I keep trying to write a blog post, but nothing coherent comes to mind. For some reason it is so much easier for me to articulate my sad feelings and far more difficult to share my happy feelings. It feels 1000 times scarier to share happy feelings. I feel like when normal people get sad the must think to themselves, “This won’t last forever.” But, when I get happy, I think to myself, “This isn’t going to last long and it isn’t going to end well.” I don’t know why my brain is programmed that way, but those neural pathways sure are strongly linked. I think after having disappointment after disappointment after disappointment the fall from happy to disappointed is just too much for me. It feels safer to find a neutral ground to stay in --not happy, but not sad either. I feel like if I talk about my happiness it will somehow end sooner.
Christmas was really 1000 times better this year than last year. Last year I didn’t even want Christmas to be a thing. I just wanted to hide until it was over. I hated that everyone was so cheerful. I didn’t feel like I had much to celebrate. But yet, there’s still this nagging in the back of my mind the whole time. We bought a few baby outfits. I loved picking through the ones we liked. I loved that Matt seemed to enjoy picking them out just as much as I do. When we paid for our carefully picked out purchase, I couldn’t help but think, “What if he never gets to wear these?” And not because we were going to have to many, but because what if he doesn’t make it that far? I wish I could have the blind optimism that we will deliver and bring home a healthy baby boy, but I know too many people with dead babies. I wish I could live in a world where all babies are born and all babies are healthy and all babies grow up to be adults. After IVF treatments, you don’t get to live in that world anymore. Every time someone would say, “Next Christmas is going to be so different!” I would say, “I sure hope so.” But the reality is no matter the outcome, next Christmas will be so different. We will either have the most joyous Christmas or the worst Christmas ever. Obviously, those making that comment had only the joyous Christmas in mind. The truth is, I love being pregnant. Every time the baby kicks, I just never want it to end. The first time Matt could feel a really big kick, his face lit up in the best way ever. I love that he can’t keep his hands off my belly and we just lay in bed forever waiting for the baby to move around. I have gained way too much weight and I don’t even care (so long as the baby keeps healthy). Some days I feel proud of my body and I almost start to trust it. But it is really hard to trust your body after something like infertility. I feel really good about my body. Although, I will admit I do still have some worries about how I’m going to feel about my body when it isn’t carrying around a life. But that insecurity seems so frivolous and so far away. I feel like every time I start to feel “comfortable” in my pregnancy (meaning, the what ifs start to disappear) I hear a story about someone losing their baby at 38 weeks or how a baby dies at just a few months old. I just don’t think I can ever take a second of my pregnancy for granted and hopefully when the baby arrives I won’t take him for granted for a second. I welcome many, many sleepless nights. I’ve been realizing how few resources there are on life after a successful IVF. I read everything I could on how to prepare for IVF. Now I’m having so many feelings and there’s pretty much no resources on what happens after you get pregnant. In a serious Google hunt, the best I could really find was up to hearing the heartbeat and transferring to a regular OB/GYN and leaving your RE. But there’s nothing out there about how I should feel or how others have felt. I still don’t quite feel like I belong at the OB/GYN. I honestly wish the OB/GYN office had the same unspoken rules of the fertility clinic. You know, no talking/no eye contact. People are way too willing to share in the OB/GYN office. We went for our glucose test this week. Another lady was there doing hers too. When they brought her the drink, another lady (from across the room) said, “It’s really not that bad.” But it was kind of in this pretentious “I’ve already been there/done that” kind of way. The other lady responded, “This is my third child. I know.” Of course in my mind I’m like “THIRD CHILD?! Just flaunt your working ovaries why don’t you?” I would also like to mention that everyone was willing to share how horrible and disgusting they thought the glucose drink was and how miserable the test was in general. It really is not that bad. The drink wasn’t even all that gross. I was commiserating with a fellow IVF mom about it. We agreed that anyone who found the glucose test unbearable could not do IVF. I would rather do a dozen glucose tests than have my vagina probed multiple times per week and inject myself with numerous needles every day. Not to mention scheduling your entire life around what time you have to administer said shots. If the glucose test is the worst pregnancy has to offer, I’m feeling pretty good. (In case you’re wondering – I did pass the glucose test!) I did find one scientific study of life after IVF. It was actually pretty depressing. They learned in a longitudinal study that women who had a biological child through IVF (no donor sperm or eggs were used in this study) reported higher levels of life satisfaction than women who had to stop fertility treatments and chose to be childfree. (No couples without fertility problems willingly choosing a childfree lifestyle were included in the sample). Marital dissatisfaction was also higher in couples who did not find success with IVF. They also reported that women who did not find success with multiple rounds of IVF would pursue additional fertility treatments if a new treatment was developed that produced a “modicum” of success. The article stated, “The study also suggests that the ‘crisis of infertility’ is never resolved completely and that the wish for parenthood can be readily rekindled with new assisted reproductive techniques promising success.” I don’t think any woman who has undergone IVF would argue that finding. It was promising for me that women who adopted did not differ significantly from those mothers who had successful IVF. But still, this gave me very little information that I was looking for. I kind of feel like I’m in a dark cave trying to feel my way around pregnancy after IVF. No one