The 2ww (or more) between a +hpt and an ultrasound to confirm the heartbeat(s), now fondly dubbed 'TO2WW': biggest mindf*ck ever. Of course its redeeming quality is that it is for a great cause, because until proven otherwise, you are pregnant. Its undoing is that the stakes have been upped over the previous 2ww yet the potential for disaster is still quite high.
After the two pink lines is both the best and worst place that an infertile can be.
Here is a (maybe not so) brief history of the reason why TO2WW makes me nutty:
October 2010 - pregnancy 1 (IUI 2):
Looks like a late implanter, but in Israel all of the drugstore hpts are pretty crappy, so….the most expensive stick I could find, the "Yes or No Professional" test, doesn't yield a faint positive until 14 dpIUI. And the underwhelming 1st beta …
14 dpIUI: 42
18 dpIUI: 279
25 dpIUI: 3576
Guiding initial thoughts of pregnancy 1: Betas start off low but the numbers (more than) double nicely. It is my first pregnancy and I am pretty anxious but I haven't yet actually had a loss so oblivion is still (sort of) my friend at this point. An ultrasound at 5w2d reveals just a GS - but again, I am too naive to think disaster at every turn. I still have some trust in the process and in my body. Brown spotting for a few days during week 6. Ultrasound at 7w3d - no heartbeat - missed m/c. Game over pregnancy #1.
new neuroses developed: Late implantation is an ominous sign of bad things to come. Brown spotting means the baby has died.
November 2011 - pregnancy 2 (IVF #2):
Guiding initial thoughts of pregnancy 2: I am a smart girl and stockpiled FRERs during my trip to the states so pesky subpar hpts won't keep me from a successful pregnancy test this time around (since that was clearly the problem last time). First +hpt 6dp5dt - see these pee sticks are worth their weight in gold! Initial thought: Not a late implanter this time, an auspicious start, in my mind timely implantation = successful pregnancy.
beta 1 (11dp5dt): 308
beta 2 (13dp5dt): 849
Guiding thoughts con't: Well this is definitely different from last time, so hopefully it is going to work out. Wait, no, not enough symptoms…they come, they go away. This shit is crazy. Night before 1st
u/s (6w2d) - I'm not even tired anymore, another missed miscarriage, I think. Arrive to clinic for ultrasound dejected - we both expect bad news (I have also convinced Y without doubt that the pregnancy is doomed because, well, I am not tired anymore, I am not nauseated, etc.). Ultrasound #1 - 2 heartbeats!
Week 9 - start bleeding bright red. Previous experience dictates that blood = dead babies. Shocked and relieved to find out that bleeding is 'only' from a SCH - the same SCH that rears its ugly head again at week 16 and leads to the succession of events that ultimately result in the death of both my beautiful babies, but I don't know that yet.
Week 19-20 - Aminadav's water breaks - PPROM. I lose both my little loves to PPROM/PTL.
new neuroses developed: It's never too late in pregnancy for your bab(ies) to die, either inside of you, or by arriving a few weeks short of viability (or as it also often happens, after…). Bleeding is a harbinger of disaster. If you PPROM before viability, you are in a bad, bad place.
June 2012 - pregnancy 3 (IVF 3):
Day 3 SET after a bumpy cycle and premature luteinization (premature progesterone rise). SET on day 3 is pretty low yield and at this point 6/8 of the embryos we have transferred via IVF have not implanted, so our IVF history doesn't bode so well for day 3 SET, but it is what it is. We are super surprised to get a +hpt at 6dp5dt.
Guiding initial thoughts of pregnancy 3: A singleton pregnancy with strong implantation bodes well for us. There is no reason to believe this won't work, other than the fact that it never has in the past.
beta 1 (12dp3dt): 138
beta 2 (14dp3dt): 139
very early m/c at 5w2d
Continued guiding thoughts: So clearly early implantation and a solid first beta doesn't necessarily stop the pregnancy from falling off a cliff with style. Weird…I thought most chemical pregnancies started with dubiously low betas and late implantation. Seems more likely due to a maternal factor than a genetic problem, but that's just a guess.
new neuroses developed: A +hpt early on or a nice first beta doesn't protect against a chemical pregnancy or early miscarriage. Those beta hCG numbers can come crashing down from anywhere.
October 2012 - pregnancy 4 (Clomid/Prednisone/TI…surprise!)
+hpt 11dpo (I just corrected that from '6dp5dt' - apparently I am still in disbelief that this wasn't an IVF cycle!)
beta 1 (13 dpo): 146
The pee sticks keep getting darker.
