Trick or Treat?

“On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises from his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys to all the children.”

— Linus

 from It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

P.S. This is a fake pregnancy belly costume in case you forgot I am not pregnant.

Coming to a theater near you

We are 24 weeks and approaching THIRD trimester- the home stretch. This calls for a little Art of Being Infertile movie trailer:

Happy Blogiversary! A year in review

Just as I was contemplating my battle with time in the last post, I realized it's been one whole year since I started my blog. Yes, it's my blogiversary! As I created my video "year in review," I see that when and where I began this blog is in some ways exactly the same as now, in that I have no baby, but in other ways completely different. I have more losses behind me. I have endured more disappointment and more fears come true. But I also have come to see myself as courageous. I have started on a new track with surrogacy and I feel that I am on the final road. It's close. Whatever this conclusion is, it's close. I don't kid myself anymore in thinking that the next IVF will work on me. That dangling carrot has been cut and I now seek greener pastures with third party help. Yes, H-E-L-P. Bringing in a gestational carrier and potentially an egg donor or adoption is the last phase of this journey and I believe that one of these will be my answer. 

So I thank all of you who have followed me over this year and continue to support me on this next cycle with my gestational carrier. Whereas last year I bitterly made IVF Christmas cards, [some of my favorites below:]

Oh Progesterone, oh progesterone

My Misfit Uterus Finds a Home

Helping Hands

A question of faith

this year I've been able put aside some bitterness and look forward to 2009. I look forward to it because I know in my heart that this journey is going to end. I won't beat a dead horse. We will move on quickly to the next option if it doesn't work. I am just keeping my eye on the end, the finish line, the credit roll. On that note, I am wishing everyone a joyous and IVF stress free holiday and a blessed new year!

Craft Therapy: Paper Cutting and Metamorphosis

As I said before, I need to get back to myself. I need to feel like I am creating things even though I am unable to create life. I would say I am certainly needing some kind of metamorphosis. As I face my 37th birthday this Saturday, I need to rejuvenate and reinvent. I've been cocooning myself since my ectopic to self-preserve, but it's lonely in here. When I was in Pingyao, we met a master paper cutter who's the Edward Scissor Hands of my dreams. If only I could cut paper like this and create these magical forms! Wen Tao learned paper cutting at the age of 7 and studied decorating design. She now designs and creates paper-cut works and keeps this art alive. She made these amazing butterflies for me for free and I think the video says it all. 

I chose to actually buy from her a beautiful paper cut work with a pattern of peonies and pomegranates. A pomegranate is suppose to symbolize fertility because of its many seeds. I found that there is so much hope and wishful thinking embedded into all these symbols in China. Good fortune, health, long life, and fertility seem to come up in so many images. A lot of it comes from the way Chinese language is structured. For instance, the word "carp" in Chinese is similar sounding to the word "profit" so it therefore becomes a symbol of good fortune. English really lacks that kind of relationship. The word "luck" can sound like fuck, stuck, muck, suck, yuck, which is pretty accurate to my own special relationship to luck, but certainly doesn't resonate its true intended meaning.

So since being home, the culture of signs, symbols, and superstitions have made me look around for signals of change. Most of my life remains the same as when I left for China so it's been hard to not feel stagnant. Even my two single girl friends who've been struggling to find someone for years are both suddenly happily dating people right now. It's like I am waiting for something, anything, to change in my life for the better instead of for the worse and I'm feeling left out in that department.

In the solitude of my infertility cocoon, I've been trying to understand how to better myself in ways that have nothing to do with my uterus. I've taken up violin again. I'm digging out an old book proposal I never actually sent out to publishers. I'm emailing old friends to reconnect. I'm looking at job listings. Summer is pretty much here and it's strange to have no IVF to plan since I've been going at this non-stop. I realize my entire life structure has been so reliant on IVF that I'm not sure what to do with myself. So I am trying hard to find a sense of change and progress besides menstruation, drug doses, ultrasounds, and egg retrievals so that maybe, just maybe, my "inner butterfly" can be set a flight.

