Don't Count Your Eggs

Teaching Our Friends and Families How to Talk About Donor Conception

I have a friend who has a child via egg donor and her mother continues to refer to the egg donor as the "real mother" of the child. This drives my friend bananas. She is the "real" mother (is there such a thing as a fake mother?). I know other people who struggle with this kind of stuff within their family. The egg donor is often referred to as the "biological mother" or some other term that includes the word mother. I get this too sometimes, like when people ask me if Momo's father was "the Japanese one." I gently correct people in my response, "Yes, the sperm provider was Japanese," but I understand how IF Islanders might get frustrated with trying to figure out the language of donor conception and educating their loved ones about it. Because let's face it, we can tell people a thousand times what our preferences are when it comes to this stuff and it will still get mangled. 

In all fairness, it is confusing. And it is especially confusing to my parent's generation. My dad continuously refers to the embryo transfer as a transplant or implant (as in liver or dental?) and describes the process of our donor cycle with my sis as Noah's sperm "impregnating" my sister's eggs (it's inseminating, Dad!). I have to constantly re-explain the difference between an egg and embryo to my aunt and occasionally remind my father-in-law that Momo might not look like Noah or me because she's not genetically related. I remember trying to explain IVF to my grandma when she was still alive. She got it, sort of. It appeared that she didn't really know how babies were made naturally, let alone with medical intervention. But she didn't care, she just wanted us to have a baby.

Everyone who has conceived through alternative means and is open about it may have to have a conversation about the terms used to describe their process. We have to try and be patient with others and understand that when many of us grudgingly moved to IF Island, we got a crash course in a new language that our loved ones just didn't get. Being fluent in Spanish or Chinese would probably be way more useful, but here we are. We each have to decided how we want to talk about this stuff and how we want to refer to the outside help some of us got. And that's ok. It's just something to figure out. We are all "real" people and I when Momo's time comes, I will be the "real" mother and Noah will be the "real" father and one day my dad will  know what a sperm does to an egg in a petri dish and he will be the "real" grandpa, finally.  

 

Until then we all keep on trucking. Noah and I have an estimated 30 days until we get to be "real" parents. I just bought a carton of milk that expires ten days past Momo's due date, so I guess that means sh*t just got real, for real. Perhaps we should pack a bag.

Have a great weekend everyone and remember that MARCH 1 is our Indiegogo fundraiser launch date for our documentary, One More Shot. There will be more video posts and updates this month, so stay tuned and help spread the word!

Infertility Around the World

A few weeks ago a writer from Chile contacted me wanting to write about our story and about embryo donation for a local magazine. We chatted on Skype and the article came out today in a magazine called El Mercurio-Revista YA,  so if you can read Spanish you might want to check it out. I'm not really sure what it says because my Espanol skills go to about the 7th grade, but I believe it talks about infertility and embryo donation, and discusses the medical, legal and ethical perspectives in Chile. 

It got me thinking about how infertility is a worldwide issue and experience. The most recent stat in America is that 7.3 million people suffer with infertility. That was in 2012. And I think must be low. I don't know what the numbers are in Australia or Japan or the UK, but it's millions and millions of people around the world. Each country deals with infertility within the context of their culture, and I think it would be really interesting to know more about what that looks like. Laws are different around the world and perhaps that sets the tone for what is medically available and how much support there is for people. It also often sets the tone for how people feel about their fertility struggles, whether it be stigma and shame or an understanding that infertility is a medical diagnosis that isn't anyone's fault. 

Infertility doesn't discriminate. It hits people from all over the world, younger people, older people, men and women, people in Brazil and people in China, well-off and not. And I also know that the feelings on IF Island are universal, so that even if we don't speak the same language we can understand the shared experience. We understand the basic biological urge to procreate and the unrelenting desire to have a family. And yet most people in the struggle feel so totally alone. 

That's one of the reasons Noah and I are documenting our story and the story of others who have built their family in alternative ways. Because people shouldn't feel alone. 

What is Alternative Family Building?

