Why Do You Put Yourself Through All of This?

Today I was crying on the phone to a friend.  I told her about my breakdown yesterday and about how crazy I feel, waiting to get started on our egg donor cycle, knowing that there is a chance that the cycle will fail.  She said “Why do you put yourself through all of this?”  And with that, I had to get off the phone.  I’ve been asked that question more times than I can count over the last couple of years.  Sometimes by well-meaning women who dealt with infertility many years ago, but didn’t have the technology available to them that we now have available to us.  Sometimes by family members who have no idea what it is like to deal with infertility (I have 42 cousins…fertility is not generally a problem in my family).  And sometimes by my own fertility friends who have changed the direction of their journeys toward adoption or child-free living.  Each time, no matter who is asking the question, I get upset.

How do you explain why you put yourself through the emotional ups and downs of infertility?  How do you explain why you would choose to spend thousands of dollars and give yourself countless injections of medications that make you crazy for a chance of getting pregnant?  How do you explain that you are choosing to give up a genetic link with your child in order to have a chance of having a child at all?  I can’t think of any explanation that adequately addresses the dreaded question “Why do you put yourself through all of this?”  Maybe I dread this question because the question itself implies that there is or should be a choice involved, and, for me, for now, there just isn't.  I have to keep trying.  I can't help it.

For me, the thought of not having a child is much like one of the saddest quotes I’ve ever read from a fairy tale. 

“The little mermaid knew this was the last evening she should ever see the prince, for whom she had forsaken her kindred and her home; she had given up her beautiful voice, and suffered unheard-of pain daily for him, while he knew nothing of it.  This was the last evening that she would breathe the same air with him....An eternal night, without a thought or a dream, awaited her.”  

                                                ~Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Mermaid” (1836)

Giving up on having a child would feel like that….entering an eternal night, without a thought or a dream awaiting me.  I’ve alienated friends and family who disagree with my choices regarding ART, spent lots of money on ART, lost little pieces of the person I used to be throughout the last couple of years, and endured an untold amount of physical and emotional pain because I yearn for a child of my own, just as the little mermaid yearned to be with her prince.  The very idea of giving up on my dream now, of walking away after everything I've put into this endeavor, is more unspeakable than anything I might endure in the pursuit of motherhood.  

Not everyone feels the way I do, and I respect that.  In fact, I have numerous friends who have chosen child-free living post-infertility and they ALL say they wish they had made the decision a long time ago.  They’ve found happiness.  I applaud them.  Maybe one day, I will end up being one of them.  But for now, I want to hold on to my dream.  I am not ready for it to be over.  The thought of giving up my dream takes the breath from me, and I guess that is “why I put myself through all of this.”  Because I must.

Courage To Let It All Go

The hero in each fairy tale has to be brave in the face of adversity.  After all, courage is a key component of reaching “happily ever after.”  I think that every person facing infertility displays courage just by putting one foot in front of the other each day, in spite of the pain and fear.  But I was reading my recent posts and I think that I'm not being very courageous lately.  There is still a lot of self-pity creeping into my thoughts.  But I think I've figured out a way to start being more fearless.

Last night, I went to my Fertility Yoga class, as I normally do on Thursday nights.  After centering ourselves, our instructor always provides all of the members of my class with an opportunity to make an “intention” – a thought or desire that you carry with you throughout your practice that day, letting it seep into your heart and become a part of you.  For ages, my intention each yoga class has been “Peace.”  I feel like infertility has thrown my world into a constant state of flux and I just need to be at peace once in awhile.  But last night, when I normally would have embraced the intention of “Peace,” a loud and clear voice said “Let it go.”  And for just a second, I was annoyed.  I thought, “that’s not my intention…where did that come from?”  But I’ve learned in yoga and meditation that sometimes the part of you that silently observes your life from an objective standpoint, only speaking to you when necessary, knows more about what you need than the part of you that is always thinking and doing and talking.  So I went with the flow and engaged in a conversation with that other part of myself (I know.  I seem to have a habit of talking to myself lately).  The conversation went something like this…

“Let it go.”

“Let go of what?”

“All of it”

“What the hell is all of it?”

“You know”

“Really, because I probably wouldn’t be talking to myself if I knew…I would be letting go of whatever ‘it’ is.”

“Just breathe and let it all go.”

At that point, I decided to stop fighting with myself and to just follow my own advice (how screwed up is this sounding).  I took a deep breath.  Nothing.  So I took another and immediately thought about a comment on my post from a few days ago, regarding hurtful things that my mother has said to me.  I realized that I wrote what my mother had said to me because I’m still carrying around the hurt from every insensitive remark she has made to me.  So I breathed some more and thought “Let that go.”  I know it sounds hokey, but I could literally feel a physical difference.  My hips relaxed more and I went deeper into the pose and my breath.  I forgave her and even realized that she may not need forgiving because she isn’t trying to hurt me, she just doesn't know any better.  Given the pleasant outcome of that exercise, I decided to go for it again.

I asked myself “What else?”  Like a flood, I was faced with a whole bunch of garbage I’ve been toting around.  It almost made me cry to realize just how much there was.  And in spite of the lovely feeling I described above, my first response to the flood of baggage was to push it down, like I always do, leaving it for another day “when I might be strong enough to deal with it.”  But then I thought, “What if today I’m strong enough?  What if I just need to be brave?”

So, I took another breath and let the first thing that came to my mind wash over me.  I experienced the fear that I have that the egg donor cycle is not going to work.  I felt the fear of being disappointed and disappointing my husband.  That fear is like a huge monster, looming over me every single day that I wait to start my cycle.  But I decided that I am strong enough right now to face down that monster.  I didn’t perform some indepth analysis of why it is okay to be afraid or why it is better to be positive going into a cycle, I simply thought "Enough. I’m letting that fear go.  What is meant to be will be."  I can’t say that the beast is now gone forever, but upon intending to let the fear go, I felt peace (which was not my intention for the yoga class, but is what I ultimately received by following my intuition and “letting it go”). 

