A Waiting Game

So much of this journey is spent waiting. Waiting to begin treatment. Waiting to finish treatment. Waiting to get surgeries over with. Enduring the 2 week wait. Waiting for test results. And now I find myself in the pinnacle of waits – the wait to be matched with a surrogate.

Doing nothing is not really conducive to my personality. But there is quite literally nothing I can do at this stage. I’ve completed my 3rd egg retrieval. I read all the books. Checked acupuncture, months of supplements, extreme diet changes off my list. But there’s nothing more I can do now. Admittedly, I celebrated the completion of my last round of treatment with enough wine, Cheetos and Swedish Fish to drown the Titanic (pre-iceberg). I hadn’t had high fructose corn syrup or artificial colors/flavors in over a year. I hadn’t even had tomato in months – inflammation causing and all that. During the aftermath, amidst wrappers and crumbs however, I was swiftly reminded why I had cut such things out of my diet to begin with. They make us sick.

Once my sugar hangover had lifted, I was left with a sinking, okay more like gaping feeling. I flew back to Grand Cayman, settled back into our home and more importantly our life, and re-learned my routine, except that it felt foreign. No needles. No doctors’ appointments. No crazy batches of anti-inflammatory soup. My bedside table was lackluster, devoid of the 20 or so bottles of supplements that usually resided there. The tangibilities that reminded me of my diseases and perhaps more acutely, of my treatment, were no longer around. Sure, the reality is that I should continue my prescribed diet and supplements to battle my chronic illness. Adenomyosis and Endometriosis may be invisible but their call to fame is the excruciating pain they induce. I know for sure that the Cheetos won’t have helped. But it feels strange treating my illnesses with no hope of ever becoming pregnant. I can take the pain. That’s a side note. I did everything I did to treat myself so that I could create the best environment for my body to carry our child. That was the point. That was the dream. And now that is simply no more.

Everything I did, everything we went through, everything I became, was to become pregnant. Now I’ve been told that will never happen, that someone else will have to carry our child for me. So where does it leave me? It leaves me waiting.

My friend asked me recently why I hadn’t been posting and/or blogging as much. When I was told I would never be able to carry my own child, that I went through the last 3 years of treatment in vain, that there was nothing more I could do – well, it broke my heart. As if it wasn’t broken already. I’m still not sure I fully comprehend the loss. When I go to the grocery store and see 2 pregnant ladies chatting over organic produce, it used to feel like being punched in the stomach, now it feels like the slow pressing on a bruise. Because that’s what mourning loss feels like. And right now I am in the mist between mourning and waiting. Perhaps the worst limbo imaginable. I know there’s a way out. Of course. I didn’t go through all this to falter at the second circle of hell.

But after the loss, the waiting actually feels worse. Inactive. Lonely. Purposeless. We fill our lives with treatment plans and positive thinking all to achieve this one goal, to get pregnant. Well, that’s never happening for me. So hurry up and switch gears, you’ve gotta hope for something else now. You must buckle down and put whatever energy you have left into legal contracts, surrogacy agency meetings, screening calls, writing the perfect profile, deciding what would happen if anyone involved died, and all the while waiting, and that all too familiar hoping, that it will work out, that although I have mourned and suffered the loss of never being able to become pregnant myself, we will be matched with the perfect surrogate, who will fall pregnant and give birth to a healthy, happy baby that we can finally hold in our arms.

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.

How to tell me you’re pregnant… the dreaded pregnancy announcement

One of my best friends emailed me yesterday to let me know she was pregnant. Some of you might think this is impersonal. Maybe it is. But I read it on someone else’s blog once, and I couldn’t agree more. Why? Because it allows you to cry (okay wail and suck for air) on your own without dragging the happy mother down. It allows you time to process without feeling like you need to fill space with conversation. It allows you the silence necessary to take it all in, the undeniable envy, the loneliness, the pain, all washing over you, all over again. Without judgement or action, it allows you to just be with your thoughts and emotions in your own space. And as always, it allows you to grieve. Plus, ultimately, it allows you to go through this process and then get your shit together so that you can be happy for this person. That is just as important as processing your own sadness. Share in the joy just as you share in the grief. This is true friendship. This is sisterhood.

