An unexpected visitor

Something odd happened yesterday. Q. and I were out of the city, having a day free from work responsibilities, and I was just not enjoying it. I was irritated by everything. I kept thinking I was going to cry (and I did, once, when I slipped on some ice on a path in the woods and fell over).  And even though I KNEW I was in a stinker of a mood, I could not get myself out of it. Poor Q. was really confused (especially since he’d cooked me this huge breakfast so he knew it wasn’t blood sugar issues).

This morning Iwoke up to see that AF had come, and suddenly it all made sense. I always have a day where I’m irrationally angry/tearful, wonder what on earth is going on, and then it turns out to be af. So my behaviour wasn’t really the odd thing.

It was this: I got af. On my own. Without any drugs. Only five and a bit weeks after my last af from the failed transfer.

This marks only the second time in years that I’ve got af without being on the pill. The other was last August, and that I chalked up to breakthrough bleeding since it had been a couple of months since the failed IVF.

But this time almost looks, well, like a normal person’s schedule.

So I’m a bit confused about what’s going on. Did I ovulate two weeks ago? If so, holy cow! If I didn’t, why is af here so soon?

I don’t expect for a minute that Q. and I will get pregnant naturally after all of this- even if by some miracle I did ovulate, there’s still the fertilization issue.

But hey, in a couple of weeks, we’ll give it our best shot.

—

And, when it all turns out to be nothing, we’ve got our schedule for the next IVF. It took me ages to pin down my f/s (we kept playing phone tag and then he talked to Q. who, of course, didn’t know the right questions), and I think he was a little confused why we wanted such precise dates (we have a busy summer coming up). But finally we figured it out.

So. In late April I’ll go in and we’ll start bcps. Mid-May I’ll get af and start Lupron. Retrieval and transfer at the end of May. Beta in June.

Fingers crossed.

We’re not done

I could think of lots of fancy ways to record our decision, but the title above pretty much sums it all up. We’re going back to the clinic. We’re going to do another IVF cycle. And while I’m still not entirely certain how I feel about the whole thing, I’m ok with that decision.

We went in for a follow up chat on the weekend. I was really, really impressed with our doctor. The clinic is a busy place, and he has a tendency to a) rush through things and b) be optimistic to the point where you start to wonder if he really means it or if he’s just putting on a brave face.

Not this time.

We got a measured, serious discussion of our options, of what could have gone wrong and how we might try to fix it, and of where we could go from here. At no point did he pressure us in any direction. And his reasoning made sense.

We didn’t really do a normal IVF cycle- we converted from an IUI when I overstimmed. And while he believed that made the most sense at the time (and given our abysmal fertilization rate without ICSI he was right), he made it clear to us on the weekend that a converted cycle doesn’t bring with it the same rates of pregnancy. It isn’t ideal.

So he’d like to do a textbook IVF cycle with a long protocol (and unfortunately I’m still not quite sure what he means by that, but given it takes six weeks I’m assuming it’s like what I’ve read about on other blogs where you get some meds to basically shut your system down before you start stimming to make sure everything’s being controlled).

And that made sense to both of us. As Q. said, “Well, if we were only going to give IVF one shot, surely we should have done a proper cycle, not a converted one. Or we shouldn’t have done IVF at all. If we’re doing it, let’s give it a proper chance.”

Dr. L wants us to ICSI all of the eggs- no argument here. If we get enough, he’d like us to think about a Day 5 transfer- I’m also ok with that. He wants to run some more tests- all the thrombophilia ones for me (which I was going to suggest- I think I went up a notch in his estimation when he said “I’d like to run a few more tests on you” and I said “Are they the blood clotting ones, because I really think we need to do those.”). Q’s swimmers are getting checked out in even greater detail- we’re doing a couple of tests to look at the possibility of DNA fragmentation, etc. None of it will be covered by provincial or personal insurance, of course, but if we find out something that causes us to stop right then and there it’ll be a hell of a lot cheaper than another cycle. And this way we know that we have tested EVERYTHING we can. There is nothing left that he can recommend.

Of course, if I do have a clotting problem, I’m already taking all the meds to counter it. But at least we’ll be better prepared.

