The Truth Breaks Out

Children can be so honest, sometimes (when they are not lying their heads off, I mean).

Here I am, faking my way through my social life. People at work ask how I am and I say, "Fine". My face closes up. My manner does not invite further inquiry.

A nice lady at church says hi and asks what we have all been doing. I say, "Oh, you know - the usual".

The Little Dude pipes up and says, "We've been making embryos - in a dish!", he says, as if it's all been quite exciting. "But then my mummy cried when the baby didn't come", he adds mournfully.

I watch the nice leady reel as she confronts this outbreak of inappropriate truth-telling in the polite church environment. She pauses as she wonders whether to pretend he didn't say it and save us the embarrassment, express her sympathy, or simply busy herself with her own child, who is pulling at her skirts. But she is too late to do any of it because, while she thinks about it, I have run off to the bathroom to hide where no one can see my lips trembling and my face collapsing - a private place where no one can see me cry.

But later on I have to start laughing as well. That lady teaches Sunday school. Wait till the Little Dude starts sharing with the other pre-school aged kids what mummy told him about where babies come from. The story is longer and wierder than they can possibly imagine...

IVF 5: Grieving

I am grieving. I am. I try not to let the world see how sad I am. I am working and busy with my life. I have too much pride and awkwardness to cry in public. But sometimes the tears well up and I just can't prevent them.

I am grieving for my embryos. Not just my latest embryo, which I nicknamed Moja (The Little Dude was known as Mojo when I was pregnant - A private joke, as the Big Dude hadn't contributed sperm, but he was "working his mojo"), but all of them. Five of them in the last two years and one extra in 2004 who accompanied the Little Dude into my uterus but didn't stay.

I know they were not babies, those six little embryos. They were just little four-celled creatures. But they were potential babies. They were all alive when the specialist put them inside me. They were our potential children and my Little Dude's potential brothers and sisters. I am grieving the fact that he didn't get to know them just like I am grieving the fact that I didn't get to know them. They are still a loss, a huge loss to me.

I am grieving for the loss of what I have put into this process. My bank account, so carefully built up and now empty. My body, so laboriously prepared and now fat and slack and exhausted and ill. My relationship with the Big Dude, so hopefully worked on, which has taken so much strain. His health, which has taken too much of a burden and is not good.

But mostly I am grieving for my hopes, which were carefully cultivated to motivate me through this painful, unpleasant, humiliating proceess. My hopes of a second child, for a noisy house with two children playing and fighting, for a life filled with people.

I tried, but I lost. I just have to face the fact that I put everything I had at risk for this, but I lost.

My Little Dude was disappointed, too. I had to tell him some time ago what we were trying to do, because all these visits to the clinic at the hospital, to see the specialist, made him anxious that I was sick. He knows that some people get sick and die and I could see him worrying. When we first saw the specialist, the Little Dude came out of the offices and said, tremendously excited, "Where's the baby? Can I see him now?" It was him who asked for one more try.

He is a smart and sensitive boy and good at empathy. My Big Dude is uncomfortable with grief. He hugged me but then he sat rigid in his chair as I wept and wept. The Big Dude never cries. It's ridiculous, but I felt like I should apologise for crying.

But my Little Dude climbed on my lap, took a tissue and wiped my tears away as they fell. He was disappointed himself, but he gave me little sympathetic kisses through the day and climbed into my bed and stayed with me all night to comfort me.

At least I got one child. One very beautiful child - beautiful inside and out. In my worst moments, I feel like I have ruined my life by trying again. But I don't blame myself for looking at my child and wanting another one. Humans are greedy. We get one kind of happiness and just want more. I don't blame myself for trying for another child, for reaching out for more of this kind of happiness.

I haven't made any final decisions. Our clinic asked me before this one failed if this was our last attempt. I muttered "Probably", but I didn't really have an answer. I still don't and it's too soon to try to have an answer.