Noah and I are getting ready to launch an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign (mark the date, March 1st, because we will need your help in spreading the word!) for our documentary about infertility, our journey to parenthood, and alternative family building. As we've been preparing to go live with the campaign, we've been talking a lot about what alternative family building really means.

Noah and I had to seek an alternative way to make a baby, because a glass of wine and a wild night (or even a mediocre night) wasn't going to cut it for us. Years of confusion followed a diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve and we documented all of it and interviewed others who also had to use modern technologies or other people's body parts to create a family. None of us who have to go down this route do so happily. We do so because we have to. Noah and I didn't wake up one morning and decide to pursue embryo donation, we went through a step by step decline into complete despair before we found a resolution to our infertility crisis and climbed our way out of a pit. 

I looked up the word "alternative" and found a definition of "available as another possibility." And I liked that. We live in a time where there are other possibilities-- medically speaking. Emotionally speaking that's a different ride for people. In 2012, when Noah and I first started IVF, I don't know that embryo donation would have been a possibility for us. We were too scared, too attached to our genetics,  too weirded out by all of it, too heartbroken to allow our hearts to be open to a baby not genetically connected to us. The possibility and science of it existed, but not in our world yet. Much of the process of alternative family building is knowing what alternatives feel ok for each individual. 

And really, that's been our journey to parenthood. A process of learning to compromise, to be present, to look at the possibilities and be flexible with making a choice out of a handful of choices we may never have fathomed or wanted. To understand what science has to offer and get comfortable with the alternatives. To sit with the reality of our situation-- emotionally, physically and financially, and decide what is most important.

These are decisions and choices that the majority of people don't have to make. But a lot of people do. 7.3 million people in America and millions more around the world.  Five million babies have been born with the help of assisted reproductive technologies as of 2012. That's a lot of people seeking an alternative to a glass of wine and a wild (or mediocre ;)) night. 

Some day soon, a lot of these alternatives won't seem or be perceived as so far off. But in order for that to be so, we have to keep the conversation going and normalize that millions of people have to seek treatments and third part help in order to have the most basic, and in my opinion, most important human necessity-- love and family (I guess food and water is up there but you know what I'm saying).  

Noah and I and, in about a month (hopefully), Momo will be a normal family created in an alternative way. Though I don't know how much we will think about or focus on that piece. We will be a family created by love, determination, support from others, and a few drops of complete miracle. In some ways, it makes me feel proud-- prouder than if Noah and I did just get lucky one night.

Everyone out there in this struggle should feel proud. However you are looking at your alternatives-- from single motherhood to IVF to third party assistance to living child-free-- you should feel proud of your journey and your process. 

Please check out the film website and subscribe if you want updates. Follow us on twitter @onemoreshotdoc. Like us on Facebook.

And on March 1st tell your family, tell your friends, and hopefully through the month of March we can reach our Indiegogo fundraising goal so we can create this feature length film.

Another Lesson in Letting Go

The lessons of letting go of control keep on coming.

So yesterday at work I started having side pains that spread into my back. I was shoving a giant cookie into my face in the lunch room and started feeling weird. I quickly finished off the giant cookie (obviously) and went into my office to lay down for a sec. The pain kinda went away but I still felt weird so I called the doctor. I'm always a little hesitant to call the doc because I feel like a crazy person. Part of me doesn't want to bother him, part of me feels like maybe weird feelings are normal and I don't want to overreact. But I called anyway (better to be safe) and ended up going into his office where a nurse hooked Momo and me up to a fetal monitor and saw that I was having contractions. The doc sent me to the hospital to be monitored for longer and that was it.

Why? What's happening? What does it mean?

I had all the same feelings I had when we were going through infertility treatments. Loads of unanswered or unanswerable questions, like why do I have diminished ovarian reserve in my early 30's? Why did our embryos fall apart in the petri dish? And yesterday it was why am I having early contractions? Is this preterm labor? Then of course there is the feeling of what now? What's going to happen next?