Besides looking for a better a career direction, I've made a pledge to start "Craft Therapy" to hopefully satisfy this need for progress. This means I will be getting back into all my crafting - knitting, embroidery, sewing, silk-screening, and yes I'll even try some paper cutting. I think there is a very deep-seeded therapeutic benefit from making things with your hands and having that object have function, beauty, or symbolism. I think it has a lot to do with setting a goal and making it happen - something that baby making has failed to live up to and causes nothing but utter frustration. I think having projects that I can actually finish will give me, on a smaller scale, that emotional satisfaction that infertility seems to be draining from me. I welcome you all to join in!

Assignment #1: (For myself and any other infertile crafters out there) Create a craft project that either expresses something about this infertility journey or creates a symbol of hope (Remember Little Miss Positive? She misses all of you and hopes to reemerge soon).

Pièce de résistance

It's all come down to this. Little Miss Positive's whole reason for living has come to this final showdown. As I wait for how my IVF trilogy will end, I wonder if it will wrap up like many satisfying trilogies with the third installment concluding with return, resurrection, and redemption. Will this be a profoundly balanced Star Wars trio, or will this drag on like a Police Academy 4 and 5 where each sequel is more ridiculous than the one before?

As we all know, the two week wait is a magnet for negative thinking. I've been left to my crazy self to try to predict if it worked or not. Unlike the first days after transfer when I felt so flushed with joy with the hard hurdles behind me and implantation ahead, the days leading up to beta make my once happy cruise ship become the titanic. I keep expecting and looking for the iceberg that's going to sink us. I'm crampy, but that could be PMS. I had smelly urine with my last IVF pregnancy, and no sign of it this time. So now I am obsessed with my pee. I'm getting hot flashes and sore boobs but that can be from the progesterone. Then I start to do the lesser of evils asking myself, "Between another failed pregnancy and a negative, which would you take?" You're just fucked any way you look at it. 

So Little Miss Positive knows that this is her chance for a pièce de résistance - her most important part of the collection, the best part of the meal, and most importantly, a chance to prove me wrong. She also knows that she'd rather not be burned and thrown in the trash, as this is what I feel like I would do to my soft plush friend if this doesn't work. So she's gearing up for the fight of her life. It's the ultimate battle between good and evil, light and darkness, good luck and bad luck. But when I look at this epic clash of powers, this messianic climax soon to arrive on beta day this Saturday, Little Miss Positive once again reminds me it's not in my control. It's not even in the control of positive thinking. I believe it comes down to the force. The higher power, God, the universe, the holy roll of the dice, however you want to look at it, is the one in charge. So, yes, I have to say, "May the force be with me, please please please!" My only consolation in these 4 days before beta, besides a lot of praying, is a fortune cookie that simply and truthfully stated:

"The only sure thing about luck is that it will change."

Hopefully this will be the last episode of the adventures of Little Miss Positive. If not, stay tuned for reruns on Channel IVF, The Art of Being Infertile.

Guru Little Miss Positive

Little Miss Positive knew that I needed to exorcise some demons today. I am in need of nuclear weapon strength positive thinking. I need a prescription for heartache. As I mentioned in my last post, my friend's pregnancy had not only reminded me of how badly she handle things, but it reminded me of how unfair it all is and what a tragedy for our friendship that she had kicked me while I was down. Recovering from my ectopic I was teetering on the edge of deep deep depression and her pregnancy news was that final push into the abyss. So my resentments run deep for her and her pregnancy. Today, the day she is being induced for delivery, I need another adventure.

So the first defensive move Little Miss Positive told me to do was create an email filter. That's right. Who needs a baby announcement today, or any day for that matter? So I made a nice little folder called "No Man's Land" where all those possible baby announcements will automatically and magically go without even making it to my inbox. Done. Then Little Miss Positive reminded me that this day may be the birth of your friend's child, but it's the day I start my first step toward my child. Stimulate me! I started my stims shots today, marking the cultivation of my fine fat plump eggs. My dose has been cranked up to 300iu of Gonal F and 2 menopur, so we are hoping this brings us more to work with.

Little Miss Positive agreed with fellow blogger luna in that you may be getting lemons, but make lemonade. All these bad memories bedeviling me are not going to help me get pregnant. Why let my friend once again create some kind of emotional mud slide and hurt my chances of success? "Oh Little Miss Positive, show me the way!" I screamed. So she said that you need to first collapse physically. Second, drain the mind. Third, think spiritually. She told me that relaxation results from re-creation and this needs to be a continuous flow. This flow of force goes from higher power to the individual and then back to higher power for renewal. Continuous flow? How can I quiet the mind when I can barely stop obsessing about my pain to write this post? Little Miss Positive looked at me with a Tim Gunn "Make it work!' expression, reminding me that we already have the tools - fertility yoga, acupuncture, and meditation - so use them!