It's possible we will try again. Officially, we are booked in for another cycle in February 2010. But the clinic says I have to pause for a while and let my body recover from all these cycles, or it will simply stop responding to the drugs altogether. Of course, after what my specialist said about our lack of time, a break for a few months may make the decision for us, anyway.

Rationally, we can't afford another cycle, especially financially. But if we'd focused on being rational, we probably wouldn't have tried at all.

I tell my friends I am running out of cash and optimism. I think if we had more chance, I would be more optimistic and more willing to keep going. If we had good cycles and were simply not pregnant yet, the obvious answer would be to just do more cycles until we got there. But our cycles are terrible. Out of five cycles, we only got to transfer three times. Specialists say that IVF is a numbers game, and our numbers are very poor. Our chances of getting pregnant are really very low.

But the sad fact is that, in some ways, its the cash that is the main problem. If we had limitless money, I would probably keep going until I had not a single egg left. Then I might even consider donor eggs. It's a step well beyond where I wanted to go, but the whole process is so far beyond anywhere I actually wanted to go that its a moot point. But all of that costs money, a lot of money. We are already badly in debt. I curently have two major loans - one for the Little Dude which is almost paid off and one for the last two years - and I would need take another loan to try again. It seems dangerously foolhardy to take on more debt when I still have my Little Dude to raise.

It's very hard to know when to give up. I read somewhere that infertility patients are second only to cancer patients for what they will put their bodies through. I told myself I would do up to five or six cycles, then see how I felt, and that is where we are now. There are always people you know or hear of who flog their bodies through nine, ten cycles, and are just about ready to give up, then get pregnant on that final cycle. But of course, there are always those people who you never hear of who do their nine or ten cycles, bankrupt their wallets and their bodies and their souls, and have nothing to show for it. I'm more than ready to move on from IVF, but its hard to move on from all possibility of a second child.

But I don't want to keep going just because I don't know how to stop.

Apologies to my readers for the length and incoherence of this post. But, but, but... my thoughts are like one, long, endless sentence, with too many buts. But this is the only place that I can say all this.

Intuitively, I have a feeling it may be time for us to take a break, at least for now. We need a pause to rebuild, and appreciate what we have. The pause may become a permanent stop. It may be time for a different kind of life, a different kind of happiness.

IVF 5: Fuck and Alas

It's a negative result for us this cycle- confirmed today after a few days delay.

Fuck and alas, indeed. We are screwed, my friends, screwed. Apparently, my uterus is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to stay there.

RIP my brave little embryo... Thanks for trying, and I really mean that. I appreciated the effort. But I would have liked to have known you.

IVF5: Beta Today

I have my pregnancy test, known as the beta, today.

Sadly, I am feeling quite pessimistic about the outcome of my cycle. I was hopeful a few days ago, especially as I have been more nauseous than usual on progesterone.

Personally, I think it is just a little cruel that IVF patients need to go on progesterone supplements at the end of their cycles. It supports any possible pregnancy, but the list of side effects includes: bloated stomach, fatigue, nausea, sore breasts and mood swings, ie the same "side effects" as being pregnant.

So every time I've felt like throwing up, I've also felt a little hopeful.

A few days ago, I started to feel almost triumphant, because my stomach started to recoil at specific smells and then started to reject the idea of certain foods. I looked at a plate of chicken salad and pushed it away. I was simultaneously grossed out and happy, because chicken was something I couldn't eat when I was pregnant.

But for the last day or so, I have been feeling much more normal. Then, since my beta test was delayed because it fell on a Sunday and my clinic was closed, I yielded to temptation and bought a home pregnancy test. These usually can't detect the very earliest chemical changes of a pregnancy, but some of the "early response" ones can detect an early implantation. There was not even the faintest of faint lines. A blank window greeted my hopeful gaze.

It reminded me very much of an entry from my favourite infertility blog, where the writer and the commenters posted in haikus that reflected their infertility experiences:

Two pink lines or one? Urine ripples, surging wish... One. Fuck and alas.