Guiding initial thoughts: Expect nothing. All bets are off. Well, a nicer way of saying that is "expect the worst, hope for the best." My symptoms come and go. I understand that every tiny thing could mean either nothing or everything, but only time will tell, and the wait is maddening. I have now been waiting over 72 hours for the results of beta 2 (in Israel I never waited more than 2.5-3.5 hours for a beta result!) and the wait is driving me nuts, as is the knowledge that by the time I receive the result, it will be obsolete (i.e. so 3 days ago!).
new neuroses: Everything. Pregnancy is a mine-field that can be cut short or go wrong at any point due to an endless combination of disasters. But with each new chance, there is always the possibility for all of the stars to align so that we bring home a living child, and that little bit of hope propels us forward, and so we keep on keeping on. In the meantime, I think I need a therapist.
Nov 4, 2012
Oct 31, 2012
the (great) unexpected
So…this is very strange for me. This was something I wasn't anticipating at all. I actually feel pretty uncomfortable writing about it. In my last post, I mentioned that before getting back into the IVF grind I was doing a long-shot Clomid/Prednisone cycle, just to help pass the time.
I also mentioned it was a bit of an experiment - I thought it was a little uncanny that both of the 2/5 IVF transfers when we used Prednisone I conceived. With IVF, there are so many variables, it was obviously impossible to speculate too much about the role of the Prednisone. I did wonder, though, if our problem was really of the implantation/autoimmune variety, whether I might be able to get pregnant with minimal intervention if I was on Prednisone.
It still obviously seemed like a total long-shot with my history -- after 6 IUIs and 5 IVF transfers you don't realistically expect to get KU with $60 worth of pills. But it happened. Y and I are both shocked that this far-fetched experiment to pass the time before our upcoming IVF consults following the epic Canadian wait has worked…at least so far.
Even if this cycle doesn't result in a successful pregnancy, I think it has taught us a lot. We really need to re-address some of our most basic assumptions about the nature of my infertility and its treatment -- specifically, considering the autoimmune angle.
I got a positive hpt at 11dpo, the day after I wrote my last post. Today my first beta at 13dpo was 146. Obviously, we are feeling very cautious and guarded. We've experienced so many different ways of pregnancy not working out, it feels like a bit of a mine field and it is really hard to have any expectations at all, especially this early.
Also, I have been spotting the last 2 days which makes me pretty nervous, though the first beta helped to allay my fears a little bit. I go back on Friday for beta 2. Please keep us in your thoughts that this turns out well.
I am feeling really guarded in sharing the news this time around even on the blog -- still trying to process this really surprising but obviously extremely welcome news myself.
Here we go again. Let's do this.
I also mentioned it was a bit of an experiment - I thought it was a little uncanny that both of the 2/5 IVF transfers when we used Prednisone I conceived. With IVF, there are so many variables, it was obviously impossible to speculate too much about the role of the Prednisone. I did wonder, though, if our problem was really of the implantation/autoimmune variety, whether I might be able to get pregnant with minimal intervention if I was on Prednisone.
It still obviously seemed like a total long-shot with my history -- after 6 IUIs and 5 IVF transfers you don't realistically expect to get KU with $60 worth of pills. But it happened. Y and I are both shocked that this far-fetched experiment to pass the time before our upcoming IVF consults following the epic Canadian wait has worked…at least so far.
Even if this cycle doesn't result in a successful pregnancy, I think it has taught us a lot. We really need to re-address some of our most basic assumptions about the nature of my infertility and its treatment -- specifically, considering the autoimmune angle.
I got a positive hpt at 11dpo, the day after I wrote my last post. Today my first beta at 13dpo was 146. Obviously, we are feeling very cautious and guarded. We've experienced so many different ways of pregnancy not working out, it feels like a bit of a mine field and it is really hard to have any expectations at all, especially this early.
Also, I have been spotting the last 2 days which makes me pretty nervous, though the first beta helped to allay my fears a little bit. I go back on Friday for beta 2. Please keep us in your thoughts that this turns out well.
I am feeling really guarded in sharing the news this time around even on the blog -- still trying to process this really surprising but obviously extremely welcome news myself.
Here we go again. Let's do this.
Oct 28, 2012
well, hello there :)
After a lengthy break, I am going to try to get back into the writing groove again. I know I have been pretty silent over the last few months, but I have been following along in my reader most days and thinking of all the courageous, strong, smart, and funny women out there. My grief does tend to turn me inwards for long periods of time and it is hard for me to write, but now that we are getting back into the concrete stuff, there should be more to write about than my sadness.
Where are we? Well probably pretty close to getting right back in the thick of things. After our long Canadian-style wait, we have 2 consults coming up the week after next. I am due to get AF in a few days and then I go to get my AMH drawn and the usual CD3 bloodwork. Y did a new S/A last week and he also did the DNA fragmentation test for the first time.
I have a SHG scheduled for the week after this coming one, right before we dive into the consults. The SHG will be important because we need to reach a final consensus on those damn fibroids before proceeding (the current leaning is no surgery, but we need to reach a confident decision) and because it will hopefully rule out scar tissue/adhesions.