Everyone is different. This seems to work for me. Though the hardest part, as I explained to my friend after receiving her email, is that there is no way to lessen the blow, not really. Whether it’s an email, a letter, a phone call or a text, it’s going to cut and it’s going to hurt. That’s just the reality. As I watch the last of my friends become pregnant, give birth to their second child, enter school, it just refocuses the attention on how far behind we are. Yes, yes, chin up and all of that. But this is the nature of the demons that haunt you when you hear another person is pregnant, which is why it is so important to really consider how you tell people when you are.

Tread lightly. This is first and foremost. And by this I do not mean you are not allowed to feel joy, or revel in your own happiness, savor that beautiful glow. Just be considerate. Be a human. It’s really not that hard.

Please think before you post on social media. This is my biggest pet peeve. It literally makes my blood boil. As you blast your album of maternity photos, your 1 month, 2 month, 6 month bump pics (ps. no one sees your bump at 6 weeks and no one cares that baby is now the size of an almond), your Some E-card complaining about not being able to drink wine or how morning sickness is ruining your life… just think first. In moderation, fine. But do you really think the woman with uterine cancer scrolling through her feed wants to see your 25th ultrasound photo? “Just in case you didn’t see the 24 other photos indicating I’m pregnant, here’s another one!” Give me a break. I wish I could punch people through the computer screen. Plus, as my best friend says, it’s super duper personal. You are announcing your pregnancy by advertising the most intimate photo that will ever be taken of your child. This is your naked, unborn child in the womb. And you are blasting it on Facebook and putting gimmicky stickies on it? I’m happy for you. I am. But have a little tact.

Again, I am different. I am my own person. And I am most certainly extreme in most things. So I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. But I’m pretty sure most of you will agree that it’s not a nice feeling to find out the 50th girl you went to high school with is pregnant by seeing a tactless ultrasound photo on Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or whatever. Our hearts were sinking anyway. This is just salt in the wound. Salt in the wound.

This brings me to the wording. If you’re going to announce your pregnancy, please don’t build it into one big lump of complaints. I would kill to be in your shoes. I would kill to have morning sickness, to have sleepless nights, to buy maternity clothes because none of my jeans fit. These are the things I fantasize about and cry myself to sleep over. So don’t you dare come to me with your list of difficulties in being pregnant. That is not the way to tell me. That is not the way to tell anyone.

A phone call works for a lot of women. And I could see it working for me. But so many factors have to fall into place, like some kind of symbiotic alignment of the stars – or communications as this situation would have it. The person sharing the news is tiptoeing around her words, mindful of not saying anything insensitive, the listener is trying to hold it together long enough for her to hang up and then cry relentlessly after the call has ended. So many emotions have to be in check. It just seems like so much work and so unnatural, which I suppose sounds odd as I am implying an email or a text is more natural. Well, in this scenario, I think it is. Allows for better reaction time.

Lastly is timing. Don’t wait forever because you’re too scared and then NOT tell me. That’s just weird. All of a sudden I see a photo of you with an enormous baby bump or you rock up to dinner with your newborn… That’s just lying. Don’t do that. Just don’t.

Don’t tell me before anyone else because you feel like you have to get it off your chest. Don’t make it about you in that sense. I know it’s uncomfortable and not ideal to have to share this sort of news with someone suffering, whom you know you will hurt in telling. But don’t verbal vomit your news just to get it out. It’s almost as bad as not telling us at all.

We’re sorry. Trust me. We don’t want to put pregnant friends and family in this situation. We don’t want to be in the situation to begin with. We are happy for you. We are. But the pain we feel when we hear another friend is pregnant as we slip seemingly further and further away from the same dream, it is very real and needs to be taken into account. Every day there are reminders of strangers’ pregnancies. From the strollers at the park to the diaper commercials to the birth on TV. We owe you our undeterred joy just as you owe us your sensitivity. They are two very separate things you see. That’s what people don’t understand. The happiness I feel for one of my closest friends falling pregnant is unfettered by my grief. It is an entirely separate emotion.

I love you Mia. And I am so very happy for you. I love your baby already, with all my heart, with everything I have. But I remain, undoubtedly, so sad for myself.

Egg Retrieval Recovery

I am still sore. Unbelievable. So different from my last two retrievals. I was fine the next day previously. Bloated but fine. The sick sick irony in having us look pregnant following an egg retrieval is not lost on me. Just glad no one asked if I was. Could you imagine?

My nurse told me that the average woman gains 6 lbs following egg collection, thats 6 lbs of fluid filling those follicle sacks on our ovaries. Gross. It sure as bleep feels like at least that as I waddle around after the procedure. Each step akin to punching a purple bruise someone deep in the darkest depths of my abdomen. But, who cares! Why? We got 29 beautiful eggs. And that’s all that really matters. I would walk through fire for those eggs so a belly full of fluid and pain only remedied by Vicodin is a small price to pay.

