Hitting bottom in IVF land isn’t when you can’t stop crying or you can’t get out of bed. It isn’t when you try to sleep for more hours than you are awake because being awake is too painful. It’s not when you’re angry and full of rage or have semi-suicidal fantasies of throwing yourself in front of a bus so that your husband has a chance to procreate with someone else without feeling guilty for leaving you. Hitting bottom is sitting in your doctor’s office listening to him talk about the expense of a donor egg and realizing not only will you most likely have to give up on your own biology, but it’s going to cost you a shitload of money that you don’t have. Let me rephrase that. Hitting bottom is knowing you can’t afford to make a family the only way you’re being told you may be able to. I was too shocked and devastated to even cry, so I asked the doctor questions that had no answers to.
Why did our embryos die? Jargon about cytoplasm and nuclei followed but no real answer.
Will this likely happen again? It’s very possible. I produce so few eggs, there isn’t much to work with. We don’t know if this situation was a fluke, that had there been ten embryos, these three would have been the three bad ones and seven would have been good, or if, no matter what, they would all have been bad.
How would you change the protocol to try and secure a better outcome? No significant change. Apparently I was on a variety of meds that should have done the trick. I’m a low responder. That’s it.
What are our choices?
Every step of this process creates a new reality, a new crappier reality. There is loss and grieving that has to be done every step of the way as options get crossed off the list. All I can do is cry and feel sad, and look at what I have left, what I can salvage of myself and my body to try to make something work. Sometimes I still feel the sadness of not being able to conceive naturally, meaning in the same room as my husband, even though we are SO beyond that now. The feeling still creeps up every so often when I’m watching the funny way he brushes his teeth or when we’re lying in bed rubbing our feet together. The possibility of having sex to make a baby is almost a joke for us now.
Now I was being told I may have to let go of my biology altogether. That’s how Dr. N led the debrief of what comes next. The first step is to draw my blood and have a chromosome test called Karyotype, to see if there is an issue with my chromosomes. It’s the only test we haven’t done. It affects less than 1% of the population, and is usually done after recurrent miscarriages. If it comes out that I have a problem, that may explain why our embryos were all bad. The next step is thinking about an egg donor. Dr. N seemed to think this is our best shot, given the finite amount of resources we have. He said if we won the lottery he could see doing another IVF cycle with my body and eggs, but he knows the reality that if we did that and failed, we definitely wouldn’t have the $30,000+ it would cost for an attempt with a donor egg.
For the first time, I truly understand how our finances are going to dictate how our family is made. I knew this was the ultimate truth, but to really feel it was infuriating. If I didn’t have a chromosome issue and I did have unlimited cash, I could very likely eventually, have a child that is both mine and my husband’s. It may take a few more rounds of this hormone-induced madness, but eventually it is likely we would get one good embryo in our small cohort. I was praying for a chromosome problem so that we could have a definite answer that would knock me out of the running. Otherwise, how could I move on to someone else’s eggs without knowing if the next round of this would have, could have, produced our baby. I was more desperate for a definitive answer, some clarity perhaps, than I was for my eggs to be useable.
I brought up the idea of using my sister’s eggs. Hana had said she would give me her eggs, but not until her family medicine residency and her board exams were officially over, around June. She was 29 (closer to 30), brilliant, kind, generous, and beautiful. My sister is a better person than I am. She always means well and is thoughtful and calm and meticulous. She saves lives every day while I am lying around at home plucking my eyebrows and eating ice cream. It’s such a conflicting feeling to be both sad about losing my own biology while at the same time feeling grateful and blessed that I have such an incredible younger sister willing to do this for us. But Dr. N said he didn’t think she’d be an ideal candidate. She was already almost 30, she was stressed out with her job and not always eating well, which affects egg quality. She’s never been pregnant and she’s genetically related to me, meaning we don’t know if her eggs would make good embryos. He suggested paying a little more money and going with a repeat donor, someone who has already successfully made a healthy baby for someone else. Our potential baby would have some biological half-sibling or siblings somewhere in the world. The thought of it all creeped me out.
“Wait, stop. I’m not there yet. I’m just not there yet. With my sister, I can wrap my head around it. Some 20-year old stranger…I’m not there yet.”
Dr. N stopped talking and nodded. He understood. Because he does this every day, delivers disappointing and freakish news to struggling couples, the words fly out of his mouth with ease and authority. He knows what is going to give us the best chance. But my ears and my heart and my brain were just not there yet. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. The amount of time it now takes me to accept our new reality has become shorter. But it still takes time. There are so many levels of coming to terms and letting go. There are so many steps between receiving bad news and gearing up for whatever comes next. I’d like to say with each situation it somehow becomes easier, but it doesn’t. I’m just less shocked.
We are completely immersed in this new world where the laws and rules make no sense. There are no tangible answers and no logical conclusions. There is no sense of fairness or justice and what is truth one day may be totally different the next. No one can make promises, and decisions are made purely on what is the best worst choice. The baseline of this world is one of trauma and despair and hurt and loss and confusion, so that every step forward or backward is just a step in a different direction, a step towards less pain or more pain, until you get pregnant, survive the nine months, and have a baby. Then you can graduate to a new reality that is more familiar to the real world. But only then. All the feelings that would seemingly be normal-- resentment and fear and anger and sadness don’t serve you, but they never go away. They just linger and then become less potent when you get a piece of good news. Right now, good news would be that after we spend $2500 to screen my sister as a donor, she checks out and can possibly do this for us. In the context of our current life, that is good news. In the context of life, that is terrible news. It’s all relative.
But that’s what we’ve got today, in this moment. In this moment I have a sister and she is willing to try and help us. I have a husband who loves me and who has working sperm. That’s what we have at this moment. The next may be different.
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