My cycles have been a good deal shorter and lighter since I gave birth and the complications that came after, so the hope is that the shorter and lighter cycles are a good thing and not indicative of Asherman's Syndrome, which I am unfortunately at pretty high risk for due to my history of multiple D&Cs and retained placenta.
I am sure I will have lots to talk about when we look into both clinics we are considering. Both clinics have different options which could be interesting or useful to us -- Clinic A has a very well-regarded RPL specialist who conducts clinical trials in that area. They also do a lot of blastocyst transfer and offer PGS (need to clarify which type of PGS). Clinic B offers endometrial co-culture and routinely prescribes intralipids.
We might end up not going for any extra bells and whistles at all, but it will definitely be interesting to learn about the different possibilities and also to have a fresh set of eyes review our case. All that being said, I am still feeling ambivalent about getting back into cycling from an emotional perspective, not to mention the immense cost.
In short, these upcoming consults will hopefully be worthwhile and interesting but we are not yet 100% committed to cycling again in the near future. Also, the SHG results could be a big game changer -- potentially surgery vs. beginning the path of working towards surrogacy if Asherman's is an issue.
This past cycle has been somewhat of a hail-Mary-type (I don't think we have an equivalent expression in Judaism) long-shot attempt...since I am still unexplained and we thought it was uncanny that the 2/5 IVF transfers that yielded a positive pregnancy test were the only transfers I took Prednisone, we did a cheapy Clomid/Prednisone cycle this month just for the hell of it before we prepare to shell-out big time to re-enter the IVF circuit. I will of course let you guys know if anything comes of it, but it is a real long-shot.
Where are we? Well probably pretty close to getting right back in the thick of things. After our long Canadian-style wait, we have 2 consults coming up the week after next. I am due to get AF in a few days and then I go to get my AMH drawn and the usual CD3 bloodwork. Y did a new S/A last week and he also did the DNA fragmentation test for the first time.
I have a SHG scheduled for the week after this coming one, right before we dive into the consults. The SHG will be important because we need to reach a final consensus on those damn fibroids before proceeding (the current leaning is no surgery, but we need to reach a confident decision) and because it will hopefully rule out scar tissue/adhesions.
My cycles have been a good deal shorter and lighter since I gave birth and the complications that came after, so the hope is that the shorter and lighter cycles are a good thing and not indicative of Asherman's Syndrome, which I am unfortunately at pretty high risk for due to my history of multiple D&Cs and retained placenta.
I am sure I will have lots to talk about when we look into both clinics we are considering. Both clinics have different options which could be interesting or useful to us -- Clinic A has a very well-regarded RPL specialist who conducts clinical trials in that area. They also do a lot of blastocyst transfer and offer PGS (need to clarify which type of PGS). Clinic B offers endometrial co-culture and routinely prescribes intralipids.
We might end up not going for any extra bells and whistles at all, but it will definitely be interesting to learn about the different possibilities and also to have a fresh set of eyes review our case. All that being said, I am still feeling ambivalent about getting back into cycling from an emotional perspective, not to mention the immense cost.
In short, these upcoming consults will hopefully be worthwhile and interesting but we are not yet 100% committed to cycling again in the near future. Also, the SHG results could be a big game changer -- potentially surgery vs. beginning the path of working towards surrogacy if Asherman's is an issue.
This past cycle has been somewhat of a hail-Mary-type (I don't think we have an equivalent expression in Judaism) long-shot attempt...since I am still unexplained and we thought it was uncanny that the 2/5 IVF transfers that yielded a positive pregnancy test were the only transfers I took Prednisone, we did a cheapy Clomid/Prednisone cycle this month just for the hell of it before we prepare to shell-out big time to re-enter the IVF circuit. I will of course let you guys know if anything comes of it, but it is a real long-shot.
Oct 7, 2012
Sep 2, 2012
dreams
Our housekeeper back in Israel would base major life decisions based on revelations in her dreams. She believed strongly in the ability of dreams to inform, clarify, and portend. She was a little nutty (though a very conscientious cleaner).
A few nights ago I had a pretty interesting dream. It was the first adoption dream I had in a couple of years. The last one I remember distinctly must have been around two years ago, when we were doing IUIs. In this dream we were presented the option of a newborn boy or girl or both for adoption.
The interesting twist (because this was a dream there has to be an interesting twist) was that we were also involved in surrogacy at the time, but we didn't actually know who our gestational carrier was or whether she was in a successful pregnancy.
So in the dream, it was unclear whether we were being offered our own biological children, whether neither of them were our biological children, or whether it was a mix. Y was very concerned with clarifying the origin of each baby before agreeing to anything.
The revelation in the dream was that I hardly cared -- if the information was readily available, I wanted to know it, but in the absence of that, it didn't really bother me whether or not the children were biologically ours.
The dream actually wonderfully clarified for me that I just really want to be a mom. I want a child in my home that is our child. The details of how that child comes to be -- in whose uterus and with whose genetic material has become a lot less important to me.
