Don't Count Your Eggs

Happy New Year! Kinda

Momo is sick. We aren't sure what's wrong but she's lethargic and won't eat. She has a slight fever and threw up earlier. It's terrible to see her like this. Poor baby. I'm not in great shape either. I have torticollis, (diagnosed by my sister-doctor) where my neck is spared out in a way that makes me look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I can't move my neck without excruciating pain. I would say the worst pain I ever felt but I blasted Momo out of my privates so that experience kinda takes that title for life. Let's just say we are kind of a hot mess over here. Poor Noah was planning on a nice New Years Eve workout followed by seeing Star Wars and invested he's been wiping barf and trying to help me get my head on straight. Literally and figuratively. 

So here we are.

As I was laying in bed nursing Momo to sleep, I looked over at Noah who was conked out next to her and I thought, "Jeez, what a sorry bunch, but this is the best friggin' New Years Eve we've had in a long time." I almost wrote ever, but that's not really true. Noah and i had some pretty rocking' New Years, toasting on rooftops, getting toasted in foreign countries-- and we had some pretty rock bottom new years on IF Island, asleep by 9pm, wishing the year away. 

I guess it made me think that we really never know what they year ahead might bring. What we do know for sure is that there will be laughter and there will be tears. There will be moments of joys and moments of despair. That's the ride we've all agreed to go on when we entered this wonderful world. We also know we will learn and grow and love.

Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy New Year. 

Can we just wrap the year up in a neat little package with a bow?

It's hard to believe another year has passed. Years feel so long on IF Island and then suddenly it seems like WTF just happened, the year is over? Noah and I often felt like we had nothing to show for the year other than a giant box full of syringes. 

I often felt... uncomfortable...angry? pissed? sad? shocked? when another year had passed and we weren't any closer to having a family. I guess we were always a little closer in that we could check certain things off our list. Clomid? Ha. Check. IUIs? Check. IVF? Check. Donor eggs? Check. Even though we didn't get the outcome we wanted with these things we did get closer to the goal because we knew trying these things, regardless of outcome, was part of our process. But the end of the year felt hard because I wanted things to be wrapped up in a neat little package, tied with a bow. I wanted closure and clarity. I wanted to feel like I had some control or some sense of what the plan was, where we were headed, and how it was all going to play out. The end of the year and the beginning of a new year often makes some of us feel like this. Like we want a clear end and a clean slate beginning. But more often than not the end of the year on IF Island kinda means nothing but the feeling that another year has gone, another year of the biological clock ticking louder. More often than not we don't have clarity, things are not left in neat little package with a bow. Things are left nebulous and vague and uncertain. The discomfort for many of us is in the uncertainty of it all and yet we have to muster to find hope and optimism that this next year will be IT. 

We have to find that feeling. That hope. Hope sometimes feels betraying but sometimes it's all we have. Noah and I said "next year will be our year" for several years. And eventually we were right. Now Momo is 9 months old. She's tearing up the house shelf by shelf and it's incredible to watch. We can't imagine our lives without her. We can hardly believe that this time last year we were just hoping she stayed put for a few more months until birth. And the year before we were trying to figure it all out and the year before that we were just a hot mess. There came a point where I had to let go of the idea that the year would end neatly with a game plan and I just allowed it to be a time of rest and being cozy. I didn't want to reflect or set resolutions or goals. I just wanted to try my best to take care of myself and Noah and recover. 

Now we are taking care of Momo. We are more exhausted than we've ever been. Noah just looked and me with bags under his eyes and said, "it's not even 11am." And this is what we were waiting for. 

After all this we are one of the lucky ones

Yesterday, Noah and I filmed part of our final interviews for our documentary. We are going to have rough cut done by the end of this week, so stay tuned... 

One thing Noah and I agreed on is that we felt lucky. Five years and tens of thousands of dollars and we feel totally and completely lucky. Not just to have the child that we do, that's obvious. Momo is an incredible human whose smile literally lights up the room. But that we had the opportunity to be on a "journey to parenthood" and go through various treatments. Not everyone has that opportunity. 

