Infertility & Grief

We have finished our IVF journey.  This is a cause for celebration and of great release but the journey itself has changed me irrevocably.  I have a hard time remembering the person that I was before we began this journey but I know I was more trusting, more willing to throw myself into the future and less cautious.  Was I happy?  Sure.  Was I as happy as I am now?  I don't think so.  My joy that I have in my family, the gratitude that I feel for my beautiful boys and my happiness in my marriage that was made stronger through facing adversity and supporting each other through it.

There is a dark side too.  I worry more and lately I have been concerned at my willingness to go to the worst case scenario at the slightest provocation.  I have spoken previously that I am a recovering alcoholic (11 years sober) and that one of my coping mechanisms to get through life without drinking is to prepare myself for the worst case scenario and know that I will not drink.  This has become habitual now and it has gone to a place that I am not comfortable with.  If Boo2 sleeps for too long, I worry that the worst has happened and he has died.  If JBB is sick (as he was yesterday), I panic that he is fatally sick.  If JourneyMan is a few minutes late in coming home that he has had an accident on his bike.  I worry that my Mum's health is not good.  I worry that my Bestie will find more lumps and won't be so lucky in her diagnosis this time.  I worry about all of my people.

At the heart of it all, I am worried that I will be made pay for the joy that we have in our lives.  Every day, I am grateful for my beautiful boys but haven't I learned that on this journey you can't be too happy, or optimistic because at any time the rug can be pulled out from under you?  I don't want to live my life in this way and in my heart, I know that it also doesn't matter how much you prepare for something bad happening, you will always feel shock and grief and the other myriad of emotions that go along with the situation.  In fact, all it does is make you grieve twice.  Once in preparation and once if the actual event occurs.  In short, I need to change my coping mechanisms.  I am going to see a counsellor again to help me to make this change.

I feel a bit swamped in grief at the moment too.  In Australia, Father's day is the first Sunday of September and this year, it has the added bonus of being the day before the anniversary of my Dad's death.  That seems a little bit cruel.  Advertising for Father's day has already begun and will only get worse as August progresses and already I am in floods of tears when I see any ads as I am reminded that I won't see my Dad again.  That he won't pat my beautiful Boo2 on the head and tell me what a miracle he is. That we won't sit and watch a footy game together again, that I won't laugh at one of his stories.  When we were around at my Mum and Dad's house the other day, JBB pulled out a little walking toy that he used to follow my Dad around on his walker, we asked him what he used to do with it and he said 'follow Pop around'.  I'm glad that he remembers him but how long will this be so?  Not for very much longer.  They had a touching relationship.  Near the end when my Dad was mostly bedridden, JBB would go over to the side of the bed and lean in for Dad to pat him on the head.

I remember the last time I saw him before I went to Thailand for the transfer for Boo2.  He put his hands on each of my cheeks and wished me good luck.  I cried and I didn't know why because he was okay, I wasn't worried that he would die before I got back, I didn't think he was even close.  I still feel bad that I wasn't there to comfort him, to hold his hand and to talk to him.  I know that I was where he wanted me to be but still, I feel like I could have helped in some small way.  A few months before, we had a good talk.  He told me that he knew that he was dying and I asked if he was scared and he said that he was before but that he wasn't anymore, he was ready.  I remember my heart clenching in fear at the time, I wasn't ready but I comforted myself that I still had time.  I don't regret going to Thailand - how can I?  My darling Boo2, who is a shining light in my life came about from that trip, I can't regret it.  

Somehow the death of my Dad has become mixed up with the final chapter of our journey to our family.  I feel that because of both of these events, I will never be the same.  I continue to wonder how to move on from the scars of infertility.  Do the scars fade like the scars from the c-section.  Will I ever stop missing my Dad and crying when I think about him?  I don't know the answers to these questions but one thing that the infertility journey has taught me is to take happiness whenever you can and I am so, so lucky to have so much happiness and joy in my life.  I need some tools to work through this.

PAIL: Healing Week

It is healing week in the PAIL world and I thought I would post my own thoughts on the subject.  For some of the other PAIL healing posts, click on the PAIL button on my blog.

As I draw to the end of my journey through the infertility landscape, I do find myself reflecting on what has brought me to this point.  When I started this blog, my main aim was to provide information on our journey to others who were considering the same path.  Ours is a fairly unique on in that we pursued donor eggs via a different race than our own and still to this day, I don't come across many people that make this choice.  We just wanted to be parents and we didn't care how.  We looked into all options, adoption, surrogacy, foster care and donor eggs.  Donor eggs in Australia was going to be a long wait (2 1/2 - 3 years), adoption in Australia is ridiculously difficult and by the time we had served all the waiting periods for international adoption, I would most likely be over the age limit.  When we were deciding on our course of action, I was 38, I was 39 when I had JBB and I am 41 when I will have Boo2.  

So, we decided to go to our beloved Thailand to source donor eggs from there.  We have all the issues of using donor eggs but some of the issues of interracial adoption.  These have not been insurmountable options and they became easily dealt with once I realised how I could heal.

