Stowaway…

You know it’s funny how life goes on while you’re making plans.

We had hoped that having a live birth I would be “cured” of my PCOS and that a conception would take place naturally for us when the time came for a sibling for Kade.  Well after nearly two years of non protective sex we decided that we would make plans to go and see our fertility specialist when we got back from our Plett holiday.

Stephan was pleased to see the weight loss and felt it boded well for a future conception.  We talked about plans for the future and how we were to proceed.  He did a scan, everything looked good and he confirmed that he saw a corpeus luteum cyst on my left ovary and that the lining was nicely progestonised indicating an ovulation of my own at some point.  Then he found what looked like an endometrioma on my right ovary and the plan was to go do my blood work, and wait for my period to start so we could scan again on day 2 to check if the suspected endometrioma was still there or not.  In its absence I would have an office hysteroscopy to ensure uteran readiness for pregnancy and if it was still there I would need to book a laparoscopy.  Once my period started I would go on the pill to prepare myself for our future IVF.

Well imagine my surprise when after a business trip to the mother city which involved hectic gastro and feeling incredibly tired and off colour for a week or so when a thought popped into my head.  A thought so unthinkable that it actually made me laugh out loud at myself.  My period was still missing in action but that is not unusual – me of 157 day cycles.  The thought that popped into my head was that maybe… just maybe I might be pregnant.  So I did what any self-respecting infertile does.  I went and bought a pee stick and peed on it.  I really don’t know what I was thinking, but I do know I wasn’t expecting to see this:

And then this:

I called Cliff and told him that I thought I was pregnant and his reaction was classic.  “How??”

We were elated and so very happy shocked.  I mean what are the chances of lightning striking?  The irony of the situation was not lost on me either.  I was THAT girl.  The one that I had disliked most intensely on my infertility journey.  You know the one.  The one who went on HOLIDAY and RELAXED and fell pregnant.

I immediately rushed out for a beta and it came back beautifully – 2285.  I emailed Stephan who congratulated me and told me to see my gynae for my 8 week appointment.

We lived in a cloud of happiness and told our families that we had been given an amazing little gift.  A stowaway from our time in Plett.  Then Kade broke his leg. It was a time of super stress.  Everyone kept telling me to take care of myself and the miracle growing inside me.  I figured that all was fine with the baby on the inside, I was feeling and having that first trimester tiredness and the fact was that my baby on the outside needed me more.  He had to be my focus.  Still I believed that this pregnancy would be just fine.  That our Stowaway was growing as it should.

Time came for our first scan.  We were excited and so chuffed to have dodged the IVF bullet.

U know what happens when you’re on cloud 9 right?  When you fall off that cloud you fall damn hard.  There was no heartbeat at that scan.  A fetus and a yolk sac but no heartbeat.  I think a part of me knew at that moment it was all over.  That our little Stowaway was not meant to be.  Our doctor told us to go through the Easter weekend and to have a beta done on the Monday and again on the following Wednesday and to rescan a week later in case we had our dates wrong and it was just too early to have seen that little beating heart.

There was no way I was waiting an entire Easter weekend to know what I already knew in my heart of hearts.  I did a beta on the Thursday – 32 954 – perfectly in range for a 6 week pregnancy.  I breathed a sigh of relief but did not allow myself to believe that it was going to be ok.  The next beta on Saturday showed me in stark black and white what my heart and body already knew.   The numbers dropped.   30 500.  The death knoll of hope.  Fucking 30 500.

Having your gynae away for a long weekend when all you want is a scan to confirm what the numbers, your body and heart are already telling is a special kind of torture.  Having your niece tell you that she still has hope and will pray that God saves your miracle baby is a special kind of hell.

I went in on Wednesday for an emergency scan to have the miscarriage confirmed.  I was admitted straight away for a d&c.  I lay in that hospital bed cramping and bleeding from the medication that was given to soften my cervix to make the evacuation easier and felt completely numb.  Cliff needed to be at home to care for our injured son.  I have never felt so alone in my life.

Its been two days since Stowaway was scraped from my womb.  I feel all manner of things.  I’m heartbroken, pissed off, confused, upset, sad, stupid… the list goes on and on.  I know I’ll never understand why Stowaway could not go all the way.  I’ll never understand why I was allowed to fall in love with the idea of being a family of four.  I’ll never understand why we had to say goodbye.

What I will say is that for a short time Stowaway made me believe that things could be different for us.  Stowaway gave me a glimpse of what could be.  And honestly, whilst I am supremely pissed off right now, I do cling to the fact that God is faithful.  That He loves me and that He only wants what is best for me.  I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but I know this is true.

