Birth and Death

I am so lame. I've been wanting to blog for weeks, but the ability to get to this computer (with the pictures) during a time when I had a few minutes to write and be inspired enough to say something interesting.... Well. Here I am.

What I've wanted to be posting first starts with this picture. Dave put in raised beds in the garden for me, and the day after a bunny mowed down our first round of beets and lettuce, added this beautiful, architectural bunny and rat fighting fence.

I love it. I love my garden with a feeling I did not know I had. I have missed actively gardening for about 4 years now. Three years ago was the diverticulitis; 2 years ago was hospitalization for twins; 1 year ago, I can't really remember, but I'm going to assume I was occupied with my twinnies. Nothing happened in the garden last year.

But this year, we've got lots of growth in a beautiful, beautiful space. I am much a believer of the intersection of form and function. It's got to be beautiful and it's got to work. Dave's handyman, craftiness has made gardening the most pleasant extra-work thing I do. Thank you, honey!!

So that's birth: the birth of a garden and the rebirth of my life outside of the twins.

What about death? Well, there is an interesting thing I only recently learned. After my first miscarriage, the chair of my department told a group of people at the time that my miscarriage--"It was for the better."

............

.................?

..................??!?!?!?!?!??!?!

What the fuckety fuck???

First, I got really upset when I heard that. I will be honest with you: it's the angriest I have been, perhaps in my entire life. The death of my baby was for the better? What????? Alcohol was likely involved with the anger considering I heard this during a casual happy hour, so let's blame that a bit for the anger.

But let's go a little further. And this is where I can easily move from being generous or nutty. The generous interpretation: He was making one of those stupid comments people make when women have miscarriages. It's entirely possible and, not unlikely, given his social skills.

The nutty interpretation (and by that I mean, I look like a completely paranoid nutjob) involves my state, at that point, of being an assistant (i.e., untenured) professor: it was better for my career that I didn't have another child. People bristle at that interpretation, but I think it's reasonable that he meant that, too. I am not trying to be coy about what was going on at the time, but for Dave and me, we believe this is an entirely reasonable interpretation. It's only nutty to those who weren't around us during that time.

He may have even meant a combination of the nutty interpretation and the more generous interpretation. A dead baby is a win-win for me!! Lucky me!

(((sigh)))

After I sobered up and got some distance from learning this information, I had a glorious revelation. And indeed, it came while I was walking back from my garden: I have everything I've ever wanted. I have my dream job, with my dream colleagues (mostly). I live in my dream house and I have my dream family. He's no longer my chair. He no longer works in my department. He no longer works at the university, and, he's not even in the country anymore.

So, yeah. I wish I could report back on some insight on forgiveness that I had. I don't have one. I'm not a good enough person to experience forgiveness that involves reconciliation and new close relationship with the "offending person". No. I think for me, forgiveness in this situation is just indifference. It's a feeling of "meh", which, I have to admit, is a pleasant one to have.

UPDATE: I spoke with my friend about his comment after she read this post and my "nutty" interpretation was the correct one. Fortunately, several of the feminists in the room (and the discussion was on INCREASING DIVERSITY AT OUR UNIVERSITY!) called him on this completely inappropriate statement.

Six Years

Last night, I was reading a book (a grown up book, which at this point in my life is exciting), and the protagonist drank a vodka and cranberry.

"Wow," I thought, "I can have a vodka and cranberry, too. I can have a vodka and cranberry any time I want for the rest of my life. WOW."

There's been a series of these revelations since the twins have been born: I can sell baby equipment, I can drink, I can exercise, I can train for a triathlon (again). It's like a whole new section of my life has opened up again now that we're not trying to get pregnant and won't ever try to again.

At first, I thought it had only been 4 years--that's how long we've been trying to give Conor a sibling or two. But then I realized we started trying to have Conor 6 years ago. So it's been 6 years that every month has a contingency. Every month where I decided whether or not it's worth the risk to buy new clothes---because I might need maternity clothes sooner or later. Six years where I've wondered whether or not it's safe to have a drink.

I don't know if other women experience this when they are trying to get pg. I'm pretty sure men don't quite get the point of dual processing one's life (well, I could train for a triathlon or marathon but I may be 7 months pregnant then).

It's just very nice to be through this journey and to finally be able to be wholly me again. Well, as me as I can be breastfeeding twins.

One Child Left Behind

I have been very upset by the news of the Chinese earthquake, particularly the stories of the parents who, due to the one-child policy, have lost their only child. I keep walking into daycare with wet eyes from sitting in the parking lot and listening to the sad end of the NPR stories on failed rescues. I know I should stop listening, but I also want to let my soul send out its support to those devastated parents.

As I told a friend this week, I don't have the one-child gene. This is despite the fact that many, if not most, of my friends are happy with just having one child. I really feel like there is an empty space in our family and there is a little soul is trying very hard to reach us. I actually stole that quote from the intake worker at the West Coast Clinic we are looking into. And yes, despite being all matter of fact when we were talking before, when she said that, I started to cry.

We still haven't had our debriefing meeting with the clinic here, and Dave keeps saying that we're not leaving here until we see what they are going to offer us. Nonetheless, my faith in this clinic is severely shaken. I know the success rate at the other clinic and it's going to take a lot for me not to insist that that's where we go.

-------------------

Ok. That's the easy part. I feel like I need to address the brouhaha in the comments from the last post. Gabi? Honey? You might want to step off a little. I don't want to reprimand anyone and, certainly, I don't want to censor anyone. But I do want everyone to play nicely and name calling does not fall under what I deem "playing nicely."

