The sad hit yesterday. I pushed the sad back because, really, it doesn't help anything and I really need to get work done. Then today my yoga teacher double checked to make sure I wasn't pregnant (I told her about the IVF). I almost lost it right there.
My life is so busy that it's easy to forget about all this, to get caught up in the immediate and the urgent needs of teaching and going to committees and taking care of LG. But when I slow down, when I spend two hours in the car driving to and from Dr. Gorgeous's office again, it's undeniably there. It: the great emptiness that is two years of infertility treatment.
I'd have to check my calendar for the exact date, but this month marks my offical two year "anniversary" of beginning ttc attempts for kid #2. Last year I still had some small amount of hope that IVF would work. Then I thought surely my post-IVF Follistim plan would work (and we think it did, sort of). Then I tried hybrid cycles. I was treated for micropolyposis. I started DHEA. I tried IVF (again). One of these plans had to work.
Of course none of them did. Then I actually listened to that growing-louder inner voice that says the more I mess with my cycles, the more complicated this gets, the worse I seem to respond. Even Dr. Gorgeous got on the natural cycles bandwagon. And then yesterday I had an IUI without any evidence of mature follicle on ultrasound. I'm going here on nothing more than faith that when my doctor says two mid-sized collapsed follicles means you-just ovulated-let's-do-this-now that there's actually a possibility that she's right.
But, really, I've written off the cycle. Another $700 dollars and another month wasted. When do I stop this? When do I decide that having a baby, any baby, is more important than having a child genetically related to me and LG? When will the universe cut me a break?
I'm so sorry you're dealing with the sad. Honestly, I'm amazed at how resilient you are - I'd've been a basket case long before this point. If you ever want to chat about DE, please feel free to email off-blog or call. I hate seeing you so down, so low. Thinking of you.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I probably will take you up on that offer. As I keep telling Dr. G, though, I'm just not there yet... Intellectually I know it makes sense; it just doesn't feel right. I decided a long time ago that my 38th birthday was the moment I needed to move forward with DE. Totally arbitrary, I know...
ReplyDeleteYou don't decide. You'll know.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm.... I don't know. What does that knowing feel like? My whole life has been about making decisions and following through on them and never, really, having regrets. I think somehow that if I wait to "know" I'll never get there, I'll be in this limbo state forever. Right now I have a plan. I might change it, sure. But it's something solid to hang on to.
ReplyDeleteah Gwinne, I am sad to hear you feeling so down. But you have been on a crazy rollercoaster for two years and only paid back with frustration. I wish I had an answer for you.
ReplyDeleteIf I were in your shoes I'd do all the research on DE and see how you feel as you get closer to all the facts and realities. Maybe even start looking at donors, just to see if it feels ok or wrong.
Thanks, y'all, for helping me process this. I guess here's the thing: I don't think I'll ever "feel" that DE is right. It's not what I want. It won't ever be what I *want*. It's like backup plan z. But at some point I think I'll decide that having a baby, a baby that I know I would love (and seriously, I know I'd love any baby that came into my house by whatever means), is just more important than my "feelings" about how that baby got there. This has much more to do with me accepting my infertility, my body's failures and limitations, than it does genetic ties to offspring.
ReplyDeleteI have a plan: if I hit 38 without a pregnancy, I make an appointment out of state at a big donor egg clinic and, assuming I get tenure, do a donor egg cycle next summer which is when, logistically, I could go out of state to do it. I suspect actual counseling is in my future before I could act on this plan. I suspect there will be a whole lot of currently supressed grief and rage. And at the end of it, baby or not, I suspect I'll still be full of grief and rage. LG is six, and I'm still not over my whole birth and breastfeeding nightmare.
In the meantime, I keep tinkering with relatively low intervention IUIs and hope.