For a long time, I wanted to be pregnant so so badly. I wanted to experience pregnancy at least as much as I wanted to experience motherhood. I don't count the first trimester losses because I never got very far, but with the twins I was really pregnant and I got quite big, too.
I found out being pregnant had its magnificent aspects, for sure - watching my belly grow and swell and my body change to support life, feeling the babies, the happy ultrasounds. But for me, pregnancy was also not everything it was cracked up to be. I had a difficult go of it and spent a lot of my pregnancy in bed at home or in the hospital.
The total length of time when I had a real bump but was still out in public, not holed up in my bedroom or a hospital room, probably comes out to about 3 weeks. I still associate pregnancy with illness and fragility. I think deep down it's really better not to move.
I see very pregnant women all of the time doing normal people things -- shopping, pushing strollers, exercising. All of it just blows my mind. They can do all of those normal people things and the baby just stays inside, growing away!
I watched my body change in these extraordinary ways, I got the huge belly, but still I didn't get the babies -- or I did get the babies, but I didn't get the babies to bring home and keep, which is a pretty big detail.
Wanting to experience pregnancy and wanting a baby are two different things, it turns out. Now I am mostly focused on the part of the journey I've missed out on. It would be nice to repeat the first leg (pregnancy), albeit successfully, but I know the first leg surely doesn't guarantee the second leg (motherhood), nor is there an absolute requirement to personally complete the first leg in order to experience the second leg.
This forced break is allowing me lots of time to reflect and entertain different possibilities more seriously. At this point we are on a forced break because in Canada it takes months to get an initial consultation with a RE. We are currently scheduled for mid-November, and then it would take a couple months after that to begin a new IVF cycle.
I have come to the conclusion that carrying my own baby and/or a genetic connection to the baby are not deal breakers for me anymore. For Y it is different -- I think he is more open-minded towards surrogacy but adoption is still out for him. I can't force him to get there.
I don't think either of us is quite ready to abandon traditional IVF and using my uterus, but it is both liberating and comforting to be open to the possibility of other options (surrogacy, adoption, etc).
I am trying to set some sort of timeline for us pressing forward with new options -- drawing a line at what point I give myself permission to say I've had enough and it is time to pursue a new option. Ultimately, I am willing to be flexible with my timeline when the milestones and dates on it loom close if it is appropriate, but for now a self-issued ultimatum might be my ticket to freedom.
A few nights ago I had a pretty interesting dream. It was the first adoption dream I had in a couple of years. The last one I remember distinctly must have been around two years ago, when we were doing IUIs. In this dream we were presented the option of a newborn boy or girl or both for adoption.
The interesting twist (because this was a dream there has to be an interesting twist) was that we were also involved in surrogacy at the time, but we didn't actually know who our gestational carrier was or whether she was in a successful pregnancy.
So in the dream, it was unclear whether we were being offered our own biological children, whether neither of them were our biological children, or whether it was a mix. Y was very concerned with clarifying the origin of each baby before agreeing to anything.
The revelation in the dream was that I hardly cared -- if the information was readily available, I wanted to know it, but in the absence of that, it didn't really bother me whether or not the children were biologically ours.
The dream actually wonderfully clarified for me that I just really want to be a mom. I want a child in my home that is our child. The details of how that child comes to be -- in whose uterus and with whose genetic material has become a lot less important to me.
For a long time, I wanted to be pregnant so so badly. I wanted to experience pregnancy at least as much as I wanted to experience motherhood. I don't count the first trimester losses because I never got very far, but with the twins I was really pregnant and I got quite big, too.
I found out being pregnant had its magnificent aspects, for sure - watching my belly grow and swell and my body change to support life, feeling the babies, the happy ultrasounds. But for me, pregnancy was also not everything it was cracked up to be. I had a difficult go of it and spent a lot of my pregnancy in bed at home or in the hospital.
The total length of time when I had a real bump but was still out in public, not holed up in my bedroom or a hospital room, probably comes out to about 3 weeks. I still associate pregnancy with illness and fragility. I think deep down it's really better not to move.
I see very pregnant women all of the time doing normal people things -- shopping, pushing strollers, exercising. All of it just blows my mind. They can do all of those normal people things and the baby just stays inside, growing away!
I watched my body change in these extraordinary ways, I got the huge belly, but still I didn't get the babies -- or I did get the babies, but I didn't get the babies to bring home and keep, which is a pretty big detail.
Wanting to experience pregnancy and wanting a baby are two different things, it turns out. Now I am mostly focused on the part of the journey I've missed out on. It would be nice to repeat the first leg (pregnancy), albeit successfully, but I know the first leg surely doesn't guarantee the second leg (motherhood), nor is there an absolute requirement to personally complete the first leg in order to experience the second leg.
