1. “Take a vacation.”
If I was going to get pregnant from taking a vacation, I think I’d have quite a large family by now. I live in France, we have FIVE WEEKS of vacation a year. And let me tell you, we have had some quite pleasurable attempts at baby-making on many, many of said vacations.
2. “Relax, just stop thinking about it.”
Does a doctor tell a patient with a hernia or heart problems or cancer to stop thinking about it? I think not. Infertility is no different from any other medical conditions, there is usually a medical explanation.
3. “Why don’t you just adopt?”
‘Just’ adopting doesn’t exist. Adoption is a long and difficult process. There are many reasons why infertile couples don’t ‘just’ adopt. In our own experience, we did actually begin adoption proceedings, but after hearing the truth about how difficult it is here in France, decided that at this time adopting isn’t for us.
‘Just’ adopting in France takes from five to seven years, and less than five percent of the couples that begin the adoption process actually have a child in the end. Oh, and in case you think we ere just being too picky, let me clarify that in our initial paperwork we did not ask for a newborn and we are completely open to foreign adoption. We agreed to accept several children from the same family and that the oldest could be up to nine years old.
Adoption is also very expensive, and with an under five percent success rate, we decided that our chances of having a child before I am forty were better with IVF.
When people ask me why I don’t ‘just’ adopt, I’m often tempted these days to ask them why they don’t.
4. “I knew a couple who had given up trying to have a baby and just after filing for adoption, the woman got pregnant!”
It seems like every ignorant non-infertile knows this couple, who magically got pregnant after filling out adoption paperwork. I would like to know, is there a special formula? Should I pay the filing fee as well and look through the catalogs of children waiting for homes? Will that help me trick my body more effectively? Maybe I can spin around in circles while standing on my head and do a rain dance as well.
5. “You’re still young honey, you have time.”
Infertility knows no age.
At twenty nine, I went off the pill, my gynecologist told me after a year of trying to conceive that we had time. After the second year I was pregnant, then had a miscarriage, which he took as proof that ‘everything as working’ and told me we had time. At thirty one, two years after the miscarriage and four years after going off the pill he finally let me be tested.
I’ll never forget the day he sat me down in his office and explained to me that I had high FSH and what that meant. ‘Diminished ovarian reserve’ – he told us that I was very lucky to have been pregnant once and that we had no time to lose. This was the first time someone compared my ovaries to a woman over forty. I felt shocked, betrayed. Everyone had said we were ’so young’. We were young, my ovaries were not.
During this last IVF cycle, we learned that my right ovary is going into menopause. I’m thirty three.
6. “Just don’t be another Octomom!”
I have received this comment more times than I care to admit since ‘coming out’ about the fact that we are going the IVF route.
It makes me cringe every time.
The classic Octomom comment is not only ignorant and inappropriate, it shuts down all communication between myself and the person who makes it. I don’t see how I could open up all the difficulty and depth that comes with doing IVF to someone who is willing to make such an inane comparison before understanding what we are going through. Comparing a regular person who seeks IVF to Nadya Suleman is like comparing someone who is having marital problems to the girl sleeping with her step-father that you saw on the Jerry Springer Show.
7. “Why don’t you just do IVF?”
Many infertiles do not go the IVF route, for various reasons. Again ‘just’ doing IVF is like ‘just’ adopting. It doesn’t exist. IVF is a long, arduous procedure. It taxes a woman’s body as well as her emotions in a way only someone undergoing it can understand. It puts strain on your marriage, it is very expensive, often not covered by health insurance, and there is no guarantee on the outcome.
Many people have ethical concerns about the procedure, when it comes to embryo creation and freezing, and what to do with the little guys when you don’t need them any more. It is something every couple undergoing the procedure has to think about, and some do not feel comfortable with the grayness of such questions.
Doing IVF or not doing IVF is such adifficult and personal choice, and is not something taken lightly.
8. “IVF is immoral.”
