Reflecting On My Journey Through Infertility

Last Spring, I stumbled upon a video about infertility entitled "What IF?"

At the time when I first saw it, we were knee deep in grief over Peyton and had been trying desperately for nearly 9 months, without success, to achieve another pregnancy. The previous December, I had gotten the news that an infection from my c-section had left both of my tubes scarred beyond any usefulness, and that my only option, and not a guaranteed option at that, was IVF.

I was in shock.

For over a year after Peyton's birth I had complained to my doctor that I wasn't ovulating or menstruating. When she gave us the green light to try again last June, and I failed to conceive, I knew something was wrong. Through it all, my OB explained my infertility away as the result of me "grieving too hard." "If you don't get over this," she would tell me, "you will never get pregnant."

Lying alone and half naked on a steel table at the hospital, my unresponsive tubes glaring down at me from a monitor overhead, a sympathetic doctor delivered to me the news that I would never again be able to conceive on my own. "There is no justice in this world," she told me, taking a deep breath, and as she did, any last shred of hope that I had held onto for a family of my own, flowed out of my eyes and down my cheeks.

In that moment: grief stricken and infertile - I felt my life was over.

Discovering that I had lost my fertility after losing my only child undid several months of healing, and brought a million questions to my mind. Hard questions. Painful questions.

Was I still a woman if I couldn't conceive?
Was I still a mother if my only child was dead?
Was I still a Catholic if I was willing to pursue IVF when the church is so strongly against it?
Was I still a wife if I couldn't give my husband a family?
Were we still a couple if making love could never create a life?

For someone who just a year and a half prior had been a confident 28 year old, with a promising career, thriving social life, happy marriage, and first child on the way - the downward spiral of those 18 months took me to the darkest depths of my life. Everything I believed would be suddenly felt like a lie, and the truths that I was facing were hard to swallow:

I had lost our child.
I had lost our fertility.
I had lost our hopes.

That's not a typo. I HAD LOST these things, or at least that's how I felt. In my mind, the blame for all of our losses and failures, were mine and mine alone.

I don't know why I always viewed hubs in a different light than myself. In many ways, I saw him as a victim in all this. He had married me and I had failed to hold up my end of the bargain.

Maybe it was because our IF issues were with my body?
Maybe it was because when he proposed he told me he wanted to "grow old together and have lots and lots of children," and the realization I couldn't give him that made me pity him for staying with me?
Maybe it was because I was Peyton's mother, and our miscarried baby's mother, and mothers always blame themselves.

All I know is that when I stumbled across this video, it struck a deep chord with me. I had, for months, been asking myself many of the same questions posed in the video.

What IF I lost my sense of self to my infertility?
What IF I lost my sexiness to infertility?
What IF I lost my spouse to infertility?

What IF?
What IF?
What IF?

Today I was looking around on the internet, and once again came across this video. As I did, the tears came, but they were different somehow. Today I cried tears of gratitude. Though I had felt so sure just six months ago that infertility would beat me, today I realized that I have beaten infertility.

It took over a year of trying, months of hormone injections, the pain of twisting an ovary, Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome, 4 weeks of bed rest for the Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome, the heartbreak of learning our first cycle had failed, many, many, MANY hours of therapy to deal with the above mentioned feelings, facing a second cycle after failing the first with no explanation, a bleed that has kept me on bed rest since week 12 and in all likelihood will continue to keep me bed ridden for the next 20 or so weeks, tens of thousands of dollars, countless tears, fears and anxieties, and all the emotions that go into having a high risk pregnancy after loss, but I am here - pregnant - full of hope - and very grateful.

I guess that is why I am writing this post. To let others on their own infertility journey know that I get it. I have been there, at the bottom, the very bottom. I have questioned every aspect of myself, my worth, and my life. I have wondered if joy would ever again return to my heart. If I could ever give my husband a family. If I could ever survive this, and the answer is yes.

There is always a chance.

Sometimes we have to wrestle with these big questions to find our way, but in the end, we can all get there. For us, a couple who lost their fertility to birthing a dying child, our chance came with IVF. For others it comes with surrogacy, or IUI. Medications, or adoption.

I don't know what the future holds for us, but I do know that it is looking brighter once again, and that is something that once felt impossible.

I guess that what I am trying to say is that it is only when we open our eyes and our minds to all of the possibilities in front of us, even those that we fear or resent or are unsure of, that we can find pathways to hope.