I've learned that in the field of reproduction there are a lot of unknowns. Doctors don't always know why something happens or  doesn't. They can't predict outcomes and they can't make any guarantees. It's a lot of wait and see. 

The lack of control we all have can make us uneasy. Uneasy is a gentle term for how many of us often feel. Frustrated. Anxious. Insane! But if four years on IF Island has taught me anything, it's that sometimes we just don't know why or how or what's next. Sometimes we have to do the best we can in each moment. We need to stay calm. Take care of our bodies. Ask all the questions we have and accept that sometimes there are no answers. 

As I was hooked up to a fetal monitor for almost an hour, I just sat back and listened to the sound of Momo's heartbeat. I hoped she would cook a little longer because that will be better for her, but kind of accepted that whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I couldn't do anything but stay hydrated and lay there. 

At one point the nurse came in and said she was going to monitor for 30 more minutes and if I had no more than two contractions in that time I could go home. I had two. I went home.

"So what should I do now? I asked. "Does this mean it's the beginning of something? Will I have these kinds of contractions for weeks? Does it mean I'm more likely to deliver early? Will the baby be ok? Is there anything I should do? How will I know when to come back to the hospital?" 

The nurse looked at me and shrugged. She took my discharge forms and wrote the phone number for labor and delivery on the corner of a page and said, "I don't know what's going to happen. You can always call or just come back, but there's nothing we can really do for now." 

So I went home.  I fought the urge to check my to-do lists and add to my to-do lists because I knew I'd just be searching for a way to feel in control. And I just kind of loafed around. 

I don't know what's going to happen next. None of us do. All we can do is move through the moment that's directly in front of us, and try to take care of ourselves the best we can, and make the best decisions we can along the way.  My dad pointed out that Momo was in a freezer for four years and has been stuck inside me for another 8 months--maybe she's just ready to get out and into the world. Maybe, but maybe not. She'll come when she comes I suppose.  I just have to wait and see. 

I wish everyone out there a restful weekend! 

IF Island can be a hostile place

It's been really interesting for me to see how differently pregnant women are treated in the world, and it makes me wish that there was a way for the world to know when someone is suffering with infertility,  so that others can be just a little bit kinder. 

Now I've only been P in the world for about a month and a half. Most of my P experience has been within the parameters of my bed, but now that I am out and about more, I've noticed some things. 

People smile at you when your P walking down the street. Occasionally someone will offer to let you cut in line at the post office, or a waiter will bring you a side of fries unsolicited (yeah, that happened to me last week. I must have looked like the type of gal who just needed a side of fries). I have three main feelings about this:

The first is bring on the fries. It's nice when people are nice. The second is that while I'm grateful to finally be in this place, it also make me feel guilty. I don't know who is getting triggered by my body and I so know how when I was going through IVF or other glorious treatments, pregnant women seemed to be falling out of the sky. And I wanted to punch them. All of them. And the third thing I feel about this disparity in treatment is WHERE THE %^#* WAS ALL THIS KINDNESS WHEN I WAS AT THE WORST POINT IN MY LIFE? 

Ok. Ok. Pregnant women are much easier to spot than infertile women (I kind of hate that term)-- than people going through infertility. I get that. But the world just feels so hostile for women going through infertility, that it would be nice if there was some way to get a little extra kindness at times. It makes me realize how important it is for people going through infertility to be extra good to themselves and to tell your partner (and friends and family if you're open) what you need, because the rest of the world isn't going to send you a side of fries for free. Sometimes you have to just order them for yourself. 

This is unfortunate. This isn't fair. The fact that infertility is a medical disorder, often considered a disease, and yet treatment is rarely covered is terrible and invalidating. And yet here we are.

So be good to yourself. Be good to your friends. Be good to your partner. 

I wish I could send everyone out there struggling a giant basket of greasy delicious fries! 

An Open Heart on IF Island

I've written blog posts for Fertility Planit and Fertility Authority this month with the theme of finding ways to keep an open heart to how your baby might come to you. Let me say here, that sometimes it's really not easy.