Also, I am not going to defend my choices here. I'm just not going to do it. And as my poor mother can tell you, it's been years and years and years and years and years (and years) since anyone has successfully told me what to do. I appreciate the different opinions of the people around me. It's nice and it's often quite useful (Weick's requisite variety and all). But Dave and I get to determine what is appropriate for us and our family.

So I certainly don't want to stop people from commenting here. I do want to encourage respect for other's diversity of opinions and experiences. And I really do want to give a mini-lecture from my knowledge of computer-mediated communication (CMC), and hyperpseronsal communication and the flashbulb effect of flaming on CMC research. But instead, I'm going to go read an article I'm co-authoring on EQ and stress and then read my student's masters thesis proposal on entitativity and online technology, and wait for the rain.

Not Doing as Well as I Thought

Apparently, Saturday when we got the news, was the numb stage of grief. Yesterday started the anger stage (which remains) and today is definitely starting the sad and for some reason anxious stage.

I really want to have another child. I'm afraid if we only have Conor, I will smother him with my love. I need to spread out all the attention and affection I have to give or it will be too much for one little boy to grow up healthy. And because we are not made of money nor covered by insurance, I feel like we need to be very calculated in what we do next.

One option we are seriously considering is going to a fertility inclinic on the west coast. They have outstanding success rates for women of my age and for problems like what I have. It's not convenient and it is likely to be a bit more expensive. However, it is also significantly likely to be more successful.

I really just want to have one or two "good tries" and this last experience does not seem like a try at all. If the path for us does not lead to a child, then I will eventually accept it. But I feel like we really have to TRY before I can say we've gotten there. And I just don't feel like we have.

Maynia

Yesterday was the annual M!dwood Maynia neighborhood festival. On the one hand, this is one of my favorite times to live where I live, what with the 5K race, the pet parade and the 6 hour festival in our park. On the other hand, this is the year anniversary of my running the 5K and losing my 11w5d daughter.

I think that miscarriage anniversary was less painful because we are right in the midst of the IVF cycle. So I have hope and excitement and not just waves of regret for losing our last pregnancy.

Plus, the pet parade is just so much fun! All the dogs and cats and gerbils and (fake) iquanas following behind the Charlotte Youth Organization Drum Corps is just a lot of fun!!!

So yes, the festival was fun. And the IVF is moving along. I think I mentioned that I wasn't quite sure if my estimates were correct about when everything would happen, and I was right in that I was wrong. It's *this* Friday not last Friday that they will collect the eggs. The good news is that so far, I'm doing great! In fact, the nurse used the word "perfect" so we have our fingers crossed that it will all go well. I'm not having any signs of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS) so that is good news. Although we want tons of eggs, we don't need to have me get really sick in the process.

So Dave has finished up his Cipro and I remain on my drugs until until and we'll go through the monitoring as we need to next week. The estimated day of transfer back to me is May 14th and I'll be on bedrest that Weds-Friday. That's the status for right now.

Finals are this week and I still have quite a few papers to grade. But things are moving along and we're happily moving along with them.

I Think This is Really Happening

I've been waiting for the official word that things are going to be starting for us for IVF, and apparently there is no "YES! You may proceed after surgery!" proclamation that is handed out. (And no, this isn't an April Fool's joke....unlike the one I pulled on my class this morning when I told them they were going to have a pop quiz. The look on their faces! The dread!! The "Oh Shit" attitude!!! Teehee! In case you're wondering, you just don't give pop quizzes to senior level students. So when I said "April Fools!", it took them a while to recover, but it was heee-sterical!)

Ok. Back to the real stuff. Dudes. We're starting our suppression cycle! Now! YIKES! I just got off the phone with the special order pharmacy and the medication arrives tomorrow. And our insurance is covering A LOT more than we thought!! And for the other medications, we joined a VIP/Frequent flier program at the special order pharmacy for $12 a year and a boatload of the meds will be less than half price. All in all the medications have thus far turned out to be half what we budgeted! Whew!! We still have to pick up some things from our local pharmacy, but it's antibiotics and a Valium for the transfer so things are looking great medication-wise.

And tomorrow we take our injectibles class where Dave and I learn to give each other shots. Well, he learns to give me shots and I learn to give myself shots. And on Friday, I had another HSG (just to make sure there is nothing in the way to prevent a pregnancy). We have our trial transfer scheduled in 2 weeks (to make sure the docs can actually do the transfer of embryos with no big surprises). And presently, we are just waiting for me to ovulate so we can wait a week or so before starting the Lupron to turn off all my hormones. (And put me into a menopausal state and scare the crap out of Dave. I might have read somewhere that "irritability" can occur.)

So despite trying to be up on everything I just leared that the first month, the docs turn off everything and the second month, they slowly turn everything back on so they can do all the things they need to do when they want to do them. Or something like that. Hopefully, I'm going to be responsive to the drugs which means that things will go quicker rather than upping the dosages and waiting until I respond before everything starts.

YIKES!!

The good news is that because of the timing of my cycle, the retrieval/transfer will happen at approximately 2 months after my surgery date which is when our doc said we could do this. Really, folks. It was Friday when he did my HSG that he gave us the go-ahead based on my cycle and the surgery and the expected timing of everything that we got the OK for this.