I can’t speak for everyone else, but on my journey, there are many times that the burden has just gotten too heavy to carry.  Lately, I've been going through one of those times.  So instead of sitting down on the side of the road and giving up on being a mother, I’m just going to let go of all of the baggage and the pain and the hurt feelings.  I can go back and pick those things up later if there is some crazy reason that I need them, but for now, the baggage I’m carrying is not providing armor to protect me from future hurt, it’s just stopping me from progressing into the future.  So I will keep “letting it go,” piece by piece…slaying one monster after another…until I have nothing left to let go of and am an empty vessel, ready to listen to that internal voice again and embarking on the next leg of my journey.

Darkness Falls Over the Land

Occasionally in a fairy tale, something will go wrong and to emphasize how bad things are becoming for the hero, the author will tell you that “darkness fell over the land.”  Very spooky.

I don’t know about you, but there have been so many times during my fertility journey that darkness fell over my land.  I would be going about my business, chewing my nails through my 2 week wait and WHAMO!  I would get the phone call from the nurse that my beta test came back and it was negative.  Immediately, a darkness would fall over me.  If I was at work, I would usually have to leave work because once the sobbing started, there was no getting it to stop.  I would go through all of the stages of grief over and over in rapid succession, thinking I was finished with a step (i.e.- bargaining), only to find myself promising to start going to church or to volunteer more time to charity if God could only make the test wrong…if I could just be pregnant a little later than expected.  Then, inevitably, the day would come (for me, usually more than a week after I stopped the progesterone) that I would get my body’s confirmation that I was, indeed, not pregnant…again.  For me, that final nail in the coffin usually would plunge me fully into the abyss.

I fear depression…actual clinical need-to-take –medicine-to-function depression, because I experienced it when I was younger.  It is like being in the darkest room imaginable, where you can hear the sounds of life going on around you but you can’t see even a speck of light that would allow you to orient yourself to the outside world.

The darkness that I call depression now is not quite the same.  I feel myself getting close to the edge of the cliff into darkness and I know if I fall down I might not get out of bed for two days or I might not be able to stay focused at work if I can drag myself there.  But I don’t need medication and the darkness always passes.  Still, feeling myself at the edge is scary.  And it is easier than ever for me to get there now. 

I also frequently have to watch as the darkness creeps over my friends.  It breaks my heart because there is very little you can do to help lift that darkness for someone else.  Like a fog, it rolls in, sucking out all of the happiness and positive energy, and rolls out, leaving you exhausted but alive. 

I’ve found it helpful to remember that there is a purpose to the darkness.  First, the darkness leaves you alive and stronger than you were before.  It hurts so badly, but it doesn’t kill you.  And, as clichéd as it is, the saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is absolutely true.  The second thing about the darkness is that it is somewhat predictable.  You can usually feel when it is coming and brace yourself (at least a little). Although no amount of will power (or at least not my brand of will power) stops the darkness in its tracks, if I feel it coming and I turn to my support systems and get myself back to yoga and meditation practices, I can sometimes make the darkness bearable and maybe even shorter in duration.  The third thing I will say about the darkness is that it isn’t all bad.  It feels like it is when you are surrounded, but the darkness is actually a totally natural response emotional trauma.  It’s there for a reason.  A lot of what that darkness is made of is grief and sorrow – two emotions that need to be allowed to run their course before a person can truly move beyond a psychological trauma.  In that sense, the darkness is cathartic and necessary.

I’ve just made it through a darkness.  Reading back through my posts, I can see that the fog was still dissipating, even though I had thought I was fine.  I’m starting to move beyond nervous, and beginning to get a little excited about starting our donor egg cycle.  There’s still moments of panic, but now I can breathe them away more easily than before.  For months, I’ve spent a good portion of times under the cloud cover.  It feels good to know that I am slipping into sunny weather, again.

So, the next time you see the clouds rolling in, (to quote the ever-wise Little Orphan Annie), just tuck in your chin and grin and say “The sun will come out tomorrow.”  Because just like in the fairy tales, the clouds will eventually roll away, allowing that sun to shine and the birds to sing.  Hope will flourish again, when you are ready for it.  And you will appreciate it all the more because you remember what the opposite side of hope feels like, making the sunny days that much sweeter.

Am I the Villain in My Own Fairy Tale?

Every fairy tale has a villain.  The nature of fairy tales is such that there needs to be opposing virtues to make the story exciting – good versus evil, beautiful versus ugly, mean versus nice.  For this reason, the hero of any good fairy tale must be opposed by a villain.  The villain generally engages in deceit and trickery, trying to harm the hero.  The villain gathers information to later be used against the hero and frequently convinces friends and family of the hero to play a role in the villain’s evil plan, thereby adding insult to injury.  The villain is the character that everyone can fear and hate, so that they are able to appreciate how wonderful the hero truly is.

I am concerned that I am the villain in my own fairy tale.  I’m the hero too, but that is sort of a given since this is my fairy tale.  I would like to believe that infertility is the villain…but infertility it not tricking or deceiving me.  Infertility is what it is.  It may be thwarting my efforts to reach my goals, but that makes it an obstacle, not a villain.  There is no person or thing that I can point to in my life that engages in the acts that you would expect from a villain, except for me.

