

Forget the high-tech stuff. Just change your diet.

It's true! Too much caffeine can make you sterile.

Yoga is good for that. My cousin Carol—

They have these ceremonies in Peru—

You mind my asking, is it him or you?

Have you tried acupuncture? Meditation?

It's in your head. Relax! Take a vacation
And have some fun. You think too much. Stop trying.

Did I say something wrong? Why are you crying?

"Useful Advice" by Catherine Tufariello, from Keeping My Name. © Texas Tech University Press, 2004.

...I hope I don't get in trouble posting this whole poem...but...well...I'll link to where you can buy more of Tufariello's poems. So there.

No, you're a dink!

We had friends over for lunch yesterday...a nice lazy Sunday. They have a 14-15 month old daughter who is a cutie-pie :) Anyway, we got to talking about rent and cost of living and stuff like that and how our previous apartment was very expensive and the father (my friend) says "but you guys are dinks". I said "what? what's a dink" and made a joke about how I've always been a dink thinking of all the times my older brother called me a dink! He said "double income no kids". Check out wikis explanation for DINKY.

I'm not saying he was being insensitive although I felt bad and a little pathetic for a moment there and gave IM a little look intended to convey our entire complicated situation. My friend's point by calling us DINKs is that we can afford high rent or certain extravagances which got me thinking a little bit. I am well aware of the enormous expense of kids--and in a lot ways "little" kids are worse...day care (for people like us) blah blah blah. But DINK generally refers to people who are childless by choice--or these days it has started to refer to gay couples sans kids which imo is not good for them either since they do fertility treatments and adopt...but I digress. As we've probably documented enough on this blog, infertility treatments are very very very expensive. We have been lucky for a number of reasons and have been able to "afford" it by a combo of luck, charity, and being smart. Many people though take out 2nd mortgages on their houses, sell 2nd cars, take out huge loans, finance it through clinics, etc etc etc. But, all in all, off the top of my head, over the last 5-6 years of treatments we have spent close to $100,000....definitely over $50,000...and we are looking at another $30,000 or so to adopt a SINGLE child...a sibling costs another $30,000. That's not chump change or trivial. My friends can add a sibling for free and WITHOUT a background check! Besides, the money they spend toward their daughter is the purest form of investment. They are taking care of her...investing in her future! Our money went down the toilet--almost literally.

Sometimes I feel like I give this particular friend slightly too much...what's the word?...I'm too understanding of his lack of sensitivity. Parents of young kids are generally self-absorbed in a strange way b/c they aren't SELF-absorbed as much as absorbed in their child. But, they basically expect that everybody else is equally absorbed in their child. So usually I give the benefit of the doubt b/c I'm not surprised that he would look at the surface of my life and think "without this little kid and all her expenses we could eat out more...fix the dent on the car...buy an Xbox..."...I don't know, whatever :) However, then I think: come on, man, pull your head out of your ass, do you really think we are childfree on purpose right now, what do you think we are waiting for, we're your age, we pretty obviously want kids, maybe we're having trouble, maybe we're in treatment? At the end of the day, though, I think it just takes experience. Without someone in your life--a friend or a family member--experiencing infertility, it takes a LOT to be sensitive to our situation. This is basically why it can feel so lonely out here.

Feeling fluctuations

I've been pretty down in the dumps lately. Actually, it's not that simple. More accurately, I've been fluctuating with pretty large amplitude and reasonably high frequency between feeling good about things and feeling depressed about things.

Let me stop and take a side trip first. I have a family member (sibling of a sibling-in-law...which I think makes her...I don't now). About two years ago she got cancer and had very very very little chance of living...but now she's alive and well and cancer free! The reason I mention her is because she is a super positive thinker (I actually suspect there is some darkness down deep down inside since she is human like the rest of us but that's neither here nor there). She borders on "The Secret" which I think is total bullshit mumbo jumbo that basically tells people that suffer failures that it is their own fault for not bringing the positive energy on themselves. Fuck you, "The Secret"! But, I have not had cancer and so she can think whatever the hell she wants and I will just try to learn something from her because she has heroically dealt with a completely unfathomably terrible situation. Ok, where was I? Oh yeah. One thing she says is that she viewed her cancer as a chance, an opportunity, to show the world how tough she was since she admittedly always talked a lot of shit growing up about how much of a hard-ass she was. Cancer was her chance to back up all that talk. An opportunity to show what she was worth and she did and there is no longer any doubt!

