Happy Endings

I haven't posted in a very long time.  There are several reasons for it.  

One reason is that blogging sometimes dragged me down and kept me locked in the prison of my despair.  Other times it gave me a voice and allowed me to advocate for myself, sort through my emotions, and share with others (strangers and loved ones alike) about how I was doing so I wouldn't have to discuss it when I didn't feel like it.  But sometimes it kept me down and I felt like a slave to my sadness.

Another reason is that I did not always like the feedback I received from well-meaning loved ones with whom I'd shared the blog.  At times, I unintentionally wrote things that hurt or offended them.  And they let me know it.  Sometimes, their taking offense offended me because they clearly missed the point of why I was feeling the way I was, or why I was writing about it.  But it wasn't worth fighting over, so I tried to graciously accept their criticism and slowly stopped sharing as much on the blog to avoid future confrontations and hurt feelings all around.  

Sometimes I wish I had made this blog completely anonymous and never shared it with anyone who knows me in real life.  It might have protected some relationships.  Although, if I never could have shared my general feelings, or how specific events affected me, or how those who care about me could try to help or be sensitive to me, would it really have made those relationships better? Or would I have just been suffering in silence?  Would my own resentment have grown with every innocent comment, announcement, or event?  Would I have withdrawn inside myself even further?  Would they have continued in their daily lives unaware of the pain they might be causing other infertiles like me?  I guess I'll never know.  But since we can't re-write the past, I'll have to stand by my decision to write this blog, and the decision to share with people who know me.  I can learn from this experience, and I can be grateful for the role it played in my journey.

The biggest reason why I haven't updated this inconceivable story since Mother's Day is because I was actively living out the end of the story.  And this story, thankfully, has a happy ending.  Yes, DH and I are finally expecting and we couldn't be happier.  In the end, we decided to do IVF and actually travelled to Czech Republic to do it because it was less than half the price to do it there, including all the travel costs.  We were very lucky that it worked first try, especially because we have no frozen embryos left over to try again.  We transferred two embies and one stuck.  I am now over 17 weeks along and we are on cloud nine.  We feel so blessed and are extremely grateful for how lucky we are.

To all those out there who are still struggling, my heart goes out to you.  I wish you all success in your journey and hope you all become parents, in whatever way you can.  Or, if it's what's best for you, I hope you find peace and joy in choosing to live childfree.  This journey leaves a mark on us all, and I know I for one will be forever changed because of it.  But I also know I will be a better mother because of it too.  Now I truly can live out the words from this comforting poem I found 2.5 years ago when I first started this blog: http://inconceivablestory.blogspot.com/p/i-will-be-wonderful-mother.html.

I wish the same happiness to all the other hopeful parents out there who may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I hope you all find peace and take comfort in the hope that your own happy ending will come someday too.

Gratitude before Mother's Day

It's been 4 years since we decided to start TTC.  I thought this milestone would be the perfect occasion to reflect back on our journey and to express my deep gratitude for all the family members, friends, co-workers, support group members, medical care professionals, blog readers, forum participants, acquaintances, and even complete strangers that have supported us along the way.  

I am humbled by the amount of love and compassion that so many of you have shown us.  If you are a friend of mine who has listened to our story, read my blog, sent me cards or messages to let me know when you are thinking of me, prayed for me, or cared and thought about me, even if I never knew it, thank you.

Thank you to all those who have checked in on me, given me space when I needed it, considered my feelings in social situations, privately notified me before announcing your own pregnancies, asked how you can help, listened to me, and hugged me.

Thank you to my DH who has been through the trenches with me, supported me, fought for our love, and done everything in his power and good conscience to give me what I want more than anything..... besides him and our love of course.

Although IF has changed me forever and at times has taken over my identity, something else has changed my sense of identity too: the kindness, love, and support of those who have been there for us along the way.  I am so grateful to have so many people in my life who care about me.  I hope you all know who you are, and I hope you know that you make me stronger.  You make my life more full, more complete.  You remind me of the bigger picture and all the small things too, and you help me keep my pain and grief in perspective.  You pull me back out into the world when I get stuck in my own head, and you pick me up and carry me when I can't stand by myself.  

I am sorry for the times I have not been the best friend, mother, daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, in-law, co-worker, or listener.  I want to be better.  I want to remember that all those roles which I play and the relationships I have are important parts of my identity too.  I promise to try.  I promise to myself that someday I will work through this suffering and come out on the other side and be even better than the person you knew before this struggle took over me.  I refuse to be stuck here forever.  Someday, whether it's because I move on to motherhood or accept a new child-free life, I will put this behind me.  I'm sure it will always be part of me, but I won't let it consume me forever.  I'll grow from it, learn from it, and be stronger because of it.

And to those of you who will still be there ready and waiting for me when that day finally comes, thank you.