I frequently harm myself emotionally during each round of ART, and even during the time in between cycles.  I trick myself into thinking that I can control the outcome of each cycle by engaging in certain activities or thinking in a certain way.  If I can keep my attitude positive enough, or if I can find the perfect IVF protocol to show my RE, I’ll get what I want so badly.  Only, that’s not true.  Those are lies I tell myself so that I won’t have to admit the truth…which is that I have no control over whether I am going to get pregnant.  Sure I have control over whether I try to conceive during a given month and what method I use, but at the end of the day, whether the sperm and egg take a liking to each other and decide to nestle down for awhile is totally out of my control.  Thinking otherwise is just a form of torture...an act that a villain would engage in, but not a hero.  It allows me, in fact encourages me, to kick the hero while she’s down.  It leaves me thinking, “Not only are you not pregnant, but it is your own fault that you failed.”

I also might be the villain because I use my family and friends to hurt me.  Not on a conscious level, but perhaps subconsciously.  I have told people about my infertility that I wouldn’t, in any other circumstance, tell anything important to.  I might love those people, but I know that they will use the information to hurt me and yet I give them the ammunition to break my spirit anyway.  For example (and I’m only choosing one of many here), I’ve talked to my mother about our infertility struggle multiple times, even though I barely speak to her about anything.  She has made such comments as: “Did it ever occur to you that you are barren because you just aren’t meant to be a mother,” “I really think that God has already made a child for you that is going to have parents who die or something so that you can step in and take over,” “Did you ever think that maybe your husband isn’t the man you are meant to be with for the rest of your life and that once you divorce him and find someone else you’ll get pregnant,” and, my favorite “It’s really ironic that your sister and I, two people who never wanted kids and never had a pot to piss in, can pop out more babies than we can take care of, but you can’t even have one.  Isn’t that a funny thing?”  Yeah…it’s freakin’ hilarious, Mom!  Why would I tell a woman, who I know will only hurt me, about every step of our fertility journey?  I know better and yet, there I am on the phone after every failure, bawling away to her and then getting angry when she says exactly what I would expect her to say.

I put myself down, stress myself out, sabotage my attempts at bettering myself, try repeatedly to follow the forks in the road that I know don’t lead anywhere, and put myself in harm’s way emotionally.  How can I not be the villain?  My only hope is that mine is one of those fairy tales where the villain turns out to be a sympathetic character that learns her lesson and changes her ways in time for “happily ever after.”   

Behind the Scenes

If you read through a fairy tale, most of what happens goes on behind the scenes.  You don’t hear about the seven dwarves showering or the fittings the princesses must undergo to have their beautiful gowns fit them like a glove, but those things must happen.  And so, too, much of what happens in our fertility fairy tales happens behinds the scenes.

For example, I was recently reading the blog of Christina, at http://2scompany3safamily.blogspot.com/.

She has just suffered a miscarriage and I strongly encourage any of you reading this to send her some support.  As I read her heartbreaking post, I thought about her sitting in her microscope room, suffering silently as those around her are likely oblivious to what she is going through.  Her suffering is going on behind the scenes.  Most people will never hear about what she is going through and how powerful it is.  I think it is not so uncommon for many of us to keep our suffering hidden from prying eyes.  And although we know what a huge part of our fairy tale the suffering is, the world will never know...will never see into our hearts.

My husband asked me last night why I am blogging.  I replied that it was nice to not have to keep my feelings hidden.  I like being able to share the thoughts and feelings that I rarely speak aloud and almost never share outside of our home.  He, in typical male fashion, replied “Sounds good!”  He explained that I can complain about him and infertility all I want in my blog, as long as it means he doesn’t have to hear it.  My husband was partially being a smart ass, but even he would prefer that the suffering aspect of infertility be bottled up and kept behind the scenes.

I am so grateful that you all allow me not to do that.  My heart breaks for Christina, but I am glad that she can put her sadness out there and be sent all of the love and support possible by a sea of anonymous women who are feeling pain right along with her.  I’m glad that none of us have to push our feelings and fears behind the scenes no matter how messy and confusing they are.  I think that, frequently, what happens behind the scenes is actually the real story that needs to be told.   

Wizards, Witches and Woodland Creatures

No princess and prince reach “happily ever after” on their own.  Inevitably, a supporting character helps out along the way.  Sometimes it is a wizard or good witch casting spells that help the couple past certain obstacles.  Other times, characters like the “woodland creatures,” the unsung heroes of fairy tales (they don’t even get proper names), are working in the background, supporting the couple as they go through their journey.

In the fertility fairy tale, there also characters that provide a tremendous amount of help in getting people their positive pregnancy test.  There are the wizards and good witches (RE’s, GYN’s, M.D.’s and nurses), coming up with magical formulas and protocols, trying to make a miracle happen.  These health care providers devote their career to weathering the emotional roller coasters that their patients take them on, tirelessly working to get infertility patients from the point of despair upon diagnosis to the elation of the positive pregnancy test.  Most of the healthcare providers I’ve come in contact with, who work in the “infertility field,” work long and often unconventional hours.  They frequently bear the brunt of misdirected anger. And most importantly, they genuinely care about the outcome of each patient’s journey.  They play the dual role of counselors and healers.  They have very intimate relationships with their patients (as we all know too well) for months and sometimes years…watching the highs and lows.  Then, once a positive pregnancy test is achieved, the thankful couple usually drops out of sight.  I think that it is probably difficult to stay friendly with the people who played a role in bringing your baby about, as you never expected to need them and, once pregnant, you seek to focus on the happiness of the present and future rather than the pain of the past. (I am, of course, speculating about this, as I have never had a positive pregnancy test).  In spite of knowing that they will be left behind at the end of their patients’ journeys, they continue to do their magic because they care.

