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no guarantees

August 15th, 2010 Posted in General

Aug, 15 2010

I wish I had a crystal ball. I wish I knew how this would end.

If I knew what the future held, I could deal with whatever I needed to deal with. If I knew for sure that we would have kids someday, I could wait patiently and enjoy the time we have together, just the two of us. I treasure our first few years of marriage when it was just the two of us. I hear about newlyweds getting pregnant and I don’t envy them. I do envy how easy it is for them – that something that seems so simple actually is – but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. I’m angry at the injustice of it but it’s not a path I would have chosen, personally.

In grief and tragedy there comes a time when you need closure, so you can move on. If I knew that the answer was “never,” I could find a way to start the process of coming to terms with that.

It’s so easy for other people to say “I know this will happen for you.”

But of course in life there are no guarantees.

People seem to think adoption holds guarantees – but it doesn’t. It’s a complex process and adoptions fall through every day. Someone recently told me about a co-worker who was about to adopt, but then the birth mother changed her mind. The would-be adoptive father said that receiving the phone call with the news was like getting a call about a death in the family.

I recently heard about a girl who finally gave birth after 5 IUIs – only to have her baby die after 2 weeks on this earth.

People who don’t have any issues with infertility get that positive test and expect to have a baby in 9 months – but people who struggle for years know that 2 pink lines doesn’t necessarily equal a “take-home baby.”

Obviously it’s just a part of life, that we don’t know what the future holds, but this is such a biggie.

I am quite honestly running out of hope.

the club

August 10th, 2010 Posted in General, Random

Aug, 10 2010

2 Comments »

Sometimes it feels like there’s this big club that we’re just not invited to. Even though I know it’s not true, it honestly feels like everyone else has children.

Several months ago I ran into my next-door neighbor only to get a surprise announcement and hear her bemoaning the poor timing of #3. Shortly after that I walked outside to see two yard signs in the diagonal neighbors’ yard: one said “It’s a girl” and the other “It’s a boy.” I met the across-the-street neighbors sometime later and the subject of kids came up. After telling her that we’d been in the process of trying for several years, she of course felt the need to tell me that their son had been conceived in the first month of trying.

It’s like an endless assault.

The neighbors congregate and chat on the sidewalk and I have no reason to join them. I’ve tried in the past but I’m out of place without kids running around. We have nothing in common.

In the past 24 hours I’ve gotten 2 emails from the church list telling me that yet another happy couple has had their wonderful, perfect, healthy baby. I can’t bring myself to go to church; it’s too devastating and isolating. Over the years I’ve felt more and more that the church (in general) is 100% focused on families and the rest of us are left out in the cold.

I’m surrounded by people with kids, people who don’t want kids, and people who plan on having kids someday.

I feel broken in the midst of them.

Not only do I feel shut out of the “moms’ club”, I feel like I’m losing touch with the “girls’ club” as well. It’s this basic, given thing, having children. You decide you want it or you don’t. And either choice is fine. But I’ve lost the ability to make that decision, and I don’t fit in on either side, and the gap is enormous in my heart.

I feel most alone when I’m in a group. But after removing myself from almost every group situation, I don’t feel any less alone. I don’t know what to do.

It all happened

July 9th, 2010 Posted in General

Jul, 09 2010

6 Comments »

Just a quick update as S rests up (she’s eating ice cream and watching Wheel Of Fortune).

The IUI happened without a hitch as usual, but there was a big difference this go around. My numbers were immensely improved. The number that sums it up is the Total Motile Sperm (say that five times fast – it’ll be the most fun you have all day). The number to shoot for there is 10. Our first IUI, mine was 4.62… not sure why we still did that IUI. Our second, 7.70… should be good enough. This time, 17.64. I’m all man.

Another impressive number is the count itself. The number to shoot for is 20 million/milliliter. First IUI was 10.8. Second was 20.5. Today’s was 51. I don’t think I have male infertility any more.

My numbers plus S’s lining and two good follicles point to chances being good.

As many of you know, I’m into the comedic arts. So before S gets pregnant, I want to share a video from one of my favorite comedy folk duos, Pregnant Women are Smug by Garfunkel & Oats:

sharing

June 25th, 2010 Posted in General

Jun, 25 2010

4 Comments »

I recently came across something that I wanted to share. Sometimes it’s hard to put everything very succinctly myself, so it’s nice to find things already put together that say what I feel. It does a good job of summarizing what we go through with this stuff.

