Preventive Measures

I’ve got something big on my mind.

It’s something that I need to sort out and take action on, but is also something that doesn’t make any sense to me at all.  As an infertile, this subject is feeling taboo in my heart even though my head KNOWS it has to be tackled and tackled soon.

At my 6 week check after Gemma’s delivery, my gynae asked the age-old question that they ask of everyone at that appointment… “so what are we going to do about birth control?”  BIRTH CONTROL???  Holy smokes!  As someone who spent the greater part of her marriage TRYING to get pregnant, having to actively think about PREVENTING a pregnancy is just plain weird.  We discussed some options.  I left the office armed with wads of information on the mirena, mulling about vasectomy and a prescription for the mini pill as I was still breast-feeding.  I took that months worth of the mini pill, have stopped breastfeeding and am absolutely NO CLOSER to figuring out what course of action we are going to pursue to prevent another pregnancy.

We (and I mean Cliff) are sure that we (again I mean Cliff) don’t want anymore children.  We (and I mean both of us) are so absolutely grateful to have the two (TWO!!!!) children that we have been blessed with and want to give them everything we possibly can in life.  Another baby would seriously hamper our ability to give the two kids we have everything that we want to.  Our house is perfect for a family of four. Having that become a family of five would mean more renovations or another house… which is not really part of our plan.

BUT.

I just cannot wrap my head around actively preventing a pregnancy.  Not when so much of my life has been obsessed focused on achieving it.  The fact of the matter is that as much as I still think of myself as someone who is unable to conceive from having sex, the fact is that I can.  I did.  Twice.  So now I have to force myself so see myself as something that for so long I was not.  Fertile.  Able to conceive.  Not wanting an unplanned pregnancy…

My first instinct is to tell Cliff to get a vasectomy (he is willing).  But it seems so PERMANENT.  What if we find ourselves in a different place in a few years and want a third child (I always wanted three kids growing up)?  What if God forbid something happens to me and he remarries and his new wife wants a child with him?    What if?

The mirena sounds like a viable option too but it’s expensive to get placed (and not covered by medical aid, surprise surprise) and I’ve read that it doesn’t always agree with everyone who gets it.

I have to tell you, it’s kind of freaking me out.

So.  If you’re willing please share your experiences of preventive measures with me.  What works?  What doesn’t?

Time for a second?

When I found out that I  was finally pregnant, I found myself hoping that I was carrying twins.  My high beta’s fed my hope of a twin pregnancy.  I have always wanted three children and the fact that it had proven harder than I ever imagined to get pregnant, I really wanted (like most IVF patients) to have twins.  That way I would have my family in one shot and wouldn’t ever have to consider doing IVF again.

Then I experienced hectic bleeding.  I was terrified I was losing the only viable pregnancy I had ever had.  When we had our first scan at 7 weeks I was a little disappointed to find out that I was carrying a singleton.  But I was just so happy to know that I was carrying a live baby.  I had more hectic bleeding right up until 16 weeks into my pregnancy and then all of a sudden the bleeding stopped and I had a perfect pregnancy from there on out.

In 9 days time my son will be turning one.  I cannot believe that time has gone so quickly.  It feels like I was pregnant both yesterday and a lifetime ago.   As Kade draws closer to his first birthday I find myself wondering if it’s time to consider trying for a second baby.

I miss having a baby to snuggle.  I miss the littleness.  Don’t get me wrong I absolutely LOVE who Kade is becoming as he grows but I yearn for the small days.  The baby powder smelling tiny days.

I had secretly hoped that I would end up being one of those PCOS girls for whom pregnancy was the cure.  It would seem that I am not to be that lucky.  I have had exactly two cycles since I stopped breastfeeding Kade at 6 months.  My current cycle is sitting at 140 days and counting so I think it’s safe to say that pregnancy did not cure my PCOS.

That being the case, if I want a second baby (and I do, I really, really do) that will most likely mean getting my feet wet in IVF waters again.    To be honest, I’m not really sure how that makes me feel.  I know I can physically face doing another IVF, I mean after six of them, what is one more?  I think I could handle another IVF failure emotionally.  I definitely know that the sense of desperation that I felt doing fertility treatments won’t be the same because I do have Kade in my life now.