This forced break is allowing me lots of time to reflect and entertain different possibilities more seriously. At this point we are on a forced break because in Canada it takes months to get an initial consultation with a RE. We are currently scheduled for mid-November, and then it would take a couple months after that to begin a new IVF cycle.
I have come to the conclusion that carrying my own baby and/or a genetic connection to the baby are not deal breakers for me anymore. For Y it is different -- I think he is more open-minded towards surrogacy but adoption is still out for him. I can't force him to get there.
I don't think either of us is quite ready to abandon traditional IVF and using my uterus, but it is both liberating and comforting to be open to the possibility of other options (surrogacy, adoption, etc).
I am trying to set some sort of timeline for us pressing forward with new options -- drawing a line at what point I give myself permission to say I've had enough and it is time to pursue a new option. Ultimately, I am willing to be flexible with my timeline when the milestones and dates on it loom close if it is appropriate, but for now a self-issued ultimatum might be my ticket to freedom.
Aug 12, 2012
what we (think) we are owed
A few weeks back, Y and I went to our first infertility support group meeting. I am not sure that it was super helpful to us because most of the couples were at a different stage of their infertility journey, but the facilitator was great. One comment she made in particular stuck with me.
She said that when we first set out trying to conceive, we think that we are going to get the gold -- the gold being everything we want and on the time scale we want it. And then maybe it turns out it is taking longer than we thought and we need a little pharmaceutical help -- we are now going for the silver. Maybe then it turns out our problems are in fact pretty big so after the silver doesn't pan out, we're going for IVF -- now we're aiming for the bronze.
Maybe after that we are in a position where we are getting comfortable with the idea of donor egg or a gestational carrier or we are pursuing adoption, and so we give up a little more of the original dream. I don't think the point was that any of the outcomes that aren't the first one -- everything we want and on the time scale we want it -- is somehow ultimately less good, but more that in order to get it, we may be finding ourselves sacrificing more and more of our original vision and all the while time is passing.
The truth is, I don't remember the original context of her remark, but it crystalized for me something really important. When we found out we were expecting twins and then later on, when we found out we were expecting a boy and a girl, I felt like everything that had been taken away from me in this journey was suddenly and unexpectedly gifted back, just like that.
In other words, we were going to get the gold. It wasn't without lots of sweat, tears, perseverance, sacrifice, and hard work, but we would get our happy ending -- what we were owed. The world was suddenly a fair place again, just as I had always known it to be until infertility and loss entered our lives.
We would have the two children we would have had if we had control over our reproductive fate and in the same time frame! A son and a daughter! It seemed too good to be true, but we did work really hard to get there, so why not? Why couldn't we have it all, get the gold, after our shit luck until then? It happens to others in the infertility community all the time, really -- from zero to two -- just like that.
Everything that happened to us until then infertility-wise sucked but it was tolerable and livable. It was something I was willing to put up with and rationalize, if we could then just get our happy ending. For lack of a better term, it was all within the realm of normal infertility suckiness. Par for the course.
And while it might have seemed sudden and unexpected when it finally worked and we conceived two beautiful babies, I felt like we deserved it because we are fundamentally good people who had worked very hard to get there. (But the unanswerable question that many of us avoid altogether in the moments of dazed self-congratulations then becomes what about everyone else on a similar road who has not been granted the same good fortune?)
Owed, deserved -- what dangerous words and concepts these are. I think you can probably already see where I am going with this.
I wasn't naive about the risks of a twin pregnancy -- if I look back at my posts during that period of time I don't think I was every really happy-go-lucky or flippant about the pregnancy. But deep down, even when the pregnancy became complicated, I fundamentally believed we would get our take-home babies -- that this would be very hard and scary, sure, but that we would also all make it out of this alive.
Even if you are particularly anxious and fearful, I don't think you ever really believe that you will be the horror story. In fact, isn't imagining the worst over and over again supposed to be some sort of protection mechanism? I am pretty sure that I subconsciously thought so.
So, obviously, in the end, we did not get the gold -- we came really close but we didn't get gold. Or silver. Or bronze. Actually, we didn't even place, we just pretty much careened off the course entirely.
What I want to get back to is this idea of what we are owed and what we deserve. It is something I struggle with in the present constantly -- this notion that we do all of this stuff and go through all of these trials and therefore it has to lead somewhere. It all has to be for something -- to ultimately fulfill some purpose.
But sometimes it's not.
Many times I see that women who have achieved their happy ending attempt to rationalize what it took to get there and find some meaning in it. For many of us, the journey can never just be an endless trek of failure, pain, and suffering -- it has to mean something and it has to have all been for something. The alternative is just too depressing and soul-crushing. It is not too difficult to rationalize the journey if you do get the happy ending, as I would have if Aminadav and Naava had come home with us.
But what about when that doesn't happen?
I know now I will never get the gold. I missed it entirely. What I mean by that is even if I do eventually get my living child(ten) in one way or another, I have lost too much that is irreplaceable for it to ever 'make up' for what I have experienced and what I have lost -- there will forever be my son and daughter missing from our lives, and that is not something fixable.
