Fertile yet Infertile ?

Friends in Low Places

I have so many things to write about, its just plain silly that I haven’t posted lately.

Sometimes, after a cycle craps out, I just get to this place. Its like the deep dark pit of no return. Ok – who am I kidding? After every cycle failure, and moreso – after all of my miscarriages, I go to this place. Not sometimes. EVERY time.

And every time, it seems to get worse. It takes me longer to climb out of it, to remember who I am again. It’s often a very difficult time for T and I, and this time is no exception. In fact, I think this is the worst its been so far – in the five years we’ve been walking down this road together.

But that’s not what I intended to write about today. Actually, I wanted to talk about how isolated I feel these days. This five years has been long and hard. Its been tough on me, and T no doubt, but truthfully what I’ve been turning over in my head the past couple of weeks is how its been devastating to the majority of my friendships. I read around the internets about women who either have infertile friends in real-life, ones who really "get-it." Also, I’ve read about bloggers who have real-life friends that, while they have not experienced infertility themselves, find ways to try and comprehend, or at the very least remain supportive and helpful even in the worst of times.

I have to admit posts like that make me jealous – because I really don’t have much, if any of those friends in my circle.

Some of the drifting apart is understandable. Most of my friends are married, and in the past 2-3 years, all of them have been pumping out kids. I usually don’t go to the gatherings where all the kids are in attendance, and they never have adult-only get-togethers. In addition, all of them at one time or another have proven through words and actions that they either don’t care about our plight, or that it makes them so uncomfortable that they can't deal with it. All of this just left me feeling empty or upset or angry – over and over again, every time it happened. So I just stopped. No emails, no calls, no get-togethers. Polite conversation when we see each other. Nothing more. And I’ve finally gotten to the place where it doesn’t bother me.

Then, there’s J. J has been a friend for years. While we were close and had fun hanging out when we were young and wild (well, wild for me anyway), things have been more complicated with J since I got married. She is still immature, acting like she’s in college even though she’s older than me. She mismanages her money, lives beyond her means in a tiny Manhattan apartment, and hasn’t had a serious relationship since high school.

But we continue to do this dance around one another, trying to pretend we’re still friends. We’ve had some difficult conversations in the last year or two – ones where I have confronted her about one thing or another, but we’ve survived. She’s always maintained that despite our obvious lifestyle differences, she wants to stay friends.

BUT.

During my pregnancies, my miscarriages, my IVF cycles over the years, she’s shown less and less of an interest in what happened, how it’s going, how I am dealing, etc. I mean, we’ve gotten to the point where we lately, we only chat about it occasionally via IM. No in-person discussions, no phone calls. It really bugs me.

Flash forward to this latest cycle. As I’ve written about here, we decided to take a shot at using a sperm donor to fertilize half my eggs and see if that created better quality embryos than last time. J and I, discussing this over IM, had the following conversation:

J: So you’re using the sperm donor this time?

S: Yeah.

J: What’s he like?

S: Ummm.

S: He has a PhD. in Geology.

J: Oh, so he’s a dork LOL

I signed off. I was mad. I KNOW this was a joke, and I doubt she had any intent of being hurtful. But hell – WHY would you joke about such a thing? The fact that T and I had even come to this option, that we were considering it…the drama that went into picking another man to be a biological part of our children. NOT. FUNNY.

From that point forward, I blocked her ID from my AIM. Weeks went by – all while I was going through the cycle. Nothing. No e-mails, no calls, nothing. Egg retrieval and then embryo transfer came and went. A couple days into the 2ww, I get a text message on my cell phone: "thinking of ya." WHAT IS THAT? Like I’m supposed to believe that was a genuine expression of concern or support? I ignored it. Finally a few days after we got the negative result, she sent me an email that essentially said she hadn’t heard from me, assumed things hadn't gone well and that I’m just taking my time, but she’s "hear (sic) for me." Again, I was flummoxed. Why wouldn’t she call? Just to check in? She covers this topic in an email? And she doesn’t even know my test was negative at this point, she’s just assuming?

Needless to say, I ignored it again. Later that week I shared with a mutual friend that the cycle didn’t work and we were heartbroken. I know he subsequently told her. She ended up calling me almost a week later, while I was away at my leadership retreat.  I emailed quickly to say I was away to which she replied: "joy."  And then came her email again a couple weeks later: "Hello?"