Another test this morning showed the same.

So its not looking good. But I will take my beta test and try to suck up the result in as dignified a manner as I possibly can without killing anyone.

IVF 5: Quality Over Quantity

My fertilised egg has continued to develop and become an embryo. Another hurdle cleared and only one more to go.

The transfer this morning was excellent: a kind, friendly group of women all clearly pleased for me and wishing me well. The transfer itself was gentle - while the moment the speculum goes in is never much fun, I couldn't actually feel the rest, which is a good sign.

On our departure, I inquired about our embryo, and was told that it was a top quality, grade one embryo. Embryo quality is the best overall predictor of implantation and pregnancy. This is the best we've done in more than a year.

A grade one embryo and a good transfer are great news. I have just as good a chance of getting pregnant as any woman walking out of the clinic, and probably a better chance that most.

As I walked back to the car this morning, it was almost too much to take in. I could feel my whole body and soul light up with hope. Usually, I try not to hope too much. But dammit, after all that misery and humiliation, I'm going to enjoy this and stay hopeful as long as I can.

Just stay with us, little embryo. Mummy wants you to stay.

IVF 5: It Made It!

We were supposed to call at 10:30am this morning for our fertilisation report, but our nice embryologist said she would be visiting our egg at 7:50am this morning and I could call then if I wanted.

I did. Our little egg is fertilised and ready to go!

Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God...

IVF 5: Finally Some Good News

I just spoke to my embryologist, who said the egg looks quite good. It's too early to assign it a formal grade, but the crucial factor is that it has a polar body, which makes it possible for it to be fertilised. The egg is a little dark, but not too bad at all.

I could tell it was good news, because she sounded excited. In fact, she was too excited to have the tact to not tell me how surprised she was!

I like this embryologist. Not only is she always extremely nice to me but, when she told us last time that neither of our eggs had fertilised, she had obviously been crying. She hardly knew us, but she wept for us. It made me feel less alone. I trust her to do her very best by my little egg during the ICSI process.

I've tried to stay as neutral as possible about this cycle, to keep my expectations low, because it just hurts too much when they are dashed over and over again. And of course, my expectations really are low to be so thrilled to produce one egg that apparently has the potential to be fertilised. It's hard to see how I could set the bar any lower.

But I must admit I feel excited and hopeful for the first time in a long time. I suddenly feel just the teensiest bit younger, knowing that I'm not all dried up just yet. Even if I don't get pregnant, I'm glad to feel this way again.

IVF 5: ICSI

As usual, my IVF cycle didn't go well. I knew my specialist thought I wasn't a good prospect, and this was confirmed when I saw the recommendations for a massive dose of stimulation drugs followed by ICSI - injecting the sperm into the egg. They were really bringing out the big guns, now!

I started the cycle with four good-looking follicles close together in size and a number of smaller ones. It looked surprisingly promising. But over the space of a sad, humiliating week, three shrivelled up and I was left with only one viable-looking follicle and some much smaller ones unlikely to catch up.

The recommendation was to cancel the cycle as, in most cases, one follicle barely justifies the process.

But I felt that, if I failed to even complete three cycles in a row, let alone get pregnant, it would be hard to justify any future attempts. If I cancelled this cycle, I was unlikely to try again. It would be all over.

With the way my cycles have gone, there was no guarantee that my cycles are going to get any better. It's far more likely that they will get worse, that I am just running out of eggs and it's now or never. So, I heard the advice and decided to go ahead anyway. My specialist said there was a 90 per cent chance there was one egg in that follicle, about a 70 per cent chance of fertilisation, and about a 50 per cent chance of actually getting an embryo to transfer. Even if I don't get pregnant, and just get the one egg, just hearing about the egg quality will give me some idea as to whether we ought to just quit or whether there is still a chance.

Pickup this morning was fine - I was half-expecting no egg from that one follicle, but we do have that one egg. ICSI commences in the next hour.

Now, I am just waiting to hear.