A ceasefire during Thanksgiving

As we approach one of America's quintessential holidays, I can't help but reflect on where I was last year. Right about now I was finding out that my 2nd pregnancy was beginning to fail. The beta wasn't doubling and the ultrasound was about to confirm a blighted ovum that would bleed out as I sat with my whole family eating turkey on Thanksgiving day. So in a year from that rather thankless day, am I thankful for anything? 

The whole idea of appreciating what I have verses griping about what I don't have has been an uphill battle. The life that unfolded after that Thanksgiving loss didn't get prettier. The months ahead would bring another pregnancy loss - a 2nd ectopic to pour salt on the wound -and then a blur of a summer to conclude with my 4th pregnancy loss. So round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows. I feel like I've been my own battleground, spitting fire and declaring injustice at every turn for the losses I've endured, and keeping poised on the defense for infertility's potential attacks. So today I'm trying to quiet my war cries for a brief detente with the enemy. I'm not going to dwell on the thankless moments, I'm going to try to talk about the thankful moments: 

1) I've found wonderful women on bulletin boards, blogs, and in New York City who have provided me the support and comradry I've so desperately needed. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

2) My husband still loves me despite me being a pile of negative whiny bitchiness a lot of the time. Oh yeah, and despite that I'm barren.

3) I'm not going to miscarry while eating Turkey this year.

4) After a drawn out mess with bad plumbers and contractors, my two bathroom showers will finally be fully renovated this week.

5) I live in a great space in a great city.

6) Infertility has made me write again. 

7) I've found a fabulous surrogate and we are reviewing our contract with her now. Hope to have it signed by Thanksgiving - that would truly be something to be thankful for. 

In this time of giving thanks, I can't help but also think about forgiveness. In Chris Rock's recent stand up routine "Kill the Messenger," he has this monologue about how the less shit you have, the more shit you can talk and the more shit you have, you can't talk shit. For example, he says "fat girls" are allowed to bitch and rage at the "skinny girls," but if the "skinny girls" say nasty things about "fat girls" then "That's just mean." He's playing on the permission of those in shittier situations to talk shit about those who have it better. Well, in a prior post I talked some shit about a very close friend who got pregnant at the same time as my first pregnancy loss. Knowing full well that I was recovering from an ectopic pregnancy and agonizing over this tremendous blow, she chose to tell me of her pregnancy with zero acknowledgement of my loss. She went the total "I will pretend nothing is wrong" approach which as you all know failed miserably. 

Even though I was honest with her about this major blunder and I wanted to forgive her at the time, truthfully I never have. She's been trying ever since to get back in touch with me and dancing around in her emails to get some info on where I am. I've basically shut her out and I have come to see that I've been subconsciously trying to punish her. In the end, probably no matter how she told me she was pregnant I would have been pissed, depressed, and angry with her for adding to my pain. I know her well enough to know that it probably kills her that she's hurt me and fears that I hate her. And I've kept the wall up - if you have more shit than me than you don't get to hear the gory details of my much shittier life. What could I really say to her? Here she is with a new baby born the same time I would have had my first baby and she's got all these joyous moments to savor. How can I in good faith ask her about her life when I don't want to hear any of it? So I couldn't risk it. I know that there was a bit of revenge and entitlement in the mix too. I felt like I lost a piece of my heart with that first pregnancy loss. Irrationally, I feel like she was part of stealing that pregnancy away from me with her healthy pregnancy.  So I realize the very vengeful side of me has felt like if I have to endure this horrendous loss then she has to endure losing me. It's an ugly feeling, but every time I have tried to let it go the anger wells up in me again.  

I don't want to be, the highly offensive expression, an "Indian giver." I don't want to give and then take it back. I've been struggling this whole time with wanting to give her my friendship, but then also wanting to take it back when I am feeling miserable, spiteful, and bitchy remembering the pain she caused. She recently emailed again and I finally decided to throw her bone last week and open up a chance for her to express herself. She said how bad she still feels about the way she communicated her pregnancy and hopes I don't hate her. I could have walked away and left her hanging again, but I felt really bad and wrote her today assuring her that I know she didn't want to cause pain and that the devastation of the combined ectopic pregnancy and her pregnancy basically put an inevitable barrier between us. I think it was good to get that out again and to let her know that it will just take time to heal. I'm trying really hard to let go.

So I am thankful that I've been able to look beyond my bitterness. No, I didn't disclose details she been wanting to hear because in the end, those are still private. I still feel like it's a story I need to tell her when it's all over. But it was a reminder that the whole concept of the first Thanksgiving dinner was that Native Americans sat side by side to break bread with Pilgrims, the very people who shed blood on and took over their sacred land. So I think I've made my first step, albeit small, toward forgiveness. Though she's still going have to stay on the sidelines until my nightmare is over, I've given my dear old friend a raincheck that one day we will sit down, side by side, infertile next to fertile, and break bread. 

