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Hope is something you pee on

~ …trying to survive infertility, IVF and egg donation.

Hope is something you pee on

Category Archives: Guest Post

The Infertility-Anxiety Connection

10 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by mybrokenoven in fear, Guest Post, IUI, IVF, prenatal depression

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

anxiety, avery neal, dealing with infertility anxiety, Infertility

Guest blog by Avery Neal, MA, LPC.

Ever noticed that those struggling with infertility also frequently tend to suffer from anxiety? Perhaps you’ve experienced this first hand or have a close family member or friend you’ve watched go through this. Though there is no question that the standard hormone regimen that women face while undergoing treatment for infertility exacerbates mood shifts and can cause anxiety, there are some commonly experienced feelings associated with infertility that can easily lead to the development of anxiety.

tumblr_na7v260vtV1r1gdbuo1_500From a psychological perspective, an ongoing sense of helplessness for a prolonged period of time causes us to experience anxious thoughts and feelings. Chronic helplessness results from the sense that no matter how hard we try; we may in fact be quite powerless in a situation that is beyond our control. This is particularly painful when the outcome is significant to us, as is the case when we desperately want a child.

In the case of infertility, there are many factors that are beyond our control, not the least of which is that our body may or may not be doing what we want it to do. No matter how much we will ourselves to get pregnant, the exact methodology that will result in a successful pregnancy and timing of it remains largely unknown on the front end of it.

So, what can we do to decrease anxious symptoms? Some points to consider:

  1. Have Fun. Enjoy the freedom that comes with having less responsibility. It doesn’t mean that you want a baby any less, but engaging in things that you enjoy will give you a break from the heaviness (and scheduling) that accompanies trying to get pregnant. It will also serve as a temporary distraction, making the time pass by infinitely faster. Make having fun a priority so that you don’t completely lose yourself in a process that can easily become all consuming.Be-Present
  2. Stay Present. Make a conscious effort to live in the present moment, rather than succumbing to the temptation of living in the future. It is so easy to make everything revolve around waiting, but this only makes each minute feel long and excruciating. Try shifting your awareness to what you do have, and focus less on what you don’t. Take some time to visualize what you desire each day in great detail, holding those positive images in your mind. You can go back to those positive images any time worry begins to take over.
  3. b33939c3dab256313c0b791adeb17bd1--missing-people-quotes-not-okay-quotesAcknowledge your Feelings. Some days are going to be easy, some days will not. It’s okay to feel disappointed, angry, sad, and hopeless at times, and everything in between. Often the road to a successful pregnancy is not a straight one, and of course, you are going to have some feelings with each turn that it takes. This is completely understandable, so be gentle with yourself. Give yourself full permission to feel how you feel, unapologetically.
  4. Try Not to Get Too Isolated.
    It’s easy to want to hibernate when we are sad. This is especially the case when we are facing a difficult time getting pregnant and it seems everyone else is posting an ultrasound photo or hosting a baby shower. If you need to protect yourself from this by getting off social media, for instance, listen to that need. It is important to protect yourself from things that make you feel worse. However, make sure that you are continuing to engage with your primary support system. Fight the temptation to become too isolated, which only feeds anxiety and depression.

The key to overcoming distress caused by an ongoing sense of powerlessness is to take charge of what we can. It may require a bit of thought, but thinking of various areas of our life where we can directly influence our experience, leaves us feeling much stronger and less helpless.

14064148_1851516475076460_974622851677695743_nAvery Neal, MA, LPC is a practicing psychotherapist and writer. She specializes in depression and anxiety at all stages in a woman’s life. She has also worked extensively with women suffering from prenatal anxiety and postpartum depression in addition to helping women recovering from divorce and healing from emotional abuse. Avery is passionate about empowering women to discover their own inner strength, leading to higher self-esteem, confidence and overall life satisfaction. In 2012 she opened Women’s Therapy Clinic, which has locations in both The Woodlands, Texas and in Denver, Colorado.  Her upcoming book is entitled “If He’s So Great, Why Do I Feel So Bad?”.  To read more of Avery’s writing visit http://www.womenstherapyclinic.com/blog.

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Perspective from an egg donor

30 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by mybrokenoven in Donor Eggs, Guest Post, IVF, Pregnancy

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

altruism, donor eggs, egg donor, egg donor experience, hero, IVF, pregnant egg donation

I’m sitting in a coffee shop across from a woman I haven’t seen in 25 years and I’m struggling to hold back tears. This woman was my best friend in 5th grade but we lost touch in high school as interests and friend groups changed and life moved on. We reconnected through Facebook several years back and one day while I was pregnant with my boys I was randomly scrolling and noticed a post where she mentioned her egg donation. My jaw hit the floor. I sat, stunned, for several minutes trying to manage my thoughts and feelings and I finally just wrote to her and laid it out. I told her I was pregnant through egg donation. I thanked her on behalf of the women she donated to. I told her she was a hero to me. And I had a million questions but I didn’t want to to pry. But here was a real live person who could give me some insight into the mystery woman who was always in my thoughts, the anonymous woman had donated the eggs that let me have my babies.