We’re just keeping everything crossed as the amount of eggs has never been our problem. Nor has the quality or quantity of the sperm. Something happens after fertilization. Something bad. And no one really knows what. At approximately day 5, more than 50% of our embryos usually die, which as most of you know, is absolutely gut-wrenching after going through weeks of treatment and procedures. Our first cycle we ended up with no viable embryos. All but 2 died or were abnormal and the 2 that survived were day 7, bad grade little ones. Heartbreaking. Our second cycle was better. We ended up with 4 but after retrieving 23 eggs, it was still disappointing and I couldn’t help but feel that once again, it was my fault. I was harming my unborn children by not even giving them the proper building blocks to survive.

This is the reason I have been missing in action from the blogosphere. 29 eggs sounds seemingly fantastic and fertilization of 27, also so wonderful. Yet we have been down this path before. We don’t want to get our hopes up. We have known, really only, disappointment as we have trudged through IVF 3 times. We are therefore cautious of our feelings and wait, on embryo reports with bated breath.

Don’t misunderstand, I feel so fortunate to have ended up with ANY embryos last cycle after the first cycle, even if they all failed to implant because of my hostile friggin’ uterus. I feel lucky and grateful. And I feel the same way towards the universe in allowing the collection of 29 eggs. No matter how you dice it, this is good news. I know there are women out there who end up with no eggs or one egg. I do not for a second take my egg retrieval for granted. I’m just hoping that all my hardcore prep has led to more normal eggs this time around. It is Easter after all. The most fertile, egg abundant time of year.

My gratitude has gotten me through the pain this time around. When I came around after the anesthesia, I was crying, the pain was so terrible. I had never experienced that before. After the last two egg retrievals, to be honest, I was still riding the high of the sedation and didn’t really feel much of anything. The bloat would last a couple days and then I was back to normal. Well, not this time around. It’s almost as if my body knew this was the last chance and then just submitted itself afterwards. Enough is enough. It’s more than can be taken again. It’s not just the immediate recovery that has been more painful. I was again, the last person walking around in my hospital gown through the halls of the surgical ward… trying to will my body to pee. But I was also writing with pain when I got home. And I felt every bump and every stop on that car ride. Daggers to the stomach. Daggers and sandpaper. A lovely combination. I even threw up into a plastic bag. Hot flash. That familiar fiery feeling at the bottom of the throat and then dry heaving into a shopping bag. I am such a pleasure to drive home. I took my Vicodin and Ibuprofen every 4 hours on the dot and even then, after roughly 3 hours had passed, I felt horrendous.

But I drank my gatorade. Sipped my electrolytes. Took my pain meds. Sucked down my Turmeric supplement. Rested. Dry heaved. Rested. Ate salty snacks. I had french fries for the first time in 3 months. And now I am feeling much, much better. The bloat is still there of course, pressing on the waste bands of all my clothes, making me feel like a balloon filled with cement. But, it was worth it. It was worth it in the hope that one of these embryos is our baby. And we have to believe. One of these embryos is our baby.

Egg Retrieval / Egg Collection

Tomorrow’s the big day. Egg retrieval. I triggered last night. Stuck that gigantic needle into my hip for (hopefully) the last time. It hurt with a vengeance this time around. I could feel the needle going in and then the slow stream of thick medication entering my muscle. Then there was that all too familiar dull ache in my entire backside that’s still sore today. I know that so many of you can relate.

I’ve done everything possible to improve my egg quality and assist follicle growth. I went to acupuncture twice a week. I drank countless cups of bone broth. I chugged protein shakes, cut out sugar, carbohydrates and dairy (to name a few.) I took warm baths. I swallowed handfuls of supplements 3 times a day. I hydrated constantly. I practiced meditation (as best I could.) I lathered with all natural beauty products and cleaned the house with the same. I slowed my workouts to gentle walks. I sipped decaffeinated green tea and what can only be described as chewed maqui and acai freeze dried powder. I’ve been following this regime for nearly 3 months as this is the cycle of our dear, dear eggs.

