Merry Christmas, Dammit!

I'm beginning to really resent the holidays.  They are starting to become soul-sucking.  I'm trying to fake myself into being into them.  I've decorated, I've bought a few presents that are here and remain unwrapped.  It's just not fun to do something with so much pent up resentment.

I wasn't thankful on Thanksgiving, and I'm not merry.  I'm angry and sad.

I met with Dr. Donesky last week as I'm still having problems.  After reviewing my labwork and symptoms, he just told me this is the beginning of the end of my ovaries.  I'm officially in menopause.  I've known this, yet hearing it just made me sad.  Sad enough to be weepy, unhappy and throw pity-parties for myself.

I just have a hard time accepting the fact that someone can accuse me of looking like I'm 16 one day, and then finding out I'm in menopause the next.  I guess the age thing will catch up in a hurry now.  I've had the insomnia for a while, I have hot flashes, night sweats...I'm a childless hag.

I'm exhausted from trying to pretend like everything is okay when nothing is okay with this situation. As if I'm suppose to be grateful that I "still have options."  Options that cost around 30,000 dollars and aren't guaranteed.  I am completely ungrateful for infertility right now.

I feel like I'm just wallowing in life.  This is not where I thought I would be at all...I thought I would be finished having children by now.  Enjoying the life of a young, completed family.  I certainly didn't think I'd still be undergoing fertility treatments and that they would not be successful.  I'm fed up, but I can't let myself give up.

Everyone in my age bracket is prepping for their Christmas with their children, and I'm trying to figure out what to get my dog this year, again.  I'm just so over celebrating the birth of an immaculately conceived baby, when I can not even get pregnant using donor eggs.  The more I think about it the more I hate Christmas.  I just want it to be over, so I can stop faking it.

I used to love Christmas...now it's just another reminder of everything I don't have.  All I want for Christmas is a healthy child of my own.  Nobody seems to be able to help us accomplish that.

Peace, Love, and Bah-humbug,

Mary Katherine  

Rebuilding

I think I'm finding myself again.  It's been pretty awful at times, but it's also been normal at other times.  People want you to just be fixed, but that is a little much to ask, so I just expect myself to function, and that seems to be working.  I end up enjoying most of my days without having the pressure of having to be "happy."  It's too much to expect everyone to be happy all the time, especially when recuperating from a failed cycle and, lest we forget, still facing childlessness while the rest of the world populates.

I think I'm out of despair, and in the "angrily accepting" stage of grief.  I've had a couple of "Have you thought about adopting?" and "How many children do you have?" and the ever famous "My brother's friend's cousin's sister-in-law went through 'all that' and she finally adopted and 4 months later she was pregnant with perfect identical twins which she gave birth to at home with a midwife, flowers, and unicorns,"  (I may have embellished that last one a bit..) in the last couple of weeks.

Someone asked me the other day if I'd ever tried Clomid...after I'd talked about having IVF.  Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining!  Why did you let me waste my breath if you think Clomid is the cure-all for infertility???? 

I also love loathe any sentence that starts with "Have you thought about..."  All I do is think, and ask, and pray, and hope and plead for guidance. Honestly, you telling me about how your kin-folk "quit trying" and got pregnant doesn't inspire hope, it quite honestly inspires more emotional pain and despair. Because it is physiologically impossible for me to conceive my own child.  No...don't say, "but miracles happen." Hell, how anyone conceives is a miracle! Miracles happen for people who are not quite as infertile as maybe they were thought to be, but it's just not going to happen for me, because I am barren. So barren that I am officially being treated for menopause.  As in my ovaries have said 'nope, no mas, we are taking early retirement'.  Help me retain my acceptance, and don't make me feel like I've given up too soon.

Especially when giving up is the total opposite of what we are doing.  We've got some obstacles to face before we can try again, and we want to give ourselves enough time to build back up our emotional stamina. Not to mention, we don't want to ruin anymore holidays with another memory of loss.

So I guess the theme of this blog is we're ok, and for now that's enough.  We can live a life without joy. We can enjoy things, people, places and moments.  We can make do with what we have, but we can't expect to experience joy...and that's ok.  Not everyone has a perfect life, and not everyone who makes decision A will get outcome B.  No matter how much they want it.  BJ and I continue to weigh each decision we make and choose a path that will give us the closure we need, regardless of the outcome.