I’m three months out from my comprehensive exams, so this isn’t happening until May at the earliest. So that gives me some time to find some distance from the previous cycles. I need to be able to get past the feelings I was having at the end of the last cycle. I need to do a better job of accepting the emotional and physical distress that comes with each transfer. I’m trying not to think about the fact that we’re facing another retrieval and stims- needles before and after just seems unfair.

It is hard. It took me at least two weeks to feel ‘normal’ again after I stopped all the meds before Christmas. During Christmas I had no emotional fortitude- I cried a lot at miniscule things; I felt disconnected from my family; I didn’t want Q. to touch me; I felt like I was jumping out of my skin.

But slowly, slowly, I’ve come back to being me again. And the first inkling I had that maybe I wasn’t quite so done with the whole thing as I had thought came, of all places, while we were watching an episode of Northern Exposure. Q. was a big fan of the show as a child (I guess since he never, ever saw snow where he lived), and I’d never seen it, so we’ve been watching the episodes on his laptop. We just finished season 4 where, if you know the series, one of the characters ends up pregnant.

In the final episode of the season she and her husband end up singing (long story) to each other and their unborn bub while standing in the nursery (which they’ve constructed even though she is BARELY pregnant- I felt like yelling at the screen). Anyway, it was all I could do not to weep.

I was heart sick at the realization of what Q. and I were missing. Heart sick that I was the cause of his childlessness.

We went to the clinic the next day. So I was already willing to consider the idea of trying again. And then Q. and I had this conversation:

Me: “I need you to tell me how badly you want to be a parent.” (I’d warned him before Christmas this was coming, so it wasn’t out of left field or anything.)

Q.: “Well, if I didn’t want to be a dad, I think I would have said something before now!”

Me: “Ok, obviously. But you know how some women feel that they were born to be mothers, and that their lives will never be complete if they don’t get to parent? I don’t feel like that- I didn’t want kids for a long time.”

Q.: “I don’t think any male thinks like that, to be honest.” (This is vintage Q. He is so funny.)

Pause.

Q.: “But I always assumed that I would be a father.”

Pause.

Q.: “And I think the reason why I’m always saying we should get a really big dog is as a child substitute.”

And that broke my heart. Because the entire time Q. and I have been trying, he has NEVER actually come out and said just how strongly he wants children. Obviously he wanted to be a dad, or we wouldn’t be going to these lengths. But to have him admit that it’s not just that he wants children as some vague idea about the future, but that he is missing his children and wants to be a dad RIGHT NOW, that he sees our friends and yearns for what they have…

Well, how can you say no to that?

So, we’re not done.

And, once again…

Negative.

At least I can enjoy the smug sensation of being right, and telling Q. “I told you so.” (This is cold comfort.)

Dr. L. is clearly not happy. He wants me in there on day 2 for a follow up. This won’t be happening seeing as I have absolutely NO desire to inflict the clinic on myself during Christmas, but I’ll go in sometime in January. Q. is coming too. And we’re going to ask the hard questions until we get some answers.

I sense that Q. isn’t done yet- isn’t ready to stop. Not without talking to the doctor, seeing what alternatives we have, what other tests they can do. So I’ll go along with that, and we’ll see where we stand at the end of it all.

If he can’t offer anything better than trying it all over again- I’m done.

If he has ideas about what to do next- I will see what Q. wants. We are a team. I won’t impose a decision to stop on him, even though it’s my body that’s taking the brunt of this. It wouldn’t be fair. He’s dealing with this as much as I am.

I stand by what I said earlier- I think I’m done. I’d like to have my life back. But I don’t think Q. is there yet. So we’ll see what happens in January.

But in the meantime, I will relish my newly needle-free evenings, and I am damn well going to enjoy my booze this Christmas.

FET #2- 13dp3dt

So tomorrow is the big day.

This week has gone by faster than I thought it would. I think it’s partially because I’ve been busy with schoolwork, but mostly because I finally started to get out of the house every day for a walk, which has helped to contain (note: not eliminate) the crazy that’s been brought on by this meds combination.