Here is the video that had such an impact on me. I am sure for those of you haven't seen it before, or are viewing it a second time, you will feel it resonates at some level with you too. (Be sure to pause the music player in the right column of this blog to hear the video.)

Oh God...

Since last Thursday's test, I have been on this recurring loop of angry, bitter, accepting, hopeless, hopeful, and back to start at angry again. What can I say? I am all of these things. I feel gypped, cheated, and screwed. I want to wave my fists at the air, and shout how unfair this all feels. Was it so out of the realm of possibility to believe that God might, just this once, cut us a break?

This post is not meant to bash anyone's religious beliefs. My feelings are actually just the opposite. I am jealous - genuinely jealous, of people who can claim that "in faith He afflicted me," and find comfort, rather than fear, in that relationship with God. That being said, I welcome any comments, religious or otherwise, to what I have written here.

People love to tell me that if God intends for me to have a baby, then I will. What am I supposed to do with that? I am infertile because a doctor didn't take the time to prescribe me some antibiotics when she checked me out of the hospital right after a c-section. Did God intend that she would be neglectful? Does God intend for child abusers and drug addicts to have babies? Did God intend for the woman on last night's news to go drunk driving with her child in the backseat, or that so many children in this world should be born into situations that offer them no real chance at life - war, poverty, disease? 

When I was 17, I walked away from the church. I was a teenager and felt disconnected and just didn't see the point. At 22, and completely out of nowhere, I felt called back. This is a piece of the puzzle that makes no sense to me. How, after finding my way back, could God choose to test me in such a way?  I don't know why I am pouring this all out here today. Maybe because I just don't get it. I don't get why a God who I so loved, a God that I put my faith in, would test me over and over these past few years. The exercise was meaningless, and I know that I have failed. 

I am not a better person, Christian, friend, wife, daughter, or sister because of this. What was left of me after Peyton died, is being beaten and battered by the intense sense of failure, injustice, and anger that comes with this infertility. Am I really to believe that it was God's intention that I not only lose my child, but my fertility to a doctor's oversight as well?

To say my relationship with my faith is strained right now, is an incredible understatement. For the last two weeks I haven't even attended services, something that I have felt drawn to do weekly over the last 8 years. I can't go there right now. I don't know why or what this means, just that right now, I can't.

I guess maybe I am tired of feeling so abandoned by Him. Words in the poem "Footprints" that used to mean so much to me: "During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you." now feel vacant and untrue. 

Not once in the last 19 months have I felt His comfort or compassion carrying me through this loss. My feet don't feel capable of crossing the sand, but instead stand still, stuck, sinking lower and lower with every attempt at righting the wrongs of these last few years. Try to have another baby - sink deeper. Learn of infertility - sink deeper. Attempt IVF and fail - sink deeper. It is like I am trying to claw my way out of this hole, and with every handful of sand that I throw from the hole, a shovel full comes raining down over me, holding me in place.

For those who talk to me about God's intentions, is this, too, God's will? Am I to believe that the God who I loved so deeply would be standing above, loading his shovel against me? 

There was a beautiful sense of security that used to come from my close relationship with God, but it is gone now. That was before. Before I watched the unthinkable happen. Before I witnessed the most innocent being that I had ever encountered, endure pain on top of pain on top of pain with no respite. I begged God to heal Peyton, and He did not. I begged Him to take her peacefully, and relieve her of her pain, and He did not. I begged, and I pleaded, and I cried, and my prayers fell on deaf ears, and the sense of betrayal that I feel from that is overwhelming. 

For months after Peyton's death, I felt alone, and scared, and sad, and distraught, and filed weekly to my seat in the pew, to see if I could feel Him there with me. Week after week I prayed that God could come into my heart to make some sense of all that happened, and week after week, no answers came. I guess I just don't know how can I make peace with that? 

When people tell me that if God intends me to have a baby it will happen, don't they understand that miscarriage, child loss, infertility, and now a failed IVF have clouded that statement to such a degree that it feels simply untrue for me? Can't they understand how hopeless that makes me feel? They might as well be telling me that it just won't happen.

What can I say???

BFN.

Focusing on the task at hand...

Thank you all for your kind messages of support these last few days. Being a loss blogger, I have come across several posts from other BLM's about mean "anonymous" comments that people have sent them, and grieving in such an open forum I half expected at some point to receive words like this from a stranger, but never, ever, from family. Both hubs and I appreciated your messages and the validation they gave to how we were feeling about this particular couple's actions.

More than forty five of you commented on my last post, and one theme seemed to be unanimous in all that you wrote - further contact with this couple will only cause more stress/pain.