Until I lost them, the loss and sacrifice that I had experienced along this road deeply affected me, but there was nothing I had given up or lost that was unredeemable or unforgivable with the good fortune of the twins. It's not that I would forget the journey, but I was willing to bargain this for that and this (6 IUIs, 4 IVF transfers, a miscarriage) certainly seemed 'worth it' for what I could get in return (a son and a daughter).
How do I shake this idea of being owed a living child for what I have endured? It is so naive -- and yet a testament to how good and straightforward my life was until infertility -- this belief everything I work hard at will be handed to me. Life doesn't really work like that, I know, but part of me can't shake the idea.
When I had the very early miscarriage that resulted from the IVF cycle we did after losing the twins part of me was like "C'mon -- what did you expect, A? Of course it didn't work out. It never works out for you. Don't you get it by now?" but part of me was suspended in disbelief "How could it not work out -- after all of this don't you just deserve for things to work out?"
Part of me just can't shake the belief in the Very American Happy Ending. Hard work = a great reward. I try to shake it but there is a girl underneath who still believes in it. And yet it is ultimately so damaging to subscribe to that idea when life keeps throwing lemons at you -- if life hands us what we deserve, what does that say about Y and myself?
I still try to bargain all of the time. It is disastrous. I think to myself -- if we couldn't keep Aminadav and Naava, then the second best thing would be to have twins again. A second chance. We deserve to have twins. Twins are so special, I think.
But I know this is totally unrealistic, especially because we plan to only do SET in the future (as we did with our last IVF) since another twin pregnancy is too dangerous for us. Even if we did transfer more than one embryo, realistically our chances of both sticking around are quite low given our IVF track record.
I keep reminding myself that the goal is to have one healthy, living child who I can carry to term. Let's not get ahead of ourselves and get greedy, here, I tell myself. So I guess along side mourning the loss of my particular, beautiful twins, I also mourn the loss of ever having twins again, which often felt like something special to make up for the lousy hand we had been dealt until then.
I have lost too much to ever think I can have it all again -- the gold has clearly evaded me -- but still there is that stupid quiet voice who says don't you deserve a happy ending? This can't all be for nothing, right? Aren't you owed a living child? Or two.
How about you? Do you struggle with this idea of being owed something or deserving it? Did you feel the gold or silver or even the bronze was taken from you only to unexpectedly get it all back (or not)? If you've had your happy ending, do you rationalize what it took to get there?
She said that when we first set out trying to conceive, we think that we are going to get the gold -- the gold being everything we want and on the time scale we want it. And then maybe it turns out it is taking longer than we thought and we need a little pharmaceutical help -- we are now going for the silver. Maybe then it turns out our problems are in fact pretty big so after the silver doesn't pan out, we're going for IVF -- now we're aiming for the bronze.
Maybe after that we are in a position where we are getting comfortable with the idea of donor egg or a gestational carrier or we are pursuing adoption, and so we give up a little more of the original dream. I don't think the point was that any of the outcomes that aren't the first one -- everything we want and on the time scale we want it -- is somehow ultimately less good, but more that in order to get it, we may be finding ourselves sacrificing more and more of our original vision and all the while time is passing.
The truth is, I don't remember the original context of her remark, but it crystalized for me something really important. When we found out we were expecting twins and then later on, when we found out we were expecting a boy and a girl, I felt like everything that had been taken away from me in this journey was suddenly and unexpectedly gifted back, just like that.
In other words, we were going to get the gold. It wasn't without lots of sweat, tears, perseverance, sacrifice, and hard work, but we would get our happy ending -- what we were owed. The world was suddenly a fair place again, just as I had always known it to be until infertility and loss entered our lives.
We would have the two children we would have had if we had control over our reproductive fate and in the same time frame! A son and a daughter! It seemed too good to be true, but we did work really hard to get there, so why not? Why couldn't we have it all, get the gold, after our shit luck until then? It happens to others in the infertility community all the time, really -- from zero to two -- just like that.
Everything that happened to us until then infertility-wise sucked but it was tolerable and livable. It was something I was willing to put up with and rationalize, if we could then just get our happy ending. For lack of a better term, it was all within the realm of normal infertility suckiness. Par for the course.
And while it might have seemed sudden and unexpected when it finally worked and we conceived two beautiful babies, I felt like we deserved it because we are fundamentally good people who had worked very hard to get there. (But the unanswerable question that many of us avoid altogether in the moments of dazed self-congratulations then becomes what about everyone else on a similar road who has not been granted the same good fortune?)
Owed, deserved -- what dangerous words and concepts these are. I think you can probably already see where I am going with this.