Last Valentine's Day I wrote this post. I was in a very different space than I am today. I was focused on trying to heal my heart rather than open it to the possibilities. During infertility treatments, I often found that it was my heart that hurt the most. More than the shots, more than the bills-- that space in my chest just felt crushed and deflated.

Sometimes I would try some yoga poses to physically and psychologically open my heart space, by clasping my hands behind my back, bending my elbows then straightening my arms, allowing my chest to rise and my head to tilt back. After a few attempts at taking deep breaths I would just know my heart space was tight and clogged up. It's a terrible feeling--like you just can't breathe.  And the emotions that come with a tight heart space are often ugly ones-- fear, jealousy, anger. But here's the thing, sometimes living on IF Island just makes us feel that way. There is a lot of thought about what could have been and should have been, if only.... There is having to process your own grief while others you know are blissfully moving on. There are relationship strains and lots of feelings you just wish you didn't have. All of it is normal, but all of it sucks. Plain and simple. 

But...there is a but...but it doesn't feel like this forever, and there are things we can try to do to soften the space around the heart and find ways to be open again. Taking ten deep breaths into that heart space, whether I could actually breathe or not, was helpful to me in tough times, because it forced me to be in the moment with my thoughts and feelings and then let them go. On an inhale I would think about whatever was hurting-- the last unsuccessful cycle, the confusion about what to do next, the unfairness of friends getting P by accident-- and at the top of my inhale I would pause, accept the thought or feeling for what it was, and then on the exhale try to just let it go. Whatever happened in the past was the past. It was over. Obsessing about it wasn't going to help me. In the moment I wasn't making big life decisions about what to do next, I was just breathing. And as Noah always said, what happens with other people doesn't affect me. Someone else being P didn't mean I never would be. It was just a reminder of the unfairness, so I tried to let it go. 

Visualizing and breathing like this is a way to get back into the present moment. It's a way to then start breathing in more positive thoughts and feelings. On an inhale it's thinking about all the good things that can fill the heart, and appreciating that I had a beating heart and people who cared about it. It was reminding myself that as unfair and painful as all of this was, that I would one day be a mother. 

That day is now 6-7 weeks away. I could never have moved to embryo donation without and open heart and an open mind. Noah and I both needed to heal and let go and reprioritize. And it took time, but I'm so happy we did. We had to find ways to truly love and appreciate ourselves and each other before we could fully embrace how our baby was going to come to us. And we love Momo now so intensely, I don't think either of us could imagine her coming to us in any other way. 

Valentine's Day is truly about finding gratitude and appreciation for wherever you are in the journey and in your life. It's finding ways to heal and create hope and to love yourself and your partner and family and peeps fully. It's thinking about your baby finding his/her way to you eventually, or looking at your miracle babies and letting your heart fill up with that energy. And if nothing feels like it's working, it's buying yourself a box of heart shaped chocolates and shoving them in your face-- indulging isn't a bad thing this weekend.

Sending so much love to everyone this weekend. 

Facing Fear on IF Island and Beyond

Fear is such a powerful thing. It often drives us into action or keeps us in paralysis or creates a state of emotional unease living somewhere between those two polarities. On IF Island, fear is all too common. The anxieties of the what-ifs, the fear of the unknown outcomes, the fear of losing time and money and parts of yourself, the fear of needles and physical pain--glorious, right? 

In the years I was going through infertility treatments, I felt a lot of fear. My initial fears were more based on physical things--are the shots going to hurt? What are these drugs going to do to me long term? And then when things didn't worked out as hoped, my fear was all about what if nothing works? 

In my mind and heart I thought I couldn't handle the disappointment. While I was a hot mess at times, I really tried to learn to sit with what was. I acknowledged the fear and gave myself permission to just be in it. I knew I couldn't fight it, I knew it would be there, but I also knew it wasn't going to kill me. I knew I had my family and my husband and that one day I would be a mother, and I tried to just focus on that. I tried to take deep breaths, do yoga and take long walks, practiced being in the moment as much as possible, and distract myself at times. 