Are we hurt like hell that something (someone) that was so important in our life meant nothing in theirs? Of course. That being said, hubs and I have decided that any relative who chose not to be there with us in sorrow, is not someone we want to have beside us in joy anyway (even though we are fairly certain that their response to our joy would have been equally selfish.)

I know that Jesus said to "turn the other cheek," but after the insults to my child, my husband, and myself, I am out of cheeks left to slap, so its time to turn away from these people and their hurtful words and actions altogether, and focus our full energies instead on the task at hand... making our rainbow baby(ies).

So now... onto more fun stuff.

We started Follistim injections Tuesday evening. These injections, for those of you who don't know, are subcutaneous and can be inserted into an area of the thigh, or the abdomen. We chose to do them via the abdomen because, for some reason, the idea of shooting myself in the thigh gives me the willies.

Hubs played doctor the first night, performing the injection as I laid out on the couch (like a total weenie) shielding my eyes with my hands. His reaction was something along the lines of, "wow that was harder to insert than I thought," to which I responded, "that was it?" Really, for anyone out there facing this particular injection (I can't speak for the others yet) the pain falls under the NBD class, for No Big Deal.

A few minutes after the injection, the area below my skin started to sort of burn and ache. This lasted maybe five to ten minutes, then subsided. I think that sensation must have been from the drug spreading out but am not sure.

I must have handled the whole thing pretty well, because last night hubs got invited to a Rangers hockey game, and tried to coax me to join him and do my injection in the middle of Madison Square Garden. I told him that wasn't really an idea that appealed to me, so the topic turned to whether or not I felt up to the challenge of self injection. Until I actually did it, I wasn't sure how I would handle it, but that too fell under NBD status. There was a little prick with very little pain or blood, followed a few minutes later by a burning ache.

Tuesday I had an ultrasound, and was given some good news, and some "I don't know what to do with that" news. The good news is that I have 20 follicles in one ovary, and 15 in the other, so, as the nurse explained, I am "very fertile for being so infertile." Comments like this make me mentally wave my fist at the air and yell "damn you c-section!"

The "I don't know what to do with that" news, was that my uterus, which has always been a little tipped, is now tipped and twisted. I don't really know what that means. Have any of you dealt with a twisted uterus, and if so, did it pose any issues?

Between the progesterone to start my cycle, and these injections, I have had a few side effects, mostly leg cramps and bloating, but today when I woke up, I was extremely nauseous, dizzy, and just feeling blah. The IVF nurse assured me that this is probably a bug from the constant change in weather we have been experiencing, and not something having to do with the meds. If she is right, I am hoping to feel better in the next few days.

So there you have it. More forward momentum. Sometime next week I will go in for the retrieval, and then 3 or 5 days later, return for implantation. As most of you know, getting royally kicked in the gut by the universe a few times in a row, the way we have, will leave a person lacking optimism. That being said, for some unknown reason, I feel really confident about this cycle. I am just sort of expecting that it will work. Someone told me not to get my hopes up too high, but honestly, my hopes have nowhere to go but up.


**I wanted to mention, too, how incredibly behind I am on my reading. I had some Google reader issues that seem to have remedied themselves, but now there are hundreds of posts in there. I have been going through them, just reading some, reading and commenting on others, and want you all to know that just because you may not have heard from me in a few days, does not mean you are not in my thoughts.

Mixed Post: All's Quiet On The Fertility Front & Peyton Sends Me A Sign.

The first half of this post deals with my infertility, the second with loss. Read one part, or both, up to you.

Infertility:

I struggled trying to decide what to post here. So many of you have been kind enough to offer feedback and advice on our new journey through IVF, and though I wish I had more to report, unfortunately we are still waiting.

I know some asked if we could get a second opinion, rather than go through a trial run. The IVF group we are using is the most established in our area, transferring over 1000 embryos each year, so while I hate waiting, and also feel that the trial run seems a little wasteful of our financial resources, I don't really have anywhere "better" in the area to turn.

AF arrived this AM with the help of the Prometrium that I was prescribed to get my cycle on track with when my RE wanted for the practice run. I can't tell you how comforting it is to see breast cancer listed as one of the drug's side effects, right alongside dizziness and bloating. Are you kidding me?

So AF came, and I felt blue. Why, knowing my tubes are shot and not functioning, do I still find myself feeling such a sense of disappointment at AF's arrival? I hate that. I hate getting my hopes up for a miracle that is not coming. I did that with Peyton. I should have learned my lesson.