I am still WIRED, people. I apparently need almost no sleep. When I sit still, I can feel my body just sitting there burning up from the inside out. I don’t feel like myself at all. There’s going to be one hell of a crash when I come off all of these drugs.

And I’m expecting to come off of them all tomorrow. I know last time I said I thought it would be negative, but I wasn’t sure if I really believed that, or if I was just trying to protect myself.

This time, however? This time I am just absolutely certain in my gut that the result will be negative. I can’t even really put my finger on why I feel this way. I know as well as anyone does that “symptoms” in the tww can be meaningless, and I’ve heard lots of examples of women who didn’t feel anything and turned out to be preggers. My certainty surprises me. It’s frustrating Q. But there it is.

I don’t believe that I’m pregnant.

And I think it says a hell of a lot about where I currently stand in our ttc journey, and how I’ve been feeling, and the toll this most recent tww has taken on me that the most overpowering emotion I feel when I think about that is relief.

FET #2- 6dp3dt

Nearly a week through. Thank goodness. I’ve found in the past that the first week goes by relatively quickly, and it’s the second week that drags and drags. The first week you know it’s too early for anything you’re experiencing to be “symptoms”, so it’s easier to check out, kick back, relax, and try to pretend your life might not be about to change entirely in a week’s time.

The second week, I have found, is torture. Especially since I think I’ve proven time and time again that I’m GREAT at inventing symptoms. I am a superstar at fooling myself into thinking I could be pregnant. I’m just hoping the fact that I was (briefly) pregnant last cycle will help settle me down. Sore bbs are worth getting excited about. Everything else, not so much.

This week has been hard. Because semester has ended I’ve been able to rationalize working entirely at home. So since we arrived back from the clinic on Friday, I have left the house exactly ONCE- on Sunday, to make the five minute walk to the grocery store to pick up a couple of items we forgot we needed when Q. did the regular shop on Saturday. I didn’t actually get to CARRY any of said items except for the bananas since Q. was being pretty militant about the advice from the clinic not to lift anything heavy, but I did get to go outside.

It’s helped that winter has really decided to settle in. It’s easy not to want to go outside when the wind is howling and that lovely combination of snow/rain/sleet/ick so characteristic of early winter is pouring down from the leaden skies. I haven’t been as stir crazy as I might have expected. Were it summer, I would be going BONKERS.

That’s not to say that I’m not excited about the prospect of getting out this weekend. We have dinner and lunch plans. We need to do some Christmas shopping and buy some lights for our porch. I get giddy just thinking about the possibilities. And, to be honest, there’s no way I could manage to stay at home in the seclusion/quiet of this last week. Not in the final week of the wait- I need the distractions of the outside world.

I’ve been busy though. I made a list of all the school-related things I really should get done before the next semester, and I am slowly working my way through them. Erika asked about the essays I’ve been marking (finished yesterday- woo hoo!)- they’re on various aspects of ancient Greece. As usual, after marking forty-plus undergraduate essays I now doubt my own spelling and use of apostrophes…

I had a mild freak out on Tuesday. I’ve been avoiding the scale for the last couple of weeks since, like most women, I have issues with it, and I can get obsessed with numbers, and I didn’t want to stress if I put on a pound or two during this FET since that sends a good sign to your body (We have lots of food! Time to reproduce!). I’ve been pretty good about no sugar (although not perfect- my last day on campus involved a very large piece of carrot cake…), but nothing other than that.

So you can imagine my shock when the scale informed me that I’ve lost FIVE pounds over the last couple of weeks.

If you remember, I wrote here about how happy I was to hit my wedding weight, my happy weight, just before the half-marathon. Well, after the race, I dropped about three pounds, which I figured was muscle turning into fat, since I think I looked better at the heavier weight. And then I stayed at that weight for the next couple of months. It was nice having that consistency- with the PCOS I’m usually fighting to lose weight, or not actively trying to lose weight (and therefore quietly gaining it). It’s rare for my body to achieve any type of equilibrium.

Now I’m eight pounds below my wedding weight, and I’ve done NOTHING to achieve this. This is unheard of- I simply do not lose weight without lots and lots of effort.