New Beginnings?

Coming across this article about turning Mother's Day into an empowering day for the infertile, which I blogged about here, and which was written by someone not too far away and kind of close to home (at least the home where part of my heart still is) reminds me that B & I have been thinking more about getting a second opinion before pulling the trigger on IVF next year.  

We had been putting it off because I've been so busy with work and travel, and honestly, for a long time we still had hoped that B's varicocele repair surgery would have worked, but now things are slowing down and we are fairly confident that one year post-surgery, the lack of improvement in his semen analysis is pretty indicative of the surgery's affect on our fertility.  Which is literally nothing.  Zero improvement.

But come mid-June, we'll return from our last scheduled trip in the foreseeable future.  I have asked B to get one more semen analysis done over the summer sometime just to confirm that 1.25 - 1.5 years out from surgery, nothing has changed.  I was thinking about visiting an entirely new clinic and going through all the rigors of female infertility testing again just to double check and see if in 3 years my hormones or blood levels have changed, or if my fallopian tubes are still open, or if my ovaries, cervix, or uterus are all still okay.  I was thinking we could try to find referrals for places that are very "holistically" focused, so that they would consider my cycle more instead of just doing the bare minimum and pushing us toward IUI & IVF like our current clinic.  Our RE just moved back to Canada, so we need to see someone new anyway.  Maybe this is the time to try someplace new just to make sure we've explored absolutely everything before we go into so much debt for IVF.

If we start hunting around in July and spend the summer getting things checked out.... again.... that would still give us six months before IVF to sort it all out definitively.  I think it would also be nice to start some therapy or find a support group at that time too.

Yes, I think upon our return from this last trip in June, much of our focus and energy will need to shift toward building our family and our future.  I'll be sure to blog about those experiences here, as this is my best place to sort through my feelings and record all that I learn along this crazy journey!

What happened two months ago

Ok, I've alluded to this a few times now, so I'm finally taking the time to open up and share what happened in September.

My first cycle after my trip to Finland & Russia in August was totally normal.  Before that, in Finland, I was about 12 hours or so late, but that's actually about right because it was a 9 hour time difference.  My period also lasted a day or two longer, but that's pretty normal too since I'd been travelling.

Anyway, the next cycle all seemed normal through the rest of August and into September... except my period didn't come when it was supposed to in September.  When I was just a day or two late, I didn't think much of it since I had been travelling during the previous month and that might have messed up my internal clock a little.

When I was 3 days late I took an early pregnancy test, just to see if I should be going to the beer garden that night after work or not.  It was negative, but was started raining later that afternoon so I didn't go out anyway.  Probably for the best I figured, just in case.

Two days later I was five days late and was really starting to wonder.  I tested again and was still negative, so I started googling about when those tests were supposed to be most accurate.  Everything said that while they can detect on the first day of your missed period, they are more accurate about a week later.

So I decided to make an appointment with my gyno for a blood test.  The next morning, day 6 of being late, I went in for a blood draw.  B & I were both so convinced at this point that this must finally be "our time" that I didn't even bother calling the RE doctors.  I didn't want to go in to work that day after the appointment, as I wanted to be home where I had cell reception when I got the call with the news.

When they called late that afternoon, I was shocked to hear the test was negative.  They had done a quantitative test, not qualitative like I'd asked for though, so I was frustrated and asked for some answers.  The nurse who'd called me said that sometimes women can just have an "off" cycle.  That's when I thought I should schedule a check up with the gyno since it had been a couple years.  Time to make sure nothing has changed on my end of things while we've been working on B this whole time.  She couldn't fit me in for weeks though, which is why I didn't go until the morning I flew out for India.

I was still pretty frustrated though, and called Robbie to get a blood draw from them too.  He agreed that we should do a qualitative one to see if we could get any answers.  The next day, day 7 of being late, I went in.  Later that day, those results came back as 0, completely negative.  I was not pregnant.

I wanted to make an appointment to have another consultation with Robbie and start completely over on all my testing, in case something had happened in the last two years since I'd first had all my stuff done.  Maybe I've developed PCOS, maybe I have endo now, maybe I'm not ovulating anymore & need clomid, maybe my tube is blocked again and they needed to open it up again.  SOMETHING!

He couldn't get me in for a week, but I was going to be out of town presenting at a conference, so I had to schedule the appointment for two weeks out.  This was so ridiculous, how could they learn anything about what was going on with my body that would cause me to be a week late if they didn't look at me for two weeks?!?!? I was beyond frustrated.  I was devastated and crushed and angry.  I wanted some answers about what was going on.