I remember as a kid hearing about a woman's biological clock and thinking how silly it was. Now, everywhere I go, I feel like that clock is ticking away, and people tell me I am young, but really, what good does that do me anyway? I started three years ago. THREE YEARS, two little babies ago, and am still tick-tick-ticking away on that clock with no living children to mother.

Do you ever feel like the universe is trying to tell you something? That you are unworthy or not good enough? I try not to go down that road, really I do, but like I have been saying a lot lately, what makes me so damn undeserving of motherhood?

Sometime, mid next week I would imagine, though I haven't yet heard, will be the trial run that gets me onto the waiting list for the injections class. I am so jealous of the commenters who said this step was allowed to be completed online. The thought of being on hold for the sake of something as menial as learning how to give myself a shot drives me crazy. Take needle, insert needle, withdraw needle. Got it.

So there you have it, nothing. I have nothing to report regarding my lack of fertility. I know it is not Christmas but I am going to throw a Bah-Humbug out there anyway.

Loss:

I had another "sign" from Peyton a few days back, and while I know some people will think I am crackers for saying so, I am going to share it anyway.

I was on a long walk with my dog Charlotte. We had gone about 2 miles up a desolate road and were passing some old 1800's farm houses when it happened.

Before I go any further, I should mention that it has been pretty gray around here lately, one snow storm following another.

When we got to the top of a large hill I came upon a school bus turnaround sign and started feeling sorry for myself, as I sometimes do, and hopeless about my quest for motherhood.

I began wondering if I would ever have children, and if I did, would they live to school age? Lousy questions like those which two years ago would have been too foreign from my life to even enter my mind.

I circled the turnaround and began heading back, passing a large farmhouse on my left, and a big red barn garage on my right, when something caught my eye. I looked up to see a frisbee sized light reflecting off the center of the red garage.

Everything around me was pretty gray, so the sight of the light made the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.

I looked up, down, and all around trying to find the light's source: a beam of sunlight, a lamp, a mirror, but there was nothing.

When I looked back at the door, the light was gone, and a sense of peace washed over me.

"Was that you Peyton," I asked out loud, (like the crazy woman that I am) and just as the words left my mouth, some chimes in front of the farm house began to sound.

You can think whatever you want of that story, to me it felt significant.

"You're numb right now"

Writing has been a huge release for me through this loss, but on the heels of last week's news, I have found myself struggling for words. This latest blow has left me back at square one in terms of exhaustion, and quite frankly, my creativity has been a bit tapped out.

In an effort to get some emotional release, and try to break this writer's block,  I went to Borders today to be in the presence of other writers (I had met a very interesting author who I knew would be there today) and write. There is something to be said about being in the presence of other creative folks, when trying to get your creative juices flowing.

While there, tapping away at my computer beside this female author, a man came over (another author) and began talking to us. This is a portion of our conversation.


Man: What are you writing about.
Me: I go back and forth between a few things. I have written a memoir about my daughter who died of Cancer, and also work on this silly little chick-lit book when I need a pick me up. I also write a blog about my grief.
Man: Your daughter died. I am so sorry. How old was she?
Me: 28 days. She was born with Leukemia.
Man: 28 days? Born with Leukemia... Oh, my. When did this happen?
Me: Yeah, the chances of it happening were one in fifty million. I'm just that lucky. We lost her October of '08.
Man: Was she your only child?
Me: Yes, and having her made it so I can't have any others.
Woman Author: She just found this out last week. Can you believe she can even talk about it?
Man: Oh, my.
Me: Yup.
Man: You're numb huh?
Me: Numb?
Man: Yeah numb. You're numb right now.
Me: Why do you say that?
Man: It's just, you're telling me something so horrific, but when you say it you are so matter of fact.

Me: Well then, yeah, I guess today you could call me numb.

This conversation really got me thinking.

Why is it that this loss has stripped me of that former sense of self preservation where I would only share good details about myself with those I encountered? Why can't I sensor what I say, even when I know I am sharing too much? It's as if it all flows, unchecked, from my heart to my lips. I can't stop it. Is it because it is all I can think about?

To this man in Borders - "My baby is dead. I am infertile." To the woman at the Post Office - "My baby is dead. I am infertile." To every person who stops to ask me for the time, or to comment on the day, or the weather, or the latest movie they saw, I turn to them lost, repeating the only truths that I know... "My baby is dead. I am infertile."

