All-In, Baby!

I’m still waiting to hear about the retreat…it may be full.  So, I can’t give an update about that yet.  I really want to be able to post like everyone else about day-to-day developments in my fertility journey.  But I can’t, because there are none.  I’m sure people are getting bored with my constant self-evaluations, but I am STILL waiting for our egg donor’s period to begin, even though it has been over 29 days since the donor coordinator said “I’ll call you when she has her first day of her menses.”  So, I have nothing exciting to report about.  Sorry.  I do, however, have an amusing anecdote about my RE and my addiction to infertility treatments.  So with that glowing introduction, here is today’s blog soup de jour.

Back in the fall of last year, my very wise (and hilarious) RE was trying to help me accept the cancellation of an IVF cycle.  I had been taking large doses of stimulation meds for something like 29 days, with zero follicles to show for my efforts.  When the RE recommended canceling, I bawled and bawled.  I just felt like I had given so much to the cycle…how could I quit?

He said “[Princess], this is not quitting.  Look at it like a poker game.  You got dealt a crappy hand this cycle.  It looked like it might be a good hand when you started betting, but now it is obvious that the hand isn’t good.  Is there a chance you could get a good card on the river that would save the hand?  Well…there’s always a chance.  But are you really willing to go all-in on this cycle when you can keep what chips you have left now and try for a better hand next time around?  It’s up to you, but there’s an obvious choice that takes your emotional and physical health into account.  You are not quitting the game…just folding a hand that is a stinker, so that you can hopefully get better cards in the next deal.”  (If you are not familiar with Texas Holdem’ poker, this reference was probably just lost on you.  You’ll have to trust me that it is clever!)

Thinking about canceling the cycle in those terms made me feel a little better about it.  I still cried but, every once in awhile, I would laugh through the tears, thinking about my RE trying so hard to convince me that canceling was the best move without making my emotional status any worse.

His analogy not only rings true when looking at an individual IVF (or IUI) cycle that isn’t going well, it also ties in nicely to my theory that infertility treatments are an addiction.  When I’m in an IVF cycle, all I can think about is getting to the end of the cycle and winning with a pregnancy.  When things don’t work out, I have an urgent need to get right back into another ART cycle.  An old New York Lottery slogan – “You have to be in it to win it” - comes to mind.  I don’t play the lotto.  Mainly because I am a big fan of math and it is hard to buy a lottery ticket when you have a solid understanding of statistics.  And yet, when my RE said I had a 5% chance of getting pregnant with my own eggs, I wanted to jump right into another IVF cycle…IVF cycle #7 to be specific. (Lucky number 7, right?)  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the Prince is also a fan of statistics and his analytical mind said that a 5% chance of success was not worth what we were going through each cycle.

So, now we’ve moved to a new “game” – a donor egg IVF cycle.  In this game, I’ve been given 50/50 odds of walking home with the prize.  Sometimes I think to myself:  “If I had six thousand dollars, and was told I could put it on a game with 50/50 odds of doubling up, I would pass on the game and keep the six thousand bucks.”  I’m risk-aversive.  But when the prize of the game is getting pregnant, I’m all-in, every time.  And even the ultra-conservative Prince is on board with 50/50 odds.  So, I just have to wait to be dealt in…and the waiting is killing me.  After all, I’m due for a big win.  And this IVF cycle is the new Lucky  #7.  Yep…I’m definitely an addict.  

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.

In A Land Far Away...

I think that the second phrase at the beginning of most fairy tales -the phrase “in a land far away” - is used to distance the reader from the story.  After all, we know that fairy tales don’t mirror the world that we live in.  So if we are going to immerse ourselves into the tale and believe that it is possible, we need a way to explain the discrepancies between our world and the world in the tale.  “Ah…But it happened in a land far away” usually does the trick.

For a long time, I felt like the stories I heard about people getting pregnant must be happening in a “land far away,” because I certainly didn’t see them happening to me or the people around me.  But then one of my friends became that fabled “signed up for adoption after being told she couldn’t have a baby with her own eggs, only to find out she was pregnant” girl.  Another friend became the “failed to get pregnant after multiple ART procedures and then got pregnant naturally while relaxing on vacation” girl.  All of the urban pregnancy myths were coming true around me.  I even had one friend who had four failed IVF’s, then ate copious amounts of pineapple for weeks, and got pregnant.  I could no longer distance myself from the clichéd stories by believing that they were fanciful or that they didn’t happen in my world.  And without the “in a land far away” buffer, I was forced to face the reality that the miracle of motherhood happens everyday, all around me, not just in another place that may or may not exist.

Of course, I am happy for my friends, but their successes bring home the point that others are getting their miracles, while I’ve still never experienced a single positive pregnancy test.  All my pee sticks have only had one line, and I’ve been on vacations and “just relaxed” as much as the next gal.  I even ate pineapple until the song “If You Like Pina Coladas” made me nauseated.  No baby.  Which begs the question, if these great fertility fairy tales are coming true in my world, why aren’t they happening to me, too?

In addition to the self-pity and doubt that comes along with the removal of the “land far away” buffer, the fear of hope is also an unfortunate side effect.  That may sound like a weird statement – why would you fear hope?  But for me, hope has not been my friend in the past.  With great hope comes great disappointment if things don’t work out.  My issues with that go back to my last post, regarding “attachments to expectations.” 

My husband is so practical and logical.  He understands the odds of success involved each time we try a different approach to getting pregnant, and he somehow balances practicality with hopefulness.  He loves hearing that my friends have gotten pregnant after they struggled with infertility.  Somehow I think he figures their unconventional successes in as a factor that increases our odds of success.  I like to think that I am also a logical person, but I cannot achieve the balance that he can.  I throw myself into each ART cycle, each alternative therapy, each “natural” try, thinking that if I can just “believe enough” I will get my miracle, too.  When that doesn’t work, my husband takes the whole thing in stride while I become a blob of emotional goop.  I’ve taken hope to an unhealthy place and I am still trying to figure out where the tipping point lies between optimism and setting myself up for disappointment. 

I guess my ultimate point here is that sometimes, for me at least, ignorance is bliss.  I need the “in a land far away” buffer right now because my fertility journey is in such a scary and uncertain place.  While it is probably better to be grounded in reality, sometimes, when things get too scary or to sad, I need the temporary solace provided by the belief that a fairy tale is simply a fairy tale.