I'm a Donor Too

I donated all of my leftover Meno.pur to a couple who had no prescription coverage. I was so excited to know that I was helping someone else towards a shot at their dream and so relieved that the meds wouldn't just be going to waste in my closet. Still... it was surprisingly hard to drop off the boxes,  smile and walk away casually.

I've been holding those meds for months now, knowing I would never use them. I told Prof later, that it felt a little like giving away my "blankie".

God please, I hope their cycle works.

Why Didn't We Do That Sooner?

I suppose the truth is, we did it when we were ready in our hearts and not before. Thank you so much for your comments and tweets of support. It was an intense week, but a decision has been made and an appointment has been set for next week (OMG how fast did they get us in?!) to start the DEIVF process.

I just need my job to lay off with the crazy stress so I can actually soak this in...

One Week (Points to Consider)

I hate those stick figure collections people splash all over their rear windows, but yesterday they served a valid purpose. Prof and I went out for a coffee and pulled up behind one of these on our way home. Prof sighed and said, "I think about the kid thing all the time". Which got the conversation started. By the time we got home, we had acknowledged that we BOTH think about the kid thing pretty much constantly. To distraction. I knew he thought about it too, but somehow I didn't realize he thought about it as much as I do.

To recap, we have established that we are NOT afraid of:

• Using Donor Eggs to conceive
• Losing our relationship to Parenthood

And lo and behold, our thoughts and fears are still running along the same lines:

• Kids are expensive and we're just making ends meet as it is.
• DEIVF kids are even more expensive. Where does that money come from?
• This world is an ugly, scary place in which to launch a tiny little loved one.
• Our lifestyle would have to change dramatically (like you have NO idea how dramatically).
• How do parents get it all done?
• What if we hate being parents?

I think that last one is the real question here. The thing we're really afraid of discovering about ourselves after it's too late.

There's a piece of this puzzle that we can't see yet. I've seen a million and three comments about how everything changes once that baby arrives... specifically how new parents' attitudes toward their own offspring took them by surprise. Without any offspring of our own, we can't see the shape of that puzzle piece to know how it's going to fit into our existing picture.

So standing in the kitchen and tossing all of that out there, we came to two conclusions:

• If we don't do this because we're afraid of A/B/C, then we let the fear win and that's not our style.
• We're not getting any younger and this isn't going to get any easier by postponing it. We need to make a decision and move forward one way or another.

So Prof has proposed an idea. We will have a brief discussion about our thoughts on the subject every evening this week. Next Sunday, we will make a Plan. We even shook on it.

Ongoing Debate

I have reached a point where I accept that no matter what our eventual decision, no matter what our eventual outcome... there is no possible future in which I do not always carry with me some sadness and some resentment regarding my experience of infertility and my perceptions of the fertile world at large. I'm not saying I will be mired in grief and depression for the rest of my life, but this sadness and resentment is part of me now, sort of a household item. I'm looking forward to the time when it's packed in a trunk in the basement, rather out on the coffee table in the living room though.

If someone could wave a magic wand and guarantee that if I had sex with my husband, there would be a baby... I would do it. So why am I debating whether or not I still want to pursue further assisted reproduction, when I know that the treatments aren't my hang-up? Good question.

Letters to a Young Poet

I wanted to share a handful of quotes from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet that have stuck with me over the years, and some of which repeatedly come to mind when I am in a difficult place. Perhaps I should re-read the entire book...

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”

“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.”

“Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words” 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

[The following is my favorite passage of the entire book. I have written it out by hand a number of times to reinforce my memory of it and I refer back to it whenever I am feeling suffocated by my fear of change.]

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

In Which I Apologize

For not posting more often and in greater detail about the mental contortions I am going through in the process of considering donor egg IVF versus choosing a childfree future. I feel like there are so few of us in this community who reach this branch in the road, that I ought to do a better job of representing the experience. Suffice it to say that things are difficult to articulate. And all very repetitive at any rate.

However.

My BFF came for a visit at the end of February. We hadn't seen each other in over a year and it was wonderful. I had been a little nervous because she told me last Fall that she and her husband were going to start TTC#2 in December and I was dreading a surprise announcement. To be honest, I wonder if they are trying again so soon after their first because of what she's seen me go through. She is only a couple of years younger than I am and she's no dummy. I was worrying needlessly.

We went to breakfast her first morning here and had long heart to heart about where we are/aren't with treatments and I gave her a quick rundown of the realities of donor egg IVF and some background on our consideration of a childfree future. As always she was interested, respectful and supportive. We also talked a lot about her experiences as a first time mother, all cards on the table. She didn't have it easy and unfortunately, she didn't have anyone nearby to provide a reality check, so it was probably harder on her than it needed to be. I feel sad about that... only that I couldn't be that supportive outside observer because I wasn't there day-to-day.

Her second morning here, we were sitting at the dining room table with our morning coffee and chatting. She took a deep breath and told me she'd been laying in bed thinking while she waited for me to wake up. She had decided that she wanted to talk to her husband about donating her eggs to us after she was done with Baby #2... if we would want them.

I almost fell off my chair.

I suspect my immediate response was a little lackluster, if only due to the shock. How fucking cool is THAT?! Realistically, it will probably not be feasible. But damn, she's awesome. I've talked to Prof about it and he is open to the idea, so why not feasible? Well, she is already 37 and she still wants to get Baby #2 first. That could put her at my current age before she's ready to start. Her husband may not be OK with it and that's totally his prerogative. Since we aren't blood relatives, there might be actual medical/biological impediments - I have no idea. My clinic might not go for it for any number of reasons.

But she had the idea. All on her own. She was already like the sister I never had. If I got pregnant using her eggs, we would be even more like family than we already are. It would amazing.

You know what? Even if I don't get pregnant using her eggs... it's still amazing.