Thalia's fertility journey: hopefully more comedy than tragedy

No pregnancy symptoms here

Just a white expanse of test. It's 13dpo and it was a FRER, so don't tell me it still might be ok. I know it's over.

I'll write about First class next time. It doesn't really seem the point right now.

Prepping the big guns

We had our IVF consultation on Wednesday. It must be so frustrating for these nurses to deal with those of us who've done lots of research. She kept looking quite stunned when I asked a question, e.g., why suppositories rather than PIO? Why Buserelin rather than Synarel?

She kept her cool though, and could mostly answer the questions. They are a lot more low key here than they seem to be with all of you in the US. There was no stabbing an orange, she just showed me how to get liquid out of the Buserelin vial, and gave me some advice about what needles to use. It was all quite straightforward, particularly since I'm no longer scared of injections. I know the volume will be a lot higher than I was using on the last cycle, but it can't be that different. She did advise that I don't keep the Buserelin in the fridge, as if it's cold it can really sting and I need to inject 0.5ml at a time.

The deadlines just keep moving out, though. I'm expecting (but hoping not to get) my period sometime in the middle of next week. Then it's three weeks til I start Buserelin (all being well), then 2 weeks before I start stimming (another difference to other protocols I've read about - why 2 full weeks rather than 2-3 days after a period or 10 days after starting suppression?), then 12-14 days of stimms (starting at 150mIU of Puregon) before taking the trigger shot. That takes us to, wait for it, retrieval in the FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER. They transfer after 2 days, unless they can't tell which embryos are in the lead at that stage, in which case they wait til day 3. Anyone else's clinic do 2 day transfer?

We'd find out our beta just before a major big deal presentation I have to do on 18 November. I can't believe it's that far away.

I know what you all said is true, it will go pretty fast, but you can surely empathise with how far away it feels right now. I'm actually feeling pretty good as I'm holding onto my optimism about this cycle (and by the way, thank you for a particularly thoughtful set of comments on that last post), and I think that having a plan lifts even that optimism onto a new level. It may be a very long winded plan, but it's a plan. Now, according to many of you, I need a plan B. No idea what that is!

Optimism

I want to be one of those women we all hate. One of those women that our families and friends hold against us. Yes, I want to be the woman who gets pregnant on a 'natural' cycle before we start IVF next cycle. It's 3DPO and I'm feeling optimistic.

How is it that I have these vast stores of optimism? I've written something similar on at least six occasions previously. Then I post something miserable and self-pitying just over a week later. Is this a chronic inability to learn? A wonderful piece of self-delusion that allows me to keep functioning? Just plain normal? I know many others do the same. Perhaps it's like that thing that we don't understand that women who've given birth say - that they remember that the pain was really bad, but they don't remember what it's like. Nature can't cope with us all being permanently depressed or freaked out about childbirth, so it makes us natural optimists instead. How do we manage to stay so optimistic despite all the evidence to the contrary?

A brief diversion if I may, then I'll get back to the point.

I forgot last time to update on the dream post. The quote was from Hamlet, so Reprogirl wins that one. It's the scene where Hamlet meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for the first time in the play. Got to love that witty repartee.

HAMLET
Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
Let me question more in particular: what have you,
my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN
Prison, my lord!

HAMLET
Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ
Then is the world one.

HAMLET
A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ
We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ
Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
narrow for your mind.

HAMLET
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET
A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

HAMLET
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we
to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

There's something in there I wanted to talk about, hence why I've pasted quite so much text. It's the "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". I've been thinking on that since I read the scene when I was writing the original post last week. Oh, no. was my original reaction. Even Shakespeare is out to tell me it's all in my mind. Do I really buy that? It seems as if it's proposing the ultimate Pollyanna complex - you can put whatever interpretation you like on anything that happens, and make it good or bad at your will. I've always struggled with this (even while loving Pollyanna as a child). Some things just are bad, right? What's good about Katrina if you're someone whose just lost your home or your family? What's good about the bad things I cited in my last post?

Ah, my Christian friends say. G-d doesn't send us what he knows we can't handle. It's all happening for a reason. You're supposed to learn something from this.

What exactly am I supposed to learn? Why did I have to learn it this way, so that H has to learn it (and suffer while learning it) at the same time?

But Hamlet doesn't mean this. Look at the next line - "to me, it is a prison". The point of the "there is nothing either good or bad" line is not that we have a choice with our thought, it's that objects and events are not meaningful in themselves. We experience them and think about them and in doing so we ascribe to them the meaning that makes sense for us. Every other event we've experienced has led us to this point and is therefore a contributor to that shaping. We don't have a choice in ascribing meaning - or at least Hamlet doesn't feel as if he has a choice. He's recognising that Denmark may not be a prison to others, but it is to him, this is his reality.