I'm matched!!!!!!!!!!

Dare I say it? It looks like I've found a partner in crime for this IVF circus. Not to slight my dear hubby, but you know what I mean - I've found my surrogate match!! How do you even describe this feeling? 

So did fireworks go off? Did I start bawling? Did we join hands in a jig together? Not quite. I can only describe it as both surreal and sublime. I was of course terribly nervous, but we had seen their profile and they looked so sweet and nice that I knew it would never be unpleasant. The question was whether that chemistry would be there and could she put me at ease with this insane road we are beginning? Could I imagine this woman carrying my baby and feel open and comfortable working with her for those intense 9 months? Could I see myself wanting to stay in touch afterwards? 

Out of respect for privacy I'll refer to her as "A." and her husband as "L." In such a short span of time so much was accomplished. We went out to Chicago this past week for work, to celebrate our 4 year wedding anniversary, and witness the afterglow of an historic election. Timing was on our side that A. and L. live in Illinois and so the meeting could happen this week. The plan was to meet A. and L. for dinner at 6pm outside of Chicago. I wanted to give us a little over an hour to drive out to the restaurant since Chicago's rush hour would be awful and for once I didn't want to be late to a very important meal (my husband and I are chronically late for everything). But of course to our dismay the traffic was bumper to bumper and my nerves starting to flare up thinking - "Damn, they are going to think we aren't good planners and can't even get to dinner on time." We called and apologized for being delayed and I kept saying to myself, "Relax and drive. Relax and drive." We sped into the restaurant parking lot and walked in a half an hour late. A. and L. were patiently waiting for us at a table and there was immediate warmth. I just could tell this would be a nice night. We talked, laughed, joked around. It was lovely and easy. I can say with certainty that she is fabulous. She's warm, positive, sweet, a hard worker, and funny. She's got 3 beautiful kids and has done surrogacy successfully for two other couples so this would be her third time. I am truly in awe of her. What an amazing person to give this kind of gift. She described it as a true "high" for her to hand the baby over to the intended parents. She joked, "I guess there are worse things to be addicted to!"

So for someone like me who can be quite negative, I feel drunk with a faith in humanity. It's beautiful to think that someone could help me out in this way. I have never more needed an injection of A.'s positive attitude. It's hard after being burned so many times to try to get excited all over again. I thought maybe I would be overwhelmed by meeting A. and just lose it in front of her. But the main feeling was peace and happiness. There's a new hope and a huge step in the right direction. Whatever happens, I know I am a little tiny bit closer to getting my baby.  

So what does this all mean logistically? For starters in order to work with her I have to cycle in Chicago. This means a new clinic and RE for me, but the upside is that Illinois is one of the best states to work in because they are so surrogacy-friendly. Technically we are now entering in the contract phase where our lawyer draws up our surrogacy contract that we hopefully will both agree upon and sign. Once that happens we are officially partnered and ready to go! Except for some medical tests and some other logistics we aren't too bad off in terms of moving forward. If all goes well I could cycle with A. in February 2009! Though that sounds far away it really isn't given how the holiday season will fly by. We can get synched up in January and be ready for a February retrieval and transfer. Holy crap, it's time to get healthy again and start doing some egg calisthenics!

Stumbling upon my metaphor

Just had to do a quick posting since I've been in Chicago this week and stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago today. The first gallery I walk into I see this! For my last blog posting I had just pulled a digital version of this painting from the internet because this tightrope walker really spoke to how I feel these days. So it's funny to stumble upon the real thing. I guess the artwork wanted to speak to me in the real physical world or maybe I am just psychic. Just wish I could tell the future when it comes to my fertility, but more news to come soon!

Tightrope Walker, 1885

Oil on Canvas

Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931)

Walking the tightrope

Every step gets a little more treacherous. How much am I willing to compromise at each step? All I can think of when trying to keep my balance is "Don't look down." But inevitably I always look down. Your legs shake. The fear starts boiling up, and you feel like you are about to fall to your death. As reckless as it looks, in my mind it make perfect sense to keep walking forward. The logic is clear- there's only two other choices. You either plummet down below (and there is no safety net) or try to walk backwards to get off the rope. Both leave me with nothing. So as I find myself intensely focused on my own feet, trying to walk on this tiny thin rope, I forget who might be watching me. What on earth is my audience thinking?