If a couple has decided to pursue in-vitro fertilization, they have likely worked through the gray area of questions and do not need blanket statements condemning their choice. Often these kind of statements arise from ignorance about the actual procedure, not to mention statements from the pope/pulpit about embryo wastage and how assisted procreation technology “violates human dignity” and that IVF is wrong because it “separates human procreation from the conjugal union.”‘
There are so many things I could say about this, and other opinions that have been formed on IVF from a religious standpoint, but it really deserves it’s own post. Half of my family is Catholic, and most of the others are Evangelical. Needless to say, we have had some very hurtful comments from people who really were just trying to help. I’ve had every Bible verse you can imagine quoted at me, in order to steer us from our deviation off the ‘narrow path’.
I have often asked for prayer, and while most people respond that they are, and they will, and that they are hoping and believing with us, there always is that one person that rather than supporting, uses the opportunity to preach at us.
The first person I told about losing our tiniest of pregnancies after our first cycle of IVF told me that he ‘hadn’t felt led’ to pray for us, and losing the pregnancy was, for him, confirmation that what we were doing was not immoral.
Another loved one, when hearing that w are planning to try again in the fall, told me I should pray about it, stating that, “If the Lord doesn’t build the house we labor in vain.” This person, whom I dearly love, had recently lost her husband to cancer. I wonder how she would have felt is someone quoted that same verse to her concerning she and her husband’s decision to pursue chemotherapy? Out of love, I did not ask her and calmly changed the subject.
If a loved one has decided to pursue IVF, why not try to understand the procedure rather than blindly condemning it?
9.”My husband just looks at me and I get pregnant!”
Oh, thank you for the side of salt to go with my wounds, how thoughtful! Why don’t you tell me how you were on the pill or breastfeeding and they just kept coming? Would you like me to plan your baby shower (on the anniversary of my miscarriage) while we’re on the subject?
10.“God has a plan. Trust Him.”
Along the lines of the whole ‘God’ argument, this would be a whole other post as well, with a side of philosophy, theology and apologetics.
God has a plan. OK, so I know this kid, a teenager, who grew up in Rwanda and saw his parents shot before his eyes just before being kidnapped by a rebel army that turned him into a killer.
“God has a plan.”
What? Did God’s plan involve this child becoming an orphaned murderer against his own will? Does ‘God’s plan’ involve babies dying and people starting and my bank account being in the red and my failed right ovary and high FSH?
Being a believer doesn’t mean you have to be so stupid. God may have a plan but their are environmental and medical factors causing infertility, and it is more and more common. Would you tell someone dying of AIDS that “God has a plan”? Do you mean to say that God gave them AIDS?
I have a new slogan: “God has a plan; shit happens.”
Of course, this list is not exhaustive. Here’s a game – what are some things people have said to YOU other infertiles that should be added?
For the non-infertiles reading this, are their things about infertility and those going through it that you would like help better understanding? If so, then what?
I don’t know what to do.
It’s over. The appointments and the hormones and the craziness and the hope – every emotion filled and spun onward from our bulldozing towards an unattainable the last several months – it’s all gone.
Is this the hardest part?
Somehow it’s easier to suffer from the hormones than from the sadness. When I’m going bonkers from Lupron, or my ovaries are aching from Menopur, or have ouchy nipples and pasty panty stains from the progesterone, I know there is a reason, purely chemical, that does not have to be dealt with on more than a superficial level. I know that I am doing this to myself for a reason and that reason is the hope that it will work, that we will have a baby and that I will be freed from this limbo we have been living the past (almost) five years.
It didn’t work.
I know there are women who do IVF over and over and over again, and that I should not be discouraged. I know that there will be other chances. I know that it is not over.
Maybe I feel lost knowing that a life, however tiny, did begin to latch on to me.
Funny, the only experience I have with motherhood at thirty three is the failure to be able to provide the most basic of things: a safe uterus for baby to grow in.
My RE is overbooked so I can’t even have my WTF appointment until August 18th. Manboy insisted somewhat by a non-violent sit-in at the secretary’s office last week, and was curtly awarded the promise of a telephone call for his efforts.
She called yesterday.