What makes me unsure is this.  I’m in a good place mentally.  I don’t want to get sucked back into the whole ttc frame of mind.  I worry that I won’t be able to stop trying for a second baby if after one or two IVF’s we havent yet succeeded.  I really don’t want to get back to being that obsessive person that I was before we hit the jackpot with IVF number 6.

I guess I will bide my time and see how things pan out.  Cliff and I have discussed the “timeline” for heading into IVF waters again.  If I am not by some miracle (and it will be a miracle) pregnant naturally by next year, we’ll contact our FS and start looking at heading into our next IVF.

I can only hope and pray that I either manage to conceive by some miracle before then, or that if we do head into IVF again that it takes first time round now that I have already had a pregnancy and live birth.

Time will tell.  As it always does.

Was it worth it?

I get asked this question A LOT.

I am very open about the fact that it took us 6 IVF attempts to conceive Kade.  I truly believe that if my story can help make one woman/couple not feel so alone in her/their own struggle, or if my story can help give one woman/couple some hope then then it was all worth it.  So I share our story with most people who comment on our son, or if it comes up in conversation.

The seven years we battled infertility were hard.  It put pressures on our marriage that we could never have imagined.  It put massive pressures on our finances.  On our emotional well being both as a couple and and as individuals.  But we were lucky.   We had our families and  I had amazing online support through Fertilicare and through the many blogs I found, started reading and participated on via Mel at Stirrup Queens.  I met wonderful people who I would never have met if not for that journey of infertility.  I found out that I was not alone.  That I was not THE only freak out there that could not conceive.  And so the tapestry of our journey was woven.

Looking back now, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it was well worth it.

I know that there may be some of you still in the trenches sitting here reading and rolling your eyes and thinking “easy for you to say, when you have your child”.  I know it, because I so often thought it when I was still battling.    But it was unequivocably worth it.  Worth every test.  Worth every needle.  Worth every drug.  Worth every tear.  Worth every arguement.  Worth every penny.  Because what we have now is priceless.  What we have now is unbelieveably special and remarkable.  A family.  That wonderful little boy makes everything we went through to have him SO VERY WORTH IT.

Its something that much like many things in life you can only explain once you experience it.

So for any of you out there doubting if the journey you are on will be worth it in the end.  It will be.  I can assure you of that. No matter how you get there, or the lengths you take to make it happen.

It will be worth it.

The Unexpected Dilemma

When we started our IVF that resulted in Kade, we decided that we would (dependant on the number of eggs retrieved) be fertilizing two eggs with donor sperm as a diagnostic tool. 

Because we were already on our 6th IVF with no real reason as to why it wasn’t working for us, we figured that this way we could compare embryo’s fertilised with Cliff’s sperm vs embryo’s fertilised with a donor and rule out any sperm issues through looking at the embryology as opposed to the normal semen analysis.  

When we went in for our transfer talk, we were pleased to see that whilst our fertilization rate vs donor fertilization rate was lower (for various reasons, my eggs did not like being ICSI’d) our embryo’s were looking just as good, if not better than the donor ones.

We transferred our 3 remaining embryo’s and decided to freeze the donor embryo’s – just in case.

Thankfully we never had to worry about the “just in case” because we were blessed with a BFP at long last.  At the time, with all the bleeding I was experiencing we decided to not make any decisions relating to the donor embies as we were not sure if the pregnancy was going to progress.  Thank God, our son was a survivor and our pregnancy continued healthily.  As we got caught up with the pregnancy, any thought of the frozen donor embies was stored in our memory banks, much like the embies themselves were stored in a freezer at our clinic. 

We got a bill for their storage a little while ago and we were unexpectedly thrown into a bit of a dilemma. 

It’s important to state that we never intended on using the donor embies in the first place.  BUT.  When the bill arrived we were FORCED to now make a concrete decision about them.  And I found myself wondering if we shouldn’t keep them – just in case.

Just.In.Case… Three innocuous little words but words that hold so much impact when put into practical use in one’s life.

Cliff and I chatted and discussed what we should do with these little embryo’s.  They are a part of me after all.  There was so much more that we needed to consider in light of all that has transpired since we froze them.  We needed to factor in that we now know that we *can* achieve a pregnancy out of embryo’s from our own genetics.   We needed to consider that we’re both not getting any younger and needed to seriously consider when (if at all) we would like to try for a second baby.  We needed to explore our hearts and find out if we could ever really use those embryo’s knowing that they were created using half of me and half of another man. 