This may have something to do with my insomnia lately. Do you think? But it appears to be really happening. Really! Of course, now I fear that my excitement will lead to abject failure and that tomorrow we'll be told it's a No Go and that everything was not as we expected and that this is not going to happen. I have to tell you that although that fear may seem irrational to you, it seems all too real to me based on everything that has happened these last two and a half years. And of course, the probability of success is pretty low. So don't anybody get their hopes up!

Nonetheless, I *think* it might work. And I know I just told everyone not to hope, but I do hope that it will.

YIKES!!!!!

A Month in the Life of an Infertile

Cycle Day (CD) 1-5: Complain about Aunt Flo.

CD6, 7, and 8: Take a break from thinking about getting pregnant.

CD10-14 or so: Don't pee for 4 hours, sit with one's legs crossed until one can pee on a stick and perform the "Is-the-line-getting-darker" squint until the test line smacks you in the head, it is so dark.

CD8-CD17: Enjoy, ahem, being married or, in terms of TTC, babydance like crazy.

CD15-16: Take a break from thinking about getting pregnant.

CD17-CD26: Inject oneself twice a day with blood thinners while taking crazy making prednisone twice a day and progesterone once a day.

CD25-28: Laugh at how foolish newbies to the TTC process second guess every sneeze to see if they are pregnant. Realize that for you, indigestion, tingly boobs and bloating are "natural" outcomes to the massive amount of drugs you are on. They quite literally mean nothing.

CD26-28: Wake up and pee on a stick with no expectation of success, which, ironically, in the past meant a real possibility of success but now means you are not freakin' pregnant. Despite all reason, stare at the FRER HPT in 3 different light settings to see if the faintest of faint lines is detectable. Occassionally, tear the test apart to see if the line you see is "real" or an evaporation line. Decide after tearing the test apart that's as white as the driven snow, that it's perfectly acceptable to not feel guilty over a big fat glass of wine. Continue to whine, also.

After the final day of testing, stop taking drugs and wait for the whole damn thing to start again.

Lip Scuff

Since I'm currenty on the quest to give a shit, I thought I'd start a new series of posts on some of the products I'm finding useful in not looking like a used up old hag.

So here's the first one: Lip Scuff. I bought mine for the Body Shop a zillion years ago, and it had to be on sale because there's no way I'd pay $11 for it as they are advertising it on amazon.

So, in addition to having it for a zillion years, I've never really used it. Until the chapter on lips in my Don't Look like An Old Hag book.

So, now what I do is every morning before I put on the rest of my face moisturizer, I use the lip scuff (it basically exfoliates the dead lip bits), add a lip moisturizer from Clinique (a freebie that must be 10 years old!), and after I put on whatever makeup I'm going to wear, I add a lip gloss.

I have thin lips. (Chickens have thicker lips thatI) Nonetheless, the lip scuff helps plump them up and keeps them looking polished for most of the morning until lunch. This includes a couple of hot beverages throughout the morning.

So, my advice: go cheap, but it's worth it. My lips appear to be bigger and definitely look healthier.

I give that product a Mother Thing Stamp of Approval.

We'll see what else does or doesn't make it.

And, as for infertility (Why, yes! My infertility is doing fantastic. Thank you for asking), we a probably going not going to start IVF in the upcoming cycle. I am traveling most of March and it just would be too tricky and expensive for us to try. So end of March/beginning of April is when we're starting.

Of course, I realized on the way to work that if we'd pursued adoption last summer, we'd probably be on the way to bringing our child home soon. But we didn't. We may be in that place next year. But we're not there now.

We're still trying on our own, so maybe something will happen beyond the knots and bruises I'm getting now. It goes well with the lip scuff.

Winter Squash*

I had my first mammogram on Friday, as part of my pre-IVF protocol. Although it felt as though the the mammographer was trying to actually pull my boobs off of my chest, it wasn't as painful as I anticipated it to be.

Of course, I anticipated it to be incredibly painful and, in actuality, it only really hurt. The more startling part was the conversation I was having with the mammographer.

"So how has your day been?" she asked as she grapped my breast and put in on a plate.

"Ok. I didn't get hardly any work done," I told her. She laughed at my little joke and then proceeded to squash my breast flat giving as many turns on machine's knobs until my skin was translucent.

Or maybe she laughed maniacally, and then squashed my boob flat.

It doesn't matter. It's over and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.

*Oh, and if you don't know the reference in the title, check this out. Even stranger, the mammographer fully knew about the blog and this particular entry.

Happy 2008: Year of the Baby

Happy New Year!

I am cooking my collard greens and hoppin' john and ready to eat my way into fortune and good luck for 2008.

We had a very nice time in Omaha at my nephew's wedding. It was also not nearly as cold as I thought it was going to be. Yes, the highs only reached into the 20's, but I had bundled myself up so much with thick sweaters and layers of t-shirts that going outside felt refreshing instead of frigid. It was also so dry that my hair was drying within an hour of washing it. In any case, I have decided that temperature is relative. 42 degrees in Charlotte is not 42 degrees in Rockford, IL which is a boatload colder than 25 degrees in Omaha. This logic is why I'm a psychologist and not a physicist.

In other big news, Dave and I have decided that 2008 is the Year of the Baby. This Christmas marked the two year anniversary of our first miscarriage. And although at one point, I thought I could go on forever trying to get pregnant, actually I cannot. We are going to start with traditional IVF in February and should know pretty soon after whether we will get pg and/or whether there will be frosties available for multiple tries. So we expect that if that route is not successful, we will be moving more rapidly down the adoption path by May or June.