Then there are the “woodland creatures.”  To me, these are frequently the coolest characters in traditional fairy tales because who would ever expect a bird or a mouse to help out?  These are the characters that the princess may not know very well, but she still considers them friends.  They are not paid to be awesome and they don’t have supernatural powers, but they provide the hands-on support when the princess is in dire need of friends.  Don’t take offense, but all of you are my “woodland creatures.”  (You are all princesses, princes, queens, etc., too…but for the purposes of this article you are also playing the role of “woodland creatures”).  I don’t know your names or much about the other aspects of your lives, but I know you are in the trenches with me, supporting me in spite of our anonymity.  You are there when I’m awake at 2:00 a.m. in a panic and you will be there to share in the joyous occasion when I finally get a second line on the pee stick.  This story wouldn’t be complete without you and I want to thank each of you for playing a role in my fairy tale.         



Overcoming Obstacles

I am awake at 2:00 a.m. again, feeling the familiar crushing feeling of panic in my chest.  No particular reason for it, but it’s there all the same, like a visitor no one invited.  I even worked out yesterday.  Yeah, me…I joined a gym and walked one and a half miles…not much, I know.  But it’s one and a half miles more than I walked the day before.  I thought that would help my sleep, anxiety and weight.  Apparently not so much for the sleep and anxiety, and the effect of walking on my weight remains to be seen.

I find that I frequently don’t know how to overcome certain obstacles…and I’m not even talking about the biggie- infertility.  The little obstacles keep tripping me up. 

In fairy tales, that just doesn’t happen.  The heroes of the tales are faced with challenges and they decisively conquer those obstacles with ease.  What is wrong with me that I can’t do the same?  All of my careful planning and obsessive researching is not getting me over the little hurdles being placed in my way.  I can’t even sleep…that’s not even supposed to be a hurdle.  That’s supposed to just happen.  Then again, so is getting pregnant.

A lot of times in fairy tales, the princess just waits for someone else to overcome obstacles for her, so that she can be saved.  There’s a lot of “deep sleeping” or going about a normal life until the prince comes to rescue her.  If only I could just sleep until I magically become pregnant…leave all of the worry and heartache on someone else’s plate.  Instead, I have to come up with some plan of action (hopefully one that will actually work) and find the strength to implement that plan.  Standing in front of my obstacles, staring at them, is not helping.  Apparently G.I. Joe’s “knowing is half the battle” slogan does not apply to infertility and everything that comes with it. 

I wish my prince would step in and make it all okay.  He has been especially distant since finding out on Friday that we are about a month away from me starting the medications to get the donor cycle going, and less than two months out from an embryo transfer.  I’m scared and I think he’s scared.  I think a lot of my panic comes from the fact that he acts like he isn’t committed to this, after encouraging me to commit, and now it is too late to back out (not that I want to).  I want compassion and encouragement, but I am getting long periods of silence and no physical contact at all.  He always seems irritated with me and if I try to address how he is acting, he retreats even further.  I wish he could recognize his feelings of fear for what they are and work through them, instead of putting up a wall (yet another hurdle) between us at the beginning of each ART cycle.  Then again, I’m lying awake, writing a blog in the middle of the night because I can’t work through my own fears and worries.  So I guess I shouldn’t be doling out the judgment and advice just yet.  Right now, we both need some rescuing.

Another Beautiful Princess/Fairy Godmother - Our Anonymous Egg Donor

Today I got the message I have been waiting for…we’re ready to start moving on my egg donor cycle.  Over a month ago, when our names got to the top of the waiting list of our anonymous donor choice, we decided we were ready to go ahead with pursuing this option of family-building.  We committed and I was relieved, excited, terrified and sad all at the same time.  Because we were doing a split cycle (two recipients split the eggs retrieved from one donor during one cycle, each recipient paying half of what she would normally pay for a donor cycle), we had to wait for the donor coordinator to get confirmation from another couple that they also wanted to move forward with the chosen egg donor.  Then, the coordinator would call our donor choice and ask her when she would be ready to do a cycle.  Foolishly, I thought I would have my answers in a few days. 

I waited, and waited, often not as patiently as I would like, while day after day there was no news.  I tried to wait at least a few days between each email to the coordinator, asking for a status update (she’s got to be ready to kill me at this point).  Always the same reply, “Just waiting for another couple to confirm.”

So last night, a couple finally confirmed.  My first thought when I received the news I’ve been waiting for during the last month was not “great” or “finally.”  No, instead I ruined the moment by thinking about the fact that if we both get pregnant, my child and their child will be half-siblings.  There are a lot of thoughts that randomly pop into my head which make me worry that I am not fully onboard with this option.  But I also get that feeling on the way up the hill of a rollercoaster…I know that it is too late to back out and a part of me knows that I really don’t want to because the best part is still to come, but I’m so scared as the cart goes higher and higher that I think, for a split second, about freaking out and trying to get them to stop the ride to let me off.  Pursing the use of donor eggs has been my “rollercoaster experience” to the tenth degree.

I was worried that our donor wouldn’t be ready to do another cycle for a while, as she just finished one in November or December, but she is good to go.  So, now, after waiting and waiting, I feel like I’m starting down the hill of the rollercoaster, and the momentum is already terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.  I still have so many questions (which I’m sure the donor coordinator appreciates me bombarding her with via email the second I got her message that we were going to start in February).  I don’t know how long the process takes once our donor has her “Cycle Day 1,” which is what I am currently waiting for.  When do I fork over the thousands of dollars for the cycle and when do I get my medications that I will be taking during the cycle?  These are all questions that I feel as though I need answered RIGHT NOW.  I’m panicking a bit, and information is my only lifeline.

During those brief moments that I step back from the panic and breath, I am reminded that I should be filled with gratitude, not fear.  I recognize that this family-building option is not available to a lot of people for financial reasons or for moral reasons.  Many religions frown upon what we are doing and I am blessed enough to believe that God would never wish childlessness on a woman who truly desired a child, so God is okay with me using an egg donor.  Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, but either way, I’m not losing sleep over that issue.