My first thought when I panicked on Tuesday was my thyroid has swung round into hyper territory, as I’ve been really warm as well lately. But I don’t have the super-accelerated heartbeat or the high anxiety that I remember from the times I’ve strayed into being hyper rather than hypo. When I was hyperthyroid- I was WIRED.

So the only thing I can think of is it’s a combination of the pred.nisone and the metformin. My original f/s did tell me that metformin burns about 500 calories a day, but since I’ve never experienced any sort of weight loss on it before, I’ve never paid much attention to that. I can definitely notice the double dose of the pred.nisone though. I wouldn’t describe myself as hyper…just full of beans each and every day (again, not really normal for me, especially at the end of semester). And Dr. Goo.gle tells me this isn’t unusual (although weight loss doesn’t seem to be an expected side effect). So I’m wondering if my metabolism is basically on speed right now.

I’m trying not to panic that my shrinking self is sending out bad vibes to the snowbabies, because stress definitely won’t help the situation, and I can’t eat that weight back on again in a week, much as I might enjoy trying. The whole thing is just really weird. And I think I’m going to have to buy pants even if I do turn out to be pregnant as my current jeans have me emulating the baggy pants trend far more than I’d like.

On another note, my assvice for anyone who ends up in a tww with PIO shots: eat All Br.an. Every.single.morning. The day you start the PIO shots- start the All Br.an. It’s boring, and it’s got more sugar and secret elements of corn than my oatmeal does, but it really does work. This is the most comfortable I’ve been in a tww in ages.

Also, read the directions on things. The bruising from the Frag.min injections has gotten noticeably better since I reread the directions and realized that you are supposed to take the needle OUT of your belly BEFORE you allow it to self-retract into its guard in that nifty manner it has. (I’m really annoyed with myself for this one.) And make sure you don’t give yourself time to think about the needle. Just swab the area, pull off the cap, grab some belly, and jab. It stings less and you get less bruising if you do it with confidence/gusto. (As an added bonus you then bring less psychological bruising with you to your next injection…) 

The twws are hard on Q as well. He really wants to do everything around the house, but he’s exhausted from teaching, and it isn’t fair for him to cook dinner and clean up afterwards. He’s finally letting me do a bit more, which is helping ease the guilt I feel when I’m meant to just sit around and be pampered. We are a good team, and we have a routine that really works. Twws disrupt it.

8 days to go.

FET #2- Transfer Day

Well, maybe I should predict the weather, or organize train timetables or something. We turned up, as requested, at 11.45 am. Our two embryos were placed into my uterus at 1.30 pm. But since I had indeed brought a book (and we even bought lunch at Tims beforehand and packed it in), and I didn’t drink any more water after I finished my litre, it wasn’t too bad. I’m definitely in the groove now- the nurses all remember me and happily leave me to do things myself. They know that I know how it all works.

Our two embryos looked fantastic again. These two were the one natural fertilizer, and the last one from the ICSI. The ICSI one was a super high grade as I recall from the chart, and you could really tell. My f/s and the head nurse took pains to point out just how awesome it looked, even discussing with the embryologist what they could see on the big screen. And I don’t think they’re shitting me. I’m sure they muscle up enthusiasm and hope for every patient. But I’ve read the reports- I’ve seen the pictures. I know we make good embryos.

So I’ve come home to rest and relax, when I’m not popping pills or jabbing myself. They actually got me to do a Fr.agmin right there in the clinic before we went home. The nurse spent a lot of time preparing me for the bruising I can expect with the double dose of Fr.agmin and the baby aspirin. I’m resigned to it- I have always bruised easily. And now, yep, I’m basically a pin cushion.

I didn’t want to give the impression in my last post that I don’t have any hope for this cycle, because that would be a bold-faced lie. I have heaps of hope- loads of hope- dangerous amounts of hope. I know my thyroid is balanced. I know that I am dosed up to the eyeballs on every possible medication that could help (the head nurse looked at my instructions and said, “Well, you’ve got everything in the book here!”). Our embryos are great. My lining was great. I have absolutely NOTHING scheduled for the next two weeks as semester is winding down and I can miss the last couple of days of classes. I can just stay at home and mark student essays and read books for my comp lists, and relax. I am in a great place with school right now, so there is no stress hanging over my head there. I’m physically fit, but I haven’t been exercising much. I’ve made sure I haven’t lost any weight.