I wasn't naive about the risks of a twin pregnancy -- if I look back at my posts during that period of time I don't think I was every really happy-go-lucky or flippant about the pregnancy. But deep down, even when the pregnancy became complicated, I fundamentally believed we would get our take-home babies -- that this would be very hard and scary, sure, but that we would also all make it out of this alive.
Even if you are particularly anxious and fearful, I don't think you ever really believe that you will be the horror story. In fact, isn't imagining the worst over and over again supposed to be some sort of protection mechanism? I am pretty sure that I subconsciously thought so.
So, obviously, in the end, we did not get the gold -- we came really close but we didn't get gold. Or silver. Or bronze. Actually, we didn't even place, we just pretty much careened off the course entirely.
What I want to get back to is this idea of what we are owed and what we deserve. It is something I struggle with in the present constantly -- this notion that we do all of this stuff and go through all of these trials and therefore it has to lead somewhere. It all has to be for something -- to ultimately fulfill some purpose.
But sometimes it's not.
Many times I see that women who have achieved their happy ending attempt to rationalize what it took to get there and find some meaning in it. For many of us, the journey can never just be an endless trek of failure, pain, and suffering -- it has to mean something and it has to have all been for something. The alternative is just too depressing and soul-crushing. It is not too difficult to rationalize the journey if you do get the happy ending, as I would have if Aminadav and Naava had come home with us.
But what about when that doesn't happen?
I know now I will never get the gold. I missed it entirely. What I mean by that is even if I do eventually get my living child(ten) in one way or another, I have lost too much that is irreplaceable for it to ever 'make up' for what I have experienced and what I have lost -- there will forever be my son and daughter missing from our lives, and that is not something fixable.
Until I lost them, the loss and sacrifice that I had experienced along this road deeply affected me, but there was nothing I had given up or lost that was unredeemable or unforgivable with the good fortune of the twins. It's not that I would forget the journey, but I was willing to bargain this for that and this (6 IUIs, 4 IVF transfers, a miscarriage) certainly seemed 'worth it' for what I could get in return (a son and a daughter).
How do I shake this idea of being owed a living child for what I have endured? It is so naive -- and yet a testament to how good and straightforward my life was until infertility -- this belief everything I work hard at will be handed to me. Life doesn't really work like that, I know, but part of me can't shake the idea.
When I had the very early miscarriage that resulted from the IVF cycle we did after losing the twins part of me was like "C'mon -- what did you expect, A? Of course it didn't work out. It never works out for you. Don't you get it by now?" but part of me was suspended in disbelief "How could it not work out -- after all of this don't you just deserve for things to work out?"
Part of me just can't shake the belief in the Very American Happy Ending. Hard work = a great reward. I try to shake it but there is a girl underneath who still believes in it. And yet it is ultimately so damaging to subscribe to that idea when life keeps throwing lemons at you -- if life hands us what we deserve, what does that say about Y and myself?
I still try to bargain all of the time. It is disastrous. I think to myself -- if we couldn't keep Aminadav and Naava, then the second best thing would be to have twins again. A second chance. We deserve to have twins. Twins are so special, I think.
But I know this is totally unrealistic, especially because we plan to only do SET in the future (as we did with our last IVF) since another twin pregnancy is too dangerous for us. Even if we did transfer more than one embryo, realistically our chances of both sticking around are quite low given our IVF track record.
I keep reminding myself that the goal is to have one healthy, living child who I can carry to term. Let's not get ahead of ourselves and get greedy, here, I tell myself. So I guess along side mourning the loss of my particular, beautiful twins, I also mourn the loss of ever having twins again, which often felt like something special to make up for the lousy hand we had been dealt until then.
I have lost too much to ever think I can have it all again -- the gold has clearly evaded me -- but still there is that stupid quiet voice who says don't you deserve a happy ending? This can't all be for nothing, right? Aren't you owed a living child? Or two.
How about you? Do you struggle with this idea of being owed something or deserving it? Did you feel the gold or silver or even the bronze was taken from you only to unexpectedly get it all back (or not)? If you've had your happy ending, do you rationalize what it took to get there?
Aug 6, 2012
searching for a new lightness
I used to smile A LOT. I was always a very smiley person. I also used to be kind of famous for my laughter, which was totally contagious. I can sort of boast about these things because it is so removed from who I am now. My fourth grade teacher overhead me laughing in a restaurant from another table without seeing my face and she instantaneously knew it was me. I was 22 years old. I hadn't seen her in 12 years.
People from all corners of my life always used to comment on my smile and laugh. It was something that stuck with them. My physical chemistry lab instructor approached me one day in the middle of lab, three weeks into the semester, and quipped disappointedly "A., I hear you are so much FUN! You haven't said one fun thing yet!"
In my new life, I never say anything funny, either on purpose or unintentionally, and I don't smile or laugh very much, either. I think I am actually a total downer to be around. I have been thinking lately that I wouldn't want to spend too much time around me. Poor Y.