What that means to us is that by December if I'm not giving birth, not pregnant or not moving along adoption, we'll be done. Our family will be complete. That is not the worst thing that could happen. We have a fantastic little trio and I am happy with my family. We may be done already. But we are not done with trying.

Except for trying for next month. A pregnancy next month would mean a October due date and while that sounds wonderful, my maternity benefits would suck. If waited for a November due date, I'd have nearly 9 months off. With an October due date, I'd get about 6 weeks. I understand that is what most women get, and personally I think it sucks. I haven't been trying for 2 1/2 years for this next child to barely see him or her before I go back to work.

So there you go! I need to go tend my collards and peas.

Happy New Year to all of us.

Dear Santa

At Conor's daycare, they often will put the children's answers to different questions on the door to their room. It's a lot of fun to see what the children's responses are because they are usually quite funny.

To wit, the class read "Are you my Mother?" and the children answered the question "What is your mommy like?" Conor's response was cute "I don't know. I have to think about it" but others were hysterical "My mommy sounds like a helicopter and she's really slow" as well as "My mommy has long hair and long legs." (Vavavavoom!)

Today's posting on the door was "Dear Santa" and the children apparently responded to what they'd like to ask Santa for Christmas. Answers were mostly toy related "I don't know--a lot of toys!" and "My daddy needs some paper and Anna wants a princess."

Conor's answer was "I would ask a present for Mommy and Daddy, but I really need my own little brother."

His response was as unexpected as mine when I ran sobbing down the hall of daycare, my hand over my mouth to keep from wailing. I hid in the staff bathroom until I could gain a modicum of composure. I was still able to tackle the mother who saw my reaction as she left to let her know I was alright if somewhat mortified. It was awkward then, but can you imagine how awkward it would have been if I wasn't able to see her until tomorrow? She's seen me act like a nut; I would still be a nut.

It felt pretty raw to see Conor's wish for a little brother up on the door. All the other children asked for toys. And seeing his innocent request makes me feel empty and, publicly, called out as a failure.

I'm Supposed to be Having a Baby Right Now

The due date was actually November 20, but I thought it would have been earlier. Like right around now. Indeed, I'm supposed to be a almost 39 weeks pregnant.

What sucks is that except for a few weeks at the end of the summer, I've pretty much known how far along I was supposed to be each and every week since the miscarriage. And for the first time, I've had negative reactions to seeing other pregnant women. I have not been upset around my friends who are pregnant (although when I found out my closest mother friend here is pregnant, it felt like someone punched me in the gut). That, however, was a short lived negative reaction. She is a good friend and I'm thrilled for her growing family. (She is also the only mother friend of mine who gets that I may still have negative reactions. And she still cries with me over this miscarriage)

There are, however, other people that I simply cannot be around now that they are pregnant. The one woman who upsets me most is someone who had a lot of trouble getting pregnant the first time. I have no idea if she had problems getting pregnant this time, but now that she's pregnant with her second, I cannot stand to look at her or be near her.

I'm not walking around in a constant maudlin state bemoaning my circumstances and seething at the big bellies around me. However, out of the blue, I can sink into a weary, gray hole of baby-missing sadness. I ask myself and this universe "where is my baby??? Where is my healthy baby girl!? Where Is My Baby??"

I sometimes say "Where is my Healthy Baby?" but then I realize, my baby wasn't healthy. There was something wrong with her heart. Her heartbeat was really way too fast and it was a sign that something was wrong.

And then I feel guilty. I haven't told you something. I am pretty sure my baby died while I was running a 5K. I didn't plan to run fast, but I did run faster than I wanted to with another friend of mine (see dear friend above). I ran 2 half marathons with Conor. And I ran at a pretty good clip with him. So I am as honest as I can possibly be when I say I didn't think anything would go wrong.

But Conor's heartrate was not too fast. This baby's heartbeat (the baby whom I sometimes call Colleen) was. I should not have been running. If I hadn't run that race, the pregnancy probably would have lasted longer and we might have been able to do something to help her heart and she might have lived. Of course, I don't know that for sure and Dave doesn't like it when I think like this. But I believe with all my soul she would not have died that day if I hadn't run that race. And she didn't die because I ran: she died because something was wrong with her heart and I ran.

Maybe it would have been a lot worse if she hadn't have died then. We probably would have found out the problem at the level II ultrasound. Maybe they would have known then that it didn't look good and I would have had to have made some awful choices. However, I would have chosen to try every single thing that we could have to fix her heart. And maybe that would have left me so emotionally drained if it didn't work that I would not be able to try to have a baby again.

I don't know. All I do know is that I really believed I was going to have a healthy baby. And now I am not.

Annoying

So, I have to be honest. There are Things. That. Annoy. Me. And I cannot keep my pie hole shut. I have to share them.

First, it bugs me a good deal when people do not want to use the First Response Early Results pregnancy tests because they are too expensive. It's true: FRER are not cheap. At Target, they cost $13 for 3. At the dollar store, one can get their store brand version of the test for $1 each. So you could buy 3 for $3 versus 3 for $13. Agreed! Cheaper.

If you are normal and only take one per month, you pay $3.33 more than you need to. (The FRERs can detect pg earlier, but that's an annoying fact for later on in this post). If you are like ME and take all 3 tests each month, you pay $10 more per month.