I didn't believe it could be true that I was not pregnant and nothing abnormal was going on with me.  I did a ton of googling.  There are women who don't produce the HSG hormone & never get a positive pregnancy test result.  Also, if it was a chemical pregnancy, that might not produce the hormone either but would cause me to be late.  Also, if I was pregnant but about to miscarry, it's possible that I hadn't been far enough along to detect the hormone and then lost it before I could get the positive result.  Clearly, I was in denial and couldn't believe that I wasn't pregnant.  I was grasping for anything to hold on to that could help me make sense of everything going on around me.

But honestly, I've never been anything but like clockwork.  I always get my period right on target, maybe a day or two off, but never a week!  I always ovulated between days 14-16, like clockwork!  I'm so regular it's almost laughable in the face of our infertility, and here I was A WEEK LATE and the doctors were all just trying to tell me that sometimes women have an "off month" and I shouldn't be concerned unless this becomes a pattern?!?!?!?  I was so mad!  I want to be on the fast track to fertility, so if something major like this occurs, I want my team of doctors to start running tests and getting to the bottom of what caused this change!  Grrrrrr.....

The next day I started spotting and then got my period.  I fell into such dispair.  I finally started believing that it was true that I was either never pregnant at all, or had been and was miscarrying, or had had a chemical pregnancy.  Either way, it felt like a huge loss.  

Do you see the hidden baby in this image?
This was totally B & I making plans for our future with our baby when we thought we were pregnant.

Even B seemed to be affected by it.  We'd started making plans, even discussing whether I should cancel this trip to India that was coming up, and debating whether we'd be trying to do his big 4-0 birthday trip next summer, since I'd probably be on maternity leave.  We were making plans about decorating the spare bedrooms in our new house and buying a bigger car when we could afford it.  We were blissfully happy hoping that our time had finally come, and we'd gotten there naturally, without having to spend $20k + to get there.

Then on Day 8 I got my period and it all came crashing down around us.  B was sensitive the first day and then seemed to move on.  Not me.  I was sad and angry.  I tried to focus on figuring out what had happened.  I wanted answers.  Oh, and get this, my period only lasted 2 days!  WTF?!?

When I finally got to go in to see Robbie, he seemed to think that trying on our own is futile now and we should move on to IUI's. I told him that we want to skip that or maybe just do one, before moving on to IVF in early 2014.  He seemed to kind of write me off then.  If I wasn't going to do ART now, he didn't seem interested in exploring other less invasive ways to help us in the meantime.  He told me work on losing weight, and if my next few cycles were like this, then maybe we could talk about clomid, but if I get right back on track again, then he said no way to the clomid.

Then we argued about math which really pissed me off.  I came home and told B about how Robbie was trying to tell me that each IUI has a cumulative effect, which is such bullsh*t.  Dr. J had previously explained it to us the exact opposite way.  Yeah sure, each IUI has a 20% chance of working, but that doesn't add up to getting 100% odds after five IUI's.  No, the fifth one still just has a 20% chance of working, just like the first one!  

God Robbie pissed me off!  He tried to make the analogy that if I flipped a coin twenty times, my odds of getting heads at least once would be much higher than if I just flipped it once.  Yes, fine.  But I'm not doing 20 IUI's!  And besides, every individual time you flip that coin, it's always going to have a 50/50 chance of being heads.  

Gawwwwwwd he pissed me off!  And flipping a coing doesn't cost you $1300 out of pocket each time like an IUI does.  We'd rather put that toward the $13-20K + that we'll need for IVF soon anyway.  Which by the way, only has a 50% percent chance of working.  Geesh, with Robbie's reasoning, we should just spend all our money playing the lottery, and then then when we win after playing for a while (which according to him we'd have good chances of doing after playing more often), we could just pay for IVF right away!

Seriously, what kind of a doctor argues this way?  This is why I talked afterward with my gyno about how I don't "click" with Robbie.  I'm so glad she encouraged me to feel comfortable switching to Dr. Strawn.  I really feel like that guy respects me as an individual, not just another patient with the same old textbook problems & routine solutions.  Strawn's the one who said B & I have been infertile for over 4 years, since we went off contraception, not just the 2.5 years that we think we've been "actively trying."  I really respect this guy & feel validated by him, not belittled.

So that's the story.  For the first time in my life I actually felt the thrill that I always imagined I would once I finally got pregnant.  And then it was ripped away.  I'm kind of in the place where I was after we decided not to do the IVF in January 2012 again.  It's not a good place and I'm just trying to process everything.

Blogging is helping of couse.  Sometimes blogging too much kind of keeps me stuck in this world where it's all I think about so I stop for a while for my mental well being & balance.  Then something happens and it helps me to process it by writing it down again, and if I get positive feedback from those who love me or have been there too then it helps me a little more.  And if I can help someone else going through this too, then that helps even more still.