I am not happy to discard the embryo’s.  

I have always said that I wanted to be an egg donor – but only once I had managed to have a child of my own.  It seems like the best and most practical solution is to put these embryo’s up for adoption.  That way they have the chance at giving someone else the gift of life and parenthood.  And in doing this, I am in a very round about way, fulfilling my dream of being a donor.

I never thought that it would be a decision that I would grapple with the way I did.  I know how much hope these two embryo’s hold and I know that they could potentially change someone’s life in the most amazing and profound way.  But I do feel somewhat sad that we’re letting them go. 

When I look at my son and feel the many ways he has healed me through his very presence I know that we have made the right decision.

I will never forget the darkness that infertility brings.  The sense of hopelessness when faced with a diagnosis you have no idea how to conquer.

So it is with love that we have put our donor embryo’s up for adoption through our awesome clinic. 

I hope that they heal another couple’s hearts and that they are able to bring back the hope and joy that has probably been stolen from the couple that will end up using them. 

Thank you donor embies, for giving us the sense of hope we needed at a time when hope was low.

Reflections…

Things have been so crazy busy in life of late, that I’ve had little time for anything else other than work and getting Clam’s nursery completed all the while trying my best to bank as much sleep as I now…

The other day my sister asked me a question that I’ve been thinking a lot about, and the reflections it caused in me have kept my mind busy and full of emotion.

She asked me if pregnancy has been everything I thought it would be.

I can honestly say that pregnancy has been everything I thought it would be and MORE.  More in so many ways – not all of them seen thru rose tinted glasses.

Infertility taught me to dislike my body intensely.  I mistrusted my body, I felt like it was useless and good for nothing but punishment in any way possible.  Too often this body (this intricate work of art) had let me down, it had failed in every way that it was *supposed* to have been able to succeed.  As a result my body and I had an extremely toxic relationship.  It would “fail” me and I would hit back – with tequila, wine, overindulgence of food – things that whilst I was doing them made me “feel better” but things that I knew were ultimately punishing my failure of a body…

In the first 3 months of my pregnancy, the distrust I had of my body prevailed every sense of mine.  Whilst I wanted so badly to trust that this body was doing what it needed to do, I could would not trust that it was – mostly because of the bleeding I was experiencing but also because it’s track record was not so great up until that point.  I kept on expecting my body to fail me.  To fail the life that was growing inside me.  Obviously I hoped that it would keep proving me wrong along the way and thankfully at each scan after each big bleed it would stick it’s tongue out at me and shout “see, I’m not so bad after all.  I’m not such a failure after all.  This life IS growing and doing well inside me”…

At 12 weeks I gave myself permission to start healing my trust relationship with my body.  And how awesome that healing has been for me.

I started noticing the changes my body was making (all on its own) to ensure that it helped sustain the life that was growing within it.  I looked at my fuller breasts and noticed the dark blue veins that lined them.  I looked at my thickening waistline and appreciated the fact that this was going to help support a burgeoning bump.  As we reached each milestone, I found that I could look at my body in the mirror and accept that it was good for something.  That it was not the utter disappointment I had believed it to be for so long.  In fact, this body, the one that I had hated for so long was doing a pretty fantastic job of nuturing my son growing within it.

It *could* and was doing what it was *meant* to be doing – and all at the right times as well.  I’m amazed every day at how truly awesome my body is.  How it just seems to know what to do every step of the way. 

Even the not so nice parts of this pregnancy have amazed me.  The heartburn which attacks me practically non stop of late reminds me that my boy and the place of safety he’s in is growing as it should squashing my stomache and limiting the amount of good food I’m eating at one sitting.  The relaxin is certainly doing it’s job in my joints and whilst the pain can almost double me over at times, I marvel at how even now my body is preparing me for labour.

I’ve loved falling in love with my body again. 

I’ve loved seeing the amazement on my husbands face the first time he felt his son move within my uterus.  I’ve loved seeing how my whole torso shakes at times now that he’s running out of space to move without restriction inside me.  I’ve loved knowing that he seems to know that it’s my hand that’s soothing him when he’s got a case of the hiccups (so very recent has this love blossomed).  I’ve loved how he responds to my pokes and prods and I’ve loved playing my own version of “blind mans bluff” trying to figure out what body part of my son’s is pushing against my ribs or rubbing against my skin…

This pregancy has taught me that my body is worth loving, warts and all.  