Here's the illogical and annoying rub for me: if you ARE pregnant, it's going to cost a wee bt more than $10 a month to have a child. And if you can't afford that extra $10/month, you really need to think twice about getting pg. Or just take one test! Then you're only out $3!!!

There are many reasons NOT to use a FRER. It's only good for finding out if you are pg ASAP (like the day after the embryo implanted). If you wait until you're a couple of days and you are officially "late", then you can use the dollar store test. That's what normal people do.

I, of course, am entirely too neurotic to wait that long. I want to take the tests as early as possible, often to see if I can have a guilt free glass of wine (or three) for dinner. So for me, it's worth $3 to enjoy that $10 bottle of wine. (We're cheap on the wine, at least. Oh, who am I kidding. Trader Joe's is in town and we enjoy 2 Buck Chuck now) Wait a minute here, my reasoning is taking an ugly turn. I must now point that that the $10 bottle is now costing me $13 when I use the FRER. The logical meandering is starting to make my head hurt. So let's get back to the point.

If you don't want to test early, then don't. But don't use the excuse that the FRERs cost too much. It's not a valid reason and *that* annoys me.

My other annoyance: people afraid of testing because they are going to get a negative test. Welcome to my world. God bless them if they have the ability to wait until they are 2 weeks late to test. My advice: keep on going!! 5 or 6 months from now if you still don't have your period, you're probably pregnant. Or you're going through menopause.

And I guess what is annoying about those things is that I am a pathetic little person. Other people don't make the same choice as I do, so, well, DAMN! They bug me. That's sad, eh!?!?!

Well, ok, on that self-enlightened note, let's end with the recognition that it's National Sucks To Be Us Week. I'm allowed to be cranky. Go read the other (much better written) article. And then write your congressperson to support in legislation to provide medical coverage for infertility.

And then you can wait with bated breath for my post on how I'm coping with the fact that I'm not 38 1/2 weeks pregnant like I'm supposed to be.

I'm Kind of Excited

Despite being swamped with the beginning of school issues again, I have spent some time googling on this new regimen for infertility.

A 2006 study in Fertility and Sterility found that this combination of drugs (heparin, progesterone, prednesone, daily aspirin, daily prenates, and daily extra folic acid) increased live births for women with recurrent miscarriage by over 40%. Of course, this treatment is most effective in women with unknown reasons for m/c, and we know that our second m/c was a trisomy problem incompatible with life. But we don't know for sure that m/c 1 was a trisomy problem and we do know for sure that m/c 3 was not. And that subchorionic bleed in m/c 2 could be an indicator of a problem.

So, we don't know much.

Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to seeing if this helps us get pg and, then, lead on to a live birth. I'm actually excited for the first time in a really long while that this might work.

Adoption Vs. IVF: Part 2

IVF

So what about IVF? What are the pros about IVF? Well, first of all, it’s cheaper than adoption. (Who knew?) And I hope that the first part of tome makes you realize that it’s not like there are dozens of adoptable children just hanging around waiting to be picked up. It’s a lot harder, expensive, time oppressive than it looks.

But IVF has very big risks, especially that it can fail. Adoption ALWAYS has a child at the end of the path. IVF does not. But with a successful IVF, I’d get to be pregnant again, and I’d be able to easily breastfeed. (Well, as easy as breastfeeding ever is. But still, it would be objectively be easier than adoption)

One big problem is that we don’t know where I fall in the IVF success risk. I get pregnant a lot more than the typical early 40ish woman. Am I more like a 35 year old? Will IVF be as successful for me as it would be for a 35 year old? And I’d like to point out that the rates are not all that encouraging, even for a 35 year old. But I honestly and truly do not think I’m a typical early 40’s woman.

That said, there is another option that we had originally thrown out: donor eggs. I originally felt that it was a very vain option: if I wanted donor eggs, then I must believe that I have to be pregnant to add to our family even if this child is not genetically related to me. On the other hand, if it is not important for me to have a genetic connection to my child, why wouldn’t I go ahead and adopt? That was my reasoning until we saw all this crap about how expensive adoption is and how fraught it is with failure.

And this IVF route is not as expensive as you’d think: $23,000 and the possibility of 6 fertilized eggs which could yield 2 or maybe 3 children! We could have a really big family! On a per child basis, it could be pretty cheap. Of course, daycare would set us back a bazillion dollars and we’d be 80 before everyone graduated from high school. (I’m kidding, folks!)

Of course, I’m being very positive in those statistics: It’s possible to only get 2 fertilized eggs and to have them not implant and then you are left with nothing for $23,000. That's a bad, bad thing. The current success rate is 60% at our clinic, but it all depends on how many fertilizable eggs the donor produces.

And then there’s the “issue” with donor eggs. I’m not supposed to let anyone know that we have even heard of it, much less considered it. It’s supposed to be a taboo subject that parents might want to (should?) keep this information away from their donor-egg children and even more so from the community around them. It might affect the children’s identity in the future, because they are not technically genetically related to their birth mother.

I would like to pause here for a moment and direct you to reread the beginning of this essay. I will even point to yesterday. A child who has gestated in his/her mother’s belly for 9 months is more susceptible to identity issues as a teenager and adult than the only black person in the family? More?!?!? Is that how “bad” IVF advocates think adoption is!?

