On the Upside

On the downside, I will never carry my own child. And this, this is the biggest downside imaginable. With Mother’s Day approaching, I feel surrounded by pregnancies, children, moms – a trip to the grocery store is akin to slow motion drowning in a pink-toned bath of flowers, cards and candy. And the stark reality, with every bump I see, is that that will never be me. I will never feel my baby kicking in my belly. I will never have an anticipatory ultrasound appointment during which time I get to see my child’s heartbeat. I will never buy a cute maternity dress. No one will ever lovingly touch my belly. (Well, they might but it would surely be creepy circumstances.) I’ll never get to take maternity photos like the ones so commonly splashed all over Facebook. So many nevers. Too many. Time to focus on the upside.

And the upside is that while I mourn the unbearable sadness that is never being able to become pregnant, I will be drinking a glass of champagne, feeling the wind in my hair on a 2 hour run, and sitting in various hot tubs to my heart’s content. Oh yeah, and this bod, this bod is stayin’ rockin’. Okay, I’m being too generous with myself, my body is just normal, but you get the picture. If we are lucky enough to have our dreams come true via surrogacy, you bet your ass that I will be sporting a bikini on the beach with my baby, inhaling the verbal rewards. “You look so great for just having had a baby.” “Thank you.” I’ll take it. I’ll take it because no one knows what I’ve been through to get to that place. And if they did. Well if they did, the congratulations would be even more prolific.

I will sip champagne, eat soft cheese, inhale sushi dinners and won’t feel guilty one bit. No morning sickness. No feet swelling. No post baby body complex. No crash diets, corset wearing, liposuction. Nope, just me being me. And hopefully me being me will be me being a mom.

My heart will still break every time I see a beautiful pregnant woman walk by. It will ache and it will break and it will mend itself all over again as it has so many times before. But I think I’ll get over it more quickly moving forward if I revel in a self gifted smorgasbord of tuna tatake, flash fried brie cheese and prosecco. Afterwards I will take a steaming hot, lavendar perfumed bath and be thankful for what I am able to enjoy, and that my body, however broken, is still a miraculous entity, capable of a so much. There is so much more I will do with it. I promise.

I don’t want kids

I wasn’t always a jealous person. I’ve been hardened to jealousy by what we’ve been through. Enduring all the disappointment and loss whilst others dreamily carry on and get pregnant with their 2nd or 3rd child without even trying, it has an insurmountable effect on a person. Seeing the gossip headlines spout out that yet another 2 celebrities are on bump watch. Listening to young mothers complain about the trials and tribulations of parenthood at the coffeeshop. Watching a father play with her daughter at the beach yesterday. Seeing that look in my husband’s face. Feeling that familiar grief of guilt. It builds up inside of me like some sort of festering beast. My mouth gets dry. My heart races. I have to consciously take breaths just to keep it down. Why is it you and not me? What did I do to deserve this? Was I a terrible person in a past life? Was I a terrible person in this life? Why are you able to effortlessly attain something while we continue to silently suffer?

Jealousy isn’t a good look. It’s impossible to wear well. So I just shove it down with the rest of my demons. Some fiery jungle deep inside me which only erupts when I allow it. Usually after 1 too cocktails. After everyone else is gone. And I cry. I cry because it isn’t fair. I cry because of my overwhelming envy. I cry because it hurts more than any physical pain I have endured.

I have this friend. She’s pregnant. Shocker, right. Who isn’t? So that’s hard enough. We all know that feeling well. Happy for her sad for me. The problem is that this sadness is more deeply rooted due to my memory, my very acute memory of a particular night back in Cardiff. Sitting around our oversized granite coffee table, red wine in hand, chatting, gossiping, watching some terrible thrillers on TV. Somehow our conversation switched gears and 3 young women were suddenly discussing more serious life goals. I had always wanted kids. Always. It was an easy answer to an easy question. I couldn’t even imagine life without them, without the desire for them. It was the same for my other friend Kinsey. A yes without hesitation. Which is why she now has the most beautiful daughter. But the 3rd response, well the 3rd response was different. Candid. I’ll give her that. But not in line with the rest.

“I don’t want kids. I’m too selfish. I can’t imagine doing everything for someone else and not being able to put myself first.”

So now this same friend who uttered these awfully tragic words is pregnant – or maybe just gave birth. And my problem is that I CANNOT no matter how hard I try, pry myself away from the “I don’t want kids” soundtrack. It plays on repeat. Over and over. I think it has surpassed jealousy, mutated into some new emotion that we don’t even have the etymology for. It’s selfish, I know. I should just be happy with her. She changed her mind and as Richard says, people are allowed to change their minds. Well of course they are allowed to change their minds. I know for a fact that her husband, my husband’s best friend, never wanted kids either. What’s so horrific to digest is that with the flip of a switch, they change their minds, and poof, they’re with child. While I sit here, having always wanted kids, willing to do anything, say anything, be anyone to bring them into this world, enduring 3 years of painstaking treatments, shelling out more money than most people’s house down payments, and still, not pregnant. In fact, I will never get to be pregnant. I get to watch someone else take the most important physical duty any woman ever has and do it for me.