In short, I’ve done everything I can.

What I don’t think I have any more, and I used to, is expectation. I no longer expect to get pregnant. I no longer expect things to work. I have hope, yes, but if it doesn’t work out, I think I’ll be resigned rather than surprised.

C’mon snowbabies. Please like your environment enough to want to stay.

FET #2- T-Day minus 1

Transfer is set for noon tomorrow, which means probably around 1.30 pm given that my clinic tends to run all sorts of late if you’re not having a retrieval. This means that I have learned the following lessons: 1. Take a book with you! Even if you only get there the scheduled 15 minutes before your transfer time! And 2. For the love of Pete, when you have drunk the one litre of water they recommend, STOP DRINKING. They recommend this amount for a reason. Last transfer I kept worrying about my bladder, so I kept drinking, and making Q. get me more water…and yeah. I nearly exploded. I even ran off to the loo without telling them (sneaky me!) because it was so dire. And sure enough my bladder was fine even after I eased the pressure. So this time round, I’m determined- no extra water.

I am a bit nervous about the embies, but the other ones survived the freeze, so I guess it would be a surprise if these ones didn’t, given they’re of a similar quality. Q. is being really really strict about what I’m allowed to do for the next two weeks. I’m very lucky to have a husband who is determined to a) not let me lift a finger and b) cook only my favourite healthy things. Mind you, I know that the house won’t get cleaned, so I went on a bit of a binge last weekend to make sure the dust bunnies won’t drive me buggy.

We started the pio shots up again two nights ago, and Q. hasn’t lost his touch. One side is still more painful than the other- I have no idea what we did to it last time, but I still have bruising from the shots in October, so it clearly wasn’t happy. We’ve got a bit of a routine going. I try not to think about the possibility that I could have these in my future for ten weeks. I’m supposed to want to get pregnant…and thinking about those needles (and the twice a day Fr.agmin fun) makes me shudder.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about why I feel so strongly that this could be our last cycle. I’ve been in bad spots before about ttcing- especially after the IVF cycle failed back in May. And then we had the summer off, and I rediscovered myself, and came back full of zen and ready to tackle anything. And yet here I am, one cycle later, ready to throw in the towel.

I think a lot of the reaction after the IVF was shock. We weren’t expecting to go to IVF- it was a last minute conversion decision. I was souped up on so many drugs. And then there was the discovery that my thyroid had been out of balance the entire time.

I feel different now. It’s not shock. It’s not a sense of being overwhelmed, or out of control, or a need to reclaim myself. The best way I can describe it is I feel a sense of finality, and even maybe a sense of peace. I feel like the decision to take time off after the IVF was an emotional one- me scrambling to impose some sense, some meaning back in my life. I don’t think my current thought process is coldly logical or anything, but I don’t feel like I’m making this decision on the spur of the moment, or out of panic, or anything like that. I feel like it’s been building for a long time, and it’s only just now that I’ve been able to open my eyes, see it, and accept what it means.

I think that switching to the pio shots, and the Fr.agmin, and the Pr.ednisone with the FET (and with now upping the Fr.agmin and the Pr.ednisone to twice a day for this one) has definitely been part of the reason why I’ve reached this mind set. These twws are HARD. They were always hard- the unknowing, the overanalyzing, the dreaded phone call. But now they’re hard physically as well. I was already concerned about what all of these drugs could be doing to my body. But the fact that I can still have bruising coming up two MONTHS after the shots ended, and the fact that the Pre.dnisone wakes me up at 4 most mornings- that bothers me. I don’t like the toll that this is taking.

It will sound ridiculous, given what we’ve already been through, but I feel like these new drugs have finally made me ask whether it’s really worth challenging nature as much as we have. I dealt with ICSI and the retrieval. I dealt with the lap. I dealt with all the other scary drugs. And I think I could cope with all of that because I always assumed my problem was GETTING pregnant. I knew going in to this mess two years ago that I had PCOS. And while I knew enough not to assume that pregnant=baby, I can definitely admit that I always felt that getting pregnant would be the hard part.