And it’s because of this, that yes, I can say that pregnancy has been everything I could have imagined… and MORE.

This says it all…

Congratulations, you should be 39 weeks, 2 days, pregnant!

First beta: December 02, 2009

Singleton Due Date: August 10, 2010

Twins By Ave Gestation: July 19, 2010

Triplets By Ave Gestation: June 22, 2010

Quads By Ave Gestation: June 15, 2010

I should either be insanely busy with Quads, delightfully nutty with Trips, wonderfully crazed with Twins or eagerly anticipating the birth of our Singleton.

Instead I am drinking wine and mourning officially what could have been.  I miss you maybe baby.  I know you were not meant to be and that your precense is serving a better use elswhere, but I miss what you could have, would have been.

July and August can kiss my ass – they’ve both  been incredibly trying emotional months.  Roll on September…

Forgiveness & Moving Forward

Since my GIFT failed so miserably, I’ve been punishing my body in the only way I know how.  I’ve punished my pcos ovaries and empty uterus by over eating, over drinking and not exercising.  I’ve put on more weight than I care to admit in this push to punish my body.  The weight  – it’s fed my insecurities and has my self esteem at an all time low.

It felt good to punish my body. 

Because the one thing my body knows how to do is take all that extra food and drink and store it.  It’ KNOWS how to do something naturally.  Something that it is supposed to do in these circumstances.  And if it can’t work on it’s own to create a baby, then at least it can work on it’s own to make me fat.

Today I’ve decided enough is enough.  It’s time to stop punishing my body and for me to accept that it just does not work the way it is supposed to when it comes to fertility.  That knowing the only way I’ll ever conceive is in a laboratory is ok.  This is my body.  It’s the only one I’ve got and I’ve been treating it so badly in the last few months.  It’s doing the best it can under the circumstances and it’s time to stop being a bitch to my body.

So I’m moving towards forgiveness.  Forgiveness for my body that I’ve hated and punished for failing me.  I know it’s not going to be easy to break this habit I’ve got myself into.   But if and when we decide to try another IVF I don’t want to be in the place where I question my body quality.

So moving forward I’ve dug out my dietician plan.  I’m going to shop according to it and eat according to it again.  I’m going to cut down drastically on the wine.  And I’ve dug out my running shoes from the depths of my cupboards. 

I’m going to enter a 21km race.  And I’m going to slowly train for that race.  I’m going to move forward to a healthier me and in that process I will hopefully learn to forgive my body completely.  Who knows perhaps through this process I’ll even learn to love it a bit again.

We’ve made no plans for another treatment except in that we’re quietly squirreling any extra money away for one.  When we’ll do it, we have NO idea.  But we know that there will be a next one.  One last attempt at becoming a family that has human kids.

Someone once said “forgivenss is freedom”.  I’m keen to get myself closer to freedom again.  And I think at the end of it all my body, this poor fat punished body is going to thank me for it.

Feeling a bit silly

You know what today is?  CD 59.  It’s also my 6th day of being back on the pill.  I’m mostly ok with it.  But let me back track a bit. 

At our last WTF appointment my lovely doc had told me that he did not want me on any form of meds for 3 months – we felt that my body needed a break from artificial hormones for a while.  We agreed that whilst I needed to not be on meds, I also needed to have a regular period so if I had not had a bleed by the 28th April (CD53) I was to contact him and we would decide a way forward.

28th April dawned and still no bloody period.  So I popped my FS an email and asked him what he wanted to do.  He wanted me to go in for a scan the next day and based on that we would decide our course of action. 

I can’t tell you how weird anxious sad scared heartbroken odd I felt walking into the clinic again.  It was hectically busy and there were so many new faces.  New faces filled with hope and excitement.  While mine was set in stone.  New faces whose hearts were thumping in excited anticipation.   While mine was constricted and did not want to beat.  I was greeted by name by all the staff there and chatted a bit with some of them while waiting my turn.  A new face asked me if I was there to have my second baby cos they all knew me so well.  I said no I was still trying for my first.  She asked how long I’d been trying.  I told her 6 years.  She asked how many times I’ve done this.  I told her five.  She mumbled something and turned away from me. 