I don’t get it. And I don’t get why women are so unwilling to talk about it. Women like Jane Seymour, Elizabeth Edwards, Joan Lunden, Holly Hunter and Geena Davis who appear to most likely have used egg donors to have their children. (In fact, pay the $2.95 and read the recent NY Times article yourself). How can IVF with egg donor be more identity shaking for the child than adoption? I think the real issue is the very high probability of being able to lie to child about his/her origins and get away with it. How can that sort of untruth ever be helpful? (For the 50% of you who have used donor eggs and are not going to tell, I do not judge you. I simply cannot keep my mouth shut for that long.)

The analogy I’ve heard about egg donation is that it’s sort of like a kidney donation or even bone marrow donation. Somebody had a need. Some other healthier person had extra. Once “it” leaves the donator for the donated, the donator has no claim on it again. This whole process has even spawned a new word: biogenetic child to distinguish that some children are both biologically and genetically related to their mother.

So there we are, people. You now know a lot of what I have learned in the past two months. (I should have entitled this “What I did on my summer vacation.”) That’s a boatload of information and I should get an A on this project. Nonetheless,

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO.

Ok? We don’t know if we’re going to adopt, if we’re going to choose IVF, or if we decide to choose IVF whether we’ll use donor eggs. WE DON’T KNOW. I hope that all of a sudden I just get pregnant “naturally” with a healthy child and save us about $20,000 in the cost of finishing up our family.

I also don’t know that if we decide to use donor eggs that we’ll tell you. As Dave and I have discussed, you can’t unring that bell. And if we, upon further discussion, see why we should keep this a big secret, we really don’t want the internets knowing about it.

We’ve had to wrestle with putting this out here (for the three of you who are still reading the end of this loooong essay) because if we do decide to do IVF regularly, that idea that they are donor eggs is now planted in your head.

But it bugs me to think that there’s some myth that egg donor children are more fragile than adoptees in their self image and identity issues. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to put my (in my head) egg donor child’s ego over my (in my head) African-American adopted child’s ego because I see a boatload of advantages for identity/adjustment/ultimate self-concept for the (in my head) egg donor child. The weird thing is how feisty I get in thinking about defending that in-my-head adopted child. The adopted child could have real issues of abandonment and difference that the egg donor child will never, ever have.

So there. That is where we are in the process. We have a great deal of information spread in front of us and we’re going to have to make some decisions soon. This essay is probably more for us to help sort out our decisions than for you to follow. And it really does help for us to get it out.

We have some time to make all these decisions and hopefully be surprised with a healthy pregnancy. Until then, we’re going to keep plodding along until we find that next child who is supposed to be in our family, whoever he or she is.

Adoption Vs. IVF: Part 1

Adoption

Ok. Grab a cup of coffee because you might be here a while.

Last year, after the second miscarriage we started looking into international adoption as the way we’d build our family. Dave and I had often talked about adoption even when we were just dating thinking that we might be too old to get pregnant. That’s why when we got pregnant with Conor so quickly, it was a surprise.

So it was even more of a surprise was how much resistance I felt within myself when we started looking into international adoption. I know that international adoption is the preferred way for most American couples these days, but it, at least at that point, was not the path that was right for us to take.

Why? Breastfeeding. A very big part of my conception of myself as a mother involves breastfeeding and the bond that Conor and I have developed through my being able to feed him with my body. It would bother me tremendously if our second child did not get a chance to bond with me in that way.

Also, I know I’m not a developmental psychologist. Nonetheless, it concerns me what could happen (or not) in the first year (or two!) or so of a child’s life before we adopted him or her. Children are incredibly resilient. But our understanding is that many international adoptions occur with children at least a year old and often, you’ll be assigned your child and then still have to wait 6 months until you can go get him/her. With the likelihood high of me causing an international incident trying to hurry the process along, It just doesn’t feel like that’s the right path for us.

So, we put adoption on hold misguidedly thinking that we were too old for domestic adoption. Then we found out we were not too old and were thrilled to hear that people “our age” could domestically adopt infants.

Yes, most domestic adoptions are with infants, and the adoptive parents often take the child home with them from the hospital and sometimes are even in the birthing room with the biological mother. WOW! An infant that would come home with us within a few days of his/her birth! And we could breastfeed!! It’s not easy, but it’s certainly possible.

Also, it was crystal clear to us early in considering a domestic adoption that the child’s ethnicity did not matter to us at all. In fact, we were quite open to what is known as “transracial” adoption as well as biracial adoption. We don’t need for our adopted child to look like us. This helps the adoption process a lot. For one thing, it also makes the process much more likely to go quickly. By saying we’re open to all healthy children, we have many more opportunities to find our child.

However, there are still issues.

First, mothers change their minds. The process for domestic adoptions is that biological mothers look through the profiles (i.e., photograph albums) of a range of prospective parents working with an agency. Then she picks the family who could be the parents of her child. The adoptive parents and the bio mom most often meet and decide to proceed with the adoption. However, the bio mom has every right in the world to change her mind. And after birth, 20 to 50% of them do. (As a statistician, it bugs me that the agencies can’t give us exact numbers. It’s an objective data point: either the adoption placement did or did not occur. How many did not occur out of the total number of adoption processes that started? Easy peasy, folks.)