And the pictures are pretty.

http://www.tearsandhope.com/emptyarms_video.html

honesty and hope

June 20th, 2010 Posted in General

Jun, 20 2010

3 Comments »

I’ve had several people comment on my honesty and openness on this blog.

But I don’t feel that I’ve been all that honest, honestly.

There’s a lot I haven’t said. I haven’t really told anyone how I really feel in my darkest moments. Or anywhere close.

I haven’t told anyone how angry I’ve been. I haven’t admitted a lot of the thoughts I’ve had. There’s a lot I’ll only say to a therapist, or to Darek, or just to myself. If half of the people I know didn’t read this, I’d probably be a lot more honest. But I don’t even know who reads this stuff, so I self-censor quite a bit. I worry that people might treat me differently or think less of me, knowing about all these raw, yucky emotions I have.

I haven’t been totally honest about a lot of my feelings. I’m not sure if anyone wants to hear those anyway.

Lately I feel like we’ve given up hope completely. Yes, we’re planning on doing IUI(s), and yes that might work, but it might not. It’s been a long time with no major problems and it hasn’t happened; we know it may never happen. It’s a reality that we face that I don’t think most people really grasp. Darek used to say all the time “It will happen…” but he doesn’t say it anymore. We used to talk about how it would be to have a kid. We used to make tentative plans. We don’t really do that anymore.

It feels so distant and unattainable. I measure our failures in other peoples’ successes; how can other peoples’ kids be turning 2 months or 2 years when we started trying long before them?

Lately I feel like this will be our reality forever.

It’s just so hard to imagine it any other way.

endless delays

June 7th, 2010 Posted in General, Holidays, Procedures

Jun, 07 2010

2 Comments »

If this whole thing wasn’t so emotionally draining, I would laugh.

We first saw the RE in September, and we planned to do up to 3 IUIs before the end of 2009.

2010 is nearly halfway over, and we’ve been able to do ONE. (I don’t really count the one we did when I had the polyp.) That’s one realistically possible IUI in 9 months. Now that’s some sobering math.

Cysts, thin lining, and surgery all got their delays in. And then something went weird and put all of the potential IUI days on days when we are going to be out of town.

Our trip to Hawaii knocked one out. A trip to Seattle next month will knock out another one. And the current one is being cancelled because I’ll be out of town for my sister’s wedding.

What??

It’s almost funny – except that it’s not.

The decision to skip this month’s IUI for my sister’s wedding was not an easy one. Ultimately though, it was just too much, and that’s not the way I want to spend the week of my sister’s special day.

So we continue to wait.

This year will be over before we know it.

The Plan

June 1st, 2010 Posted in General, Procedures

Jun, 01 2010

5 Comments »

This has been going on for a long, long time. It’s just been awful. We know we can’t go through this forever – at some point, one way or another, it has to end.

We’ve made some decisions about how far we’re willing to go.

This will be our last year to try to have a child. We can’t take the heartbreak and monthly devastation for much longer. At some point we need to move forward – and we’ve decided it will be at the end of this year.

In the meantime we’re willing to try as many IUIs as our doctor thinks is worth trying. Our doctor doesn’t keep trying something that isn’t working, so there will be a definite limit on these – though I’m not sure exactly what that is yet.

Our next IUI will be different than the previous 2, which were a combination of clomid (a pill) and FSH injections (shots). Our next IUI will be full injectibles – a week of shots, and no clomid. Any following IUIs will have a similar protocol.

Over the last few months, the terrifying letters I, V, and F have been creeping into our conversations. I’ve always said that I wouldn’t be open to IVF – it’s something like $12,000 with just a 50% success rate. I felt I couldn’t handle the disappointment if it failed.

But we’ve made a decision about that too: we’d be willing to try up to 2 rounds of IVF if it came to that. At this point, we feel that to come this far and not try everything we can would be a bigger disappointment and a potential lifetime of asking “What if?”

Of course, there’d be a lot of details to work out to do IVF – primarily funding – but if it ends up being an option, we’ll be open to it.