My RE says that the IVF cycle confirmed once again what we already knew, that I have a very diminished ovarian reserve, and taught us something that we didn’t know, that my right ovary has called it quits. I asked her what she could do about that. She said nothing really, except to let my ovaries rest over the summer, and in the fall try again, this time with an even more aggressive protocol. She warned me though that it would be a heavier treatment, and more difficult to endure. She told me bluntly that in my case she would make no guarantees about even IVF working, and that even with a different protocol, that we might not do any better, eggwise, and we might even do worse. But she did say that she thought we had a chance, and that even having the tiniest glimmer of a beginning of a pregnancy is always a good sign. She compared me to a woman over forty when she spoke of our chances of success. I tried to act like I did not hear that last comment.
And I told her not to worry about what I could endure, to bring on the heavy artillery.
After coming so close and having our hopes dashed, I’m feeling a bit masochistic. Besides, I don’t think any treatment could come close to hurting as much as the heartbreak we are feeling right now.
Words are so hard to find right now.
I spent a bit of yesterday afternoon putting this together…You know how when you break up with someone and every song on the radio sounds like it’s about you? I guess that’s how I felt this past weekend when I heard this song.
It haunts me.
It’s Sunday morning, not even 7 a.m.
Sleep evades me.
Manboy and I stayed up past 2 a.m. He cairried the canvas I was working on, and the easel, as I carried my paints and brushes up the stairs behind him to the third floor office.
I didn’t want to be alone.
“Are you sure you want to work on this one?”
I had seven or eight unfinished canvases propped against the wall of the dining room that I hijacked eight months ago and turned into a studio. Various subjects, but none were calling me. Usually I work on several at a time, according to my mood. But not the past month or so.
Since then I have only worked on one, a large flower exploding into light. When I worked on it I thoought about hope and life and second chances, and the word ‘maybe’.
Maybe.
He knew what I thought about when I worked on it these past weeks, and now I am aware how continuing must seem so morbid to him.
I do not want to seem morbid, still, I continue this painting.
Yesterday I chose to caress the petals in darker, somber shades. I thought about this budding life that was, even so tiny, that had even taken fragile root. I thought about how either it or my body had not permitted to continue. I wondered with guilt which it was. I cried as I painted and listened to Leonard Cohen and the clicking of Manboy’s fingers on the keypad of his Mac. I will never know what might have become.
I cried and I cried, and I painted, and the emptiness grew inside me, large, a balloon, waiting to explode, waiting to change, to be born into something. It moved through my fingers and my eyes until settling the mass of it’s weight between my womb and my heart.
I am pregnant, only with a sadness that I cannot explain.
Beta today was 4. Which means we are out of the game. Which means that even as I was being so encouraged and helped by your emails and comments, our little guy had already given up the fight.
Still, once again, I cannot tell you how much it has all meant to me.
Manboy and I cried like wailing animals on the couch, and then, at his suggestion we did what any other sane grieving couple would do under similar circumstances :
We drank cheap beer and then jetted down to the Côte d’Azur to spend a day at the beach.
The Mediterranean waters were still a bit chilly, but the sand was hot. We layed close to each other the way unmarried peope do and slept and talked and cried and got sunburnt and got sand everywhere and said how we’d always remember the day Michael Jackson died as the day we knew our little embie was gone.
Something about knowing that our lonely little little embie had fought, and even implanted, makes its short existence that much more precious to me. Like the little guy wanted to be with us, but just didn’t make it. I know I’m imagining this, embies can’t want, they’re only cells, don’t have a brain yet, still…
Manboy suggested naming the embie ‘Jackson’.
Tonight we’re back, and I’ve already gotten my first assvice phone call. (crowd applauds)
I’m glad so many people seem to know so much about what they think is best for us and God’s frecking will and whatnot, but why do they so need to tell me about it before this little clump of cells that carried so much hope and promise of life has even left my body? Can’t I have 24 hours of “I’m sorry for your loss” before getting lectures about moving on and the ethics of reproductive science?
I spent a half hour heaving and crying in the shower after said telephone call. Manboy found me afterward, crumpled and shriveled like a raison in the tub covered by a wet towel and looking like something from an After School Special.