I got a reminder of that yesterday when a friend said something irritating. Instead of cheering me on, it was liking hearing gasps and cries from the audience which only makes you more nervous. I had just explained how I might have a new surrogate prospect and how sick as a dog I have been the past 2 weeks and how my body just feels so worn out. She said, "Are you sure you want to do this and not adoption?" I felt the irritation well up in me, but I just quickly said "No, it's anyway too late to turn back now." I know she meant well. They always do. I know everyone who is spared the infertility hell always thinks adoption is easier. It is so easy when you are in a position of gain and good luck to think - "I would never do that!" 

For the first time in a long time I started to feel like a freak show. Have I reached sensationalist talk show guest status? In this IVF circus, am I the lady with the special tent with the sign saying "Using a surrogate"? I felt like my friend was secretly shaking her head wishing she could say to me, "Stop." She's watching me walk the tight rope seeing how much I am wobbling, fumbling and crying along the way and for what? - Just to get to the other side. 

This is where it becomes so hard to share with friends your extreme fertility planning. It's one thing to do IVF and get support, but it's a whole other ball game when you let people in on the secrets of more alternative baby-making. I realize that even the closest of my friends might pass judgement on me. I realize that my decisions about disclosure are very important now. I need to be careful about who knows our secret life. I am walking this tight rope and the rope seems to be getting thinner and thinner, more dangerous, more frightening, more death defying. Shouldn't I be getting some respect instead of the "You are crazy" innuendos? 

P.S. I know I am suppose to be creating my own art on this blog, but I am borrowing these days since I've been just too tired to be creative. I hope for a new surge of inspiration soon. 

Oh surrogate, surrogate, wherefore art thou surrogate?

I am perched on my balcony looking out into the world hoping for her arrival. It's going to be a love story like no other. Who will you be? Where will you live? When will you appear through the trees bringing your light into this shadowed room? I am waiting again.

In our search for true love, there are always the false starts that are disappointing. We came close. A lovely woman from Iowa seemed like a great possibility but with further research we found out that Iowa would most likely require a step parent adoption. After everything I have been through I just don't think I can deal with the hassle of adopting my own child after I finally have the baby in my arms. Aren't I entitled to an end to this madness once I take a baby home? Do I really need to be subjected to a court hearing and a social worker home visit to allow me to adopt my own child when any maniac out there is allowed to have a kid naturally with no approval system? It's just absurd. So we are waiting to work with a surrogate from a state that our names can be put on the birth certificate without having to do any more legal crap to be officially "mother." 

It's hitting me these days how strange this whole thing is. This is truly online fertility dating. I study profiles of women with my requirements in my head but ultimately it comes down to a connection. Of course we want her to be healthy and fertile and honest, but there also has to be that je ne sais quoi about her that will win my complete trust. Everything can look great on paper but until you meet someone face to face you can't feel that chemistry. So as my mind runs away with dreams of Princess Charming, I know that anything and everything can happen with this new relationship. My heart beats a little faster every time I think that soon I will meet her. 

Good-Bye Family Tree

As I walked down my apartment hallway last week trying to keep the pain of this recent loss from spilling over my entire body and collapsing, I noticed the walls covered by family photos. One side of the hallway is dedicated to my family history and the opposite wall is a portrait of my husband's family. I had made this collage of family photos so long ago because I had this sense of pride about my family and wanted them all close by me. It's like a gallery of darling candid shots of my nieces and nephews, old pictures of my parents as dashing lovebirds, and me and my siblings as cute toddlers. I particularly love the old photos of my grandparents. I never even met my paternal grandparents but I like to look at that old black and white dusty photo of them and imagine who they were in a country so far away. What were they thinking when they stood there staring blankly at the camera? Did those two fresh faces ever expect to die young and have their children eventually immigrate to America to spawn us spoiled brats stuffing our faces with cheetos and watching Brady Bunch? A rush of sadness came over me as a flash of this family history spun out of control in front of me. It all stops here. My husband and I may not continue this family tree. We could be that branch on the genealogy chart that's the dead end. 

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to have a biological child. I've already given up the idea of carrying a child myself and now I've been trying to rethink what my own family could mean. I've been so locked into my past, my own childhood, and my own blood. To top it off my husband is the last male of his family so if we don't have a child, let alone a son, it's the true end of his family name. We all know that in earlier times I would have already been shown the door and 2nd or 3rd wife would be taking over the procreating. So I know why it pains my husband when I mention adoption. I know he doesn't want to really face that he may not be able to continue his blood lines or his great smile. It pains me too. 