Second, it takes a long time. Catholic Social Services has quoted us at least a year for a healthy non-Caucasian child and well over 2 years for a healthy Caucasian child. A Child’s Hope in NC has suggested that it’s 6-12 months for an African American or an African American biracial child and well over a year for a Caucasian, Latino, or Asian American child. Adoption consultants, charging $2500 to represent you to up to 30 or 40 agencies around the country, can shorten the time for placement with some guaranteeing placement in less than a year. But we discovered that they tend to work for the most expensive agencies, and we just don’t have that kind of money. (We’ll talk about why we have ruled out foster care adoption at this point in our search in another blog)

So that takes us to drawback number 3: Money. Before I quote numbers, remember that in the US, you can take $10000 off your taxes the year you adopt. And this is right off your taxes, so it’s essentially a refund from the government for the adoption. Catholic Social Services (CSS) charges $12,500 for any and all adoptions. That is an appealing option. A Child’s Hope charges (I think) about $13,000 for an African American adoption, $15,000 for an African-American Biracial adoption and $23,000 for everyone else. (Does that information bother you? It should.) The agencies the consultants work with start at $23,000 for African-American adoptions and go on up to at least $35K to $50K for Caucasian adoptions. There can be additional charges for the mother’s living expenses and searching for the father to give up his rights for all of the agencies except CSS.

So CSS seems like a good option, no? It certainly does to us. They are also one of the few agencies that do not make you pay half the money up front and then the other half when/if you get the baby. CSS only has you pay upon placement of the baby. The problem is that it’s just no way of knowing how long it will be until we have a child placed with us. (6 months? 2 years??)

And I haven’t even started to address that adoption causes for the children of same ethnicity adoptions (e.g., abandonment) much less transracial adoptions (e.g., identity, feelings of difference) reported by adult transracial adoptees . There are no insurmountable issues involved here. It is clear to us that we would not back away from adoption because of these issues. In fact, we want to arm ourselves and protect our child from having to deal with this.

But in any case the adoptive family needs to take many extra, important steps to make sure they don’t screw it up. I’d argue this is even more an issue when there is already a biological child in the family. (A strike against us, btw, in having a bio mom choose us)

There is humor in this, as always. The funniest thing I’ve heard is that an advantage for transracial adoptees occurs when they are teenagers and their parents start acting like parents of teenagers do all the time: embarrassing their poor children. Transracial adoptees can act like they have no idea who those old embarrassing farts are and can generally get away with it! I think that’s a hoot!

So now you know what we know about adoption and what we perceive are the big pros and cons for us.

Tomorrow, we’ll present the IVF issues.

Oh, Just Lots of Things

We had another "event" this month. I will probably refer to this as the Month Where I Used A Gazillion HPTs. I took a test on Monday afternoon and got the faintest of faintest lines on my First Response Early Response (FRER) test. In case you were wondering, that was 9 dpo, so it was very early and certainly reasonable to have a faint line.

However the next morning, 10 dpo, it was still way too faint and I knew it wasn't going to stick. Nonetheless, I took another test Tuesday afternoon with an Accu-clear (which I've later found out was panned on Peeonastick.com) and still had that faint line. By this point, I'd broken down and let Dave inspect the sticks, too, instead of saving the test for a big "You're Going to Be a Daddy" surprise, which one might admit is pretty foolish at this point. In any case, he saw a line, too.

And BECAUSE I AM PATHETICALLY OPTIMISTIC, I took another Accu-clear test on Weds morning, 11 dpo, and finally got a faint but clearly visible positive test line. It was gone by Thursday morning (12 dpo) when I peed again on a FRER. I won't even mention the three tests I took Weds afternoon with one positive (FRER) and two negative (Answer, New Choice/Dollar Store).

I am my own HPT testing lab. And I'm sticking with FRER because I think they are still the most sensitive. However, if I was really pregnant, then all of them would be flaming with two hot pink lines right now and it wouldn't really matter which test I used.

So there. Bleah and crap. I continue on my quest to be the oldest miscarrying freak of a woman in these United States this year.

In other news, we have an evil bunny indulging him/herself in a fresh vegetable garden buffet every night. It's amazing how this rabbit can eat the insides of a tomato clean out and leaving a soon-to-be rotting hull on the vine. Oh, what a talented bunny haunts our garden. At least it's not a rat. (And I just realized that I didn't blog about our rat problem from the spring. Hmmmm. Go figure)

I like not this bunny. And I like not our dog who lets this bunny run free in our garden. It is shocking that Patches lets the bunny roam, much less live, considering the incident with the bird and the other bunny. I know he's an older dog now but he still chases squirrels around the yard, and God(dess) forbid that Scarlett should do anything out of the ordinary because he'll rat her out in tail wag. Speaking of rats, I should have realized his hunting days were over when he did nothing as a rat ran across his paws and under the deck earlier this spring (see Rat Problem, above). Yes, nothing more than a quizzical look from our bird killing dog should have been my first clue that He Has Changed.

We try and try to explain to him: Scarlett, good! Don't bite or bark at. Birds, good! Let live!! Rats, bad. Attack! Bunnies in garden, bad, Bad, BAD! KILL BUNNY, KILL!

And on a big change of subjects but more on my mind that evil bunnies, I believe we are going with Catholic Social Services for our domestic adoption. I promise you that soon I will devote an entire blog on how FREAKIN' confusing adoption is, the range of prices that are out there and why, and why we are making the decisions that we are making. I keep making these offhanded comments about what we are doing on this adoption journey, but each decision point we get to is really, really hard.

But enough for this Friday post. I wonder why I always blog my longest on Fridays because no one comes around to read it. If you are here on Friday, well, thank you for stopping by!! I do miss having your company on Fridays.

Have a good weekend, y'all!

Oh, one last thing: it is one of my biggest pet peeves when people misspell y'all. It is the contraction of You All. You All: Y'all. It is NOT the contraction of Ya All. What the hell is that?? Ya All? Ya'll?!?!?