So tonight we’re opening a 2001 bottle of Côtes de Tricastan (yummy local wine) that my friend visiting last week left for us. Her instructions upon gifting the bottle were that it would be our celebratory bottle. If I got knocked up, we’d open it and Manboy could enjoy. If not, well, we’d still open it, but, eh, you get the picture.
I don’t think there’ll be a drop left in the bottle before we go to bed. Oh, and I’ve been hankering to try the homemade chestnut hooch I made and served to my guests last week, but couldn’t drink.Oh, and the bottle of muscat has been calling my name… and the creme de cassis…
If losing Jackson the Embie isn’t a worthy excuse to get happily hammered, I don’t know what is.
My beta HCG is 13, which is very low. I spoke to the secretary at my RE’s office who was quite concerned, saying that they like the levels at 14 days past egg retrieval to be at least 40. I’m having another blood test done tomorrow, and then another Monday, to see if it is doubling. Or not.
I asked her what my odds were. She said that I shouldn’t give up hope yet, but that I shouldn’t let my guard down either. This is so hard.
Please keep our little Embie in your prayers. Please.
I broke down tonight, the kind of sobs that make you roll into a ball, heaving, unconsolable. I don’t want to be consoled. I want to be pregnant.
I will have my beta tomorrow morning. I’ll post here as soon as I’m strong enough to handle it, if it is a BFN. If it’s a BFP, I’ll likely be shouting it from the rooftops.
I feel so fragile right now, and the fall, if I must fall, seems like it may be very long and hard.
Are you comfortable in there?
I hope you like my mucus. My RE said that it was ‘beautiful’. It mad me laugh at the time, though I admit I was quite pleased. I hope your accomodations have been satisfactory.
Are you still there in my uterus? How’s cell division going? If I understand, assuming that you have decided to stay, you should be implanted by now, which means that we’re sharing the same blood, and nutrients.
I’ve been trying to eat healthy for you, mostly organic at that. Tonight I had merguez, mashed potatoes and peas in a pod. Do yo like peas in a pod? They’ve got vitamins to help you grow.
I hope you’re still growing.
Daddy and I have little nicknames for you. Our Cell-Baby, Mini-Baby, Pre-Baby, Chickpea, Pois Chiche (Chickpea in French), Bout de Chou (Bit of Cabbage), and Bout de Cellules (Bit of Cells). We called you Blasty for a few day when you were younger, assuming you had reached the blastocyst stage. But mostly, you’re just ‘Embie’.
Are you still there, Embie?
I just wanted to let you know, had you decided to stick around, and implant, and try to grow, how much we want to meet you and know you and wrap you in a warm, welcoming blanket of love.
I hope I can be a good mother to you, my little Embie. I’ll try. I’ll do my best to listen and to see you for who you are, as an individual. I ‘ll try to guide you when you are young, and teach you to make your own choices when you are older. I’ll treasure you. I’ll tell you how much we wanted you and how you evaded us for so long. I’ll tell you how much you have brought to our lives by deciding to latch on, to grow, and to stay.
If you are still there, I want you to know that every terrible and painful and huliliating experience these past several years has been worth it just to hold you in my arms and to look into what I know will be your beautiful eyes.
In two days time, I will know if you are still here. If only you are, and then you will stay, and grow, and be born, and grow some more, I promise to love and treasure you every day as much as is humanly possible.
Love,
Mommy
Wednesday morning I go into the lab for a blood test, to see if our little precious embie is still living and growing in my belly.
I am on the edge of my seat. Hoping, wishing, praying, daydreaming, almost believing and being frightened out of my mind of the blow that a negative result might bring.
I’ve been feeling a bit sick to my stomach the past few days, but I don’t know if it is baby-juice or the heat. I’ve also gotten up to pee the past four nights, something I rarely have to do. However, I am so used to being infertile and un-preggers that even the merest hint that this might be related to a pregnancy sounds like a cruel joke.
It’s so confusing. I’m really afraid that I’m willing these symptoms into being, seeing as I just want this so bad. It hurts so much to want this.
