IVF thoughts

My drug induced haze has evaporated. Sweet Reality, you have me back.

I am doing alright. My body is recovering nicely and I am not too worried about new adhesions/scarring (that's sort of a plus when already having so much adhesion damage. Things are already broken.). My mind, well, that's a different story, but it tries as best as it can to process the information and not give in to sadness.

My infertility story is by no means extraordinary. I've read too many blogs, too many infertility stories to know that unexpected bad news is never far from our doctor's lips. And yet, I wasn't prepared for it. Oh, I was mentally prepared that Dr. Soothing might not be able to open my blocked tube despite the high success probability he cited (who are those people anyway who fall on the good sides of these statistics?), but I so was not prepared that my left tube was even more useless AND unfixable. It caught me off guard. While this result explains nicely why I haven't managed to fall pregnant in those two years, and while this may mean I might not have as crappy eggs as Dr. Soothing may have thought, it means that my tiny hope for a natural pregnancy is in fact microtiny.

IVF is an excellent infertility treatment for tubal factors. It may even have been invented for it. But, unfortunately, I am no more an excellent candidate for it than I was before. IVF's success lies partly in circumventing the tubes, but it also lies partly in numbers. The more eggs, the more embryos, the better the chance to find the one embryo (or two or three...) that looks like it could make it. My past IVF experience tells me that my beaten ovaries are not so much into the number thing. And nobody knows how or if the Asherman's/Endometriosis has functionally damaged my uterine lining.

Only time will tell whether our second IVF will be more successful than the first. I am being cautiously optimistic, so much stuff can happen in an IVF cycle that it is sometimes overpowering. There is nothing one can count on, nothing one can willfully or with a lot of hard work control: not the number of eggs produced, not the number of eggs fertilized, not the uterine lining, not implantation. One can only try to breath and continue on.

One of the smart infertility books that I have lying around here suggests not to go in into one treatment cycle without having a Plan B to hold on to. Honestly though, I don't have a plan B. Plan B was to keeping trying for a natural pregnancy. Not very original, I know. And now even less promising.

Have a good weekend, lovely internet, and thanks so much for checking in with me after surgery!

Decorative Plumbing indeed OR: Another piece of the puzzle

Lovely internet, checking in with you for a short time. I figured as long as I am in a happy drug induced state, I could share with you the results of my laparoscopy/hysteroscopy.

According to Dr. Soothing the procedure was a success. According to myself, well, not so much. But here in short the good (yes, there were some!) and not so great results:

Good:
(1) I am alive and with most of my organs (minus the reproductive ones) hopefully intact
(2) Endometrioma is drained ( = success of surgery for doctor)
(3) No uterine adhesions detected. Yeah for that one!
(4) Apparently, not much endometriosis implants detected elsewhere?! Maybe the acupuncture/herbs have done some good?

Not so great to downright depressing news (once my drug induced state weans off):
(1) Could not easily remove endometrioma, so endometrioma still present (and will probably grow again)
(2) Could NOT get the metal tube opener through the uterine opening of my RIGHT tube. Too much scarring. According to doctor, it’s unlikely, yet not impossible for an embryo to pass it. Before surgery Dr. Soothing said something about “in 90% of all cases, we won’t even have to use the metal opener, because the tubes will have opened in the meantime.” I said “in 90% of all cases? Well, with my tendency to fall on the worse side of these statistics, we already know what will happen to me.” He said “Yeah, you’re right.”
(3) The downright depressing news: Left ovary is permanently married to LEFTtube. They are inseparable, leaving the one tube we thought was functional, purely decorative. More so than the blocked right tube. Huh?!

I guess, that’s another piece of the puzzle of my SIF. Sometimes, and please no beatings, I don’t understand why people with unexplained infertility want to get an answer for their infertility out of their surgeries. I have so many answers, many of them unfixable, that I don’t know where to keep them anymore!

Seriously though, I think the drugs keep the events of today somewhat cocooned from my mind’s eager, pessimistic (realistic) processing. I know they are depressing to me, yet I don’t feel it quite yet. Makes me think, I should seriously consider antidepressants. All the vitamins in the world just didn’t do this trick.

Oh, and before Iforget. Shortly before I went into surgery I read this article in a German magazine about a woman who had 13 children. The last one she decided to have at, yes, drumrolls, please, 55. And what did this article asked us? Why don't we all have so many children? Yes, why indeed.