Last month I finally had the chance to sit down with my friend and hear her story. It moved me to tears. And this childhood friend, my hero, has agreed to share her story with us. So thank you B, for everything.

Why did you decide to donate?

I never wanted kids.  And, spoiler alert, I still don’t.

But my friend E did.  Desperately.  And it wasn’t happening.

So that’s how my donor adventure started.  Just kinda exploring the options, a little bit on behalf of my friend, but mostly because she made me aware of the need out there with the nights of heartbreak and tears and hugs and feeling utterly helpless to do anything for someone who meant the world to me. And when she got pregnant and clearly didn’t need me and my eggs, I thought, well, everyone has an E in their lives.  So even though SHE didn’t need me anymore, someone’s E did.  So I would do it for them.

And I won’t lie. The money was nice too.  I’m no saint. I’m not sure I would have been altruistic enough to do six rounds of daily shots and blood draws and ultrasound wands up my junk and days off work on behalf of a multitude of strangers if I hadn’t been getting a nice wad of cash for it.

But it started off with wanting to help.

What was your donation experience like?

It’s been a while now.  I’m 41 and the last time I donated was when I was 33.  But I remember in the beginning, lots of tests.  Family histories, and forms, and psych tests, and blood tests, and financial disclosures, and talking to my boyfriend (now husband) to see if he was cool with this, and then more forms, and more tests.  They vet the crap out of donors, or at least the place where I donated did.

Beyond that I remember bruised thighs and tummy from all of the injections. I remember daily blood draws, to the point where I got track marks on my arms and I was afraid people would think I was an addict.  I remember getting really intimate with the transvaginal ultrasound wand –was that daily too?  I feel like near the end of each cycle it was–and how I stopped caring who got all up in my junk cause pretty much the entire world had seen it at that point.  I remember the nurse drawing a target on my butt for the “trigger” shot, so my husband would know where to jab me—the one shot I didn’t do myself.  I remember daily calls with the nurse coordinator, to let me know my hormone levels and how to adjust my shot doses the next day. I’m not sure if the recipients got calls too….I know everyone’s cycles had to be synced up to some degree, but I honestly don’t know much about the recipient side of that, whether they got the info on my progress or not and how that effected whatever process they had.  I remember feeling “puffy” as I got close to the end of each cycle.  My husband swears you couldn’t tell from looking at me, but I felt like I was wearing a weird heavy water balloon in my tummy. Like I ate too much, but it wasn’t my stomach.

I remember sitting in the waiting room of the clinic on retrieval days. I looked around at the other women there and I felt guilty. I assumed they were women who were trying so hard to get pregnant. I remember crying for them as I waited for my retrieval, and blaming it on the hormones.

The retrieval itself was under anesthesia, so all I remember about that is counting backwards. But every time, my husband said the first thing I asked when I woke up was how many eggs there were. And because I was coming out of anesthesia, I would immediately forget and ask again. And again. And asking if it was ok, if it was enough. Was that a good number? Is that enough? How many eggs? Is that good? How many?

Do you think about the families you donated to?

I do sometimes. Not as much now as when I was going through it, but they cross my mind. But honestly it was a bit like donating blood—once those eggs left my body, they weren’t mine anymore. They weren’t connected to me. Who they went to and what happened to them after that wasn’t part of my experience.

I did six cycles, and after my first round, they classified me as what they called a “high yield” donor, so each cycle after that was split among three women. So that’s sixteen possibilities. The clinic that I donated at won’t tell the donors anything about what happens with the eggs, not even if it was successful or not. And honestly, that isn’t a bad thing in my opinion. They said it was because when they did tell donors, they would get upset and depressed if it didn’t work out. So it is nice in a way to still be able to think of it as 16 possibilities, rather than knowing that for some of them it still didn’t happen. That would upset me.

There was one family that I still think of a bit more than the others. A little while after my last round of donation, I got a package from the coordinating nurse/clinic. I had no idea what it was. But when I opened it, it was from one of the women who received my eggs. Inside was a package with a little handmade neckwarmer filled with rice and some stationary and a card. Which I still have. And which still makes me tear up whenever I think about it, even as I type this. It said “Thank you for helping us make our family.”

That makes it more real for me. Before I got that package, it was just something I did and it wasn’t really connected to real people. But that card made it real for me. Made HER real for me. This woman whose cycle was once synced up with mine, and who received this donation from me, whose family I weirdly became a part of in a roundabout sort of way. Yeah, that got me. It still gets me. And holy shit (am I allowed to curse here?) do I hope it worked for her. I hope it worked for everyone, but damn me I really hope it worked for her.

Would you ever want to meet the donor families?

I wouldn’t object to meeting them if they wanted to meet me I suppose. But honestly I am mostly…unconnected to that.