Many of my fears came true. Shots hurt. We lost a lot of money. Procedures we thought/hoped would work didn't. Years of my life just went. Friendships suffered. And yet, now I'm almost on the other side. I survived the shots. I rarely think about the cost. I know we had to try the procedures we did because it was all part of our process. I learned a lot about myself and about life in those years that just went, and I know they were not wasted. And I have many new and amazing friends who have also gone through similar struggles. Oh, and I have a 33 week old baby girl growing in me who just learned how to punch me in the ribs! 

I guess what I'm saying is that fear is natural and often inevitable on IF Island, but we all get through.

Now that I'm at a different stage of all this, I thought much of the fear I've felt in the past was behind me. Though my pregnancy complications were scary, after the new year I was feeling pretty good--more confident that we are really going all the way with this thing!

I've been listening to hypnobabies and reading books about mindful birthing and I haven't felt fearful. Until yesterday, when in birth class the instructor showed videos circa 1993. Graphic videos.  Ummm...suddenly I felt overwhelmed with the same types of fears I had during infertility treatments. About the pain, about the process, about the unknowns. I even felt myself start crying for a sec. But, if IF Island has taught me anything it's that I'm way tougher than I give myself credit for, and I'll be ok. I have to go back to the basics of being with the fear and letting a lot of it go, but I know how to do that now. Infertility has kind of conditioned me to deal with difficult emotions now. I can only imagine what kind of fear comes up when there is an actual baby to care for! 

Wishing everyone on IF Island a fearless week!  

"Is you're husband really tall?" Ummm...no, but our egg donor is...

Being back at work and being as round as I am means I've started getting lots of questions. Do we have a name? How am I feeling? Do I feel her moving around a lot? It's sweet that people are interested but I have moments where I just get annoyed at the positive attention P people get, when during the most miserable and vulnerable times in my life going through infertility few people took much interest. I get it. No one knows what to say, and not everyone knew about our struggles. But I needed much more support then than I do now. 

One question a guy I work with asked the other day is if I can feel baby girl's legs kicking around. He has a few kids and was always excited when he could feel the baby kicking in his wife's belly. I answered that I can feel her a lot (soccer player perhaps?) and that doctors keep telling me she seems to have pretty long legs. His follow up was, "Is your husband really tall?" 

It caught me off guard for a moment. I'm about 5'5 when I'm exaggerating on my drivers license. Noah is tall-ish at 6-feet, but that has nothing to do with why our baby might be tall. I had a moment where my brain got confused. How much info does this guy need or want to know? Should I just smile and tell him Noah's height? Is it part of my mission to educate people about the different ways families/babies are created? Is it all TMI and too hard to explain in the hallways at work? Are there going to be a lot more questions if Momo comes out looking very Asian (she's half Japanese, like me, but Noah is caucasian, so chances are she might look much more Asian than an child we would genetically produce). Do I start preparing my co-workers for that first baby photo email that gets sent around so people aren't like, ummm...how did that happen? Is it even anyone's business at all?

The answers to these questions are very personal and each person has to decide on their own how they want to handle these moments. Those of us who have used donors or adopted need to know what we are comfortable sharing and we need to remember our story and our information belongs to us. The rest of the fertile world often doesn't think about these kinds of issues.

There were a few other people around when this particular co-worker asked if Momo may have long legs because Noah is tall, and after a moment of hesitation trying to think of how to respond, I said, "Yeah, Noah's about 6-feet, but that has nothing to do with why our baby might be tall. She isn't genetically related to either of us. I'm pregnant with a donated embryo and the egg donor was 5'11! Baby girl might be huge!" I kept it factual and light and that felt right to me. He was a little shocked for a minute and then said, "That's really cool," to which I made some joke about being grateful she won't have my stubby legs. Chances are once she is born, we may get a lot more questions like this. The first thing people do when they see a baby is try to identify the parents in said baby. So knowing how to field questions can be important.

