Tag Archives: DOR

It never gets easier

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Donor Eggs, IVF, Pregnancy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

So, in case you were wondering, it never gets easier. Or at least it hasn’t for me yet.

My sister (who also has DOR) is scheduled to have her second, naturally conceived baby next month. And I couldn’t be more thrilled for her, and I couldn’t be more jealous.

And just now (literally 12 minutes ago) I just got a text from my BFF. She’s pregnant. Unexpectedly.

And I am ECSTATIC for her. She has PCOS and went through fertility treatment to conceive her son, and we had recently been talking about when they were going to try for another one – we had a long laugh about how “trying” meant something very different to us now then it used to. Trying means doctors, and needles and suppositories and dates with the dildo cam instead of wine and movies and sex and dates with our SO . And now she’s pregnant, which is a miracle and I am totally legitimately thrilled. But I’m also bummed. She was the one other person who sorta kinda got it. Of course, her babies are bio babies and so I have an entirely different level of emotional infertility shit to deal with, but still. I just can’t shake that sense of playground injustice that makes me want to stomp my feet and yell “It’s not fair!!!!”

Do I want another baby? Maybe? Probably not? But do I want to have that weird feeling in my stomach and pee on a test and be shocked to see two lines? YES. Do I want to plan a special surprise for my husband to tell him that we’re pregnant? YES. Do I still want a bio baby? YES. Do I love my boys any less because they’re not bio babies? NO.

At least now I’ve come to realize and embrace that I am big enough and complex enough and mature enough to have contradictory feelings at the same time. I can feel thrilled and bummed at the same time, and both of the feelings are real and legitimate. I can desperately want a bio baby and still know that I would never trade my babies for anything, even bio babies. I can be glad that my sister and my friend don’t have to go through IVF to conceive and still be pissed that I had to and they didn’t. Those feelings are ok. Now I just have accept that it’s going take more time, maybe a lot more time, for the infertility wound, in all of its many facets and manifestations, to fully heal. And as you know, I really really hate waiting.

Donor eggs?

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Hi everyone – sorry I’ve been gone for so long. First I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your thoughts, comments and well wishes. There are times in the last few months when I’ve been in a pretty dark place and your support has been invaluable to me. So, thank you.

Things have been pretty rough ’round these parts. A few days after we found out that my sister has DOR and can’t donate my whole family came out to visit. It was already planned – my mom wanted to be out here while my sister and I got our tests finished. And it was terrible and awkward. We didn’t discuss it. Not even once. Such a huuuuuuuge elephant in the room!! It was awful.

After they left I just tried to put the whole thing from my mind. It was just too big, too much to deal with. Once again, I felt totally overwhelmed, completed defeated and entirely alone. *sigh*

A few weeks ago when my husband was out of town I spent an entire day watching documentaries on adoption. Not gonna lie, they painted a pretty dismal picture of adult children with serious attachment issues, separation anxiety and abandonment issues, even when they were adopted as babies and raised by warm and loving adoptive parents. Clearly, not all (or even most) of adopted people feel that way but it was eye opening. That same night I started looking at egg donor registries, just to see what was out there. I saw a girl who had a teenage photo that looked just like me – I sent it to my mom and she said “I don’t remember you dressing up as a cowgirl for Halloween”. It’s pretty good if even your own mom can’t tell! But, to use that girl would be upwards of $35K (not including travel) which is way outside of our budget considering that our savings are already drained from all this other infertility BS.

So, now I’m looking at frozen eggs. However, the more reading that I do about egg donation the more “on the fence” I become. Most frozen egg donors are anonymous, and I don’t want that. I don’t want them all up in my business, but (if I were to go this route) I believe donor conceived children have a right to know their genetic heritage. After all, S and I would have gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to ensure that our child was genetically related to us (well, one of us), how could we take away our child’s right to know the people they are genetically related to?

Plus, if I were the donor (HA) I would want to know that the eggs I donated went to good people. I don’t know that I would want to be heavily involved with them or the children, but I’d like to know. 

