The Body doesn’t Lie

Or mine doesn't...Last night I woke up with the sweats and knew it was not a late implentation. After ten cycles I know the signs. I decided not to take anymore meds and spoke to the doc this AM who convinced me to take another blood test. THANK THE UNIVERSE, the Beta went down. It’s over. For now.

Thank you all for your support. Somehow this is harder than normal. And yes, when you have a donor you do think it’s a magic bullet – but there is no magic, just life unfolding. Will spend the weekend trying to heal.

It’s happening again…

22 HCG ten days past transfer. It’s cruel really. The last pregnancy in February the one that dragged on for six weeks before the D&C started with a 34. It almost seems like a joke to go through this again - to be in the "you're not negative but your positive is really sucky" place. I’m trying to go with it. Hope for the best but really, the whole thing is like, F*#$ this is happening again. Would like for it to be over quickly one way or another. We are going out of town this weekend so I wont even be able to do a blood test until Monday.

So there we are. Once again. Waiting in limbo, not really anywhere. Still so grateful for all that we have balanced by this is just totally crappy news and I feel stuck.

Imagine our shock

when we sat down with dr. fabulous to go over how many of our 18 fertilized embryos we’d put back/freeze and he told us that in fact we had a grand total of two that had made it past the five day mark and those two we’d put back because neither was yet a blast. so the chances that both would make it/stick were very small.

Aint life amazing. One minute we are hypothetically speaking to our obgyn about if I could even physically carry twins the next we are so grateful that we even have two embryos that we can put back at all.

All I can say is that Summer put is so well (thank you Summer) when she said in her comment to my previous post “even though medicine can try to create more and they can retrieve more than one mature egg per stimulation. The whole point of retrieving multiple mature eggs per stimulation is to try to find that good one.”

And of course there is this to say once again: We have no control over events, science certainly gives us that illusion, but it isn’t totally science. There is something else involved in all of this otherwise 1+1 would always equal 2 but that just isn’t the case in the fertility spinning wheel.

So keep sending your thoughts and comments. I have nine more days to go.

My husband and I are, I think, at peace with the idea that whatever the outcome is; it’s what’s meant to be for us and for our family. That said of course I vacillate between hopeful and totally negative until I’m able to remind myself to remain in the present moment which is a nice one to be in.

What Control?

So all is set for a transfer this coming Tuesday. Our donor had 25 eggs retrieved and we get the fertilization results tomorrow. Great right? Yes and we are now, of course, agonizing about whether to put on or two back. Twins would be a lot. And then we think, but my gosh could we actually be that lucky that two would take on the first go? And of course this is all so hypothetical and all about this illusion of control over details when you have a child this way. Details that we have no control over whatsoever. Tuesday will be transfer. I’m up. Our obgyn said, given my past pregnancy (the one with our first donor cycle) she things, besides some possible discomfort toward the end, I should go for two embryos as we would have more of a chance of a pregnancy that way. Maybe I was looking for a medical reason not to try two, I don’t know. At any rate I think, at the moment, our feeling it to go for it because well, we wont try this again. Its sort of our last shot. I would love to expand our family, am satisfied with what we have, and well, this is sort of it . Also not getting any younger. I turned 42 last month.

So there it is. If anyone still reads this, please send your good thoughts our way.

The Issue with Gattica

Just cause it looks good on paper doesn’t mean it is. And so our donor, who looked perfect genetically on paper doesn’t have good eggs. Whoa. Right? She just did a second cycle eleven eggs, two good. The doctor is not recommending her for further egg donation. Kinda funny, but not really.

The upshot is that we did have a back up who was our first choice but had said she couldn’t work with our time line. Guess what?! Now she can. So we are back on after a minor glitch that only took up about two hundred and seventy nine extra hours of thinking about it and stressing.

Enjoy the weekend.

Going Gattica

Do you know the movie? You know the one where “In "the not-too-distant" future, genetic engineering of humans is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class and ethan hawke plays a guy who fools everyone he being born without the help of genetic tinkering is discriminated against etc…anyway…where was I. Oh yeah, finding a donor.

As my husband and I looked at the donor selection – trying to minimize photos by asking the two agencies we were working with to send us PDF sans images…we started to get caught up in the stories – not the whole I like this, or eat that but the story of I paint, or I’m good at math, or I studied this and my siblings do X while my parents do Y – getting caught up in whose story is most similar to mine…and then the epiphany came…these are just stories and it really doesn’t matter what these people do (direction is so much determined by home life/circumstances/chance etc) – I see how much we influence our daughter now, see how different she is from her cousin of the same age in many respects because of how we are raising her and while genetics are responsible for a predisposition and her looks we help to guide that and foster or negate certain qualities which bring me back to this: in the end we threw out the stories of the donors just as we’d thrown out the images and went to who is the healthiest, who doesn’t have cancer, and has perfect eyesight etc (see Gattica above) and then it was easy there was only one who had such a clean slate. So we picked her. And in the game of pretending we can control anything we feel like we have someone who at least on paper will give our possible baby the best chance for a long disease free life. That and we had the nurse who chose our previous donor take a look at the photo of this donor to let us know if she thought she was compatible not with me but with the donor for our daughter. And she is. To back track I sent photos of our daughter to the agencies and had them select donors for us since we didn’t want to see the images.