Healing is such an important part of our journey through infertility.  Without it, I wouldn't have been able to pursue donor eggs in a country other than our own because I most likely couldn't have moved past using my own eggs.  Does that mean that I have completed healing from our journey?  I don't think so, this pregnancy has thrown up some more things that I feel that I need to heal from but for the most part, we are moving on.

To me though, moving on does not mean, forgetting.  I feel like to move on, I need to grieve the parts of the journey that didn't go the way I expected and we all have expectations about how we 'should' be able to conceive our kids.  I think that moving on means also celebrating those parts of the journey that brought us here as well.  I have grieved having my own biological children, that part of me has been healing for a long time.  I look at my beautiful JBB and am thankful and celebrate every day that I allowed myself to move on from having my own biological children.  How can I not celebrate when I am a parent to such a fantastic kid?  Each celebration brings a little bit more healing.

I am happy to move on from our journey through infertility.  The thought of not having to do any more cycles and all of the supplementary treatments that go along with it.  These are lovely thoughts, a balm of healing to my soul.  I feel like there will be some grief that I will need to work through about this but I will be able to do this and celebrate the birth our darling Boo2 very soon.

There is no forgetting for me though and, to me, that's okay.  The main reason is our journey through infertility is intrinsic to JBB and Boo2's stories.  It is part of their identity and that is why I don't regret anything that happened.  Sure, we would all love to have sex with our partners and *boom* 9 months later, baby arrives but to me, that would mean that JBB and Boo2 would not have come into existence and that is impossible for me to face - along with JourneyMan, they are my world and my greatest achievements and that is a healing thought.

There are still scars, both physical and mental but I am hoping that one day, they will go white and fade into the background.  For now, they are still a little red raw (I think that the panic over this pregnancy has everything to do with scars from negative cycles past). 

The healing for the main part though, resides in the face of JBB and the movements of Boo2 that I can feel - they are who we wanted all along.

Stripping away the guff….

The journey to a baby can be a rocky one and for some lucky ones, they path to a baby is easy – one of the the biggest worries being ‘should we find out the gender of the baby?’.  Sometimes I envy the people who had an easy run.  I wish I didn’t know how IVF worked in intimate detail or I wish that I could unconcernedly tell everyone about the baby before the wee stick is even dry.  In both of our positive pregnancies, we have told our families of our success straight away basically because they knew that we were going to Thailand.for a cycle.  This time was even harder because people knew our history and when my Dad died, my family told everyone that I was in Thailand and they correctly made the assumption that I was there for a cycle.  It was an uneasy first trimester with so many people knowing about the pregnancy so early.

Sometimes, I am so green with envy of my friends that get pregnant ‘as soon as they look at each other’ that I want to scream.  At a Christmas dinner with my girlfriends, one of my girlfriend’s was telling me about how her husband had been booked in to have a vasectomy (they have 3 kids) but with a week to go, they both just couldn’t face the vasectomy, they didn’t want to close the door on a 4th child.  Despite being pregnant myself, I felt sick with jealousy that they have the simple luxury of this choice.  Our choice to have another child would mean finding another minimum of $25,000 to go to Thailand for a fresh cycle, to put our lives on hold further, to decide whether the risks on mine and the baby are worth it once again.    For me, I would love to have another child, indeed, I had always dreamed of having 4.  Sadly, that dream is just not achievable any more, financially, emotionally or phycially.  I don’t know if I have completely let go of trying for three but there is barely any daylight in the crack in that door (maybe if we won tattslotto).  I think our best course of action is to (hopefully) have another beautiful son, thank God, the universe, the angels, the doctors, nurses, friends, family, commenters, and any of the other hundreds of people involved in bringing our family to us and move on with the business of being an actual family.

At this moment, when all I hope and pray is that my second darling boy will be healthy and in our arms in May, I know something this pregnancy that I only suspected last time.  The worry is worth it, the risk is worth it, the financial strain is worth it, they physical toll is worth it. 

The jealousy goes away.  It can still hurt sometimes but when I got home from the Christmas dinner with my girlfriends and checked on JBB in bed, his angel face melted all jealousy into gratitude.  At the end of the day, all of these petty jealousy’s and wishes for change mean absolutely nothing when you are holding a new born in your arms who is dependent on you for everything in their life.

I know that the journey has been hard (hard seems such a small insignificant word for such a tough time), it has changed me irrevocably but I am proud of who I am.  I am proud of the wife that I am to my husband, the mother that I am to my son, the daughter that I am, the sister that I am and most of all I am proud of the person that I am.  I am not perfect, that’s for damn sure but I wouldn’t be the person that I am today without the journey that we have been on.

For now, despite the worry, I am grateful.  I have felt my darling Boo2 kicking up a storm today and every time it happens, I smile.

Infertility: The Middle of Nowhere

I have a confession that I have never admitted even to myself.  In the past I have thought about taking my own life.  Mostly it was when I was younger and I hope that it was never really serious but definitely those thoughts were in my mind.  I specifically remember a time when I was living on my own, I was still drinking, so the shame / drinking spiral was getting tighter and tighter.  I was having an affair with a married man, I despised myself my bestie was overseas, I felt desolately alone.  I was mixing alcohol and sleeping pills at that time and remember being kind of worried about what I was doing but also kind of daring it to happen too.