I also realize that I need to be so grateful that the beautiful, amazing woman that we have chosen to be the genetic mother of our child is willing to give such a precious gift.  I understand that there are some financial incentives for donors, but I have read the answers my donor gave to a whole battery of questions (and reread them about a million times), and I truly believe that there is a huge altruistic motive for our donor giving us the gift of hope. 

When we started choosing a donor, I came up with a mathematical formula that rated and weighted the characteristics that were most important to us, plugging in each donor’s characteristics to determine which one had “the highest score.”  My husband and I both agreed that we wanted to use someone who had donated before and had a good response.  To my husband, it was also important that the donor be smart (in his mind, this means an advanced degree or a high SAT score).  For me, I felt like our donor should look something like me and her answers should be well-written.  But after hours and hours of pouring over each “candidate,” I realized that we were missing the big picture.  Some of the donors seemed very smart but had children at a very young age, or had financial situations that prevented them from pursuing college degrees.  My husband wasn’t happy about it, but I decided that I was not eliminating any candidates based on their education.  I also realized that I was incredibly nervous about being a recipient, and would probably have a ton of spelling and grammatical errors if I was asked to complete a pile of questionnaires without the benefits of spell-check, so I got rid of the “well-written” requirement that I had placed on the donors.  It also became less and less important to me, as I researched the donors, whether the woman looked like me.  Sure, a resemblance would be nice, but lets face it…no one is going to say that our child looks just like his/her mother and if someone does say that, it will be tough for me not to suppress a giggle.

Eventually, I started to get a gut feeling and my gut kept drawing me back to the same donor.  At that time, she hadn’t donated before (yet another one of our criteria down the drain), but I just felt like she was the one.  She does bear some resemblance to me, she has an associates degree, and she is very well-written, but most importantly to me, her answers jumped off the page.  It was like I could hear her voice and she was there with me when I read her responses to such questions as “Why did you choose to be a donor” and “How would you describe yourself” and “Who is your role model and why.”  I made my choice that she was “the one,” got my husband’s blessing (which was more like him being so sick of my indecision that any decision was fine with him), and I put our names on her waiting list.  As it turned out, while we waited we found out that she has an amazing response to stimulating medications and, in the two single cycles before our upcoming cycle, her eggs have helped both recipients get pregnant…one with twins!

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I would say to our donor if I could.  I would say that no matter how this all works out, I am so thankful that she was willing to share the ultimate gift with us.  I would tell her that she is so amazing and so beautiful inside and out, that I could see her radiance from a piece of paper she filled out.  I would tell her that I am honored to have her DNA in my child (okay, that would be a little awkward to say, but it’s my fantasy, so it’s fine).  I would assure her that, if I do get pregnant and have a child thanks to her assistance, I will be the best mother ever and that child will be showered with love every day of the child’s life.  I would say “Thank you,” through the tears of joy that are flowing down my cheeks as I write this post.  

And A Handsome Prince (a.k.a. My husband)

In the traditional fairy tale, the beautiful princess always completes her journey with a handsome prince.  Not always so in real-life fairy tales.  Sometimes couples are composed of two princes or two princesses.  Sometimes a princess decides to embark on her journey into motherhood on her own.  I have friends in each of these categories and I love and respect them for their strength and courage.  So please don’t think, when you read this post, I am forgetting that not everyone is making their journey with a prince…But I am, so that’s what I’m going to write about.

Let me start out by saying, my husband is not always a prince.  Sometimes he is aloof and grumpy.  Sometimes he goes into his emotional turtle shell and it is all I can do to coax him to poke his head out to acknowledge that I’m there.  Sometimes he rolls his eyes when I am crying about another coworker announcing her pregnancy or he lets out too big of a sigh when I ask him to pause a television show so I can update him on our current position on an egg donor’s waiting list.  Sometimes he makes me feel like I am all alone, because his way of dealing with the overpowering emotions involved in our infertility struggles is to move on without acknowledging that anything happened.  On these days, “prince” is not the word that I use to describe him.

But then there are other days – the days when he gives me a hug first thing in the morning and tells me that today is going to be a good day, or the days that he surprises me with a weekend getaway during a two week wait to get my mind off the all-consuming fear that we’ll be disappointed again.  There are those times when he offers to take over dealing with the egg donor coordinator because I am feeling overwhelmed and out of control.  On those days…he is absolutely a prince!

I should explain that my husband is a chemistry professor.  Enough said.  He is the poster-child for “emotionally unavailable" but I love him anyway.  We are very different people and we have struggled as a couple in the last year.  We’re in marriage counseling right now, not because we are on the verge of divorce or are disinterested in the marriage, but because we don’t speak the same language when it comes to infertility and it leads to serious breakdowns in our ability to communicate with one another.  The counseling helps and I would recommend it to anyone who is feeling like the tiny cracks that were there in a marriage before infertility are widening.  It happens to the strongest couples I know, and counseling helps.  Even my husband admits that it helps and he HATES relying on anyone, especially someone in the “soft sciences.”

Anyways, Mr. Science is logical, analytical and predictable about everything.  I am logical, analytical and predictable about everything…except infertility stuff.  When it comes to my struggle to become a mother, I am a hormonal ball of emotion that changes her mind faster than the wind changes directions.  Even when I am not on the fertility meds (which would turn Spock into a bawling little girl), I am not myself when it comes to dealing with my own infertility.  And it is because of the very different way that my husband and I approach infertility that we have made it this far. 