Every time I go to the bathroom I obsessively check for blood, while pleading, please, God, no, just let me have this. I even get up in the middle of the night to do so. It’s awful.
Last night I had cramps that felt like period cramps.
What I wouldn’t give to flat out vomit first thing in the morning.
Please, let it be true. Please let this be my cycle. Please, let me have a baby.
(I’m terrified.)
It’s always nice to have microbiologist and a therapist come to visit just after embie transfer.
Especially when the microbiologist is one of my favorite people, one of the funnest, silliest, smartest, most caring, interesting, and all around wonderful people I know. I hadn’t seen my friend for over ten years and I don’t know of a better person to help me feel like myself again after mainlining all that Chinese Hamster Ovary and menopausal pee the past few weeks.
There’s something about talking about cells and embie-ness with someone who is a real life expert in tiny things AND a friend. Over anecdotes of daily life “Hey guess what? This morning I put my prenatal vitamin in my girl-hole and the progestene vaginal suppository in my mouth! Now isn’t THAT a riot?But, uh, should I be worried?” – I got scientific reassurance, as well as her friend and travelling partner, listening to me cackle on about my feelings of infertility and not having ANY support from my mother at the tie when you would think I need it most and how I used to think I was a little boy and the like.
I feel so selfish, like I was on this warm umbilical receiving end of love and understanding, and like I was myself again, like they really cared.
I don’t talk about my French friends much, and that’s basically (surprise) because I basically don’t have any! Or very few. Don’t get me wrong, we have a social life. We see people. We hang out. But friendship, in the seven years I have been here, has coldly evaded me. I like to blame them (blame it on the French…) what with their defined gender roles, and protocol, and formalness, and rigid requirements for meal preparations when having guests. I blame them, outwardly, I bitch and say that it just isn’t easy to talk anything that seems real without offending, that I surely come across as brash, uncouth, that my in-laws don’t get me and that I don’t get them. I don’t think the French and I, at least in here in La France Profonde, mix well at all. We get along, aggree that the countryside is the most beautiful and the wone most delicious in our tiny corner of the world, but other than that don’t really have any raging desire to spend more time and energy in each other’s presence. It’s kind of complicated.
The truth is, after being here for so long, and feeling like such an idiot in social circumstances, I forget sometimes, how simple, how easy a friendship can, and in my opinion should, be.
The highlights:
- Driving around locally, visiting some beautiful villages and ruins and castles, making fun of the gaudy decor in some and amazed by the elegant beauty of others.
- Following a sinewy wine route bordered by farmland, perched stone villages and lavendar fields in bloom, liquering my friends up at a few local vineyards, tasting, while being taught about the local wines.
- Acting like a buffoon in a pottery store and breaking a handmade cup. Apologizing profusely to the owner while trying to hold back laughter, feeling like a jerk, and being happy that being a teenage jerk is still possible, even at 33.
- Cooking like a French grandmother and making my friends taste (some of these for the first time) saucisson, tarte provençale, merguez, clafoutis, creamy local goat cheese (St Felicien) and cherries bought by a farmer, on the side of the road.
- Going to one of my favorite stores, Mac Dan, which is my favorite because of its cheesiness, (does anyone remmeber Mac Frugal’s? – it’s quite similar) and making fun of English names of men’s off brand colognes. Some winners: ‘Jummping Cool’, ‘Stand In’, ‘Predator’, ‘Sexual Expression’, ‘Oh No!’, and ‘Clouds of Love Man’.
- Walking up to the ruins and the castle on the hill just behind my house, smelling wild arugula and thyme crushed under our footsteps, remembering, in their awe, why I first fell in love with this land and that it truly is beautiful.
- Talking, listening, appreciating the words of another and feeling something close to being understood.
- Having guests helped take my mind off of what was going on a bit, what with being either PUPO or in the 2WW, whichever way you decide to look at it.
- At night, sometimes, after I fell asleep, I could feel myself, in a dream, tiny and floating over someplace deep inside my abdomen, looking for a sign of life in me, wondering, hoping that I was not alone, and would not be after their impending departure.
