We went to the doctor’s office the morning of Thanksgiving. I was six days into medication and aside from being constantly exhausted, I was feeling fine. Noah had gotten good at the injections and I didn’t gain 30 lbs and only mildly broke out in teenage-style acne. I asked some of my girlfriends to buy a bouquet of nine flowers, one for each of my follicles, and meditate on them. Sing to them, talk to the smaller buds, tell them to grow and send me positive blossoming energies.
Noah and I were planning to hit the doc and then head down to the Ace Hotel in Palms Springs to sit in the sun and get away for an overnighter. But it felt like the doc hit us instead. We did our follicle count and it appeared that only two follicles were growing. Two out of nine! How was that possible?! I was on SO much medication and human growth hormone crap I could probably hit an old school, Barry Bonds style home run out of AT&T park! Dr. N wasn’t in the office that day, but he phoned in from wherever he was vacationing with his family.
“So we have two choices,” he said on speakerphone. “One is to convert this cycle to an IUI (turkey baster) and the other is to do IVF, even though we have a very small number of follicles. Both options are a compromise.”
I immediately started crying hysterically. I knew an IUI was not really an option for us. I have one possibly functioning Fallopian tube, but it’s clearly wonky. We had been trying for two years with good sperm and no luck, so it seemed to me like the bridge from egg to uterus was broken. IUI would be a waste of time and hope, and both of those were running out. We had already gotten this far, so it felt like all we could do was put all our eggs—both of them -- in one sad little basket. I tried not to think about retrieval rate and egg quality and the likelihood of fertilization and division.
“We have to do IVF,” I cried into the speakerphone. “What more can we do right now?”
Dr. N extended my medication for a few more days so that the two follicles that were at 13mm could get closer to 20mm and the 7mm could possible catch up so we would be going for three instead of two. He told me to relax and have a nice Thanksgiving.
Noah drove while I clutched the cooler holding my shots and wept. I called Gilli and she sounded disappointed but still hopeful.
“Mayale, you need one egg for one baby. Don’t give up; your babies need you to be strong,” she said. Gilli had become my headlamp through the dark tunnel that is IVF land. She had been through this with other women and seen all different kinds of dire situations as well as magical miracles. I trusted her as much as I trusted my own mother. My mother, interestingly, said almost the same thing.
“OK. Two is better than one.”
We stopped at Hadley’s Fruit Orchard and I got a date shake. Ever since I was a kid, it’s been a family ritual when we drive to the desert. The thick, creamy sweetness calmed me down just enough for us to drive into the Ace parking lot in total silence.
Poor Noah. All he wanted was for us to have a nice time together, sitting in the sun and relaxing. But all I could do was crawl into the bed and go to sleep.
I tried to convince myself not to get too attached to good or bad news. In IVF-land, good and bad news are both so fleeting. Emotional rollercoaster doesn’t even really capture the experience; it’s more of an emotional seismograph, with sharper, more aggressive ups and downs. It makes you sick to your stomach because your feelings are jetting up and down so quickly that your brain barely has enough time to process and make sense of it all. Needless to say, I had an incredible migraine by the time our Thanksgiving room service meal arrived at the door.
It looked like airplane food -- two slabs of turkey smothered in gravy, over cooked green beans, and pumpkin pie wrapped in Saran Wrap. We ate it wearing matching bathrobes and tried to strategize on how we were going to get our optimism back.
“What else can we do,” Noah said between bites of grossly thick mashed potatoes. “We have to be optimistic. It’s not like there are no follicles. Whatever we’ve got we’ve got. We give it our all. We don’t give up until someone tells us to.”
I’m so glad his brain works like this. It gives me hope for our potential children.
No more than ten minutes after we finished our meal I started feeling sick. It wasn’t the food, it was me. I felt poisoned by sadness and knew what was about to happen.
“I’m going to throw up,” I said.
Noah looked at me. It had been less than week from the time he was up all night barfing his feelings.
“We’re the barfing family, this is how we handle things,” I said, clutching my stomach, waiting.
And sure enough, I ran to the bathroom and hurled. Spewed. Upchucked. Ralphed. Blew chunks. I puked the entire turkey and every last soggy green bean. All undigested, all slow and thick and chunky rose up out of me. It was disgusting and painful but afterwards I felt better.
Noah was right. We had to be optimistic. Those two follicles may very well be holding our two babies. Dr. N is the best guy to free them from their follicular prison. If we do more meds we could even get one more follicle to work with. We have to believe this.
So we went to bed believing our babies were slowly taking their sweet time to form. That my follicles were stubborn and defiant, like me, and didn’t like being told what to do. As sensitive as I am to most things, like sound and light and alcohol and annoying people, somehow my body was taking these meds in stride. We said a prayer that Noah’s sperm wasn’t like him, laid back and slightly passive. And we talked about how so much of this journey has been about us finding a way to meet in the middle and truly balance each other out. We agreed that one day we would be chasing our twins around the Thanksgiving table, reminiscing on the worst Thanksgiving ever. In retrospect, this may even seem funny.
God bless retrospect.
Thanks Johanne. No healthy pregnancy yet but we keep moving forward best we can. Good luck with your cycle!
Posted by: Don't Count Your Eggs | October 20, 2013 at 12:54 PM
I'm just reading this blog right now, found it looking for info. I just started cycle 1, and feeling...I don't know how to feel. A little anxious, a little worried, feeling alone. I read this and I felt your pain, only those of us going thru this can really know the emotional roller coaster we go thru. I pray that God answered your prayers, and that you and your husband were blessed with a healthy pregnancy.
Posted by: Johanne F | October 19, 2013 at 01:24 PM