In any case, I couldn’t deal with her on top of all the other emotional bulk, so I just ignored it all. She finally called me at work one day (where she knows I can’t talk – I work in cubicle land) after a week or two and left a message that could be interpreted as hostile. She basically said she hadn’t heard from me, and to at least call and get in touch, she ‘gets it’ if I am laying low, but she wants to be "here for me."

I thought about it for a few days and eventually decided to email. I wanted to talk to her about everything, get it out on the table, but not over the phone. I conveniently was going to be in NYC that week for a meeting, so I suggested we get together, making evident I needed to talk to her about a couple things – implication being I’m angry or upset or something. This commences an email string where she lets me know she can’t make it that night because she has some community response training class to go to (like she couldn’t skip or try to get out a tad early?) and offers to meet me for lunch. I had already said I was in an all day meeting, so lunch was not an option, and couldn’t stay late (she wanted to meet at 10pm) etc. Well the end result is this statement from her "oh well, maybe next time I’m at my parents."

Her parents live about an hour from me, and she goes there for the weekend occasionally. I was stunned. I mean, could she be any more non-committal? Make it clearer she doesn’t REALLY want to sit down and have a tough conversation with me?

Ugh, just ugh. Why do people have so many issues that end up being my problem?  Where have all the normal people gone?

So I let the email go. I didn’t reply. I don’t know what else to do. I’m trying to find a way in my mind to get some kind of closure to it – to not be so upset about it, not to reflect on the whole situation all the time. All it does is bring me sadness. But I can’t. I keep reviewing the whole thing in my head - the past couple years of our drifting apart, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do next, how I’m supposed to move off this spot.

I suppose writing this is part of it; I’m trying to find a way to get it out of me and onto something else. Put it out there, out of my head where I just keep turning it over and looking at it, to look at it more objectively.

If anyone is still reading, you deserve a shout-out for hanging in there with me…

I’m planning on writing more over the weekend more specific to the next part of our IF journey. And oh yeah, stay tuned for an uplifting post about my depression.

See Sherry Spot.

Today:  cd 30

Any signs of a period:  Spotting for the last 5 DAYS?!?!?!?!

What the heck?  I have never spotted like this - for this long.  Well, except while pregnant.  Ha.

I'm not sure what could be going on.  Spotting is low progesterone, right?  Maybe my body is all out of whack from the completely artificial cycle last month; I just have no earthly idea.

Don't know how much longer I am supposed to let this go on without calling my ob/gyn.

Also - I boldly called the new RE practice today.  I was put through to the "scheduling coordinator's" voice mail.  She never called back.

ARGH!

A meandering kind of post.

I am in disbelief this week that it’s actually September.  September 17^th to be more exact!  A month since we confirmed the negative result of our latest cycle.  I feel like the time has both dragged and flew by at the same time, if there’s any sense in that.

I don’t so much have a full coherent post this morning as a bunch of tidbits, so please bear (or is it bare?) with me as I meander around.

First, I wanted to thank you all for the cheer-me-up comments you posted here.  I think this is the most comments I have received on a post to date.  You have no idea how much you ladies and the support you give mean to me.  While I wish I weren’t “here” if you catch my drift, I absolutely love being a part of this community with you all – it’s such a special place!

Second – a tidbit about our RE.  I think I mentioned in my last post how this guy declared his newfound doubts about PGD.  He said he wanted to talk to some colleagues and dig up some citations for us before recommending how to proceed if we were to do another cycle using my eggs.  He said it would take a couple of days.  Well, it’s now been two weeks since we’ve heard from him.  And I’m really annoyed.  I know I could just call him and ask for a call back.  But between this latest disregard of managing our case, and the whole bad donor debacle, I just have an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.  I feel almost silly about it, as I know Doctors are busy people.  But if he can’t take the time to call me back about this and explain a position he was so wishy-washy about – and in response to something so important?  Come, on!  I just feel so disappointed in him and how our care is being managed – again.