I have slowly, over a long period of time, turned more and more inward. Most people who have met me in the past few years would probably describe me as awkward, serious, introverted, and well, whiny.
Infertility and loss has made me more empathetic and given me depth and maturity, but those things are much harder to see and appreciate, at least on the surface. Infertility and loss has also made me less vital, less zany, quirky and fun -- a muted, subdued version of myself. And I think I might also be less good-natured and more inclined to hold a grudge, especially if you were a jerk to me when I lost the twins.
More and more turned inward. I think that really accurately describes it. Not self-involved in a narcissistic or conceited sense, but in a darker self-obsessed way. Self-obsessed with my misery, my bad fortune, my inability to understand or answer all of the whys of how this came to be our lot.
I realized recently that I have been complaining a lot about stupid things. Mostly things that are within my control. And I realized this all serves as a cover. I think I have a compulsion to complain because of what really bothers me and how freaking unfair it is, but because it is not socially acceptable to talk about my infertility or my dead babies, I just complain about completely stupid inane stuff instead:
Y hasn't yet taken me to a baseball game this summer, we will probably never go, pity me, etc. etc. Read: My babies died and I am still incredibly pissed and sad and confused about it pity me, etc. etc. It must be so annoying to listen to.
Self-pity. Well, there is not much more to say than that self-pity really blows. No one wants to be proficient in the art of self-pity, but thank goodness, those of us who have gotten really adept at it are usually too self-involved to notice, save for the brief glimpse of self-awareness.
I wonder if I actually talked about the heart of it and acknowledged it outside of this blog like it is a normal topic of conversation: That I have had a really shitty, disastrous go of it conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy. That I had babies but they died and I don't know why things happened the way they did, but that it is really unfair and sucky. That I wish and pray for a living child every day -- whether maybe some of the burden would be relieved and I could find some lightness again and stop acting like a crochety old hag who is so hard done by.
I wish I could act like someone I would actually like to spend time with, but I am not there yet and instead I am too involved in self-pity and self-loathing to have an open heart. How can I find the beauty and the fun in simple things and in my friends and family again? Can I reclaim my smile and my laugh, even if I never feel my old, unhinged lightness again? And can I learn to find a new kind of lightness among the heavy things?
People from all corners of my life always used to comment on my smile and laugh. It was something that stuck with them. My physical chemistry lab instructor approached me one day in the middle of lab, three weeks into the semester, and quipped disappointedly "A., I hear you are so much FUN! You haven't said one fun thing yet!"
In my new life, I never say anything funny, either on purpose or unintentionally, and I don't smile or laugh very much, either. I think I am actually a total downer to be around. I have been thinking lately that I wouldn't want to spend too much time around me. Poor Y.
I have slowly, over a long period of time, turned more and more inward. Most people who have met me in the past few years would probably describe me as awkward, serious, introverted, and well, whiny.
Infertility and loss has made me more empathetic and given me depth and maturity, but those things are much harder to see and appreciate, at least on the surface. Infertility and loss has also made me less vital, less zany, quirky and fun -- a muted, subdued version of myself. And I think I might also be less good-natured and more inclined to hold a grudge, especially if you were a jerk to me when I lost the twins.
More and more turned inward. I think that really accurately describes it. Not self-involved in a narcissistic or conceited sense, but in a darker self-obsessed way. Self-obsessed with my misery, my bad fortune, my inability to understand or answer all of the whys of how this came to be our lot.
I realized recently that I have been complaining a lot about stupid things. Mostly things that are within my control. And I realized this all serves as a cover. I think I have a compulsion to complain because of what really bothers me and how freaking unfair it is, but because it is not socially acceptable to talk about my infertility or my dead babies, I just complain about completely stupid inane stuff instead:
Y hasn't yet taken me to a baseball game this summer, we will probably never go, pity me, etc. etc. Read: My babies died and I am still incredibly pissed and sad and confused about it pity me, etc. etc. It must be so annoying to listen to.
Self-pity. Well, there is not much more to say than that self-pity really blows. No one wants to be proficient in the art of self-pity, but thank goodness, those of us who have gotten really adept at it are usually too self-involved to notice, save for the brief glimpse of self-awareness.
I wonder if I actually talked about the heart of it and acknowledged it outside of this blog like it is a normal topic of conversation: That I have had a really shitty, disastrous go of it conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy. That I had babies but they died and I don't know why things happened the way they did, but that it is really unfair and sucky. That I wish and pray for a living child every day -- whether maybe some of the burden would be relieved and I could find some lightness again and stop acting like a crochety old hag who is so hard done by.
I wish I could act like someone I would actually like to spend time with, but I am not there yet and instead I am too involved in self-pity and self-loathing to have an open heart. How can I find the beauty and the fun in simple things and in my friends and family again? Can I reclaim my smile and my laugh, even if I never feel my old, unhinged lightness again? And can I learn to find a new kind of lightness among the heavy things?
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