The only time the "ll" goes by itself is when you are contracting: You All Will. That becomes Y'all'll. Yes, that is a word. We use it all the time down here when we are inquiring about others' plans in the future. "Y'all'll be at the park on Sunday? We will, too! See you there!"

Hey Y'All

Conversation while driving 5 hours* to the beach:

"I can't wait until the kids** are older and I can stay in my wood working shop for a couple of hours."

"With them?"

"Without them!"

Happy Father's Day, indeed.

*This is normally a 3 1/2 to 4 hour trip sans children. But considering it took us 3 hours to go 90 miles, we actually did make good time.

**Yes, we are seriously moving quickly down the adoption path, at least mentally. For the first time in 2 years, we know we're going to have another child.

Well, howdy from Myrtle Beach. I thought I'd have more time to blog dozens of witty entries, but we've been too busy having fun. Of course, that doesn't stop my panic attacks at 4 am of all the work I have to do, but I grasp onto that tiny sliver of meditation zen I still have left and believe it will all work out.

So, apart from being "on board" with adoption at this stage---as in, chickens are on board with breakfast, pigs are committed---we have other baby news. The OB called about 30 minutes before we left on Friday. Knowing that Friday is his surgery day, I was happy he worked in this call for me.

There is/was nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with me as far as the bloodclotting and auto-immune issues they checked for. (There's plenty wrong in other aspects!) And there was nothing wrong with the baby, chromosonally. And I would like to officially point out that I TOLD YOU SO. (Imagine how much fun it is to be married to me!!!)

I have to repeat that: I knew it. I told everybody that this was supposed to be my perfectly normal baby. Yet there is still nothing in my belly right now. On the one hand, I am validated. On the other, I am so sad that I will not have my baby girl and there's no way to keep this from happening again. (Yes, girl. I said that before, too.) There was one abnormality: the too-fast heartrate. But we'll never know what that means.

And in all honesty, I may never get pg again. We're going down this adoption path. Do you have any idea how relieving it is to KNOW we're going to have another child? Pregnancy, at best, is: maybe. Pregnancy when dealing with infertility and multiple miscarriages is without a doubt: maybe, maybe not. Adoption is a sure thing. Even if the first adoption match falls through and the mother or father changes his/her mind. Eventually, there is still a baby in your arms.

Do you have any idea what that means to me right now?

Time to get back to vacation.

Exhibit A in the Miscarriage Freak Show

So, ummm, yeah.

I probably need to explain the motivation behind yesterday's first post. I have no doubt that folks out there might think I'm a big fat freak for taking multiple pregnancy tests after receiving a positive one. And, I suppose, if you wait until you are actually "late" to take one and you end up with two screaming pink or blue lines, then there really is no reason to take more than one. You just call up the doc and get that confirmation visit.

But if you are like other people, (*ahem*, me), and use the First Response Early Result (FRER) tests that can pick up even the faintest of pregnancy hormones revealing a line that you have to verify with a partner that it (the line, not the partner) even exists and isn't in your imagination, then yes, you might take another test the next day, hoping to see another, darker line. And when you take that test and see only a slightly darker line which is still not clearly obvious then you might take ANOTHER test the next day hoping to see that clear positive line. And you might not go to the doctor for verification because 1) it's the weekend and 2) the FRERs are much more sensitive pee sticks than what the doctor has so the test at the doctor's office might still show up negative and you're not evne using first morning urine (FMU) and you don't want the doctor to say "You're an idiot; you're not pregnant. You're not even late yet!! How do you know you're pregnant when you are only 11 days past ovulation?" and then you have to fight him/her for a blood test.

So.

We weren't supposed to get pregnant this month so soon after the D&E. We didn't try to get pregnant this month. However, call us as stupid as teenagers in highschool, we forgot to use birthcontrol this month.

That's not true. We didn't even think of using birth control this month. But after two years of TTC, I don't even think about birth control anymore. But I know my body pretty well and afterwards I could tell I was in the very fertile stage around ovulation. I tried to tell the doctor, but the nurse was not amused and said "DON'T GET PREGNANT THIS MONTH!" I tried to explain that we weren't trying to get pg this month, but, ummm, you know.

Nonetheless, guess what?

Yeah.

And then guess what?

I could tell by the second day's test results that the news was not ultimately going to be good. By day 4 of testing (Monday), we were back down to almost negative. I say "almost" because there was still a light of thousand suns line there. But after 4 days of testing, we should have been able to spot that line in the twilight.

So. Apparently, we do not have a problem getting pregnant. I did not waste all that birthcontrol in my 20's. But I am miscarrying freak. My eggs suck.

We have now been pregnant at least 5 times in the last two years. (There are possibly two more chem pgs, but they were only positive for one day, not multiple days; so it's possible those were evaporation lines. But I don't think so). We've only had 3 clinically recognized pregnancies, but really, we've had 5 (or 7!) chances in the last 23 months, not counting the of 4 months we weren't trying because we were already pregnant.

When I look at it that way, things certainly do not look promising for us to have another bio child.

Joyous Naïvete

A friend of mine just found out she is pregnant.

Hooray for her!

She took the first test Saturday morning, with a glorious BFP. This morning, I asked her if she had taken the second one.

She responded that she hadn't and she didn't really know why she should.

Why, indeed.

I really don't think she was saying that to be cruel. I honestly think that with her first pregnancy she has no idea what perils are out there. And most likely, she never will.