I know that many people who follow the blog live in different countries, and I know some of those countries have very different laws when it comes to assisted reproduction. In some countries egg donation or surrogacy isn't legal. Some places don't allow single people or same-sex couples to access treatments. There are often rules about age. What am I missing? I know it's really hard for many people to have access. But another big (HUGE) access issues is the cost. 

Last month (November 2015), there was an article in Redbook Magazine called, "The secret reason women aren't getting pregnant." It wasn't about age related fertility decline or fertility unfriendly foods, it was about money. The subheading read, "It's the most heartbreaking aspect of the fertility crisis: While scientific advances have been life-changing for families, millions of Americans simply can't afford to gamble their savings or go deep into debt to get treatment. Are we now living in a world where you have to be lucky or rich to have a baby?"

In some ways, yes. According to this article, the average amount a couple going through IVF spends is $19,234. WTF?! That's insanity. That's for a chance. Sometimes a less than 1% chance. That's for putting everything on the elusive one good egg. 

Noah and I spent about that on round 1 in 2012. Maybe a bit less, more like $16,000 for IVF and the meds and acupuncture and herbs and vitamins and therapy and initial doctor appointments and crazy expensive blood tests etc etc. And when our embryos fell apart so did I. I knew the gamble. I knew the odds. But I was 32 and thought that if you spent the money, followed directions, and crossed your fingers, everything would work out. Transfer day never came.

But we were lucky that we could afford to try.  That round was kind of all we could try. For round 2, my parents helped us. The Baby Quest foundation helped us with a grant. We dipped into our savings and we saddled up for round 2 with donor eggs. The average cost of egg donation is between $20-$30,000. That is some people's annual salary. That price tag knocks a lot of people out of the running completely. Living child-free can be a very difficult choice for some people, but it is a choice that many make.

Having a baby has become a class issue. It's beyond unfortunate that people with a medical diagnosis  (which infertility is) aren't offered insurance coverage and that having a baby has become a luxury.

So I don't want to get too fired up, but it is very unfair and very heartbreaking. I sometimes think that if money hadn't been an issue for us we probably would have gone for an anonymous egg donor for round 3, and then we wouldn't have Momo. Momo is the single best thing that has ever happened to us. We are in love beyond anything we could have imagined and perhaps everything had to happen exactly how it did for us to have found her. 

We were lucky and we know it. We also did our best to think outside the box and be open to how our baby would come to us. I really send a lot of love to anyone out there who is struggling with this aspect of infertility. As if the diagnosis and process isn't hard enough, the financial burden can be crushing. But I also try to believe that where there's a will there's a way. It just might be a completely different way than anticipated. 

There will come a point where you sail away from IF Island, and watch as it gets smaller and smaller...

Momo is asleep in her crib and I can't stop watching the monitor. She's just over 8 months old and the most incredible little human I've ever met. She loves to get into things and crawl up and down the stairs. She loves avocado and pulling leave off trees and wakes up every morning, standing at the edge of her crib with a smile that melts Noah and I. Even though it's 5am, we argue over who gets to get her.  (When we both go in there she's like, "WTF guys, chill, it's 5am, don't overwhelm me.") And I still can't believe she is ours. I have these moments where I still can't believe that she grew inside of me. That parts of her began inside someone else-- two someone elses who we may never know. I can't believe she was vitrified--whatever that means-- in a freezer for nearly 5 years. I could never have imagined that all the steps--every terrible, heartbreaking moment of our "journey" was perhaps necessary so that we could connect with her. Every set back, every failed cycle, every terrible phone call with the RE and every disappointing procedure had to happen perhaps, and I'd do it all again for her. 