I don’t have a burning desire to meet the children. Because they aren’t MY children.  Not in any way that means anything to me. They have a bit of my biology, but so does that guy who was in a car accident and got some of the blood that I donated.  I know it isn’t really the same, but it is to me a bit. I didn’t carry them. I didn’t get excited over seeing a heartbeat in their ultrasounds. I didn’t go through the pain of childbirth. I didn’t feed them or tuck them into bed or yell at them to do their damn homework.  Their mom did. I am not their mom.

But I would understand if they were curious about me and wanted to meet me.  And I would be ok with that I think. Although I would be afraid they would be disappointed. I am utterly ordinary.

Are you glad you did it?

Yes.  Without hesitation, yes. There has never been a moment of regret, even in the cramping and not so pleasant aftermath of retrieval.  And there never will be.

I gave 16 women a chance to have a family and I only wish it had been more, that I could have done more.

abbbf0638f7efb1f02048626d8bd970a--hero-quotes-good-quotes.jpg

 

 

Guest post from another mom of donor conceived twins

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by mybrokenoven in Donor Eggs, Guest Post, pregnant after infertility, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

donor coneived twins, donor eggs, Infertility, twin mom, twins

Recently, another mother of donor conceived twins commented on one of my posts, and her story was so moving to me that I wanted to share it with you (with her permission). In particular, it was a relief for me to hear from a mother who has both a bio child and donor conceived children, as that’s a perspective I’ll never have. I thought you all might like to hear another perspective from a mom who’s been there.

Thank you Kelly, for sharing your incredible story with us.

I have a biological son who is now 19; I had him when I was 22 with my first husband. I developed secondary infertility, possibly due to endometriosis or due to the severe thyroid problems I developed with my first son, or some combination thereof. The end result is that I was never able to get pregnant again.

My first husband and I eventually split, and my current husband and I eventually got married. We got engaged knowing that I had infertility issues and we stopped using any protection during the year of our engagement so that we could go into medical treatment right after our wedding (but always hoping for that happy OOPS! – clearly that never materialized). We started off with 3 months of Clomid – nothing. Then 3 rounds of Clomid assisted IUI’s – nothing. Then 4 rounds of OE IVF – nothing.

When we first started, I had initially said that I wouldn’t consider using donor eggs, that if we got through our OE IVF, we would call it good and move on. Except… I couldn’t. I knew I wasn’t ready to give up, and my husband, bless his heart, got right on board with it (the gut wrenching grief-from-the bottom-of my soul crying when we got the last negative call from the clinic may have made it an easy decision for him). We looked at both donor embryos (our clinic has an amazing embryo program with a money back guarantee if you don’t get pregnant in 3 attempts and has an 80% success rate) and donor eggs. However, my hubby really wanted that genetic connection, especially since I would still be carrying them. So, we moved forward with the DE.

I chose a donor purely on her physical attributes. I wanted someone with dark hair and eyes like me, and I wanted her to be tall, because I am really tall. I didn’t care about anything else, I just wanted to babies to at least be able to pass as mine. My husband’s sole request was that she be a proven donor.

Our fresh round failed, and at that point, I became convinced the issue was my uterus and not the eggs. I fell into a pretty heavy despair. My RE did a endometrial scratch, we did our transfer, and then I went back to work and promptly let it all go because I knew, without a doubt, that it would not work. Imagine my surprise when I got pregnant on that frozen round with our twin boys. I knew the very next day that something was different, but I refused to get my hopes up. I took a digital pregnancy test 8 days after the transfer and it immediately came up positive. It was so fast I didn’t even have time to pull my pants up. I literally set the test on the counter, stood up, and there it was – “PREGNANT”. At 11dp5dt my beta was 997, and my 2nd beta was over 2000. We knew we were having twins from that first test.

Having had a bio child and now 2 donor children, I am in a position to say that I don’t love my bio-son any more than I do my Twinks. They all came from me, and were all desperately wanted and loved.

As for looks…we got one who is my husband’s mini-me, from his looks to his temperament. And my husband and the donor both have dark hair, hubby has hazel-brown eyes, donor had brown eyes… and we got one baby who is blond and blue-eyed! We weren’t expecting that at all, lol. Everyone assumes he is a throwback to my dad’s side of the family as they are Danish and German and all fair and blue-eyed – people comment on it ALL THE TIME. To the point that I have given up reminding people that it can’t be possible, I just smile and nod my head and say thank you. However, I do like to think that my DNA turned those genes on and had some determination in their strong expression in him.

We registered on the donor sibling registry, and are in contact with the parent of one of our boy’s genetic half-sibling. It is only a couple of times a year, but it has been interesting. We are hoping to meet one day.

I don’t know how I feel about meeting the donor someday… conflicted, I suppose. I am so thankful for what she did… but I also have this fear of my boys wanting to get to know their donor. But, we decided before I even got pregnant that we would be honest with them from the get-go, and have books that we read to them (they are 17 months old) even now, and talk about it pretty openly in our house, with our family and friends. We have been very blessed that everyone in our lives was immediately open to and receptive of this idea, even people I thought were going to struggle with the idea. My family treats the boys just like they treated my older son.

It was a heart wrenching and long 3 year journey, but so worth it.

I love sharing my story with over DE moms so thank you for letting me do that.

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