I try to tap into her thinking and sometimes I can. Sometimes I am able to tell myself that I always thought and assumed and expected I would be a great father. Well....here is my chance to back it up. Parenting an adopted child is not necessarily for the faint of heart. I've read too much about adoption to think it is a walk-in-the-park (not that parenting is ever easy) or the same as parenting your 'natural' child--ugh...there has got to be a better phrase than that! (I'm sure there is, I just don't know it.) To add to the challenge we will mostly likely adopt a mixed race child that is not either my or my wife's race....we would've produced our own mixed race child but...well...you get the idea. On good days, I relish the challenge and opportunity to be an adoptive parent. There are so many interesting and unique and beautiful situations that await us. The chance to connect to a different culture through adoption...or country...is super exciting. Blah blah blah.

On bad days I just feel too exhausted to step up to the plate and having a baby the 'old-fashioned way' feels like an easy way out.

Unfortunately, I'm fluctuating between these two extreme thoughts quite frequently lately. Hopefully I'll land on my 'good-day' thoughts permanently pretty soon.

speaking of cleansing...

So Intended D beat me to the punch today. (Thanks a lot babe!)
Yesterday was a start at trying to cleanse in many ways. It was spring cleaning on a beautiful day in our nation’s capital. I just read Intended D’s post and will lobby to remove the back up of the donor profile that we have saved somewhere. There is no reason to keep it in our home. I don’t want to stumble upon it in 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years. I’m over it. Like Intended D said, it was “nice knowin’ ya, and we paid you well to give us some of your genetic material.” And it didn’t work and we’re not going down that path again. I have no attachment to this stranger who was going to potentially be a genetic link to my child. NONE. As Michael Jackson sang, “she’s out of my life.”

I have a need to cleanse lately. Intended D and I are in a holding pattern as we move toward adoption, mostly because of circumstances that are out of our control. But I believe we are also in a healing mode. I have always been the type that jumps into the next step for the sake of my sanity. I am not an impulsive person, but I need to keep moving. I don’t like to feel complacent. So yes, I am happy to say I tackled our bags o’meds yesterday. And I do wish we would have had a ritualistic burning on par with the women’s lib bra burning bon-fires of decades past. Intended D wasn’t willing to participate which worries me a little bit because I think he needs catharsis. But c’est la vie. We are on different time tables. I don't think that's uncommon.

I haven’t had an intermuscular shot for– well, it’s been a few months now—and I still have pain in my butt where we have hit nerves time after time. Pain not deep down in my butt where the drugs were injected, but more from nerves that are closer to the surface of my skin. I believe it’s the nerves healing. I have had numb spots on my butt for years now from the many PIO shots I’ve had to endure. I have also developed hypersensitivity on certain areas of my butt where the nerves are healing. I have a medical background and I think I understand what’s going on so I’m not my normal hypochondriacal mess about it. Nonetheless, it’s a constant reminder of the last several years of hell. I’m still healing from the injections physically and obviously emotionally. I’m sure someone more poetically equipped than I am would be able to write novels about the parallels between the physical healing and the emotional. But I’ll abstain.

The point is that I have made a decision I’m not going back there again. I’m not going to put myself through any more cycles. I just cannot. I don't think it's good for Intended D either. This has been too painful of a journey for me to consider another needle. I need closure to this experience. I am so scarred by this experience I am pretty certain I have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). No I’m not kidding. My heart rate elevates when I see a pregnant woman. I can’t look babies in the eye. – well that was kind of joke because I started picturing avoiding eye contact with a newborn. So funny on so many levels. They can’t see a damn thing anyway.

But I digress… I know I’m scarred and I know that at this point, the only way I will recover is to find resolution. And finding resolution means having a child of our own through adoption. I think intended D and I both know that. I am not happy about our plight. I just know I need to protect my psyche. I know he understands why I can’t do another cycle and I’m pretty certain he is also done with it. But deep, deep down, I think he still wants to because of the “what if…” factor. Which I completely understand. Believe me.

So anyway, yesterday, I finally decided the bags of meds in the closet needed to be addressed. We have a small walk-in closet that is more like a narrow hallway leading to nowhere and at the end of it, we’ve had bags of meds, needles, and sharps containers that have accumulated over the years. Every time a cycle ends painfully (which they always do) one of us has dropped the new accumulation of meds into the closet to get it out of our line of sight. We had lupron, ganirelex, progesterone (in oil AND suppositories), and even some follistim. I’m not sure what else. I stopped looking at the labels. This was not a great walk down memory lane. I also had more needles than you can shake a stick at. I needed to purge it all. I could not tolerate the thought of this paraphernalia existing in our home anymore. I want nothing to do with them. They have caused us nothing but pain.