I'm going to hold on to this next time someone tells me to look for the lessons in my infertility when I'm feeling down. How I'm feeling about the situation is my feeling - my meaning. Perhaps in some instances I can chose that meaning by carefully considering what I'm feeling and examining to what extent I can shape how I'm feeling. But I am not going to look across this whole experience and decide that it's all teaching me something, and I need to find that meaning - to chose specifically a positive meaning - in order to cope. I think that searching for the good side in all of this would instead drive me insane. I'll enjoy the good moments of optimism when they come, not beat myself up about being happy for a few short days, even if I know that it's likely to end in tears. I'll let myself feel whatever feels right when the bad things happen. In the end, either way, we'll (all) be ok.

You may remind me of this next time I'm all about the floor cake.

I feel broken

The decision to go for IVF was tough. I think before we started discussing it with Dr Candour I knew it was the right answer. But it feels hard. Miserable in fact. I wasn't ready for the shell shock on my emotions.

The day we saw Dr Candour I was somewhat of a basket case. The day after, I had my first acupuncture appointment with new acupuncturist and it really helped calm me down. But on Wednesday I had a complete collapse and couldn't stop crying all day. It was a bit tough to explain to clients and colleagues why I was constantly wiping my eyes while discussing issues such as their current program structure. Thursday I was ok. Saturday I was fine until a recently new mother turned up to see my personal trainer in the slot immediately after mine, bringing her baby with her, encouraging all sorts of billing and cooing about how cute the baby is. I just left without admiring the baby. I'm sure the baby's mother thinks I'm a bitch, luckily the trainer knows what we're going through so I think she understands. I'm up and down, and all the places in between.

I think my extreme funk comes from two directions. The first is that this feels like a last resort. There is nothing else we can try if this doesn't work to have a biological child. And right now, not having a biological child feels like the end of the world. Jen's post on this really helped me think about it more rationally. I do know that being a mother is more important to me than anything else in my life, and so if it comes to it I will want to adopt. But oh, that feels like such a loss right now. I'm mourning the potential loss of a biological child, before we've had the loss. I know that's perverse, but it's what I'm feeling. Even more bizarrely, I'm mourning the potential loss of a second or third biological child. I'll try to explain.

Although I have never had a clear visual image of my dream child, I have always imagined my daugher - her character, what I would do with her, what she would want to do - since a fortune teller in India when I was 19 told me I'd have three children, two girls and a boy, and that one of the girls would have a big impact on the world. Although I'm very anti hocus-pocus, this was the same fortune teller who told me my mother's maiden name - which is an incredibly odd combination of English and Jewish names, double barelled - nothing he could have figured out - so I did have to give him some credibility. And, let's face it, I gave him that credibility because I wanted to. Two girls and a boy sounded about perfect. I wanted my daughters to have the sister that I never had. I suppose now those children may still come, and perhaps they will be biological and perhaps they will be adopted. But the fact that they may not come either way is a loss.

When I'm not worrying about never having H and my biological child, I worry about having an only child. When I was 23 a friend of mine died from leukaemia. He was an only child and both his parents were only children. I looked at them at the funeral and thought I had never seen anything like the level of devastation they were experiencing. I am well aware that nothing can make up for the loss of a child, but if you have another child surely you are not quite as alone. And the other way round - if you are the only child, the loneliness of being left orphaned and without siblings seemed unbearable to me.

This was supported by a very moving article I read about 10 years ago, where a woman described going home to clean up her parents house after they had both recently died. She described being there with her sister, and how her sister was the only person she wanted to be there with, despite the fact that they had not spoken in 5 years and were in no way close to or supportive of each other. But her sister was the one person who could understand what she was going through, and who shared her memories. I imagined what it would be like for her to be going through that experience without her sister and I cried.

Finally I worry about the pressure of parental expectations on an only child. I am a bit of a perfectionist (Ha, hear my friends laughing at that understatement). I worry that I'd really mess up an only child if they are the only repository for all my hopes and dreams for my children, no matter how well I try to hide that.

This wasn't meant to turn into a diatribe against only children. I know some wonderful only children - my favourite goddaughter is one - it's just another potential loss for myself that I'm mourning. It wasn't the future that I envisaged for myself, just as adoption was not the future I envisaged.

Back to our regularly scheduled blog entry. Second, IVF feels like admitting failure. The failure of my body to do what it is supposed to have done. Much as I have been pessimistic on here, I've also secretly always known that I would be pregnant soon. That's why each month of failure is as devastating as it is. So going to IVF is going somewhere that I always characterised as a last resort for those whose bodies didn't work as well as they should. Now I am 'those people'. My body is broken. It doesn't know how to get H and me together into one being, or how to get that potential being to implant. Or it doesn't know how to make eggs in the first place, who knows.

So I'm broken. But I'm at least exercising and not baking. Although I did eat several spoonfuls of New York Super Fudge Chunk yesterday. Not even my usual flavour of choice, but it seemed like the right option to accompany an evening of season 2 of ER. Carter looks so young! Lucy Liu was so plain! Ross was such a maverick!

Onwards and upwards.