Resentment and Rage

Don't let all the New Year's peppiness about the appealing donor fool you. I'm really struggling here. Struggling to accept the situation I seem to be in. Struggling to get through the day without crying. Struggling not to let infertility ruin my relationships with LG, my family, or my friends. Struggling to focus on all the blessings in my life instead of what's wrong with it. Struggling not to self-medicate with vodka or whatever migraine meds I have stored in the closet. (Yeah, I really did need that therapist; thanks for the tip, Dr. G.)

 

See, I'm angry. Really angry. And I don't like anger as an emotion. Sadness is familiar. I know what to do about sadness. I don't know what to do about rage, and that's where I am. Life lesson I should have learned at age 6 or at least during that existential philosophy class I took in college: shit happens for no reason. See, I keep coming back to I did everything right. I did not wait around for "Mr. Right" to show up to start a family while my fertility declined. I did not wait to try to get pregnant until I had tenure; hell, I started trying for my first a year out of grad school, when I was newly 29. When I wasn't quite ready to start trying for #2 but knew I was approaching that scary age of 35, I did the responsible thing of having my FSH tested to make sure I could wait a couple more months. I did everything right. And here I am, 2.5 years later, with only the slimmest possibility of conception without donor egg.

 

Now don't get me wrong: I am incredibly thankful to live in a time and place where donor egg is a possibility. And I'm equally thankful for the generosity of my grandparents who squirreled money away for me when I was young and my uncle the stockbroker for investing it wisely, because their foresight makes it possible for me to do DE without going broke or taking out a huge loan or even changing my lifestyle in radical ways. But, still, I find myself angry beyond words that this is my reality. I did everything right. I've taken my supplements. I've gone to acupuncture. I've cut out stress as much as can. So why the fuck can't I get pregnant and stay pregnant? Why has everyone around me—women older than me, women with PCOS, women without a real desire to have children, women who didn't plan on having children, overweight and unhealthy women, women who don't have the resources to support their children—gotten pregnant either completely accidentally or within a few measly cycles? (Yes, I know, it's not fair. Shit happens for no reason.)

 

Roccie said something in a comment about imagining how I'll feel about DE five or ten years down the road. If it works, I imagine I won't think about it much on a daily basis, in the thick of parenting. That in the whole scheme of things, it won't matter. That my children will be my children and I will love them equally, despite their different conception stories. Both my children will know that they were wanted desperately, that I would have done anything to have them, and their existence is dependent upon my will and the generosity of strangers. That is the blessing of fertility treatment, particularly as a single woman; my children will know they were wanted and chosen, day after day, shot after fucking shot. But whatever joy DE will give me—if it works, I'm still not able to even process that it might actually work—I resent having to make this choice.

 

Now this strikes me as an entirely unproductive way of looking at it. But that's how I feel. I felt similarly about having to put LG on wickedly expensive prescription formula as an infant; I'm glad the shit was available because my milk was ravaging her digestive system—and in another time and place she likely wouldn't have survived—but it wasn't remotely close to what I wanted. Ditto the early induction and c-section instead of an unmedicated birth with a midwife. Can we talk about my body's radical failures at all reproductive enterprises? Because I'm fairly certain that's what this resistance to DE is really about. And that's something I don't know I'll get over, even if I imagine I will be over-the-moon happy if this DE cycle works. (Up next in therapy: my trust issues and being a control freak.)

 

Right now, I'm grieving the child I will never have. And I'd really like to get drunk and smash something, but I suspect that would wake LG and mess with the ulcer that seems to be flaring up. Maybe I'll find a new and interesting use for my follistim pen instead.