Which leads me to meandering #3, a new RE.  I have been procrastinating on calling another practice for weeks now.  Every day I find a new reason not to call, or else conveniently forget.  T is not pushing me either.  He’s been so wrapped up in a big work project lately that it seems to be the only thing on his mind.  We went out to dinner on Saturday night – for the first time in quite a while – and I thought the “baby” topic was bound to come up.  But it didn’t.  Obviously, I could have brought it up if I wanted, but I didn’t.  We were having a nice time chatting about this and that, and smiling at each other so I just let it go.  Of course in this restaurant we frequent in Philly – the tables are oddly close together.  Close enough that you hear the conversations of your neighbors without even trying.  Who do we end up next to but a couple with a baby at home – their first night leaving her with someone – who frantically call home three times during the meal to see how she is doing with the sitter, asking dozens of questions about how much milk she took.  Ugh.

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to decide if this “limbo-land” where we haven’t chosen a course yet is leading me to the insomniac path I am currently on. You see, I have always been the type of person who has her problems surface in sleep patterns.  If I’m stressed, I sleep fitfully.  If I am depressed, I sleep a lot – or not at all, depending on the shade of the depression.  However I haven’t dealt with a bout quite like this one in a long time, and I’m not sure what to do about it.  For the past 10-14 days, I have routinely been waking up somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00 am.  I inevitably have to get up and pee, since I am awake.  Then I go back to bed and the trouble begins.  My mind races.  Work, infertility, friends, T, whatever.  I go from one topic to the next at blinding speed.  And I can’t turn it off.  So I lay there, unable to go back to sleep until 5:30 ish, at which point I fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.  Then of course, my alarm at 6:15 comes – BOOM – when I am just falling into that deep sleep.  It’s KILLING me.  I feel exhausted every single day.  And it’s certainly not helping my mood much. 

Last point, I promise.  Yesterday I spoke with my father for the first time in a couple of months.  I haven’t said much about my relationship with him here, but suffice it to say things are um – rather strained.  He wasn’t around much when I was a kid, (workaholic with an alcoholic spin to it) and we never had much of a relationship.  Things went completely downhill when he stopped talking to me after my mother and he separated – because he perceived I somehow had chosen her side.  Then since my father wasn’t speaking to me, I asked my cousin to give me away when I married T.  I still invited my father to the wedding – but he refused to come because people would talk about him not being the one to give me away.  Yeah.

Anyway, I digress.  For these and many other reasons, we have limited interaction.  Whenever I talk to him, it’s the same conversation all the time.  He complains about my mother (if his girlfriend is not present) and how hard he has to work.  He scolds me for something, anything, while singing my brother’s praises.  In any case, after delivering the news that we had lost our first pregnancy, I didn’t tell him much more about our IF struggles.  Not about the other miscarriages, subsequent IVF treatments, etc.  Yesterday, I called him with the sole purpose of using all of our trials to date to make him feel guilty. 

He had been complaining to my brother last week that he hadn’t heard from me in months, and how I never call him back, blah, blah, blah.  So I sucked it up, called him and told him we were having kind of a rough summer.  I told him about all the IVF treatments.  I could tell he felt bad.  I then started feeling bad about using our experience that way – to make someone feel guilty.  But you know what – then when he somehow twisted the conversation to his problems (which are about 90% self inflicted) and how I should call him back when he calls because he “might be calling me to tell me he’s checking out,” the guilt started slipping away.  I was just left feeling sad after I hung up – pretty much the same way I always feel after each and every one of our conversations…

I’m hoping to update this place more frequently.  I know I’ve been one of the most lax posters in the blogosphere, and I want to change that.  Hopefully I’ll be able to update later this week with a post about how I got UP OFF MY BUTT and called the new RE!

More on Virginia

I went out to lunch today with a friend, B.  We had a long talk, and I told her all about my weekend with C.  Somehow, I feel like I failed to convey just how painful our little “talk” was.  B didn’t really comprehend until she was trying to compare herself to C – telling me how she sometimes feels she has some harsh words for me, so how is it any worse what C did?

The difference is this.  I have no doubts, ever that B will stand behind me.  I have never felt she was judging me.  She may disagree with my viewpoints, or push me to see different sides of things I say – but she is always supportive.  And I know even if I were to lose my mind, leave my dear T and run away to a deserted island, she would love me no less.

If I really get down to it, there were a couple of things about this weekend that were most bothersome.