Our little Stowaway, our ray of hope and sunshine, you are missed.  I will always wonder what you could have become.  I will always love you.

Thank you for being mine even if it was for such a short time.

 

Thinking of Donating?

It’s no secret that Cliff and I had a long battle with infertility to conceive Kade.  After seven years of infertility and after 6 IVF’s, we were blessed to become a family of three.

With each failed IVF, I was dead sure that at our WTF appointment our lovely FS would tell me that I would need to consider using donor eggs.  As someone who had always thought they would be able to donate their eggs, this was something that I was always prepared to hear from our FS.  I would always pre-empt it “are you sure I shouldn’t consider using donor eggs next time?”

Knowing that there were women out there who were willing to allow me the opportunity at realising my dream of pregnancy and parenthood meant so very much.  That someone I hadn’t met, would give me that chance, it really just blew my mind.

I don’t fit the requirements of becoming an official egg donor, but am grateful that I indirectly got the chance to help a fellow infertile have the chance of achieving their hearts desires by donating embryo’s from my eggs and donor sperm.  I’m proud to say that that makes me in a very round about manner an egg donor.

If you, like me feel it in your heart to help someone like me (an infertile whose biggest desire was to feel the weight of a baby in her arms) have the chance of becoming a mother, please consider signing up to become an egg donor with Nurture.  Tell them you found them through my blog.

You will never know how much your gift of egg donation will mean to the couple who have come to that point in their journey with infertility.  How much hope your gift to them can inspire.  How with your donation, their faith could be restored.

Letting Go

As a new first time mom I really battled with the notion of letting go.  Throw in seven years of infertility and the idea of letting go was an absolute no-no in my mind.  I wanted to be able to do EVERYTHING for my son.  I so badly wanted to prove that I DESERVED to be his mother.  In my mind that meant that I had to do everything for him myself and I had to do it perfectly.  I put an immense amount of pressure on myself to be the perfect mother.  Throw in some sleep deprivation and a refluxy baby, lets just say things were not always perfect… that meant that the guilt set in.   That useless emotion that gets us no where.

Guilt that I wasn’t doing everything perfectly.  Guilt that I would sit on the bed and hold my son tight,tight, tight in my arms and literally BEG him to go to sleeeeep.  Guilt that I craved sleep more than I craved the desire to care for him.  So I put more pressure on myself.  I battled to allow Cliff to help me.  Cos I had to do it all myself.  In not allowing Cliff to help me, he happily toddled off to bed to sleep most nights and boy then did the resentment set in.  How DARE HE SLEEP WHEN I CANT?? More guilt.  For being a shit wife.  A wife who begrudges her husband his sleep.  Useless, useless, non productive guilt.

On and on and on the circle of pressure on myself and guilt went.  Until one Sunday when Kade was about 3 weeks old my mother came to visit and found me in Kade’s room in a state.  I was overtired, cluster feeding my child and so overwhelmed with this thing called motherhood.  Battling to figure out how to manage it all.  Still trying to figure out this little person who was my child.  She told Cliff to pack a bag for Kade and told me that she was taking my son to the shops for the afternoon.  That I needed a break.  I burst out crying and told her to just take my child away from me cos I wasn’t deserving of being his mother cos I couldn’t cope!  Talk about drama queen!

That afternoon was the first lesson I got in allowing myself to let go.  To allow myself some help and to give myself a break.  I started accepting offers from my family to come over and watch Kade for a few hours so I could sleep.  I started allowing my husband to do more than just change nappies and wash bottles.  I started allowing myself to think that altho no-one could care for Kade like I could (cos lets face it Mom’s always do it best *wink wink*) that maybe their way of caring for him was not so bad after all.

It was not an easy process, and it took some time for the notion of letting go to sink into my stubborn mind.  But I have to admit that allowing myself that “break” made life a lot easier for everyone involved.

I still battle to let go sometimes, but overall think I’ve managed to balance the act of wanting to be everything to my child and allowing myself to remember that in order to do that I too need a break.  It’s still a work in progress, one I’m sure that I’ll never truly master.  All I can hope for is that in allowing myself to let go, that I become a better mother to my son.

 

 

Jelly Belly

After Kade was born, the thing I battled most with in the first few days was not the lack of sleep.  It was the freaky feeling of my jelly belly.  I was rather large in the end of my pregnancy but loved the feeling of that rock hard tummy that housed my son.  After he came out that wonderful hard ball became this floppy, empty, soft, squishy, hot mess.

I couldn’t handle the way it looked and felt.  Much like the feeling of my flat belly button on my pregnant tummy skeeved me out, my jelly belly gave me that same feeling.  Thankfully I was lucky enough to have a child who literally sucked me back to reasonable shape in a short period of time.  Nine months later I find that I still have that last bit of stubborn flab on my tum.