I don't know what's right or wrong--what's appropriate or unnecessary. I just know that it feels ok to me to share the facts surrounding my rounding belly and it makes me feel good that I'm educating and normalizing this alternative way to build a family. I have a sense of pride about it, which I think will be important for us as a family and for Momo's self-esteem. She is a miracle, and will hopefully get those 5'11 donor legs!

Happy Friday everyone! I wanted to share another NYT Motherlode blog piece from the perspective of a woman/couple who generously decided to donate their embryos. It's so important to keep this conversation going! 

Infertility 101

Ok. Sooo...I'll just briefly mention the Super Bowl, and then we'll move on. WTF Seahawks!!! We actually got to watch it because our birth class instructor kindly changed the time of class, so there was no Super Bowl vs. birth class conflict after all. The conflict came in the last few seconds of the game when the head coach made a REALLY BAD choice and instead of...ugh. I can't even talk about it. Noah definitely can't talk about it. He's sad. We got home and he went into his man cave in silence and started editing footage from Act 1 of our documentary. We were hoping to get in bed early and watch highlights over and over again, but not last night. I'd like to say you win some you lose some but I think it's ok to just say last night's game ended in a crappy way and sometimes winning is everything. 

Now that that's done, let's move on. 

This weekend we did our hospital tour and attended birth class #1. Sh*t is getting real. It made me a bit emotional sitting in a room full of expecting parents, blending in with the crowed. I can't say I ever fully feel like I belong but I do. I'm just as round (Noah pointed out I was the second biggest in the room, his prize cow) and I need to know where to park on delivery day, so we belong. 

Then there was birth class. Another place where I can't believe I finally belong. When we went around and did our introductions, I felt the need to share that we had gone through years of infertility before getting to this point. I think it's important to normalize that and make people aware of that, even if it doesn't mean much to anyone else.

Though I've been reading different books about the birthing process, I still think you don't really know what's going to happen until it happens, but it's good to know the general process and stages and all the options you have. The teacher showed us enlarged pictures of a baby making his way into the world and while I could sense that many people in the room were fearful, asking questions about how soon one can get an epidural, I just felt anticipation excitement. I still can't believe that I have gotten the opportunity to grow our baby and will get the chance to blast her out of me in two months. I'm not scared. I'm just ready to get this show on the road already. 

But while sitting in the class, I started thinking about the idea of birth class. Giving birth is one of the most natural and common experiences in the world. Women all over the planet have been doing this since the beginning of time, yet there is SOOO much support--classes and groups and books etc. At the end of the day, there's a human inside you and it has to get out. There are two ways for that to happen and there are experienced professionals who will help you to do that. But there is no such  (or just much less) support or classes for people who are trying to figure out how to get a baby inside them. Half way through the class, when the teacher was holding up laminated photos of the cervix dilating, I started designing a curriculum for a one-day course on Infertility--Infertility 101. Because here's the thing-- infertility is way more confusing than birth. 

There aren't just two solutions to infertility like there are to birth--there are many. And often it's a step by step process that requires learning a new language, knowing what to ask and advocate for, making difficult decisions that have no guarantees, emotional turmoil, lots of money, and an understanding of the process of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. There are physical and hormonal changes that happen, there are relationship stressors, there are intense feelings, and a high need for coping tools. Birth to me--though maybe I'm wrong, seems fairly straightforward. I'll have to look for specific signs that this is all really happening and then I'll have a handful of choices to make until someone tells me to push. Maybe I'm a total jerk and it's all way more complicated, but the years leading up to now seem to me much more confusing. And at the end of the day, the birthing process takes a few days, max, while infertility can take years. YEARS!

So perhaps I'll  have to create a curriculum one of these days to support those stranded on IF Island. Because the discrepancy in support for P people and those going through IF just seems unfair. 

Hope anyone on IF Island finds some good support out there, best they can. 

Oh, and last Friday Lisa from Amateur Nester posted an interview with me on her blog, check it out!