When I was begging to keep trying IVF’s with my eggs after 6 failed IVF’s and our second RE saying he just didn’t feel we were going to get pregnant that way, the prince didn’t cry or get angry like I did.  Instead, he insisted that I consider what was most important to me and what was going to give us the best odds of getting to my goal of motherhood.  I grieved for a long time, but eventually it was his objective perspective that forced me to be realistic and realize that having a baby was more important than having a baby with my DNA.  Granted, I wanted to send him outside to live in the garage when he was telling me that he didn’t understand why I was being so stubborn and emotional about not wanting to move on to donor eggs, but if he had taken the easy road right then and given in to my begging to continue a futile quest, I would probably be on my eighth failed IVF cycle by now, with two more heartbreaks under my belt.

Writing this post makes me think about a T-shirt that I got my husband for his birthday, after our third date.  The T-shirt says “Trust me.  I’m perfect.”  He still has it and even though it doesn’t quite fit his body anymore, it still fits his personality.  And he doesn’t hesitate to squeeze himself into the shirt, like a sausage, when he thinks I need a laugh after we’ve quarreled.  I’ll never say it to him and I would deny it if ever confronted with the statement I am about to make, but he is perfect...in his own way.  He is my perfect partner in the infertility trenches.  I can always rely on girlfriends to help me cry it out and to talk about the stuff that is too sappy for my husband to take on, but he is the one I need when the time comes to make the tough calls (there have been a lot of them on this journey).  He  is the one that consistently rises to the occasion when the chips are down.  Bottom line, my husband may not always be exactly what I want, but he is exactly what I need and in that sense, he is my prince.       

There Lived A Beautiful Princess (Part 2) - Shame and Self-Loathing

I was thinking a lot about what I discussed yesterday…how infertility has had such a profound effect on my weight and, thus, my outward appearance.  But thinking about that made me realize that infertility has had an even more profound effect on my view of my own inner-beauty.  I hear my fertility friends say all of the time that they hate what they are going through, but looking back, they can see how they have become such better people because of the hardships.  I wish I felt that way.  I think infertility has made me stronger, but when I look in the mirror and compare who I am today with who I was a few years ago, I’m sad at what I’ve lost and what it has been replaced with.

My infertility issues are largely due to my endometriosis and premature ovarian failure.  My husband has a contributing factor too, but his issue is taken care of with the ICSI process, so at this point, it’s my limitations that are causing us to stumble.  My husband says he doesn’t blame me and that it is not my fault that my ovaries aren’t doing what we want them to.  I’m so glad that he says that, but I secretly don’t believe him.  I hope I am just projecting my own insecurities onto him, but how could he not be just a little upset with me?  Being a father is the most important thing in the world to him and, albeit unintentionally, I am standing in the way of his dream coming true.

I know that our struggle is not “my fault.”  I can say that over and over and know that it is true…but it doesn’t feel true.  I feel so ashamed that I can’t get pregnant, that my ovaries don’t produce any quality eggs, and that I can’t seem to get an embryo to stick.  I try to hide these feelings, but my shame is so evident, the last time my RE cancelled my IVF cycle for lack of response, he spent a half hour with me, in a private room, telling me over and over that it was not my fault that we had to cancel and that I deserve to be a mother.  He reminded me that I have tried everything that anyone could ask of me – acupuncture, yoga, meditation, supplements, maya abdominal massage, huge dosages of multiple stimulating  medications, every different IVF protocol you can imagine -  and no one can ever say that my lack of getting pregnant is due to any lack of trying on my part.  I responded “I know” and plastered a fake smile on my face, but I walked out of the office wanting to be invisible and feeling like an utter and complete failure.

I am a person who needs order and control in my world, so when I am out of control of something, I start questioning why and trying to find a way to make things go the way I think they should.  In the case of infertility, the questioning is done not being done in the usual logical and productive way that I approach other problems.  Instead, I jump straight to negative, disjointed, unproductive conversation with myself.  For example, I frequently have the following thoughts -

Why I can’t be a mother…is it because I’m too selfish?  After all, I like to take naps on the weekends and I get grumpy when something wakes me up too early in the morning.  Maybe I’m not ready for a baby if I can’t deal with sleep deprivation.  Or maybe I can’t get pregnant because I am going to be a terrible mother.  To say that my childhood was less than ideal would be the understatement of the century.  So what if I’m wrong in my belief that those experiences will make me a great mother because I know what not to do?  What if I will be worse than my mother was?  After all, she’s had at least twelve pregnancies in her lifetime and I can’t even have one.  Or maybe I can’t get pregnant because I work to much…or because when I was young I said a hundred times that I wanted to be a “career woman” and never get saddled down with a husband and kids.  Maybe I asked for this and there is no taking it back.

This is the internal dialogue that haunts me if I don’t squash it.  I don’t feel like a beautiful princess and I don’t know if I will again until, one way or another, this infertility journey comes to an end.  I feel like there is this piece of me that just hates me and is always there, waiting to sabotage my attempts at maintaining balance and some degree of happiness during this journey.  It is always trying to steal away the self esteem that I have managed to hold onto throughout the heartache of the last three years.  I’m tired of saying “I’m sorry” incessantly, to everyone, for everything.  It’s become a joke to my friends because I do it so often.  I tell them that it is a nervous habit, but I was a psychology major in college…I know that it is an OBVIOUS sign of repressed self-loathing and shame. 

Like most of the issues that I am struggling with during this journey, I’m not sure how to fix my self-image.  For now, all I can do is try to listen to that other angelic voice that is also a part of me (not in the multiple personality disorder kind of way).  She says to shake it off…try to believe my friends when they tell me that infertility doesn’t make me any less of a person…try to acknowledge the good things I am able to do for others because of my experiences…try to believe that I will make an awesome Mom someday and that I deserve that gift as much as the next person…and have faith that some day I can tell that little self-destructive voice inside of me to “shove it” when I finally come out the other side of all of this. 