So tomorrow we find out how many eggs they can suck out of my swollen ovaries with their sharpened needle. Thank goodness for anesthesia. I’m hopeful that the procedure but there is always worry in the back of my mind, lingering, from the first cycle. “We don’t think any of your embryos are going to make it.” After $30,000+ and the shots and the time and the distress, it’s a statement that never really dissipates. It haunts me in fact. I will do whatever it takes but there is a fear so real that regardless what I do, a certain amount of this process can’t be controlled. So it just leaves me to hope, to push that negativity out and away, funnel it into proactive behavior like I have tried to do this cycle and last. Last cycle we retrieved 23 eggs, which sounds tremendous at first, but out of those 23 eggs, less than half fertilized and only 4 were classified as genetically normal. To go from 23 to 4 felt like loss on steroids, especially when we were previously told on so many occasions that we were young, healthy adults who should produce a very high number of normal, fertilized day 5 blastocysts. Again, there is reality and there is what people say and think. The two are very different. So we have learned. But I hope all the same. We ended up with 3 beautiful embryo babies last cycle. We can do it again. I didn’t even do all of my crazy dietary regulation, supplement downing, acupuncture obsessing last time so surely this will be our best round. This is hope. The most acute hope someone can have.

In terms of the actual procedure set for tomorrow morning, I’m not nervous. I’m strangely excited. For one, we at least find out how many eggs are there to be gotten. For two, I am going to inhale a Chipotle quesarito, sweet potato fries and entire box of Trader Joe’s peppermint chocolate ‘Joe Joe’s’ once I’m outta there. In fact, I might pack some for the outpatient room. I’m good for saltines and water out of a plastic cup. I packed my own heart rate elevating snacks. I’m tempted to bring a sourdough baguette to much on post-op as well but that’s not nearly as easy to pack.

All kidding aside, I will be abiding by all the traditional ‘avoid hyper-stim at all cost’ tips. No one in her right mind wants to suffer OHSS. After a whole cycle of IVF, let’s rush you to the ER so they can plunge a needle back into you and drain your ovaries of free flowing fluid because you can’t pee and are the size of someone 8 month’s pregnant… no thanks. I have my gatorade at the ready. Admittedly my acupuncturist said not to drink Gatorade or pedialite, to drink bone broth instead. But I just can’t bear it. After weeks of that gelatinous, luke-warm guck, I just can’t do it. I’ll have just been aerated by a needle being repeatedly plunged into my ovaries to suck out my eggs. I think I deserve a break. I know it’s full of chemicals and additives, but to me it just tastes better. It will be short-lived. The key is salt content anyhow. This is the most important factor post egg retrieval. Liquid salt gets going in our system hastily which is why it is most commonly prescribed. But my acupuncturist told me that downing huge amounts of plain water and/or coconut water is really not what we should be doing. I found this interesting as so many forums advise drinking these very things. The whole point of us drinking a ton of liquid is for it to have salt which not only flushes us out but allows the high sodium content to draw out the fluid building up in our follicles. If we drink sugar-ridden coconut water, we are doing the opposite. My acupuncturist also recommended a big batch of cabbage soup but common. If I’m eating salt, I’m eating french fries. Always french fries. Tomorrow’s self recommendation will be, rest, Powerade and comfort food. I hate to say it but my comfort food sure as heck ain’t cabbage soup.

We’re not all the same

The amount of times I’ve been told, “I have a friend who’s going through the same thing,” or “you’re just like so and so,” or “you’re like the 6th person I know who’s undergone IVF.” Well great. We’re all the same then. Lump us all together in one big barrel and just roll us towards the clinic. I guess there’s no reason society wouldn’t put us all in the same corral. The legal system does. Insurance companies do. “Omg, you’re just like Chrissy Teigan.” Currently my head exploding – no not really as to begin with, she is actually pregnant carrying her child and I’ve been told I never will. So not the same. Not really. Not at all.

Sure, we’re united under the same banner. We suffer the same. We want the same thing, a healthy child. But we are not all the same.

Someone with endometriosis is not the same as someone with blocked tubes. Someone with uterin cancer is not the same as someone with early depleted ovarian reserve. Someone who is 30 is not the same as someone who is 40. Someone who gets pregnant after one round of fertility treatment is not the same as someone who has endured failure after failure for years. And I’m not even talking about myself. I suffer after 2.5 years of this but know women who have been undergoing treatment for 10+ years. I most certainly do not consider myself the same as those brave, brave women.

It honestly baffles me how we all get grouped together. The lack of understanding and sensitivity is unnerving.

But again, the only way we change this is by sharing our individual stories. Even the rants are part of our stories. That’s at least what I’m telling myself this rainy Sunday.