So, I don’t like to admit it, but this envy has been sharpened beyond the pangs of jealousy and has turned to some sort of cloaked anger. Why in the hell does someone who never wanted kids, married to someone who never wanted kids, with a reasoning that translated to sheer narcism, gets pregnant in an instant while someone who has been unwavering her whole life in her desire to have children remains barren and in pain?

The answer I suppose is the same answer to most of my rage-fueled questions that aren’t really questions but rather outcries. And it’s that life isn’t fair. Nope, it sure isn’t. But that answer doesn’t comfort me in the slightest. After 3 years of suffering, a blanket-all statement such as that is holding the same meaningfulness as those initial remarks people would make when this nightmare started – just think positive and it will happen – just adopt – just do yoga. How about just shut the bleep up?

The reason I am admitting to my elevated and ugly envy is that I want to beat it. I want to be happy for her. I really do. But I cannot for the life of me get those words out of my head. I don’t want kids. I don’t want kids. I don’t want kids. It’s like verbal kryptonite.

Yes, people change and people are allowed to change their minds. But this doesn’t actually help me overcome my feelings. It’s just explaining the logic behind behavior. Well I hated logic in college and I’m pretty sure I still hate it now. Emotions aren’t logical. How I’ve been feeling for the last 3 years sure isn’t logical. Maybe if logic could cure endometriosis, I’d give it a little more of a chance.

Deep down I think I know the answer though. It’s difficult to admit but I think I’m punishing her for what she said. I think that I am restraining my happiness for them as some sort of psychologically driven scolding. I have to choose to, and admit to this before I can share in their joy. So here is is my verbal white flag. I am waving it openly to you ladies first because I knew you would understand. Or at least I had hoped you would understand.

Happiness is probably the greatest healer after all. With all this suffering, we deserve it of course but I think it heals better when transferred, when shared. I’m not sure I will ever be able to erase the memory of those words. But I vow to accept what has been said and work at moving on to a place where I can be happy for them. If not, I know I am only hurting myself.

 

When you suffer loss

There is far too much lost on this journey. Jobs. Relationships. Opportunities. Blood. Privacy. Money. Time. And there are more tangible losses. There are miscarriages and chemical pregnancies. There are sperm that can’t survive and eggs that fail to grow. There are embryos who don’t make it, never fertilize, and there are embryos who get discarded like leftovers in a high school chem class. I’ve been missing in action for the past couple weeks because I was mourning yet another loss. One of the many, I, and so many others have endured on this tough path. The upside is that we have 4 chromosomally normal embryos. And yes, I know, I need to focus on this, embrace it. Trust me, I have. I have not forgotten about my 4 beautiful babies safe in the lab. But I don’t need a lecture on it. I am allowed to mourn the 12 we lost. Those are 12 of our children. They are made of me and my husband, our DNA, our efforts, our love and devotion. I did so much in preparation for this egg retrieval. It felt so reassuring to send 16 embryos to Natera for genetic screening. We never had so many before. We were so grateful. I got carried away. I could tell Richard was skeptical, that he was worried, that we were always the ‘outliers’ of IVF so if it seemed too good to be true, it probably was. So when we found out that of the 16 that were biopsied and tested, only 4 were normal, he was probably more prepared. Still, it’s grief all the same.

What people don’t understand is that they aren’t just cell structures in a petri dish. They are our babies. They are our babies that represent every time I jabbed myself with a needle, all the medical procedures, the multiple credit card bills, the hope and prayers that go into every cycle. They are all of that and so much more. So to receive some generic piece of paper that lists 12 of my children’s abnormalities, and to know, on top of that, that they will literally be tossed out like trash, well, it’s why I needed time. It’s sad. I’m strong. But it’s still sad. We have 4 left. But it doesn’t detract for the 12 we lost and the love they deserve, the chance for life, all that we did to bring them to life. Still sad. Still heartbreaking.

The survival tactic is hope. It’s our buoy, our boat, our big fat bandage. With all that is lost, we can’t ever lose hope. We just can’t. This is more important than the follistim, the painkillers, and the ganirelix. It’s the ultimate medication. And we don’t even have to freakin’ inject it. So I’m hanging on, albeit, with one hand, and it’s my left, but I’m still here. Thinking about those precious 4 and hoping we find the perfect surrogate to protect each one until our baby is in our arms.