seems to have lit the path before me in the same way life during IVF was illuminated. I keep trying to figure out what “normal” is. But then I remember, nothing about this is normal and whatever my reactions are –well, they just are. Every time someone who has had a successful IVF (with or without donor eggs/sperm) the first thing they say (after 3 betas and a heartbeat) is, “When will it feel real?” I’m almost 29 weeks pregnant and so much doesn’t feel real. I still have days where I’m shocked when I look in the mirror. I still have my positive pregnancy tests on the sink and stare at them when I brush my teeth. I’ll try to do something I maybe shouldn’t do and someone will rush to me and say, “Oh let me do that for you!” Which I admit is quite nice. Wish people had been willing to do more for me when my ovaries felt like grapefruits. IVF is such a silent treatment no one knows to help you. Even if they know you’re doing IVF they don’t really know what it feels like. But they know what being pregnant feels like so the empathy is real. No one really wants to acknowledge IVF. It’s like someone in a wheelchair or with a pronounced deformity (or Bell’s Palsy—something I’m also familiar with) – everyone kind of looks at you halfway. Like they’re trying to interact with you, but not make you feel uncomfortable or talk about the elephant in the room – which ultimately makes you feel more uncomfortable. I felt way worse (physically and mentally) during fertility treatments than I do pregnant so it’s almost hard to accept the help. I am at a point where I feel pregnant. It’s still so hard for me to imagine holding our baby, let alone bringing him home and being a family of three. I’ve seen many women who said it didn’t feel real until the baby was in their arms. Today someone told me their doctor (who had a baby via IVF) said it still didn’t feel real when the baby was in her arms. She said, “Whose baby is this? Is this really my baby?” Some days I still struggle with having used an egg donor. The grief of not having a biological child is still very much present at times. Sometimes I still get so angry when someone says, “I’m so glad IVF worked for you.” IVF did not work for us. We still had to drastically uproot our initial idea of what our family would look like. IVF with donor eggs worked for us. To me the terminology makes all the difference. Of course, I even struggle with this too. I don’t want my child be looked at as an egg donor baby. I just want him to be our baby. But I also don’t want to undermine all that we’ve gone through to get here. I don’t want to undermine what all the other women who have used donor eggs have gone through. I don’t want there to be shame in using donor eggs. It breaks my heart how many women are so ashamed of having to use donor eggs that they won’t even tell their doctor they’ve used them because they never want their child to find out. I never want to keep this a secret from our baby. I know he might struggle with not knowing half his genetics and knowing that he will have many half siblings in the world. He may never even know how many. I know that might cause him to have an ache I will never understand. I will do everything in my power to help him find his siblings or egg donor if he so desires. I would much rather him have that knowledge from the start than find out later and resent me for never telling him. In a world with affordable at home DNA kits, I think it’s inevitable that they will find out eventually. I also hope that he can be proud of how he was conceived. Maybe it will inspire him to go into a science related field. Or, maybe he will want to be a fireman or a carpenter or an athlete. I don’t really care what he wants to be. I still have moments where I’m sad he won’t be my biological child. Over Christmas, we watched a family video at my husband’s grandmother’s house. I noticed everyone has the same nose. It’s amazing how young kids are when they look like their families. You can see a little bit of mom and a little bit of dad or a whole lot of mom and very little dad – vice versa. I became overwhelmed thinking that whatever features our baby has that Matt doesn’t have won’t be mine. I will never know myself in another person. That can be a pretty overwhelming feeling sometimes. When I see the very commonly shared meme that says, “I used to be cool, but now I just argue with a smaller version of myself about *xyz*.” I’ll be arguing with a small version of someone else that I don’t even know. Then I also grapple with the worry that he may not feel like enough if he ever found out I had these feelings. He will always be enough for me. But maybe there will be times when I’m not enough for him because he may also wish to know who is donor is or his long lost siblings. Maybe in some way we can find empathy with each other in our own losses. I keep trying to remind myself not to judge myself on my thoughts. I just try to notice them and let them keep moving. I also know in some way I will love him more because he isn’t biologically mine. Just like our own biological child, our baby would not exist if it wasn’t for us. We had to search high and low for an affordable clinic and then after looking through all of our donors we found the right donor for us. Then after traveling 8+ hours one way we had our baby transferred into my uterus. We worked so hard for him. I never thought we would be so lucky to get the stars (and my hormones) aligned just right to get our baby. As much as I hate the term “miracle baby,” it does feel like a miracle. I never thought I’d have the chance to be a mother and now that I’m going to get that chance, I could never take our baby for granted. I remember when our first IVF wasn’t going well our doctor told me, “I’ve been in deliveries for biological babies and donor babies and the looks on the mother’s faces are all the same.” I do keep repeating that to myself over and over. Every family perceives that they have some challenge. Some families have real and unfathomable challenges. If this is our only challenge that would be something to be thankful for. Even if it isn’t our only challenge we will just keep rolling with the punches. “I have died every day, waiting for you Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years I'll love you for a thousand more” – Christina Perry, A Thousand Years
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Heather Joyce
Trying to conceive. Archives
April 2018
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