Oops I did it again, I made another one scared and nervous. *sigh*

So into the scan room I went with a thumping heart.  I don’t know why I was so scared… actually I’m fibbing.  I do know.  In the smallest region of my heart I was secretly hoping that I would be one of *those* women.  You know the ones right?  The ones who after 6 years of infertility and several failed IVF’s miraculously spontaneously fall pregnant all.on.their.own. 

I know I should have known better.  My body?  It’s not known for its regularity in ovulation.  It’s not known for its perky little 28 day cycles.  What it is known for are my over 100 day cycles and that record-breaking 198 day cycle.  It is certainly not known for its ability to miraculously fall pregnant.  But a teensy weensy part of me could not forget that we had got it on on CD15.  And that silly little teensy weensy part of me could not help but hope that I might be legend.

Clearly I should know to know better.  My FS was all excited cos he found a corpus luteum cyst and thought my period would come all on its own but just to be sure he sent me for some bloods to check my E2 and progesterone levels.  My levels were so low they were through the floor.  So even if my wonderfully PCOS body had somehow managed to create a follie and release it, my wonderfully PCOS body could not manage to keep it going.  Great. 

So here I sit dutifully popping my daily pill feeling a bit silly.  A lot dumb.  And very, very broken.  I’ve been trying so hard to get myself back into a positive frame of mind about this journey we’re on.  I’ve been immersing myself in my relationship with God (which is still tenuous at best but it’s slowly getting better) and just really trying to focus on all the good I have in my life.  I’ve been looking within and willing myself to find strength to keep believing that this can happen for us.

I think that the fact I was secretly a teensy bit hopeful at that scan shows that I *can* dredge up the strength and hope to do this again.  I think it shows that sometime in the future my fighting spirit will rise again.

But today?  Right now as my fingers fly across this keyboard?  I feel so silly and so dumb for believing.  I feel so unbelievably stupid for having believed that *my* body (whose track record has been far from sterling) could actually work.

And I would give anything for that feeling to be gone.

The Way It Goes…

Reasons why I am considering trying IVF again sometime:

• Cliff will be an amazing Dad
• To experience pregnancy
• Once pregnant I can’t wait to spend evenings with my husband feeling our child move in my tummy
• My Mom deserves to be a Granny to more than one child
• Cliff’s Mom deserves to be a Granny to HIS child
• Gummy smiles I see from my friends kids absolutely melt my heart
• My niece thinks I’d be a cool Mom and that’s gotta count for something
• To decorate a nursery
• The clothes – have you *seen* how cute they are?
• To hear my child call for me when they are sick and to know that only *I* can make it better
• The laughs and giggles that can’t get any better
• To look into my childs eyes and know that they know they are LOVED, so very, very loved
• To see my current babies (my Saff’s and Jazz) protect and guard my new baby
• To experience Mother’s Day without tears and sadness
• To experience Father’s Day without guilt and torment
• To share my love for reading with someone innocent
• Delight in my children who see the world through such unjaded eyes
• We had a chemical before – that’s got to mean that it might go all the way for us at some point right?

I could go on for ever and ever….

Reasons why I might consider stopping this madness for good:

• This hurts both of us so much in so many ways

Still Alive & Sun Beauty

I’m still alive. 

I’ve been cutting myself some slack and am allowing myself to feel what I’m feeling and so far I’ve not wanted to throw myself under a bus so I think it’s working 😉

Monday was hard for me.   I got two very unexpected pregnancy announcements that hurt my heart.  The first was from a friends Dad who caught me on FB and asked me if I had heard the great news.  My heart sank and I just knew that said friend was pregnant… with her third baby… her second baby is only 4 months old… The second one came from another friend who is pregnant with number 2.  Wonderful news except she delivered it with the missive that she wished it would have taken longer than the 2 months it did to happen and that morning sickness was a “bitch” to deal with all day every day long for 8 weeks.  *sigh*  I am happy for them, I really am, but I can’t help but wonder when (if ever) it will be my turn to have that happiness.  I ended up drinking a bottle of red wine on Monday night while watching Revolutionary Road (ps SO not the right movie to watch when you’re in an IF funk).

Other than that work has been hectic of late.  So it’s been a busy few days. 

So often on my way to or from work I see the most amazing skies.  The colours are so vibrant and it just looks so damn beautiful that I have to take a snap with my cell phone.  The pics I take never quite do the reality justice but I had to share two of my favourites from the last two weeks with you all.