Peace, Love, and Kubler-Ross,
Mary Katherine

Unwritten

Well, days continue to pass, and it looks like life is continuing to happen whether I rejoin the living or not.  I'm not totally ready to rejoin and commit to life as we know it.  I evert my gaze anytime I see a stroller.  I ignore babies.  I hide in bathrooms and cry.  Occasionally,  I let the pain overwhelm me as it comes crushing down on my chest. I refuse to go out in public. I hide in oversize clothes as if they'll protect me from the barrage of "What did you expect?" and "Why don't you just adopt?". 

Other times I pretend I'm strong. The whole "fake it till you make it." Although, you'd know I'm faking because I'm not brave enough to try to wear contacts just yet.  That's always the dead giveaway.  

There are tons of books about infertility and how if you "hang in there" you'll get your happy ending. What they don't tell you is how to gracefully navigate through the infinite disappointment to find hope again.  They tell you to hold on to hope.  We do, then we lose our grasp and cling to whatever far off possibility we can find, only to find ourselves in the exact same situation...just that much further from hope and that much closer to despair. 

Sometimes I wish infertility was a terminal disease just so I know it would end. I have no plans for a life without children and as long as there is a chance, I cannot accept giving up.  I wish someone would tell me that I had to have a hysterectomy, and I just wish I knew how the story was going to end.  To the point that I don't even care how if I just knew this pain would be finite.  Where there are answers, there is peace.  Any answer...

Instead, we have to endure this pain, once again.  We have to fight our way back passed the existing mode and back into "living" mode.  Pretend we are ok with life the way it is in a world where 93% of people do not have the slightest clue.  Devise yet another plan, put ourselves at risk for a chance of our greatest joy or another round of absolute heartbreak and devastation.  

Right now we are just pursuing healing.  Trying to restore our strength so we can fake it through another day, week, month, year or years until we can have a family of our own.  Honestly, that's all it is.  Faking it in a world where precious few understand how difficult it is to not be able to do the one thing you were biologically designed for and your heart desired so much.

Peace, Love, and Pretend,

MK

Well...

That's over.

I am not pregnant.  Even after using a healthy embryo.  Even after having more side effects from the hormones than I ever have had.  I wish I could understand why, how, and what happened, but we don't and won't ever know for certain.  There was only a 50% chance as with every other frozen embryo transfer performed with a day 5 blast.  However I seem to on the losing side of these statistics no matter what we do.

I have an appointment with Donesky on Thursday.  We have another embryo.  We have options, still, but none of that takes away the disappointment or the pain in the immediate moments.

We keep "pulling out all the stops", and none of it seems to really matter.  I don't know why.  I hate not knowing.  I hate being told "there is no reason you aren't conceiving" when here I am inconceivably not pregnant.

Well, let the healing begin...

Peace, Love, and Onwards and Upwards.

FET

Well, it went great overall.

BJ and I arrived in Chattanooga at about 10:45.  We tried to shop at Hamilton Place Mall, but we never noticed how perfumey (I made up a word...I know) stores were.  It's not just Abercrombie...so we finally went to Spencer's because it did not smell like anything.  I ended up playing with that "Magic Sand" for 15 minutes...It's pretty calming...98% sand 2% polymer minimal residue...If you are a worrier like me...then it's good stuff...Plus it comes in pink...(Christmas is coming, afterall so *hint,hint*, BJ).

So since our Hamilton Place Mall trip lasted only 45 minutes...and 2 stores, we decided to go furniture shopping because 3 years later I've never found a dining room set I was willing to put in my house.  So that got us through lunch and we ended up in the parking lot of the fertility center 8 minutes early.  We waited for about 10 minutes past when my labs were supposed to be drawn, and because I am Mary Katherine Roberts, I told BJ...they are going to parade out of there and tell us they are sorry but none of our embryos survived the thaw.