It may seem premature for me to give up hope of a genetic child since maybe the surrogacy road will work for us. But I can't help feel that something is probably wrong with my eggs. I've had 4 pregnancies and none of them survived. They don't really know if it's my uterus or my eggs. But I'm not willing to spend another two years trying with bad eggs. I've thought about if I could really handle donor eggs. At least if our child is part of my husband then can I be happy? I think I can. I need this journey to end. I can't do this much longer. 

I've thought about all these options a billion times through the years. But now they are quite real. They aren't in that space in my brain called "last resort." These are my options now. I know it's pointless to keep asking why bad things are happening to me. Every time I get pregnant and I am faced with the limbo of "it could be good or it could be awful," I manage to find an online buddy whose in the same boat. It's always a brief encounter where we find each other in our moment of desperation with similar threats and then sure enough things go well for her and my pregnancy tanks. These women are just blinks. For a split second we have the same prospects of good things and then we quickly diverge. It's weird. Could I really be that cursed? But when I get into the space of feeling like I am being denied, victimized, and deprived of what others get immediately (or eventually) then I fall into deep down basement darkness.

So take the photos off the walls! Reinvent what your future will be. Give up this notion of what family is suppose to be. I'm not going to have a conventional family, period. I won't be able to get pregnant with IVF and then practically be like everyone else (at least from the outside). I am going to have a baby with either surrogacy, egg donor, or adoption. I'll have a couple extra people in the mix who helped give my child life. I know I have a higher chance now of not having a biological child. I will have to get special books and join support parenting groups to make sure my kid doesn't grow up scarred or emotionally freaked out by their birth story. This is more real to me now than ever. I close my eyes and see a couple cute kids running around the apartment that pretty much look like me and my husband. I am trying to get use to them not being biologically connected to me. I am trying to understand the greater love that goes beyond narcissistic pleasure. 

So I painted the hallway walls a light gray. A true blank slate. 

Under Cover IVF

I thought about keeping this one completely under wraps. Somehow if I told no one then it would cease to exist. But as much as I would like to keep my mouth shut, I decided I should at least acknowledge the try. After all my flip flopping on this blog, I ended up trying a fourth IVF this month. The idea was that while I wait for my surrogate match I could squeeze in one last try and by some miracle I could make this nightmare end with a healthy pregnancy. Sadly, this is not my story.

Today I officially have a chemical pregnancy. The cycle itself was a total bust to begin with. We only got 4 eggs and only 1 fertilized and so we transfered a mediocre 5 cell embryo. The day I transfer my lone embryo I caught a nasty ass cold/flu and ended up sick for my entire two week wait. I was assured this would not effect anything, but I knew it was another sign that this cycle was a dud one. Also, that same week of retrieval and transfer we got a call from our agency saying they had some surrogate candidates for us. The last thing I wanted was all of this to converge the same week. We had to decide in a matter of hours between canceling the cycle or losing our surrogate candidates. But luckily our agency was so understanding and said we could finish out this cycle and then decide. Surrogacy was pushing its way back into my life and I had a feeling it was foreshadowing an IVF failure. But some lessons have to be learned the hard way. The story ends with, against all these odds, a positive beta (albeit very low which we all know means trouble). It all happened so fast. The cycle zoomed by in its own disastrous way just as quickly as my one day of pregnancy slipped by. As much as a chemical pregnancy is no picnic in the park, it beats an ectopic any day. So when you've gone through so much loss, it comes down to what type of loss is less painful and you take what you can get. Isn't there some trophy or ribbon for being "Semi-Pregnant" all the time? Who says "No pain, no gain?"My life is all about "pain and no gain."

So I feel this is like some confessional blog posting as I've been keeping this a secret and finally get to tell the truth. I didn't tell anyone but my sister and parents about this attempt. We all know what it's like living with this secret. I can now admit freely that I caved in and fell victim once again to the lure of IVF. I knew the risks and I still did it. But have I become so jaded that this loss means nothing? I don't feel like crying. I don't really even count this one, so have I lost part of my heart already? I don't know what this means but I find that it's unbearable to think about it any other way besides the-IVF-cycle-that-didn't-really-happen. It's like the bastard child kept in hiding. It was just so bad and pointless that I'd like to pretend I never did it. But as much as I would like to sweep this one under the rug, I feel I should honor this brief and somewhat ridiculously short-lived pregnancy.

So after so much bullshit and IVF fiascos, how can I view the universe without total bitterness and hatred? I don't want to be that dismal person who keeps waving a fist up at the heavens with steam coming out her ears. So throwing myself back into surrogacy is the best way to cope. I have to believe that the universe brought these possible gestational carriers to my attention for a reason and that my path, no matter how much I want to fight it, is going to go down this surrogacy road. Instead of picking out names and preparing for a May due date, I am going through profiles of women who will try to carry my baby. Will this ever end?