The decision for this to be our last year was made awhile ago; the fact that today is June 1 and the year is half over is a bit depressing, since we’ve only been able to try one IUI this year. But we needed a deadline, and we need to stick to it, for sanity reasons.

At the end of the year, if we aren’t expecting our own child, we’ll be moving on. I’m not sure exactly what that will entail, but we’ll be on a different path than we are now.

None of these decisions have been easy, and we still potentially have a lot of hard decisions ahead of us. But there is something about having a plan that is better than the uncertainty of not having any plan. Closure, perhaps. Being able to deal with things, instead of facing a complete lack of control.

So that’s the plan.

away

May 29th, 2010 Posted in General

May, 29 2010

1 Comment »

We’ve been away.

IMG_4303w

We just got back from a week in Hawaii and it was wonderful. I barely thought about IF or TTC or BBT or OPKs or IUIs or anything else along those lines.

It was nice to get away.

We’re back now and I plan to give an update on where we are with stuff very soon, but first I have about a million things I need to do.

didn’t quite make it

May 17th, 2010 Posted in Family, General, Holidays, Random

May, 17 2010

4 Comments »

This might sound really silly to a lot of you – or even just plain horrible. I debated about posting about this, because I know it doesn’t make me look like a good, mature, rational individual, but I’m going to share anyway.

I had a goal. My goal was to be pregnant by my sister’s wedding. My youngest sister (I have 3) is getting married June 12. The thought of going to a major event like that – and a huge gathering of family and friends – while still going through this fills me with dread. My middle sister got married 3 years ago and I had planned to be pregnant by then. And that was 3. Long. Years. Ago.

This has taken over my life. It’s almost all I think about. I don’t feel happy. And that’s not the way I want to be at my sister’s wedding.

I picture my younger sister’s adorable 2 year old daughter throwing flower petals down the aisle, and I know I’ll be thinking “why isn’t my child walking down the aisle with her?”

I wanted to have happy news to share with everyone. I wanted to be full of joy. I wanted this to be behind me. I wanted to be looking ahead.

I feel out of place with my family. That’s not their fault, but it is what it is. It’s one of those things that I can’t really explain – I just feel like the black sheep or something.

I know that I will not make my goal. I will most likely be in the process of having injections every night for a week. We’ll (probably, hopefully) be in the middle of actively doing something, but I won’t be pregnant. I know this.

I’ve been setting goals for years. I won’t list them here, because even thinking about that list makes me tired and teary. But I have spent the last 3 years saying “I will definitely be pregnant by (insert holiday, event, trip, month, someone else’s baby being born, etc. etc. etc.).

Back in January when we were starting our 3-month break, my therapist encouraged me to think positively and assume that I would be 2 or 3 months pregnant by June. That really helped get me through the beginning of the year.

But it didn’t happen.

I have 4 weeks to get it together and suck it up. Mental preparation goes a long way with this. I have 4 weeks to accept it and get ready to not think about it on the big day. I know it will be a hard day for me, but it will be a happy day, full of joy, and I want to fully participate in that joy. So I’m getting ready now.

This was my last goal. I have no more. I will make no more plans.

This is our last year of this, either way. But there will be no more goals.

these days

May 12th, 2010 Posted in General, Holidays, Random

May, 12 2010

1 Comment »

Not much to report these days. Mother’s day came and went. I felt mostly forgotten, but I survived. We went away for the weekend and it was really, really nice to get away from evertything.

It’s the busy season for my photography business, and that’s helped keep my mind off things. When I think about the infertility side of things, I feel pretty helpless, because there’s not a whole lot I can do. So staying busy is a good distraction, and one I’m thankful for.

We actually came really close to being able to start the IUI process this week. If we’d already had the drugs, if the nurses had gotten back to me sooner, if we were going to Hawaii 2 days later…but of course, with all those “ifs” it isn’t going to happen. My body decided to be really weird and reset itself either 2 weeks early or late – not really sure which. As a result we came really close to being able to move forward, but on the bright side we’ll (hopefully) be able to do an IUI a little earlier than originally planned. On the not-so-bright side, we may have to juggle wedding events during the process.

Figures, right?

So that’s where things are right now. Nothing much.

The Eternal Guest Room

Infertility kinda sucks.