The last two years changed that. The failed IUIs changed that. And most of all, the chemical pregnancy changed that. My f/s raising my doses of the drugs that combat auto-immune problems was a big fat warning light. It’s clear to me now that my problem isn’t just getting pregnant (although that is also a big problem- hence the ICSI), it’s maintaining a pregnancy as well.

I think realizing that really blew a big hole in my optimism and my enthusiasm. Because it took us TWO years to even get to a pregnancy, one that ended as soon as it began. And it finally sunk in that after all the toil and trouble, it’s possible that getting pregnant will turn out to be the easy part.

This week I had a dentist appointment. I’ve had the same hygenist for ages now, and when she asked if I was on the same meds as last time, and I confirmed it, she said, “You know, I was looking at your meds, and you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’ve been trying to conceive for two years now.” We had a great talk (well, as good a talk as you can have when you’re garbling around all the implements in your mouth). She’s dealing with recurrent miscarriages- four of them. She’s got auto-immune hypothyroidism too…and absolutely nothing else to explain why her babies keep dying. And while we chatted and compared clinics and laughed at the stupid things people say to you, a tiny thought echoed in the back of my head that this too could be me.

And yet, I worry about what people will think if we stop. I worry that I will be quitting at something (and I am not a quitter- I am if anything dangerously stubborn). I worry that we will look ridiculous for not doing another IVF cycle…or two…or three…or whatever it takes. Because that’s the siren song of treatments. They are addictive, and now there is really nothing concrete that will force us to stop. As long as we can muster up the money and the emotional fortitude, we can keep at this. I’m still young, as they all keep telling me. So to feel like I do, to want to stop like I do, it is so hard to silence the other voice in my head, the one that chastises me for quitting and claims I will regret my decision.

I often have the song “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent in my head these days. I love the bit where they ask how to measure a year. Because you can measure our ttc journey in so many ways as well. 26 months, sure. But SEVEN chances at getting pregnant. That’s what we’ve had: four IUIs, the IVF and the two FETs. And given the fertilization rate from our IVF, the four IUIs never had a chance. And given my thyroid report, the IVF was doomed to fail as well. So 26 months for two shots at pregnancy.

When I put it that way, saying I want to quit sounds ridiculous. Who quits after two attempts?! But of course they aren’t just two attempts. Because it took us 24 months to get to those attempts- two years of medications and clinic visits and treatments and tests and surgeries and more medications. And if it really was THIS hard to get a chance at being pregnant, then the wanting-to-stop voice in my head calmly points out that maybe it’s time to stop beating our heads against the brick wall.

I really haven’t said anything about this to Q. I know that he won’t be willing to even discuss it until we know the results of this cycle. And I also know it will take some effort to convince him that I’m not just speaking from a medication-induced haze of despair. And, given that we are about to transfer embryos tomorrow, in some ways maybe it might seem silly that I’m spending so much time hashing this out.

I need to, though. I need to get these thoughts out, and organized, so I can evaluate them. So, if you’ve made it all the way through this beast of a post- thank you for listening. It means so much.

FET #2, Day 7

It’s funny how quickly some things become routine. Every step of the IVF seemed terrifying. The drugs! The appointments! The technology! It was all I could do not to FREAK OUT every.single.day.

FETs are much easier, of course, for one thing. But I also think I’m past the point where things can suprise me. You want me to take how many pills a day? Sure, no problem. I should stick how many needles in my butt? Whatever.

My lining check is on Monday. And now I know from past experience that this means I have precisely five more needle-free evenings. Another round of bruising from the last set popped up on my right side the other day, so I guess I’ll be multi-coloured until well past Christmas, irrespective of what happens. Transfer is still set for Friday week. Our last two snowbabies.

I have been quiet, but I have been doing a LOT of thinking. Hours and hours upon hours of it. And the end result of my thinking is that, as it currently stands, if this FET fails (especially if we get another chemical pregnancy), I think I’m done.

I can’t say for certain, because I haven’t asked Q. yet what he thinks. And if his desire to parent is stronger than mine, and if he really wants to continue, I think I could manage one more IVF cycle. But if he’s ambivalent, or even as worn out as I am, then I think I would like to close the door on these last two years, and embrace our childfree future.