So I pulled out all the bags, threw all the meds away (I thought about donating them but to be honest, they have been sitting in a closet that gets 30 degrees in winter and over 100 in summer… I wouldn’t even want to use these meds anymore even if I WERE cycling!). I still have the sharps containers and the bags and bags of needles which I’ll take to the RE clinic when I have a chance.

Unfortunately it felt very anti-climactic. I tried to bring Intended D into it by asking for his help and letting him throw away a couple vials. But he wasn’t interested in participating. I feel like I need a ceremony or something. Or a party. Maybe that’s what we need. A 'WE'RE NOT FUCKING WITH MY BODY AND OUR MINDS TO TRY TO CONCEIVE A CHILD ANYMORE' party. Do people have those?

Ritualistic cleansing ... but I don't really feel cleansed

Yesterday I started cleaning out an old laptop of mine. My mother-in-law could use an "Indian-soap-opera and Solitaire playing" machine and the old laptop fits the bill pretty well :)

Anyhow, I was looking around and deleting old files and I came across a folder with info about the egg donor we eventually chose. Hmm. I had saved the "bio-data" and about 10 pictures. We had stored this info b/c we figured it would be good to keep this stuff for our eventual child and I was in charge of storing it b/c we also figured it would be best to "hide it", in some respects. We didn't want it easily available for IM to look at any time she felt the need...I have better will-power when it comes to stuff like this :)

The reason we wanted to sort-of limit the availability of the donor's pictures and bio-data is due to this: we went to a donor-egg support group once and the leader, who had donor-egg twins that were toddlers at least (I think), had mentioned that she would, in weak moments, look at donor pictures (or remember donor pictures) and realize that her children resemble the donor and not her. That was not a feeling she particularly enjoyed. (This reminds me of my great idea!)

So...anyway...I deleted them (although not really b/c I have a backup somewhere and I'm not going to delete the folder in the backup b/c I just don't care enough to do that) and I'm not sure how I feel. It didn't seem really momentous b/c the donor really doesn't mean anything to us anymore. The cycle didn't work. I appreciate what she was willing to do to help us (and we paid her pretty well for the help) but it didn't work. So there is just no connection between her and us. "It was nice knowing ya" sort of thing.

Earlier in the day, IM had thrown away all the medication we still had (progesterone, lupron, blah blah blah). She seemed to want me to participate but I didn't really want to. I'm not sure how I feel about it but she was pretty exhilarated...I think. I think I feel a little bit sad and pathetic about it. She has been ordered to write about it....we'll see.

Faith in humanity partially restored...

First of all, I fucking hate William Saletan! He is just fucking terrible...so pretentious and so 'all-knowing'....ugh. He makes me want to hit somebody in the face, preferably him. To those that don't know, he writes these "Human Nature" articles for www.slate.com and he is basically a self-styled bioethicist or sexual ethicist. Good Lord. As I've said before, "get a real job b/c nobody is interested in your half-baked opinions."

Here is a prime example of why I hate this fucker. I actually didn't have the stomach to read the whole thing so I jumped down to the comments where I was expecting to be even more pissed off from reading the usual "these people weren't intended to have kids anyway, they should stop playing god" type of bullshit. Well, much to my happy surprise the first comment said this (from "AJ"):

This is preposterous. People only "get" to the point of buying eggs when they've reached the very end of a long, painful and emotionally enervating process of infertility treatments. No woman or couple would opt for someone else's eggs to create a child, if they could use their own. When people select for certain characteristics in the eggs that they procure, they are attempting, as best as they can, to select for traits that are similar to what they would have expected their own genetic child to have had. It is possible that there may be inflated egos that inform that selection, yes, but the 40 year old chemist who has done three rounds of IUI, three rounds of IVF, suffered a couple of miscarriages, and is a hundred thousand dollars poorer for all her efforts, should not be faulted for seeking the gametes of a woman who is similarly brainy, blonde/brunette/redheaded, tall/slim/athletic/curvy, so that she can "get" a child as similar to her as possible.
Noone would choose someone else's eggs as a first option in trying to build their family. This articles, and articles like it, have little basis in reality.

Thank you AJ! I couldn't have said it better myself.

In fact, most of the comments are pretty decent and put Lord William (I'm stealing Digby's very fitting name for him) in his place, that is, he has no goddamn idea about what he is talking about.

Perhaps there is some collective education going on? Maybe people aren't all that bad...other than good-old Will.