Lets review...The Fertility Center almost exclusively does frozen embryo transfers now.  The success rates with frozen embryos have been higher than fresh.  They thaw embryos all.the.time.  So I was just making myself crazy for no reason.  Instead, out comes Susan, our embryologist sent from Heaven, with a huge smile on her face saying that our embryo has already been thawed and had started to continue to develop.  So because I have enough hormones in my system to keep an elephant pregnant, it was really hard to hold it together. They drew my progesterone and then it was time for my massage. The Fertility Center's masseuse, Rachel, is the most amazing woman. By the time I got to her, and of course, I was being escorted by Susan because she was explaining what she looked for and how so far Baby Roberts met all of that criteria, I started crying.  Not sad tears, but I just won Miss America tears, because none of this ever goes well for us.

Anyway, Rachel remembered me from 3 years ago, and she wanted to do a hot rock massage to try to get the soreness out of my hips from my 2x a day progesterone shots. I have never done a hot rock massage, they're nice.  Rachel asked if she could pray with me, she did.  And much to my heart she prayed for strength for BJ and I no matter what the future had in store for us.  I thought it was a very Episcopalian of her, so I appreciated it.

It wasn't long before they were ready for us in the pre-op area.  Jan the IVF coordinator gave me my discharge instructions.  Lay low for 72 hours and Susan came back and consulted with us once again.
She gave us a picture of Baby Roberts:

Baby is at 1:00...Just for perspective, here is a blastocyst compared to the eye of a needle...

(www.eikonika.net)

So she told us she hatched the zona pellucida with a laser after she took this photo to give Baby Roberts every possible chance.  

We went back for the transfer, and with minimal struggle Dr. Donesky got the catheter where he wanted it, and the transfer was completed.  He told us he was very pleased with the quality of the embryo.  I rested for 20 minutes...during which Susan came back and gave us a worry stone with the word 'Hope' on it.  She told me she really liked this one because of the burgundy in it, and it has been in her office for a long time, but she wanted to give it to me.  She  laid it on my tummy. 

I'm sure they go out of their way to make all of us frequent fliers feel special, but they do a good job of really making it seem genuine, even if it's not really special treatment.  Plus talking to her, really made the time fly by so I could pee!!!  (They do an abdominal US for this procedure so you have to fill your bladder...and hold it for however long it takes plus 20 minutes.)

So since then I've been a couch potato as instructed.  I've had some twinges, occasional sharper sensations, but I'm very aware that I have a uterus.  I have no clue what this means.  I know with my chemical pregnancy I had some sharp cramps, but I don't even remember what day they were on. I remember I had already given up at that point and was an emotional basket-case.  This time, I'm feeling optimistic. I know my mother had piercing implantation cramps when she had my brother...That was back in the day when they killed rabbits to see if you were pregnant...but it was so early they could not be for sure whether she was indeed pregnant.  I'm choosing to believe this is just implantation stuff until proven otherwise.

Peace, Love and Hopefully Implanting!

MK  

I'm Just So...

A.N.G.R.Y.

I'm so incredibly frustrated, sad, embittered and angry right now.  I know it's anxiety, lack of sleep, and hormone-fueled, but it feels awful, nevertheless. The worse part is that there is no one to be angry at or frustrated with because it's just aimed at life in general.

I'm angry that no one seems to understand why I'm angry.  I'm angry that I'm having this meltdown the night before my embryo transfer. I'm angry that there is a TV series "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" but there isn't a show "I Didn't Know I'd Be Infertile."  I'm angry that we have to go through all of this, and it very possibly (as BJ and I well know) won't work.  I'm angry at people who say "Well, it's not going to be worse than the other times it didn't work."

Every attempt is the worst one yet, because every attempt requires us to pool together all the resources we have including hope.  We drain our hope every month we try thinking this will be it. Else we wouldn't try. And when it doesn't work, we are literally hopeless until we can try again.  It's exhausting and I don't want to be hopeless anymore.

I'm angry that I've become so good at failing.  If you could only imagine failing at something so simple. Imagine it taking 5 years to pass your driving test and never understanding why you failed in the first place.  Imagine consecutively failing a prerequisite for getting into your dream job for years on end as you watch everyone else ace it.  Imagine no one really caring.

I don't know how I feel about tomorrow. I was positive yesterday, negative the day before, and just angry today.  I'm really scared the embryo(s) will not survive the thaw, and it will all be for naught. I'm hoping this is just the pre-transfer jitters.

Peace, Love, And Tomorrow will be better,
MK 

Progesterone Shot #3

This is going to be a long 2 weeks...

Peace, love, and at least it's my blood, 

Mary Katherine