 

 

Needle Phobia

They say if you have a fear of needles, IVF will either make you or break you. Well, as always, I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it broke me before it made me, but I got through it all the same. If you would have told me, 10 years ago, that I needed to inject myself 5 times a day, I would have laughed in your face. If you handed me the needles to do so, I probably would have punched you. No lie. I had to be restrained when I had my wisdom teeth pulled because the dental hygienist couldn’t keep me still long enough to put the IV in. I kept pushing her away… perhaps a little too violently for their liking… thus the restraints. So how do you go from shoving dental hygienists to stabbing yourself in the stomach with 5 different needles? IVF.

I was petrified at first. I kept having flashbacks to my the humungous needle that got shoved into my knee following my ligament being torn in half back in grade school. The pain was unbearable. So horrible in fact that I couldn’t wipe the feeling from my memory banks. So it became a pavlovian response for me: needles = excruciating pain. End of story. I don’t want to see the needle. I don’t want to see the flesh. I don’t want to see the medication. I don’t want to see the blood. Get it all out of my face. It’s such a joke considering how many trees I felt out of as a kid, being sideswiped by a van whilst riding my bike. The actual pain of injuries I have sustained is far greater than that of some tiny needles. No matter. They are scarier. I’d rather fall out of another tree.

So I started with a nurse having to administer my injections for me. I was such a wuss. I couldn’t even watch her do it. Seems laughable as a I sit here staring at 3 bags of syringes and my follistim pen needles spread out on the very same table I’m typing at. But I learned some good lessons from her. I learned to ice the area, swab my skin and all vials properly, pinch the skin around the injection site firmly, stab quickly and directly, inject smoothly, and withdraw the needle with the same fluid motion. I learned how important it is to apply pressure to the injection site afterwards. Intense bruising teaches you that lesson pretty darn fast. There’s all the little tidbits I picked up on as well. Flicking lightly to remove air bubbles. Pushing the syringe back and forth before filling with any medication to loosen. Prepping the needle so that just the tiniest bit of medication beads at the top. So when judgement day was upon me and it was up to me to self administer, somehow, I had retained all of this, probably out of sheer fear, and was able to use it to my own benefit. I prepped everything, cleaned everything and iced a far larger region than was necessary (better safe than sorry.) I watched a dozen or so YouTube videos. I was ready.

Here are my two biggest tips. This coming from a complete and utter needle-phob. I’m not counting icing because to me this is a no brainer. If needles freak you out and you don’t want to feel them going in. Ice, ice away. On to the real tips. Firstly, pinch the skin around the injection site hard. This way you are focusing more on that discomfort than any discomfort the needle will cause. Second, inject hard and fast. I don’t mean you need to hit yourself in the stomach with the vigor of a boxer, but if you push the needle in slowly, you are definitely going to feel it more. If you thrust it in quickly and inject quickly, it’s over and done with before you know it. Hopefully you won’t even notice as you will be concentrating so hard on your fingers pinching the area. I pinched so hard the first time I did my own injections that I bruised with fingernail marks. But hey, I didn’t even feel the needles going in. So this was a win in my book.

I’ve currently racked up over 68 days of giving myself shots. That’s over 230 injections. This is including inter-muscular injections for embryo transfer. But it’s not including the 30 or so blood draws and multiple IV lines put in for surgeries. All in all, I can comfortably say that I’ve squashed my phobia. I’m still not a looker. I don’t like the feeling when the nurse, every 2 days, draws my blood for my E2. It irks me just thinking about it. But I’ve got it handled. I’m comfortable and dare I say it, at ease when it’s happening.

3 rounds of IVF and 4 embryo transfers later, I’ve kicked my phobia in the butt. I guess there’s always a silver lining…

Acupuncture

I am a believer. I wasn’t always. I received some acupuncture when this nightmare started and thought it was okay. It didn’t help my response to clomid at the time. It didn’t help my lining. It didn’t help me get pregnant. It was relaxing in the sense that it forced me to lie down in a calm environment for an hour without disruption. But that was about it. That being said, I figured it wouldn’t hurt (literally or metaphorically) to book a few more sessions prior to my last FET. As I’ve noted before, I’ll do ANYTHING if it’s rumored to help. And these were our last embryos, our last chance. Puncture away.