And there we have it. We will do a cycle at end of August/September.

Fingers crossed.

Donor Search Update

So we looked into donors – thank you everyone for your suggestions. Summer’s list is extensive. Please take a look at it. http://worrierwarrior.wordpress.com/agency-list/


We tried Beverly Hills Egg Donation and aside from the fact that the donor we chose – that they suggested – decided she didn’t want to cycle again the experience has been good. They are responsive, I sent photos of myself so they could help me with the search. My husband and I DO NOT want to see photos of the donor. We aren’t looking for someone who looks like me, or the previous donor (not that we know what she looks like) but we are looking for similar physical traits like hair texture, skin color, body type, overall healthy (with healthy family members) coordinated and someone who is college educated (although that isn’t even necessarily an indicator that someone is intelligent). Oh, and a proven donor. We don’t care what music they like, or what their favorite books is, those are not genetic characteristics.

At any rate it did seem to be too good to be true that the first person we chose would work out. Luckily there was someone else equally good. And finally lucky for us the nurse we worked with who chose our donor for us before looked at both these donor’s profiles AND their photos so she could let us know if there were any red flags or any reason the ones we chose would not be good.

So there it is: we have decided to move forward. We have a second donor we also liked – although , and here is the kicker – while she has donated once before there was no pregnancy. It’s a risk. More so then say, with our other choice who had donated three times and had three pregnancies. So of course nothing is perfect. And we are a little hesitant because of this. But then we all know this isn’t an exact science – if it was there would be a formula and all of us would get the correct result. So there is that chance and I guess we are gonna take it.

Searching

We have decided to see if we can find another donor. Last time we didn’t look. The nurse who we had worked with for two years just called and said “ I have the perfect donor for you”. And that’s who we went with. This time that donor is done donating. We have asked the nurse again to look out for us but I’m also now contacting donor agencies which is bewildering…maybe a little odd to be flipping through images of people. I actually never saw our donor and don’t have any desire to see the next one. Anyone know of a great East Coast donor agency? Let me know.

So that’s where we are at. Although if we don’t find a donor in the next four to five months we will stop searching. We are very happy with our family as three and while it would be an incredible blessing to have another we are already so blessed we will be happy to keep our family the same size.

Ugh

Blah’s have set in. Back went out. Almost got sick. Body is tired. It is different getting over this loss with a child already here. We know how lucky we are to have her, and she doesn’t let me sit and stew. All good.

Still it’s hard. And now that the relief of having the D& C is behind me I can feel sad. DH and I went to hear some classical music and I immediately started crying. A good thing. Went to a toddler CPR class and heard this girl say everyone here has just had a second baby, or is expecting one except for her (pointing at me). Crap thing. Seeing my “friend” and not talking to her about any of this….the one who said she wished she might have a miscarriage. Yeah, that friend. I did not officially tell her what happened, have not really seen her alone, but have not felt like it. And I don’t really want to hear about her pregnancy. Awkward thing. She lives two blocks away and her daughter and ours like to play together – they are two weeks apart. Guess I’ll stuff my feelings around her and go pay my therapist more money to get through it all.

Anyway, life does forge ahead, and this one is.

It’s over.

It’s over. For now.

D&C this morning. When our doctor came to do the ultrasound he said something once again that was totally icky. This time I was ready. And guess what? He heard me. He totally apologized. And apologized again. And again. And it really made a difference because instead of feeling vaguely icky I just was able to feel sad. I urge you, if you are ever in a similar situation to speak up. I didn’t yell, I know I had tears in my eyes because well, because. And it was fine. And it was a relief. And I don’t care if he remembers about last week, I am hopeful that he will drop in when he speak to the next patient in a similar situation. And I know he can. And when he says he understand how painful this is, he does. He and his wife used a donor and a surrogate and we all know you don’t just start there.

It feels like a relief to have all the waiting over, finally. Even though the waiting means the end of this pregnancy. This is my fourth miscarriage. I hope it is the last. DH and I have to talk about what we want to do. We may be done, and we may try again. I’m just in this moment getting through. Taking the time to sit and breathe and feel instead of covering up with busy work.

Thank you as always for your support.