The first was how I felt C was judging me.  Her tone, her inflection – some of the words she used made me feel that not only didn’t she agree with my choices, but she was belittling me for them.  She took an almost ‘holier than thou’ approach in telling me about how hard the first year of having a baby is.  Harder than I can imagine.  So hard, well maybe I should just not do it if I am worried about my marriage.

The worst part of this was the things I thought of later, the ones I turned over and over in my head – that I wish I had said.  During these three, almost four years now, we’ve faced countless challenges.  Our hopes have been dashed.  We’ve watched a poor, sick little 15 week fetus move around lethargically on an ultrasound screen – knowing he would never survive.  We’ve kissed countless times – with me on a hospital gurney and him worried to death, either going into surgery to take miscarried tissue from me to try and make sense from it, or heading into an ivf procedure room, on our way to having more hopes dashed.  What would she have said if I had tried to describe any of that to her?

We’ve spent so much money, we’ve wasted tears, grieved and screamed in disbelief at what we’ve been handed.  Though I know I have not experienced the stress of that first year having a newborn, I find it hard to believe it could possibly be more emotionally draining on us than this has been. 

The flip side of this experience with C is really just the anger I feel towards myself.  That first night, I discounted my feelings.  I tried to talk myself out of being upset.  I made excuses.  Excuses for me – I’ve had too much wine, I’m overly emotional, I shouldn’t be this upset, I’m too sensitive, I’m too angry to talk to anyone right now.  They were all geared at not allowing myself to experience the feelings as they come, and to trust them.  And I had myself so twisted and turned inside, so churned up about all of this, that I failed to say anything.  I didn’t take my chance to tell her how hurt I was – to educate her about talking to me, talking to other women like me.  I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to at the very least, get my feelings off my chest.

And now, is my moment gone?  Have I missed my window of opportunity to tell her how I feel?  I don’t know.  I think about calling her and talking to her about it, and then wonder if it’s even worth it.  Will she understand?  Will she just get defensive?  Will our relationship ever be the same again, no matter what I do?  I doubt it.

What would you do?

Rest and Relaxation?

This past weekend, I went away with my friend C.  Prior to this, I had counted C in the very (frightfully) small group of friends I could talk to about my infertility without worry.  Although she has a smiling little boy, the result of a blissfully easily achieved and uneventful pregnancy, she seemed to get it.  She was here visiting just prior to my first IVF ET.  I remember her hugging me that morning, telling me everything would be alright before we drove her to the airport on our way to the clinic.

This weekend seemed to change all that.  We met about halfway between the two of us – a tad outside of

Charlottesville

,

VA.

  We went to

Monticello

, did some hiking in Shenandoah, hit a few wineries.  We stayed at this little cottage a couple rents out on their huge cattle farm.  Beautiful scenery.  Serene surroundings.  All in all it should have been a blissful weekend.

Saturday night though – after I cooked us a nice pasta dinner, we sat around drinking wine and talking.  She had avoided all things fertility related so far – but asked if we had any news on the donor.  We didn’t.  Then came the first blow.  It went something like this (insert judgmental tone here):

“Tell me again why you’re not pursuing adoption?  I mean not like Chinese or Russian baby adoption, but American baby adoption.”

I said, rather simply that we weren’t there yet; that we haven’t necessarily ruled it out.  But I felt stung.  There was so much behind that statement.  One being the obvious bias about international adoption – I won’t even go there.  Two – the oversimplification of it.  As if deciding to adopt is something you just wake up one morning and decide to try.  Duh – why hadn’t I thought of that, the solution to all our problems!  Thank you, C!  And third, the discounting of where we are now.  Egg donation.  Does this mean its taking too long for her liking and she thinks we should give up on it?  Or that she discounts our being invested in this option?

Anyway, I brushed this aside.  We moved on.  We somehow got into a long discussion about marriage and how challenging it is and how different it is from what we once thought it would be.

I opened up and shared some deep fears I have been talking about in therapy lately.  Essentially the crux of this is what happens if T and I decide to live child free.  In some twisted way, I always find myself assuming that this will be the end of us, that all the pain and disappointment and grieving we have been doing will simply be too much to get over.  More importantly I really worry about T resenting the decision – and his choice of marrying me.  You know – me, the one with the bad eggs?

