Feeling Infertile

Get ready. This is a long one. And I might continue it later. I'm not done processing.

First, a hell especially designed for me: this morning, a trip to Babies R Us in order to buy a gift for a friend who is having a shower ridiculously early in her pregnancy (as in, I don't think she's even hit the viability mark, which would leave me in a complete panic, but I digress). I have been dreading this whole event for weeks, knowing it would coincide with the outcome of the IVF That Wasn't. So I put it off, until the only possible choices were going to BRU the day of my beta, or the day after. Now, I have to say, as far as trips to BRU go, this one was relatively uneventful; LG printed the registry, I scanned it for items within our price range, found what I was looking for, and got out, all within the space of 10 minutes and without seeing a single pregnant woman. But don't worry, dear readers, I didn't get off that easily. I stopped counting the pregnant women and women with teeny-tiny, probably-shouldn't-be-in-the–sun babies at the pool today. They were EVERYWHERE I turned. Pregnant women rubbing their bellies, pregnant women clearly wearing last year's string bikini, pregnant women in swim dresses, pregnant women who opted not to look for bathing suits at all, pregnant women rubbing their lower backs, pregnant women lifting toddlers. I started laughing, I kid you not. LG said what's so funny? Tomorrow, the shower, which I wouldn't attend if it were for anyone other than Best Professor Friend. She knows the whole IVF Debacle, and I plan to sneak out as early as I possibly can (even if that means using LG as an excuse).

*

What's hit me about this cycle is that I'm feeling infertile. Let me explain. Most of the time, I'm in an odd no-woman's land, in that I first showed up in my RE's office (at 29) not because I had fertility problems per se but because I wanted to get pregnant and didn't have access to sperm. Other than a wickedly low progesterone level, which has been treated all but my very first cycle, I don't seem to have obvious fertility issues. (Recurrent miscarriage issues are another story.) I've been pregnant three times, all conceptions that occurred, if later than I wanted, still within a reasonable time frame (6,4,5 cycles respectively). But that's the thing. While 6 cycles isn't bad at all for a woman having sex with her partner, 6 IUIs is, well, more than many fertility patients would do before turning to IVF. By the time that 10th cycle rolled around, even my RE said are you ready for in vitro? It's just taking SO LONG to conceive. Thankfully, unbeknownst to both of us, LG was already burrowing her way into my uterus. (Let's just say I used up my get-out-of-IVF free card.) So when I embarked on the attempt for Baby #2 (pregnancy #3), I assumed that, even though I was 5 years older, I didn't have any need to worry about conceiving. I bought 6 of the 7 available vials of LG's donor because I figured it would probably take about the same amount of time it took before. And I was right: I conceived on cycle #5. But then I miscarried (again). And had a failed cycle. And then stims for IVF turned out so badly I might as well have been injecting myself with water for two weeks (even though I was maxed out on Menopur and Gonal F). Yeah, that IVF to IUI was a bust, too. So here I am, a full year into a process I thought might last 6 months, if it went badly. My backup plan was IVF this summer. What do you do when even your backup plan falls through?

So am I infertile? Maybe not technically (my laughable diagnosis is currently "male factor"). But no baby after 7 IUIs (plus two cancelled cycles)? After being diagnosed with both APA and MTHFR? That doesn't exactly make me Fertile Myrtle either. Oh, I'm sure eventually I'll get pregnant again. But when? And will I lose that baby, too? What if I used up my one lucky cycle on LG?*

*

Dear non-fertility-challenged friends: I know it's hard to know what to say in these situations, so I'll give you a few suggestions, or take some hints from my generous readers (I'm particularly fond of MeAndBaby's fuck fuck fuck). I'm sorry. This sucks. I've never been where you are, but I know you're hurting. I know it must be hard. I'm sorry you're going through this. I hear you, even if I don't really understand. What I don't want to hear is I'm sure it will work. It happened for me, so it will happen for you. Or, you aren't really infertile. Or, worse, you've been pregnant three times. Because right now, I feel infertile; right now, I have a recurrent pregnancy loss diagnosis. And for the first time in a year, I'm really wondering if I'll have a take-home baby by the end of this journey. I'm not sure how much stamina I have left.

*Oh, I know I'm incredibly fortunate to have LG, and I know that many of you who read this blog haven't (yet) gotten this far on the journey. I certainly don't take that for granted. I'm just in a really bad emotinal place right now.