Sucky friend update: she emailed an apology. A nice one (in a way better than a phone call since I didn’t have to respond etc.). But I’m not sure if the damage has been done. In other words I will still be friends with her, how deep that friendship goes remains to be seen.

With a friend like this who needs an enemy?

So there was one friend I told about our pregnancy. She had told me she was pregnant and was not so happy about it (not someone with fertility issues). At any rate she asked me how things were going. “Not great, it looks like I’m headed for a miscarriage.” “Oh I wish that would happen to me.” I kid you not. That was the response. I looked at her like WTF and almost started crying and said something to the effect of, umm that was not helpful. Immediately she was like I’m sorry blab bla....i had this urge to smooth things over and say to her I know you didn’t mean it. Instead I just said, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Then she’s all like I feel terrible – and I’m sure she did but I didn’t feel like consoling her for telling me she wished she was having a miscarriage too. Gawd.

I know she didn’t mean it. I know she has a lot going on. It’s just disappointing when a friend doesn’t come through. And it’s just sort of gross.

Anyway, still waiting and eating and popping pills and doing injections and time is slowly dragging by till next Tuesday.

Thanks for listening/reading.

How Sucky Can it Get?

“It looks like you’re headed for a D&C” but, of course we need to wait an see because there is a chance (and the doc has seen it happen0that everything could be hunky dory). And the five days behind in development are still about a late implantation. And so begins the fourth week of wait and see. Very hard psychologically and physically. We have shared with no one although this morning I finally told my mother. Her response “ can you get the same donor again?”. Not exactly the warm nurturing comment I was hoping for. And no I don’t know what I was hoping but I do know it wasn’t that.

At any rate, still waiting, still doing shots and popping pills and stuffing my face because I’m starving all the time and in the back of my head is that small image today that didn’t have a fetal heartbeat when it should but we can’t give up yet because we never know. So I guess in the moment I’m still pregnant and next Tuesday’s scan – scheduled for 9:00 AM so that if I need a D&C I can get whisked off to another floor for a 9:30 procedure – will tell all.

Safe…for now

So it’s not ectopic! Bedside manner of doctor was horrible. You’d think that was actually not a good thing the way she said it…you are still in a gray area sac hasn’t developed yet. And I’m like do you expect one now? And she’s like no. God…youd’ think they’d have an ounce of sensitivity. Maybe. At any rate we are still playing the waiting game. On to next week’s scan. I’d like to remain cautiously positive. Will let you know in a week.

Seesaw

Well today my number is somewhere in mid 500s which is normal for the number I had earlier but is low for this point in time. So they are all like we’re not worried BUT should come in for ultrasound next Tuesday (instead of waiting another week for my doctor to get back from a trip) just to rule out an Ectopic Pregnancy. Ugh. The nurse was like, “I’m not worried at all your numbers are right on target from the 34 baseline”. And yadda yadda yadda – ugh. And I’m like ummm you know you are talking to someone who seen so many permutations of what can go wrong this is not soothing.

Please keep your fingers and toes crossed for us.

Today lottery number इस...

Today my number was 270. Doctors have gone from cautiously optimistic to optimistic. We are still cautious. Always. I am scared to think it might have worked. Again. Scared and grateful.

And no I am not thinking I wish this time it was with my own eggs. Not at all. Why should I. It makes no difference in my love.

I am just hopeful that everything will turn out ok and that we remain grounded enough to integrate a possible new soul into our family in a safe nurturing way.

We tried again

We tried again
hi,

Don't know if anyone reads this anymore. My husband and I tried a frozed DE cycle with our last to frozen embies. One didn't make it one was chugging along. I just got back the pregnancy test blood test certain it would be negative. And...it's positive BUT with a number of 34. I am not very hopeful. This kinda sucks. I wish it were a flat out negative. To contrast this number, with our daughter it was 160. Ugh.ugh. ugh. And of course they can't say no way but they also can't say this is great. I know they look for a number over 50. ugh. If anyone is reading this and has any words of support of wisdom of whatever, please share.

Nurture vs. nurture

Hi.

As you can see I don’t post that often anymore but I think there may still be a few things worth sharing for DE moms and those thinking of becoming DE parents.

Here it is: I think I’ve become so much more conscious of who I am and what I do, how I react, assessing my values, or family values because I know that the thing I pass on to our daughter is my morals, my actions, and my example not the genetics. So I can’t say oh well at least she gets X from me since I messed up raising her. Nope, I get raising our daughter, period. What I can show her through my actions versus what she’s received simply by being born. And ultimately that’s what it’s about. Your looks and your natural talents are just that. It’s the person who embodies it that makes the difference and as a DE mom that’s the input I get.

It’s nice. It keeps me grounded while staying on my toes.