Well either I didn’t appropriately describe what I meant or she jumped to a conclusion that she shouldn’t have, but what she said next was like a slap in the face.

She explained to me her opinion that if we are not “strong enough” to get through this, then maybe we shouldn’t have children.  Because, "you know, Sherry, having children is tough on a marriage."  The whole first year was SO TOUGH on her and her husband D.  The late nights, the crying baby, no sleep, figuring out how to juggle it all, etc.  And if we can’t get through this “stuff,” then actually having a baby would probably just be too much for us.

I kid you not.  This is what she actually said.  To me – her friend who has been trying to get to that place for ALMOST FOUR YEARS NOW.  Chew on that for a bit my fellow infertiles!

I’m tiring quickly and I don’t want to lose another night of sleep turning this conversation over in my head.  I will write more about this in the next day or two and then get to post number three hopefully over the weekend – where I talk about the EGG DONOR PROFILE that is sitting upstairs on our kitchen counter.  EEEEK!

Lost

Gosh I seem to be getting into this pattern of posting once a month and I don’t like it.  Doesn’t really do much for my goal to actually have more than a handful of readers, does it now.

I took a well deserved mental health day today.  The weather here in the northeast is awful – pouring rain and howling wind has had a good hold of us for the past 48 hours or so.  It is such depressing weather.  I feel like with springtime upon us, things should be bright and sunny – and encouraging.  But yet they feel worse than ever.

I suppose that is all related to the way I have been feeling the last few months.  T started a new job in the beginning of March and his dad had major surgery to rid him of the prostate cancer he found out about just before Christmas.  Since then, T’s been preoccupied, less available.  We used to talk a couple times a day on the phone while we were at work.  Not long conversations – just “hey how’s your day, what do you want for dinner” type of thing.  His new job has him busier, and most days we don’t talk at all until we get home.  We eat dinner, go our separate ways and I head to bed alone around 10.  He comes up later, with me usually asleep by that time.  Fast forward to the next day, repeat pattern again.

I’ve been “training” for this blasted 10 mile race I decided to run in.  I’ve been running at least 3 times a week and lifting weights twice a week too.  My training includes long runs on Saturdays (7 miles this weekend!) which really wipe me out, plus they keep me out of the house for a couple of hours as well.  So I guess to some degree I have been preoccupied too.  But we’re just off – and I have only realized in the past week or so that most of it is him.  He just hasn’t necessarily been “present” very much lately – and it’s bothering me big time.

I actually mentioned it to him last night, after a weekend where I thought it was particularly bad.  I didn’t blame it on him – just said I felt like we haven’t necessarily been connecting much.  He agreed and said he noticed it, but that he thought it was getting better.  I don’t necessarily agree. 

You know what gets me though – why do I have to bring it up all the time?  If he noticed it too, why didn’t he say anything?  Why do I have to be the one to force the difficult conversations all the time – take the blame for upsetting the apple cart?  These conversations always end with “Do you want a divorce?” from him – he acts as if he might die if he lost me.  Then why doesn’t he act like this is important to him BEFORE we get to a difficult time?

The scary thing for me is this – I find myself doubting everything the past few weeks.  Doubting our relationship, doubting us – the decisions we’ve made.  And then the whole waiting for an egg donor thing . . .  I sit here thinking “Do I want a baby with him?  Will all the effort be worth it – or will things just get worse when we have a baby?”  I’m at the point where I can’t even picture it anymore.

I used to be able to paint a picture in my head.  The two of us sitting there, looking into a crib at our little baby.  We’re happy, the baby is healthy, we are in love with each other, with our lives.  Now it seems out of focus – like I just don’t picture good things happening for us anymore.  Maybe it’s prophetic, you know – maybe it’s my sixth sense telling me to give up, I should get it over with now.  Then again maybe its just my mind playing tricks on me.  I’m not sure I’m up to believing good things can happen to me anymore – that I even deserve them.  I mean come on, look at the past three years – and the sadness and emptiness they have brought.  Surely this pattern won’t be reversing itself anytime soon.