I went from feeling ‘eh’ towards acupuncture to absolutely knowing it’s one of the best things I’ve ever signed up for. But so much of this boils down to the acupuncturist. Mine is amazing. She isn’t just an acupuncturist. She is a therapist, a wellness coach, a dietician, a nutritionist, a holistic healer, a practicer of eastern medicine and a friend. I left my last appointment with her discussing tattoos. And this is a woman who you would NOT expect to have tattoos. Though the vegan leather and organic lemon juice should have probably clued me in sooner.

When she put me on my CIBO/anti-inflammatory diet and it basically cured my adenomyosis, that would have been enough to make me a believer in itself. But there has been so much more reinforcement. Besides that, I also believe in the power of our own minds. We underestimate these brains of ours and I know that once I started believing, that would have been assistance in itself, even if it was just due to the placebo effect. A couple weeks before transfer, when I had already been put on my diet, I went with a friend to try on wedding dresses. She is one of the most beautiful girls you’ve ever met, slender as a runway model, as effervescent as a bottle of fizz… which may have been part of the reason we were inspired to indulge in a few glasses before going to her first fitting. A celebratory glass quickly turned into 3 and we were soon after on our merry way to trying on some of the most beautiful fit and flares that any bride has laid eyes on. I had a mild tummy ache when I got home that evening but nothing horrendous.

2 days later I had acupuncture – “Did you go off your diet?” “Um, what?” was all I could immediately muster. The champagne had slipped my memory and I trolled through the last day’s spinach, salmon and lemon juice. I thought longer. Then I admitted to the glasses of bubbly. She could tell from my skin alone. Remarkable. That session was devoted to assisting my liver so that my uterus didn’t suffer the consequences of my little mishap. Still aren’t with me? Maybe it was a lucky guess? I was already convinced but I don’t blame you. I’m a skeptic at heart. Especially when the service costs over $100 a pop.

I took up hot yoga before that transfer as well. I had read and heard so many things. Yoga changes your life. Have you tried yoga? Om and all of that. I had to try it. But I’m not exactly the peaceful type so if I was doing yoga, it was going to be tough. Hot yoga was the perfect fit. The studio near my parents’ house is great. They are great with beginners and the class incorporates other workouts. There is an abdominal series built in. Yogi crunches. They are my favorite. That region gets so bloated and round from all of our meds and surgeries, anything that tones and flattens is greatly appreciated. So I started going a few times that first week. I saw my acupuncturist the day after my 3rd class. “Have you been doing abdominal exercises?” I mean, common!!! She explained to me that I shouldn’t be doing any exercises that squeeze and/or tighten the muscles surrounding my uterus. Instead, stretches and elongating routines were beneficial to creating a healthy implantation environment. Well, if I wasn’t sold already, I was buying the whole sha-bang at this point.

Fast-forward to the point I’m at now, my 3rd round of IVF and the first round in which I have incorporated acupuncture. It’s expensive and even with all the positives from her treatment before, we aren’t exactly in a position to make excessive purchases at the moment. Duh. But ultimately we decided it was worth the price tag. Isn’t it always if there’s a chance it could help? I respect first and foremost that my acupuncturist doesn’t just follow some whimsical routine of pricking me with needles willy nilly. She follows a very specific protocol called the Cridennda/Magarelli Protocol, most recently proven to be the most effective method in treating patients undergoing fertility treatment.

She also reconfirmed research I had done into CoQ10 and DHA in improving egg quality. She advised specific doses – 4 capsules of fish oil a day! Her other recommended supplement was an anti-oxidant. I knew the benefits and had been adding acai and maqui berry to my protein shakes but she wanted me on 3 capsules per day. Think I underestimated the power of those little berries. Most recently she advised I look into DIM which would help my body process the flood of hormones going through my body due to stims. The base of DIM is found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli but I would have to eat a record breaking bucket load of broccoli to get close to the amount of DIM I needed to make a difference in my body. DIM supplement it was then.

The acupuncture itself is soulfully relaxing. I’ve even fallen asleep on a few occasions. When I don’t sleep, I am in such a deeply meditative state that it’s as if the woes of this process have literally drifted away. Magic.

I’m not saying acupuncture is for everyone. It’s not. Just like I’m never going on a yoga retreat and even skipped through those chapters in Eat Pray Love, some people are never going to pay to get pinned with MORE needles on a weekly basis. What I will say is you should give it a shot. Try it out. Find an acupuncturist you actually like regardless of his/her practice and go from there. Like I said before, it can’t hurt. Like my acupuncturist says, if it hurts, it’s not being done right.