37 weeks 5 days pregnant and HUGE!

 

12 days post partum and looking pretty darn good =)

I was chatting to a friend of mine the other day about this very thing.  Her baby is 7 weeks old and she said she was battling with the changes in her tummy since her baby came along.  That it’s not the same as it used to be.  I could relate to those feelings mostly cos I had those same icky feelings about my own tummy after Kade came.

Thing is I figured pretty early on (at about 2 weeks after he came) that I needed to change the way I was thinking about my jelly belly.  For too long I allowed my relationship with my body to suffer and be in a very dark place.  My pregnancy helped heal a lot of the damage I did to my body image.  I wanted to hold onto that.  So I decided to look at my jelly belly as something rather special.

Because the cause of that jelly belly was the priviledge of my pregnancy.  That little bit of flab that I still have is an honor to wear.  Because my tummy will most likely never be the same again – and that’s a good thing.  That permanent change means that I have my child in my life.  For me, a little bit of flab is a small price to pay for the amazing prize I hold in my arms every day.

What are your thoughts on your jelly belly?

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.

Have yourself a Merry Lil’ Christmas…

It’s no secret that I love Christmas.

I love it for many reasons.  First and foremost, I love Christmas because it’s an outward showing of the love I have for my Saviour who was born into this world to die for my sins. And yes, I know he wasn’t actually born on this day but the symbolism of it holds true for me.

I love Christmas cos its a special time that I get to spend with my family.  My big, mad, crazy family.  As a Curley tradition we always used to wake up early on Christmas morning, head to church and when we got home we’d crack a bottle of bubbly, mix with OJ and toast while opening pressies.  We still do this every year.  We have a massive Christmas lunch with loads of laughing, joking and EATING and then we all sit and lie together on couches, some of us have naps, we talk, we tickle each other but most importantly we love on each other.

As Cliff and I got further and further into our infertility journey, I still loved Christmas but it started to become a time of sadness mixed with the joy for us.  We used to be reminded of the fact that we were the ones without children over and over.  And we all know “Christmas is all about the kids” right?  It became a time of year that I stopped looking forward to.  I used to head into each Christmas with the thought that next year would be our year and when it wasn’t I would spiral further into the despair…

Last Christmas I was pregnant, happily so and I was just so darn glad that I could embrace the joy that Christmas was for me again.  I had experienced my last major pregnancy bleed and my child was growing in my tummy.  I could let myself drown in the happiness of it all.  This year, I know I’m gonna have to take a trailer with to my Mom’s house to cart all the pressies home.  Cos this year, my son will be entering into the Christmas mayhem with us.  I look at him as we draw closer and closer to this special day and I fall to my knee’s with gratitude.  I cannot believe that we hit the jackpot so to speak and that we are so blessed.  I sink into my happiness like an addict sinking into a high.

But I also take a step back to think of those who are still in the trenches of infertility.  Of the joy that is robbed of them at this time of year.  My wish for all of you who are still trying to make or add to your families; is that your deepest desire’s are fulfilled in the coming year.  That next year will be a Christmas of unending joy and gratitude.

So from me and mine, to you and yours “Have yourself a Merry Lil’ Christmas”

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.

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

A wonderful bunch!

As always I’m a tad late on the mark here, but you know that they say about “African time”…

I started this blog in 2008 as an outlet to my thoughts and emotions relating to our journey to a family and through it was thrown quite literally into a world where I was meeting like-minded people who understood where I was coming from and who knew not to tell me to “relax” and who knew that telling me stories of their auntie’s cousin’s friends twice removed cousin who “just adopted and when they stopped thinking about it, she fell pregnant”.

It was also a time when I started reading JJ’s blog.   It took me a while to get the hang of this blogging thign and it was a further while after that, that I plucked up the courage to click on the Braces bunch logo on her blog and found a whole new group of wonderful people to connect with and to become “friends” with.  Being part of the Braces bunch is totally cool (even though I miss most of the twitter action cos of the time differences between SA and the US) and I’ve connected with some really amazing women who inspire and lift me up daily.  Cos when I’m feeling sad or have just had bad news and I open my post box I see a cool envelope and just know that someone far away was thinking of me.   Someone in another country took time out of their busy schedule to remember me and to send me a word of encouragement or make me smile.

That’s something special.  I am SO grateful to be a part of it. 

My daily blessing card said this today:

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves ~ J.M Barrie

And that I think pretty much sums up what this group of women and our founder means to me.

BB girls – you rock!  Happy 3rd Birthday Bunchers!  Here’s to many more years of support and love for each other.