I posted on a forum I frequent about how I was feeling a couple of days ago. I’ve copied and pasted most of it here so I don’t repeat myself. It makes me so sad to read my own words- I wonder what happened to the girl I used to know. I’ve never sounded so defeated before, so utterly worn out.

—

Part of what’s inspired all this introspection is the anxiety. I am already feeling a lot of anxiety about all the medications that come with this cycle, and all the needles. I hate what these cycles do to me. I hate how invasive they are, and how they make me feel, and how we rearrange our entire lives to try and make this work.

Everyone always says that it will be worth it in the end, but I really don’t know about that anymore. I never wanted kids growing up- I only wanted them once I met Q. and saw how awesome he would be as a father, and wanted to mingle my genes with his (I seriously think that’s what my brain did- it saw some good genes and decided it wanted babies). But I never defined myself growing up with the expectation that I would be a mother. And a giant part of me just desperately wants to get on with our lives as a family of two in January. Part of it is selfish- we have all these plans for things we want to do in the future, and some of them would be much harder to manage with kids.

But a big part of it is I feel like we don’t actually get to live our lives right now, because even when we’re not cycling, we’re thinking about when we’re next going to cycle, or whether we can afford to do a cycle, or whether our plans can fit in around when we can next do a cycle. Our entire schedule for almost the last two years has revolved around our trips to the clinic.

I’m tired of scrimping and saving and always keeping in the back of my mind the cost of another IVF cycle. It sounds awful to put a price tag on the whole thing. It sounds selfish and uncaring. But the truth is, we’re not paying to get a baby, we’re paying for the privilege of even TRYING to get pregnant. And most days now I feel like I’m flushing our money down the toilet. My body doesn’t work on so many levels when it comes to babies. There’s a part of me that wonders whether I should just recognize that maybe this is not what I’m supposed to be doing in life. Q. and I were signing consent forms before I went in on day 2, and he was asking me about assisted hatching, which they do with FETs at my clinic because sometimes the embies have trouble breaking out to implant. I said to him that I don’t like the idea, but I don’t really feel we can say something since we’ve gone so far down this path of assisted conception. Q. agreed. He said there was nothing natural about this process anymore. It’s true. It makes me sad.

I really wish we had four embies left, rather than two. I feel like if we had two more FETs left, and they didn’t work, I would be able to walk away with absolutely no regrets. I don’t know if I can bear to go through another IVF cycle. And while I know we can’t plan when we get pregnant, etc. etc., we won’t be able to do an IVF until August. That makes me 31. I wanted to be done having my kids by 31. And I know that being an older mum is increasingly becoming more common, but this is not how I have envisioned my life. We intentionally planned to ttc while I was doing the PhD so we could be done by the time I finished. There comes a point where I’m not willing to live by the schedule the universe keeps handing me- I do not want that for my life.

But at the same time, everyone keeps telling me, “Oh you’re still young, this will work out, blah blah blah”. Infertility treatments are addictive. They suck you in, and you lose perspective and before you know it you’ve added in every possible medical intervention. I don’t really know how to put a stop to the madness. That scares me about the prospect of another IVF cycle too…because if we have embies we’ll feel obligated to use them…so if we do another IVF cycle and it doesn’t take, that could be another whole year of FET attempts.

In the last two years infertility has trashed my self-confidence and my body image. It has put enormous burdens on my marriage. Most of all, it has made me into a sad person who spends all of her time thinking about the life she wants to have, instead of someone who can enjoy the life she currently lives. Some days I don’t recognize myself anymore, especially when I’m in the throes of treatment. It makes me so angry and frustrated.

I am so tired of all of this. I am so tired of having my life on hold and turned upside down. I’m tired of the emotional weight. I’m scared of what all these drugs could be doing to my body. I’m sick of it, all of it.

—

So that’s where I’m at. I’d like to say that all my thoughts are just the fourteen pills a day talking, but the truth is, this has been a long time coming. I don’t think I ever thought that I could hit the end of this first IVF cycle and not be pregnant. And if that turns out to be the case, I just don’t think I’ve got the desire to start it all over again.