There Lived A Beautiful Princess...but she got fat on infertility meds

“Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but they can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate” ~Author Unknown

The third phrase in a fairy tale is frequently something to the effect of “there lived a beautiful princess.”  Beauty is a tough thing when you’re dealing with infertility.  I’ve taken an injection of HcG, the pregnancy hormone, lots of times to trigger ovulation for an IUI or IVF.  No one has ever said to me, during this process, “Oh…You are positively glowing.”  No.  Usually I get a comment from my husband like “Sweats, again?”   To which I have to shamefully reply, “I’ve really grown to appreciate elastic waistbands.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but infertility has not been kind to my waistline.  In fact, this weekend, I reached a milestone…and not a good one.  As of Saturday, I am officially 60 pounds heavier than I was when I first started treating for infertility.  That’s right…not a typo…60!!!  And, to paint the picture in all its ugliness, I was not thin when I started this journey.  In fact, my first RE was on my case about my weight from the beginning, repeatedly telling me how much being overweight would hurt my chances of being pregnant (needless to say, he is no longer my RE).  I won’t give my exact weight to you…even in an anonymous blog I am too ashamed to share that little tidbit.  But the number that stared back at me from my scale’s display screen on Saturday was like a big slap in the face.  And I might have needed it.

I’ve been in denial about the weight I’ve been packing on for a year or two now.  I don’t lie about the fact that Ben & Jerry have become two of my closest friends.  How could I?  But I have lied to myself and to others about the extent of the problem.  Food has become my drug of choice and with infertility, there are a lot of emotions to be numbed.  Some nights I can feel sad, angry, scared and bored all at the same time.  Those are typically pizza nights.  I never reach for a salad in times of despair. 

So, reaching Saturday’s milestone made me face up to the fact that, not only has my weight been on a steady incline since finding out getting pregnant wasn’t going to be easy, I have also been on a binge for a long time.  I am eating enough calories for two or three people a day and I truly didn’t even realize it.  I tried to trace the binge back to its beginnings and, to my astonishment, I can recall the exact moment that it started.

A few days before Thanksgiving, I received the news that my IVF cycle was cancelled because, after 24 days on stimulating medications, I still had no follicles growing.  I was devastated.  I went for a drive to gather my thoughts and when I got home, I had a text message from my husband’s younger (and only) sister, announcing that she was pregnant with the family’s first grandchild.  I literally threw-up when I read the message.  I love my sister-in-law.  She rocks!  And I am really happy for her, but her pregnancy has been devastating to me.  She got married a year and a half ago and she and her husband had decided to wait to have a baby until they bought a house.  I was so relieved when I heard about their plan because I thought “Well, at least we’ll have chance to get pregnant first.”  Awful, I know…but I couldn’t get past the fantasy about having the first grandchild.  So, my sister-in-law and her husband closed on their house in October…and she announced her pregnancy in November.  That is the day the binge began.

I initially pulled it together to be the supportive person that I am expected to be, but the pregnancy was always there in the back of my mind and sometimes in the forefront of my mind.  Then, I had to deal with Christmas.  I was having panic attacks about how I was going to deal with Christmas at my husband’s family’s house, as it would inevitably become a celebration of the pregnancy.  My husband’s response was not to comfort me…oh, no.  He got irritated with me, said he couldn’t understand how I could be mad at his sister for being pregnant (sometimes guys really don’t get it), and told me not to ruin having a niece or nephew for him and not to ruin Christmas for his family by moping around.  He has been put in his place for these comments, but he did serious damage to my already fragile self esteem that day.  In addition to feeling miserable that I wasn’t pregnant, I now had to feel guilty about feeling miserable.  I made it through Christmas without making a scene, but I have only recently pulled out of what I can best describe as alternating bouts of mild depression and severe anxiety.  That was how the binge that I am on began and how it kept being fueled through the holidays.  After that, I think momentum just took hold and carried me through January.

So how do I fix this situation?  I’m not sure, but I think it is good that I at least am asking the question.  I know taking away my own excuses would be helpful.  Yeah the stimulating medications make you put on weight, but not 60 pounds and not when you aren’t even on the meds anymore (which I’m not).  I think that dealing with my own guilt and self esteem issues (related to my infertility) would help, too.  I’m hoping that admitting this issue to all of you will also be helpful…accountability never hurt anyone.  If anyone else has tackled this issue and has some advice for me, I would be so appreciative if you shared.  I know I can’t be alone on this one.

Once Upon a Time (Part 2) - Before and After Infertility

Once upon a time...I was not "infertile."  Maybe I couldn't produce viable eggs and wasn't able to get pregnant, but I didn't know it.  I didn't know anything about infertility, and I was happy.  I just went about my life, hanging out with friends, going out on dates and worrying about how not to get pregnant.  In fact, if I had saved (and invested wisely) all of the money I spent on birth control over the years, I probably would have had enough money in the bank to send a child to college.  But I digress.

Around age 25, something changed for me.  I met my husband and I noticed that I was smiling at babies in grocery stores and was looking at baby clothes when I went shopping.  I still worked out, hung out with friends and watched movies.  But I occasionally found my mind wandering to how it would be to hold my child in my arms.  And it made me smile.  I realized that I wanted to be a mother.

My wedding day was a wonderful day and it marked a new beginning for me.  It was the beginning of my journey to becoming a mother.  My husband and I had a plan and, after being taken off a suppression medication my RE had previously had me on for endometriosis, we just happily waited for my cycle to start again.  When it didn't, we didn't panic.  We figured that having a baby was just going to take a little longer and be a little less traditional than we had hoped.  But as each failed IUI and IVF cycle piled up, our spirits sank.  I became consumed with all things "fertility."  It was no longer about having a baby, it was now about making a baby.  And let me tell you...making a baby is hard work.