Today wasn’t such a great day for me, but after checking in with some other bloggers, it seems to have been a pretty bad, if not worse, for too many others as well. I’m so sorry, Julia, for the crushing news you received at your ultrasound today. It’s so heartbreaking. And, Thalia, I’m so sorry for the white space where there should have been happy pink. Should have been. I’m so, so sorry.

Two year anniversary

So, here it is: the reason why I went AWOL (hi DinoD!). I wanted to write this really insightful post about my 2-year SIF anniversary. What I learned, what I gained, lalala. And not surprisingly, nothing was written. Yet. And not only because I didn’t really gain anything from this godawful experience. Not even some extra pounds, and I had actually looked forward to adding on some womanly proportions.

So, it has been two years. Lots of babies can happen during two years. Just look at Brittney and, soon, Heidi. But not over here. Oh, no, not at all.

The thing is, I was always afraid of infertility. Always. Even before there even was a reason to fear it. I’ve just seen too many (great)aunts of mine end up childless, having had miscarriages or abortions, and never conceive again. I always pitied them. For me, having children wasn’t a choice, it was the most normal, the most ordinary thing in the entire world. I heard my biological clock ticking before anybody else did. When I learned I had endometriosis, I was devastated. I was very fortunate to have met Mr. H shortly thereafter. But he is a couple of years younger than I am and wasn’t too eager to start a family quite yet (well, I wasn’t quite there yet either, thinking at first that he and I were a wonderful fling without serious prospects). When we finally agreed on trying for a child, we tried to mentally prepare ourselves for the reality of IVF – as much as this is possible, which really it isn't. He researched his health insurance. I wrote down our timeline. But then, out of the blue, on our third cycle trying I conceived Miss V. Can you imagine my utter surprise at that faint second line that emerged? It was a left over HPT and I thought I would have to get used to seeing negatives anyway, so why not pee on it. It was positive, the only positive I have ever got. And thankfully, this positive turned into our Miss V, the cutest little pain in the butt you can imagine.

So, when we started trying for our second elusive child, my guards were down. I wasn’t so much wondering about the IF as I did the first time, it was more a question of WHEN. Ironic, isn’t it, in retrospect? Sure, I was two years older but my endometriosis should have been the quietest it’s ever been, what with the pregnancy and the nursing and all. Needless to say, it wasn't.

It’s been two difficult years for me. I remember my excitement at the first positive ovulation predictor. I remember my first cycle with shooting breast pain, that surely meant one thing and one thing only (it didn’t). I remember the pregnancy announcements around me and my bewilderment of why I still wasn’t there. I remember the wakening of raging pregnancy envy. I remember my acupuncture appointments and vile herb concoctions. I remember FertilAid. I remember the fertility monitor. I remember a cupboard full of vitamins. I remember the never ending rollercoaster of hope, disappointment, and despair. I remember my dawning suspicion that something was seriously wrong. I remember ultrasounds and bad news. I remember surgeries. I remember injections. I remember two embryos. I remember tears. Lots of them. I remember anger and bitterness. I remember increasing social isolation. I remember fights, with my husband, my mother, my friends, and sometimes – and that’s the most bitter thing of all- with my daughter. I remember severe feelings of worth/uselessness, as a woman, a mother, a wife, a friend, a daughter, a member of society.

I’ve learned a lot about myself during those two years. Things that frankly I didn’t need to know. Who needs to know about oneself what a bitch one can be? I cannot think of anything that has ever induced such jealousy as the ability to get pregnant and have babies. It’s frightening of how jealous I can get. And then there is the anger and the bitterness that I cannot shake off. Sure those feelings have got a little better over time, but they’re nowhere close to extinction. I’ve thought of myself of quite the compassionate person before infertility brought me to my knees. But I cannot honestly say that infertility has made me more compassionate. Sometimes I even fear it has made me less so. There is, however, one positive thing that I learned during those two years. It’s how to forgive myself for being such a bitch. Not always, mind you, but I’ve become much better at accepting my undesirable personality traits and inadequacies.

I might not overcome it, but I will survive this infertility shithole. It might just take me a long time to do so; much longer than my family and friends seem to deem acceptable. Recently, I sensed changes within me, may they be resignation or acceptance. When we moved into our house, I was wondering how to arrange our house when our second child would arrive. Would the kids share a bedroom? Or would we have to finish our basement to add more useable space? I haven’t had those thoughts in a long time.

I believe we can be happy again – provided not more awful shit goes down the drain. There will be a good life after infertility for our little family. In the meantime, though, my heart is breaking.

Next: laparoscopy scheduled for Sept 18. Yep, that’s next Monday.