I’m just so tired.  I thought the time we would spend waiting on a donor match would be liberating.  It would allow us to get on with our lives, gain back a sense of normalcy for a while – without me in the middle of treatments, hormones raging though my body.  But instead, it’s been worse than actually being in the middle of cycling.  It is like being stuck in some limbo-ish state that you are not even sure you are ever going to get out of.

Maybe it’s the rain, maybe its PMS – but the glass certainly seems half empty today.

Whoops!

I had no intention of going this long without posting, but I did.

I just felt like I didn't have much to say.

I'm currently cooking up a post or two, so stay tuned.  We had our interview session for the Egg Donor program today - good, scary, and sad all at the same time.  More to come.

And hey - anyone know what happened to Flicka?  Did she go p/w protected too, a la Manuela?

silence

I am still here.  Gone, but not forgotten, I hope.

Working on a post about the holiday blahs (which T and I have a monster case of) and our warming to the donor egg concept.  The application is sitting on my desk right now, half filled out.

I have just been feeling so tired and worn out by all this stuff - the gift giving, the cooking, the forced smiles over mugs of egg nog . . .I guess I just haven't felt like I've had much to say.

Still here

So - yeah.

I am still here.  Don't know if anyone is still reading after all the pity parties, but I intend to keep writing for now.

Topics to come:

1.  Our meeting with the RE today.  We have the semblance of a plan, with a few decisions for T and I to make - and some time off from all things related to ART.

2.  The way suddenly we are a family pariah - nobody knows how to handle us, so they just don't.

3.  The holidays - again being endured after another disappointment and/or loss.

Oh the joy of this blog!  How can you all stand it?!

I will have to try and think of a happy post topic too.  Unfortunately my heart is just so broken these days, smiles don't come by very often.

Catch up

I just have not had the energy or desire to post here in weeks - obviously.

The feelings I have now - its hard to inventory them, but overall I am still pretty angry and raw.  Recovering from a failed cycle like this - I still don't feel as awful and empty as I have with my miscarriages - but it still just sucks.  For me I guess each loss or failure or whatever at this point - feels like just another notch on the infertility belt - you know?  They just serve to bring me back around to that place where I feel hopeless and helpless - like this will never happen - while the "why us" and "why me" feelings kick into higher gear than usual.

In the "moving on" category, we've decided to go for another cycle.  I had a long phone conversation with my RE where we debated back and forth on doing fresh vs frozen - and in the end opted for fresh.  Overall I didn't feel great about our chances of success with only one frozen embryo.  Neither did the RE - he put them somewhere between 30-40 %.  He felt there would be a lot more for us to learn by doing a fresh cycle, with the added benefits of a better chance at pregnancy, and hopefully coming out of this with at least one more embryo to freeze.

We had an interesting conversation about success rates though.  I suppose it just revealed my naivete about the topic, and made me realize I did not ask enough questions when we first started, but it seems I had some misconceptions.  Because we were doing PGD - I assumed our chances of success were better than the average couple pursuing IVF.  I know I had read that IVF fails routinely because even with embryo grading, it is hard to tell which ones have the best shot at turning into established pregnancies.

By doing PGD, we get almost completely around that issue to a place where we have relative certainty that we are only putting back chromosomally normal embryos.  Then taking into account I never had a hard time GETTING pregnant, I guess I thought this would not be so difficult.

But the RE was trying to say that doing PGD doesn't necessarily increase our chances of getting pregnant on any give cycle.  Rather, it increases our chances of having a normal pregnancy in a cycle in which we do get pregnant.

Its odd - I learned much of what I know about ivf from infertility blogs.  I knew ivf backwards and forwards before I even started.  But there are relatively few bloggers out there who are doing pgd - the women who would be in a situation most like mine.  I wish there were more of us that I could read and share experiences with, etc.   

Am I even making sense any more?  I don't know.  All I know is this:

We've decided to do another fresh cycle.  I am on b/c pills now.  Very little change to my protocol, as it mostly worked well last time.  RE felt I overstimmed a bit (My e2 levels were astronomical at trigger time, so much that they had to cut my hcg dose in half) so they will be lowering my initial Foll*istim dose a bit.

My baseline u/s and bloods are 10/19.  As long as everything is calm in there, stims start 10/23, with retrieval sometime in early November.

I can't believe we're getting on this ride again!