For years, the first thing I did each morning was take my basal temperature.  That meant the first thought I had to have every morning was about fertility.  Then, I would get up and pee on an ovulation predictor stick.  Then I would drink my whey-yogurt-flaxseed-blueberry fertility smoothie for breakfast and, more often than not, head to my fertility clinic for blood work and an ultrasound.  I would spend every free second that I had at work on the internet, researching every article on IUI's, IVF's, diminished ovarian reserve, premature ovarian failure, the side effects of the drugs I was taking, the diets that are supposed to enhance fertility, yoga poses for fertility, self-help books on fertility, and every other fertility-related topic you can imagine.  It's exhausting just thinking about that time in my life. 

Then, during treatment cycles, there was the obsessing.  I would obsess about how many follicles I had and how long it was taking them to grow.  I would obsess about the level of my hormones, what the levels meant for my chances of conception and what I could do to change any of it.  Then, I would obsess about how many eggs we got at retrieval, how many fertilized, how many made it to Day 3 and...if we were lucky enough to make it to transfer...I would get to obsess about how poor the quality of my embryos were and what I could do to make them "stick."  I was so busy obsessing, at some point, I stopped talking to my friends.  I stopped talking to my husband (at least about anything other than infertility).  I stopped looking in the mirror or doing my make up.  I stopped exercising and going to movies.  I put on sixty pounds.  I stopped being me and I realized that, while I was still alive, I had stopped living.

That realization occurred only a few months ago.  I'm still mending friendships that I abandoned and I'm still learning how to have fun with my husband again.  We've both changed because of everything that's happened, and because we changed individually, we are needing to relearn how to truly enjoy being together as a couple.  We recently went on a vacation and I managed to go eight days without uttering one word about fertility issues.  At some point each day, I still would think about getting pregnant or about our egg donor choices...but I was able to let those thoughts go and just enjoy the sunshine.  I don't know if I will ever be able to go back to who I was or if I will ever be able to return to the social life I used to enjoy (especially now that all of my friends are pregnant or have small children).  I'm learning to live among "the fertile" and am slowly figuring out how to define myself outside of the label of "infertile."

Once upon a time, I was someone else.  I'm not that person anymore and, sometimes, I mourn the loss of that happy version of myself that was so full of hope and so unaware that there is a painful condition called infertility.  But sometimes, I look in the mirror and I'm able to see not what I've lost, but what I've gained.  I've gained strength, empathy, knowledge, and perspective.  I've learned to appreciate my friends, my husband, my dogs and all of the blessings that I do still have in my life.  And sometimes I'm even able to dream about what it will be like when I am in the future, holding my child, thinking about how difficult these last couple of years have been, and viewing this time as just a "Once Upon a Time."

Once upon a time...

That's how all fairy tales start, right?  And that's what becoming a mother is supposed to be...a fairytale.  Little girls are taught to dream of being a mother from the time they are old enough to pick up a doll.  In fact, I can't remember a time when I didn't think that, eventually, I would find the man of my dreams, get married and nine months later - POOF - I would be the mother of a beautiful baby.  And then, we would all live happily ever after.  That was the fairy tale I believed in...and therein lies the problem.  I believed in a fairy tale.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines "fairy tale" as follows:

fairy tale

n.

1. A fanciful tale of legendary deeds and creatures, usually intended for children.
2. A fictitious, highly fanciful story or explanation.

Looking back on the last few years, I have to say that I find definition # 2 to be particularly relevant to this discussion.  The story I was told, the same story that I think many of us hear as we grow into women, turned out to be a "highly fanciful story."  "Fictitious" may be a strong word...after all, there are some women who have exactly the experience described in the aforementioned fairy tale.  But I think the fairy tale of a girl's journey to motherhood that I was sold told as a child was, at the very least, "fanciful" by omission.

There were many things that got left out of my fairy tale.  For example, no one told me that, at age 29, a reproductive endocrinologist would be sitting across from my husband and me, telling us that we may want to consider using an egg donor because six failed IUI's and one failed IVF was enough to indicate that we were facing an uphill battle with the use of my own eggs...the dreaded diminished ovarian reserve and/or premature ovarian failure.  No one told me that I would be sitting across from a different reproductive endocrinologist, two years and five additional failed IVF's later, having the same conversation.  No one told me about injecting medications into my stomach for weeks at a time, or about crying for months over the loss of a child that hadn't even been conceived.  No one told me how I would have to shake away the shame I feel every time I see tears in my husband's eyes when another negative pregnancy test is announced.

In fairness to those who promulgate the fanciful story that gets fed to little girls, there are a couple of legitimate reasons to leave the scary parts out.  First, they are a serious buzz kill and everyone knows fairy tales are not supposed to make you cry (see definition #1, above)...unless the tears are tears of joy.  The second reason I can see for leaving those experiences out of the widespread version of the fairy tale is every journey to motherhood is different.  This is true even for those of us ladies who have similar diagnoses, are of similar age, or are pursuing similar ART methods.  Every person's journey is unique in so many ways.  In a sense, we all have our own important tales to tell.  That's why sharing our stories with one another is so important.  During those times that our stories intersect, we are given a golden opportunity to strengthen one another and maybe even share a laugh or two.  We get an opportunity to teach one another, learn from one another and become better people for it.  

For that reason, this princess is going to lay my story out there for everyone to see.  Every midnight run to the local pharmacy for a pee stick because I am "certain" that I feel pregnant, every night spent obsessing over medical journal articles about how to improve ovarian response in IVF cycles, even every Ben & Jerry's binge will be proudly (or not so proudly) displayed for all of you to see.  For better or worse, I am writing this tale all the way to "happily ever after," and if I can, I'm taking all of you with me.