I want my life back.

Umm…I thought we were getting a break?

Q. and I were discussing when we wanted to do this next FET. We’d decided on December because semester will be over and I can literally spend the entire two weeks resting at home. Next semester is crunch time for me, as my comprehensive exams are coming up in April, so there would be no way for me to a) take the two weeks off and b) stop stressing long enough to give any embryos a chance.

Then we started looking at December, and realizing that we needed to get the whole tww over and done with before the Christmas festivities start (which involve relatives visiting us, and us visiting relatives, etc.). And then, given our last experience, I realized we needed at least a couple of days AFTER the beta result in case we had to go back in again to confirm either good or bad news.

The end result was when af finally turned up and I went back into the clinic last Friday, we scheduled the FET for the 4th of December. And I thought, holy crap! That’s soon!

Yep. I am on bcps for 12 days, and then the madness starts up all over again. The only good thing is I might get my drug-induced energy back again. I’ve been feeling really smug all semester about how well I’ve been balancing everything… and then I absolutely CRASHED in the last week. Turns out my “balancing” act was entirely due to the steroids my f/s was making me take. But I’ve started them up again, so I’m expecting to bounce through the rest of November, if nothing else.

My f/s is not too pleased with the last result. He wants to up the Frag.min and the pio- which to me suggests that he isn’t convinced that I just got unlucky last time. It turns out my second beta wasn’t really negative- it was 4- still climbing, but much too slowly.  Anyway, I’m going to be dosed up to eyeballs this time around (whee), so we’ll see if that has an effect.

On the weekend I finally went running again. And with the first two steps I realized that you can’t stick needles in your ass for almost three weeks, take a week off, and then expect all the bruising to have gone away. I was ok, and I was able to keep running. But my butt wasn’t happy about the whole thing, and it let me know. (The run was also awful, given I have not been running for a month. It is so depressing how quickly you lose fitness.)

The other good news from the clinic was we tested my TSH again (I think my f/s has just given up arguing with me on this one, and rings up the blood lab the moment I start to open my mouth), and it came back at 0.7, which is absolutely ideal. It literally couldn’t be better. Fingers crossed this new level of meds actually keeps me there and balanced. I’m sick of it bouncing around like a damn yoyo.

So, it looks like we’re going to be back on the roller coaster sooner than expected. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. And try to enjoy the ride…

Head up, shoulders back

First of all, thank you so very very much for your words of comfort and support. It is appreciated more than I can say.

I took a large chunk of the weekend to mope and feel sorry for myself and to cancel social engagements where I would have to make meaningless small talk with people I didn’t know very well. And then on Sunday I decided that enough was enough, and Q. and I took the whole day off (a rarity for us at this stage in the semester) and had a simply wonderful day, just the two of us.

And I am ok. Today in one of my classes we were watching a film where someone unexpectedly turned out to be infertile, and it didn’t bother me, other than a momentary flicker of annoyance where I realized where the dialogue was heading.

I’m ok with the result. I’m ok with the end of this cycle. I know that Q. and I did everything we possibly could to make it work. My thyroid was balanced. My uterus looked great. We had two great embryos, a smooth transfer, a relaxed tww filled with every medication my f/s thought might be of assistance.

I honestly believe that we just ended up on the wrong side of the odds this time around. And I have to believe that in December things can be different.

I think it helps the way I compartmentalize infertility and trying to get pregnant. When I am cycling, it dominates my life to such an extent that a negative, or a low beta seems like the end of the world (as overly dramatic as that sounds). But how can it not? I’ve just spent two weeks obsessing over everything, sticking needles into all parts of my anatomy, changing my diet, my exercise patterns, my habits, all in an effort to make it work. So when it doesn’t, it’s awful.

But when I’m not cycling, I can remember all the good bits about the life that Q. and I currently have. And the loss doesn’t seem so great, so overwhelming. I can file it back into a list of life’s disappointments, and then just keep on moving.

So for November, I get a break from the insanity in my head, and I can be me again, without medications.

And in December, hopefully, hopefully, we’ll end up on the right side of the odds.