There’s a girl in the egg donor registry that I like. A lot. She looks like me – red hair, green eyes, similar build. Her nose is bigger, her lips are fuller, her eyes are slanted. I think she’s lovely – a prettier, more petite version of me. But she’s 22. Which is great, reproductively. But who’s to say that at 27, or 30 or 35 or when she wants to have her own children that she won’t regret her decision to donate? That she won’t wonder about her “other” possible children and be concerned for their health and happiness? I would be, if I were her. So for her, the potential future genetic mother of my potential future donor children and for those children themselves I’d want at least to have the option for limited future contact. But I don’t think that’s possible with frozen eggs. 

On top of this, I have all the usual fears about using donor gametes. Will I be able to bond with a child that’s not genetically mine? Will I always be looking for the donors traits? Will I be able to handle it? Will the child love me? Will I always feel second rate, second best, like I’m not really their mother? Will my family/friends/society be able to accept the child? Will the child think we were selfish for focusing on our desire for a child rather than what that decision would mean for the child who has to live with our choices? Would the child feel “incomplete”? Have I thought through this decision enough? Will the child want to find/have a relationship with their donor?

I know a lot of you have been here and have grappled with these same issues. Any thoughts or advice you have would be awesome. We have a meeting with our RE tomorrow to discuss donor eggs (including whether or not this particular donor would be open to limited contact) so hopefully he’ll be able to help clarify some things as well.

Man, remember when things were straightforward and easy? Nah, me neither.

Brutal honesty

24 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR), IUI, Musings, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, ,

One of the brave ladies whose blogs I follow had some bad news today. Only 1/3 of the eggs they retrieved during this cycle were mature. She is understandably crushed and feels that she has reached the end of the road. Despite thousands of dollars of drugs and treatments, months of healthy living, and the highest level of medical intervention available she feels like pregnancy isn’t going to happen for her. I feel her pain. My feet are also on that road, and it is a sad, lonely, painful path to walk.

We spend so much time scouring blogs, boards and articles looking for hope – trying to find that one success story, trying to convince ourselves (and often succeeding) that we are the lucky ones, that it will happen for us. People answer your questions and are very supportive – “Keep trying!”, “Don’t give up!”, they say. That support is invaluable, but it’s also misleading.

A few months ago I posted a question on an infertility board and got lots of warm, friendly, supportive, positive replies. I felt good, better, even hopeful.  And then a woman sent me a personal message. She told me that she had the same diagnoses as me and was a bit younger. She had basically the same response to meds. And she was going to use donor eggs. She urged me to open myself up to other options, because, as she said “it was very, very unlikely that I’d ever carry a pregnancy to term with my own eggs.” I was angry, hurt and confused. She’d burst my bubble. Where was the support? All those words that I wanted to hear? I didn’t want to hear that it wouldn’t work, I didn’t want to acknowledge that as a possibility.

Months have gone by since she wrote to me. Since then my AMH has dropped. I had a miscarriage and another unsuccessful Clomid cycle to add to my list of failures. My odds, which were never good, are in the toilet. So I wrote her back. I asked her questions. And I now trust her as someone who will tell me the truth. Not in a mean, hurtful or dismissive way (like my RE) but like someone who has been there. Like someone who walked this horrible road before me and understands the pain, frustration, and utter powerlessness that you feel. She found a way out of this terrible place. She recently gave birth to twins –  a boy and girl – as a result of her DE cycle. She beat infertility. Not in the straightforward way we all wish for, but in a subterfuge – an undercover coup. She found the courage to accept a work-around, and she has 2 beautiful children and couldn’t care less where they came from. 2 souls now exist that didn’t before. Her arms and heart are full. She won.

Let me be very clear here – donor eggs, surrogacy, adoption – these options are not for everyone. It is an extremely personal choice. The point is that there is a choice. One of the most awful things about infertility is that your choice, the control of your own destiny, the control over your own body is taken away and no amount faith, karma, begging, wishing or believing can change that. But there are options. There are choices.

So, when my blog friend wrote how defeated she was feeling my first instinct was to comfort, reassure and sooth her. But I erased that response and tried to be honest, hoping that eventually she would find some comfort in that honesty and that it would help to make the road she’s on a little less frightening. I wanted her to know that even if her very worst fears come true (which is very possible) life won’t come crashing down. There is hope, but it may look entirely different than you thought it would.

252023_10151198428449117_2074835779_n