I remember getting a drink with my friend Lisa a while back. It was around this time of year, maybe two years ago, and several of my friends were spending the holiday excited to announce their pregnancies to their families. Lisa went through years of fertility stuff and ended up with the kids that were meant to be hers, one through adoption, one through egg donation and surrogacy. I think Noah and I were just totally lost and did know what to do next. And I felt angry. Holiday lights and music and signature drinks were all around and I just wanted to crawl into a hole.  I didn't want to be envious of friends who were making holiday cards that doubled as pregnancy announcement cards, but I was. I didn't want to feel sorry for myself, but I did. And Lisa bought me a drink and a bowl of fries and said two things that helped me feel better. She said, "Fuck your friends," (I feel really bad about this now but at the time it was kinda just what I needed to hear. She went on a bit, like fuck anyone who's pregnant etc...I know, terrible, but...kinda hit the spot), and she said she promised that my "journey" would one day be over and I will be able to not only immerse myself in my baby (which I do) but I'll be able to make sense of some of the journey, and what I can't make sense of (like TONS of medication injected into my body that resulted in nothing) I will be able to let go of. None of it will matter as much and the immediate sadness and confusion and frustration and longing and fear will just start to feel a little dull.

I didn't believe her. I mean, I did believe her, I wanted to believe her, but I couldn't fathom what it would feel like to be immersed in anything but my IVF schedule and obsessing on online egg donor sites. It wasn't my reality to be able to picture sailing away from IF Island. So I relished in her first comment for a while and eventually decided I'd just believe her. One day it won't be so bad.

And that day came. And that day at that bar with Lisa feels like a lifetime ago. Her kids are teenagers and mine is here, with a zest for life and a strength and confidence that is so fitting for her little journey into this world. 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, only to be a reminder that things change and the hamster wheel of infertility will one day stop. And there will be resolution. And there will be distance. And there will be healing. And there will be love. And hopefully, there will be tiny toes and smiling little monkey who makes your heart sing every moment of every day. 

Sending love and patience and luck and a reminder that one day much of this...crap will be a somewhat distant memory.

From one Islander to another

Yesterday I went to the ear doctor because I kinda went deaf a while back. It happened when I was about five months P when all of a sudden it felt like I had water in my left ear and everything sounded muffled. I knew that weird things related to mucous and such can happen when P so I ignored it and found myself just saying, "WHAT?" a lot. It got really annoying around 9 months P so I went to my primary care doc who told me some tube was probably blocked and I could try a nasal spray that might not be safe during P. Ummm...no thanks. Cut to yesterday. I was in this ear doctor's office and she was doing some basic tests. I told her the story-- about being P and one day just noticing I couldn't really hear, and I saw her tense up and get...snippy? I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly felt like something came over her that pissed her off when I told her it happened while I was P. And then I just knew she was part of the club. I'd known her for about four minutes but instantly I could sense that she had struggled and still had feelings when people talked about being P. Perhaps I have intuition about these things. So I tested it out. 

As she was getting more seemingly agitated at just the word P, I told her what my primary care doc said about the eustachian tubes being blocked and she said that wasn't it and I said, "that wouldn't be the first time my primary care doc was wrong. He completely missed my obvious fertility problems." And almost instantly I saw her eyebrows soften and her tense jawline relax. She asked me who my RE was and shared who hers was and talked about how after years of fertility treatments she adopted her first child and her sister carried her second child for her. Suddenly we were old friends. Oh, and I have sudden onset hearing loss and possible nerve damage and some problem with the bones in my ears. No fix apparently. No drops or spray, that ear is apparently just done. Anyway. 

I went home moderately depressed about my ear and made an appointment for an in depth hearing test next week, and I thought about the interaction. How did I know she was an IF Island survivor? How did I sense that the word P was upsetting her, even as a medical professional, even as a parent of two children? It's my new Spidey sense perhaps. Of all the superpowers...

It's interesting to be (finally) on the other side of the Island and reflect on the scars, the sensitivities, the traumas, the desire to share and the camaraderie many of us feel towards each other. I never know who I am triggering when I walk down the street with Momo strapped to my chest. I have guilt about that but I also often get lost in her, which makes me feel even more guilty. I also have love and understanding for anyone going through the insanity of it all, and I hope that by connecting and being open I can help one person feel less isolated and more hopeful that the situation at hand can and will change.

Many of us might carry with us some... feelings about all of it. And that's ok. It's about how aware of it we can all be. How kind to ourselves and understanding towards other we can be that matters.