P.S. Little Miss Positive and I recommend Anji's meditation CD "Imagery and Meditations to support In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF)" if anyone is looking for one. 

Stay tuned for more adventures of Little Miss Positive. Posted weekly here on Channel IVF, The Art of Being Infertile.

Roast the Pig! Bring on the Year of the Rat!

Little Miss Positive and I were right on the same page today. It's all about renewal. Ring in the lunar new year and be gone you rotten year of the pig. That's right. "Abidia Abidia Abidia, Th Th Thats All Folks!" Now don't get me wrong, I am in fact born in the pig year (1971) so last year I was elated with the thought of giving birth in 2007. How full circle that would be - the red fire pig year being the auspicious year for child-bearing. Well, I missed that boat. 

But then Little Miss Positive reminded me that perhaps that was the wrong boat to begin with. The pig year was one of general misery and frustration for me. So Little Miss Positive said, "Book 'Em, Dano!" See ya in 2019 porker. Now the year of the rat brings change. Starting off my next IVF in this new lunar year feels good. So we spent the day getting to know our little rat friends and celebrating a great new zodiac cycle. The pig being the last of the 12 animals, we are now back to the beginning with the rat. It's truly a fresh start.

To quote from the wonders of the internet: "A Rat Year is a time of hard work, activity, and renewal. This is a good year to begin a new job, get married, launch a product or make a fresh start"; "Babies born under this sign are intelligent and hard working. They are intelligent, curious, sociable born leaders who do well in any group, but value ties with family and close friends more than social contacts."

So Little Miss Positive and I had a good adventure today, in fact a great one. We were reminded of all the potential good change there is out there in this world. All of us IVFers will continue to work hard and should expect new beginnings. So I wish you all a very Happy Lunar New Year!

Stay tuned for more adventures of Little Miss Positive. Posted weekly here on Channel IVF, The Art of Being Infertile.

Happy Box O' Drugs

The first time I got my enormous box of IVF drugs, I felt a mixture of terror and curiosity, like I was rubbernecking at my own car accident. It looked like a scary mess but I couldn't stop staring at it.

The second time I got my enormous box of IVF drugs, I was so excited to get started again that I was a kid in a candy store. That special delivery was like some long awaited care package.

Now the third time getting my enormous box of IVF drugs, I've come to a new threshold. Having been around the block a few times, hardened by tough times, my eyes glaze over. The screen swirls to dream mode and suddenly I've been hustling on the streets for years to get high on baby making. Everything seems to be in slow mo. I open my box with the excitement of an IVF addict finally about to get her fix. Both hallucinogenic and fanciful, my drugs are as happy to see me as I am happy to see them.

Have you gotten your box o' drugs fix?

Time won't give me time

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There is no doubt that the biological clock tick-tocking away is a tired cliché of a woman's reproductive life. Sure, we are warned by endless media about how our eggs will shrivel up and die by the time we are 35, but my body never felt like it was ticking away. I still look pretty much the same since college, or at least that's what people tell me. As much as my body could blow off that relentless biological message, alas, the mind is a whole other animal. My mental clock has unfortunately absorbed all those warnings and went into overdrive. I told myself starting 2008 that I would not dwell on the past. Nor would I obsess about time. However, I can't help but laugh at how many times over the past couple years I have said "I will never do that," and yet inevitably that turns into a "sure, I'll do that." We don't have the leisure time to say "never." So it's amazing how many miles my mind has travelled while constantly saying to my body "are we there yet?" I remember being so torn up about whether to start clomid. CLOMID! My god it's just a pill. Now I can pretty much at the drop of a hat lie on my back and get ready for my IV drip and spread my legs for probing. I am, in the end, an easily trained monkey. 

So our minds and bodies often have a major disconnect in how we exist. I think we all struggle with our heads convincing us that time is slipping away at exponential speed. Even if I were 25 and having fertility problems I am sure I would still feel like I am running out of time. So when people advise me, "why don't you take some time after this miscarriage?" I would like to show them a peek into my mental biological clock to answer that question. Time won't give me time.