Travelling has been helping as well.  It keeps me busy so I don't have time to think about our struggle so much.  And it puts things in perspective by reminding me of all the wonderful opportunities that I'm able to take advantage of right now, which I probably couldn't do if I was pregnant or had kids.  India in particular has also reminded me that things could be a lot worse for us.  Many other people in the world don't have clean drinking water, a sanitary place to go to the bathroom, or have access to proper food or shelter.

On the other hand, travelling also gives me something positive to focus on like having new experiences and making new memories, especially as a couple with B this time!  Of course, like I've said in the last several posts, it's always in the back of my mind and I have guilty-little-pleasure thoughts about making a baby with B in India and naming it Asha or Indie or something.  But seriously, without some kind of hope, where would we all be?

I was watching a movie on the way to India and one quote really stood out to me. In the movie, the character was explaining that they have a quote here in India that goes something like this, 

"Everything works out in the end, and if it's not working out, then it must not be the end."

I love this.  Whenever I start to get sad about our baby woes, I need to remember this quote.  It really gives me renewed hope for our future and this crazy journey we are on.  It also stands as a testament to my stubborn personality and perseverance.   I will never give up on the dream of my child.  I just can't do it.  Motherhood is something I was born for.  It's all I've ever envisioned for myself.  It's all I've every truly wanted.  

And B is going to make such a good daddy.  His capacity for love, nurturing, and protection has always been one of my favorite traits of his.  He's going to be an amazing father and I just want to finally give him the opportunity to realize that potential.  I just want to have that man's babies.

Well anyway, he's joining me here in India for some touring after I finished my work here, so either way we'll have some amazing experiences and take with us some amazing memories to share for a lifetime together!

So you're saying there's a chance...

I'm sitting in the Hyderabad Airport, reading yet another book on infertility. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother anymore. I've read so many books by so many different kinds of authors (doctors, patients, nutritionists, homeopathic experts, former infertiles, etc), that by this point, I feel like I've heard it all and there is nothing new for me to learn. Yet each new book does present information in a new way and every now and then I do get inspired by new ideas.

The book I'm reading now on my iPad has a few words on varicoceles. As we know, B had varicocele repair surgery back in April. He had very large varicoceles on one side, and fairly large on the other. Dr. J had said that with most patients, a significant number see improvement in sperm counts and achieve pregnancy after 3 months post-surgery. Then another large percentage will see improvement and pregnancy success after 6 months. A few more after a year.

This book claims that men with large varicoceles may see improvement within 6-12 months after the repair.



This gives me some renewed hope because we are exactly at the 6 month mark as of RIGHT NOW!

I'd actually already given up faith in us seeing any improvement from the surgery, and just figured we were going to have to wait more than a year until we could afford IVF. But if the stats in this book are accurate, then we may now just be entering into our prime time for TTC!

Best part of all, after my ordeal two months ago, I was relieved to get my period on time (like clockwork) while I was here in India. It did last an extra day or two longer than normal, but that is common when traveling, especially with a nearly 12 hour time change, so I'm not worried about that at all. Anyway, my point is, I'll be in my fertile period next week and should ovulate once B joins me for our vacation in Northern India! Maybe the stars will finally align for us and we'll be able to make our own little Indian baby here together ;)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I will be a wonderful mother

(I didn't write this but I may as well have. It is exactly how I feel!) 

I will be a Wonderful Mother

There are women who become mothers without effort, without thought, without patience or loss, and though they are good mothers and love their children, I know that I will be better.

I will be better not because of genetics or money or because I have read more books, but because I have struggled and toiled for this child. I have longed and waited. I have cried and prayed. I have endured and planned over and over again.

Like most things in life, the people who truly have appreciation are those who have struggled to attain their dreams. I will notice everything about my child. I will take time to watch my child sleep, explore, and discover. I will marvel at this miracle every day for the rest of my life.

I will be happy when I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my child, knowing that I can comfort, hold, and feed him and that I am not waking to take another temperature, pop another pill, take another shot or cry tears of a broken dream. My dream will be crying for me.

I count myself lucky in this sense; that God has given me this insight, this special vision with which I will look upon my child.

Whether I parent a child I actually give birth to or a child that God leads me to, I will not be careless with my love.

I will be a better mother for all that I have endured.

I am a better wife, a better aunt, a better daughter, neighbor, friend, and sister because I have known pain. I know disillusionment, as I have been betrayed by my own body. I have been tried by fire and hell that many never face, yet given time, I stood tall.

I have prevailed.

I have succeeded.

I have won.

So now, when others hurt around me, I do not run from their pain in order to save myself discomfort. I see it, mourn it, and join them in theirs. I listen. And even though I cannot make it better, I can make it less lonely.

I have learned the immense power of another hand holding tight to mine, of other eyes that moisten as they learn to accept the harsh truth when life is beyond hard.

I have learned a compassion that only comes by walking in those shoes.

I have learned to appreciate life.

Yes, I will be a wonderful mother.