Sometimes the words come with tears, and I watch the discomfort wash over the face of whichever poor soul I am speaking to. Sometimes the words come with a resigned muffled laughter, a pathetic attempt at laughing at my misfortune or making light of my luck, and the shit-storm that has swirled unrelenting around my attempts at having a family. Sometimes, like today, the words present themselves as bulleted facts. Talking points delivered with little to no expression.

Some take this to mean I am doing well. "She can say this without crying. Look how strong she is." I know it is just the opposite. I know that regardless of the expression on my face, or the inflection in my voice, I am lost. My heart is broken.

Perhaps it is the shock, or the PTSD. Perhaps it is my mind's way of trying to process all that has happened. All that I have seen and done. All that we went through, or worse, all that Peyton went through. She was just a baby. A poor, defenseless, little baby. She endured things that no child should ever endure. Things that no mother should ever bear witness to.

Maybe if I say "My baby's dead, and having her left me infertile," enough, out loud, to everyone I meet, I will finally accept or make peace with the irony and pain impregnated in those words. Or maybe tomorrow I will wake up once again in this world of disbelief, without the luxury of feeling numb, and those words will bring with them the return of my tears.

Regrouping... again

Or at least attempting to. I feel like that is what my life has become, setback after setback requiring us to regroup based on the universe's rules. Well you know what. I am pretty tired of it really. The utter irony of learning this week that my tubes are shot to crap as a direct result of a c-section that I had to bring a dying baby into the world. Oh, that's just hilarious universe isn't it? You really got me on that one.

If Peyton had been born healthy, if she was here, a laughing fifteen month old, of course I would feel this was all worth it. But she isn't is she? She was born to suffer through chemo, procedures, and surgeries that would make a grown man cry, and for what? For an infection to take hold of her after one month!

This latest development has me thinking alot about Peyton's birth. Alot about why the c-section was proposed, and if it would have been kinder to let her pass in childbirth. That would have been kinder to her, no doubt. She wouldn't have had to learn just how cruel life can be for a baby born with cancer. I am so glad to have held my baby girl, to have loved her and nursed her and known her. But at the end of the day she is gone. Just as she would have been had I birthed her. The only difference is, I wouldn't have known all that I am missing. I wouldn't have known how much I need to see her smiley face again, or how beautiful an experience it is to breastfeed her. In that way, perhaps it would have been kinder to me, too.

The truly crappy thing is that they had no idea about Peyton's cancer, so the recommendation to have the c-section, that was based on something else. What exactly? I couldn't tell you. They wait until you are in the throws of labor and then say, "it's time to get that baby out, she is in distress." What does distress mean? Her heart was healthy, her lungs. What distress brought on this surgery? A surgery that birthed a dying baby, and then wrecked my tubes through infection, and my chances at other children? I will never lay down with the man I love, and make a baby again. This is a devastating reality for me. DEVASTATING.

I am sure there are those who will read this post and judge my thoughts. I am sure there are others who will think I am callous or cruel. I can't apologize. I am not sorry that I feel this way. I am 29 years old and feel like my book is closed, like I am the punchline to some ridiculous universal joke. I married the right man. We had a safe, secure home to welcome a child into. Where did I go so wrong?

This time it is different because I recognize the stages that I am going through, I have been through them before. They have been unwelcome companions on this fifteen month ride through grief.

Shock & Denial.
Pain & Guilt.
Anger & Bargaining.
Depression.

These four have become like second nature to me, it's the last three that I have never quite been able to master.

The Upward Turn (I thought I was getting here, really I did. When we decided we were ready to try again.)
Reconstruction and Working Through.
Acceptance & Hope.

Where is the hope in something like this? How can I accept this irony? It is too cruel.

I hear Shakespeare's words, "I am fortune's fool!" ringing over and over in my mind, and believe they were written for me.

These last two days have been like those early after losing Peyton. Eyes swollen with tears. Head pounding. Not answering the phone. Not getting dressed. Not going out into the world. I have not even been able to bring myself to go see Peyton's grave. My sweet little girl who I love so much. I feel awful for this. For feeling the way I am feeling. It hurts to look at your child's grave under any circumstances, these make it especially difficult.

Most people get pregnant and know that changes are going to come. They are supposed to be happy changes... not this. Pregnancy, child loss, infertility. Where does the shit storm end?

I wrote the title of this post, "regrouping... again" with every intention to write something that says, "Listen up world, I will get through this, I will overcome this." The problem is, I don't believe it. And if I don't believe it, I can't write it.