It is 15 years from that time, I have almost 10 years alcohol free and I have a fantastic life, I am a completely different person, for the most part, I like who I am now.  I have amazing people around me.  I have a wonderful husband, the most gorgeous, hard won, precious child in the world, an amazing family and brilliant friends and yet sometimes the journey through infertility reverberates with those same  miserable feelings of isolation.  It is a different kind of isolation and I have heard many ways to describe it and I think that the one that resonates most with me is living behind a glass wall.  For me, the glass wall represents understanding.  In my real life, people don't get it.  They don't get that it this journey permeates every part of my life, every decision I make.  It dominates my thoughts and rules over our whole lives.  The wall is so high that I can't see what life would be like without it there, I have hope that I will recover but wounds that cause a person to howl with sadness are slow to heal - thinking about days of negative cycles, negative prognosis and negative outlooks still cause my heart to hurt even now.

I am not saying that I contemplate taking my own life now, wouldn't because I think it is a selfish thing to do - especially to the people that love, trust and depend on me.  I do, however, understand how people could move down this path if their IF journey progressed a certain way - things like turning away as a couple rather than seeking comfort from each other, not having a supportive group around them or even not having a blog world full of sisters who are there to hold your hand (virtually), provide feedback and basically to help you feel like you are not alone in this gut wrenching journey that hits at the very heart of what makes you a woman.

Sometimes I feel like I have had enough challenges in my life and wonder if I can take any more. Even finding out today that I am perimenopausal at 40 was a blow but most times I feel like the challenges that I have had in the past have provided me with the tools that I use to deal with this journey.  If I wasn't a recovering alcoholic, would I still have hope that I would recover one day from these years in the trenches?  If I didn't learn how to self assess my behaviours, would I be able to pass on these very necessary skills to my son to deal with life?

I would like to dedicate this post to the many, many sisters that I have gained on this journey.  If it wasn't for the inspirational, courageous words that I have read on posts or comments, the feelings of isolation that I have felt on this journey would be intensified exponetially.  Just knowing that you girls are out there reading, understanding, holding my hand makes the days easier.  A special shout out to my friend Lifeslurper who pushed me into starting my blog and telling me (very firmly I might add) to connect with the community over at Stirrup Queens, thank you - you changed my life.  To everyone else, your words change my life every day.  Thank you.

Irked by the Fertiles

Some days I don't feel like I have dealt with the infertile in me all, some days the things that Fertiles say, no matter how innocuous, feel like they are stabbing my heart. I know that it is my own issue to deal with, I know that I should probably have gotten over it by now but just when I think my infertile heart has the armour to withstand the things people say, an arrow gets through.

During the week, I went to a doctor to get some blood tests done that the naturopath had recommended. I was in the waiting room and there was another woman in there is a couple of months old baby. She annoyed me right off the bat because she talked about everything in a loud voice for everyone to hear, I really don't like that, I like to keep myself to myself and don't want to be forced to listen to other people's issues. I heard all about their trip to Fiji and how the baby needed immunisations (and perhaps a boat considering the country is flooded right now - meee-ow!) I heard how her husband is away and she was having to get up to the baby and the toddler on her own at night. I could have also marked down when her next appointment with the doctor was, it was a 10 minute discussion to get the date correct. Then I found out that they had to 'hurry up and have their third baby very soon because the doctor was retiring'.

This was at the point in which I did a mental double take. I mean, doesn't she have to plan for a year to start trying, go back to work early, save up money, lose weight, remove all chemicals fro her life, go to counseling, see her acupuncturist each week, do yoga every day, do detox hydrotherapies every day, only eat organically, buy air purifiers, vitamin supplements, organic cotton sheets and pj's, have fertility tea every day, listen to subliminals, do hypnosis, they to get her whole family to send positive thoughts via elephant key rings, find time to meditate, do positive imaging exercises, make up a mind map and find a way to remove all stress. No, apparently all she needs to do is to get her husband to free up a day or two in the next month and she will be knocked up again and able to have her doctor of choice for her third pregnancy because God forbid, she wouldnt want to have to **gasp** find another doctor for her pregnancy, that would be way too hard.

Okay, whinge over, I'm off to have a clay bath.

What IF?

Project IF is a joint project between the fabulous Mel of the Stirrup Queens and Resolve to create awareness for Infertility. You can find out more about Project IF here. If you have a chance, read through the live and growing list of 'What IF's' from bloggers here - it is extremely moving. Here is a link to Keiko Zoll's video - I watched it with JourneyMan yesterday and my heart hurt with the plain truth of this video. I read your blog stories every day and I am constantly moved by the unfairness that some people's journey takes but am also blown away by the courage that you women show - you are all amazing in my book.

So here is my What IF submission:

What IF a part of me still grieves for the golden hair genetic child that should have been mine?

What IF the walls that I built around myself on my IF journey never come down again?

What IF I can't forgive my friends and family for telling me that I just need to get over it?

What IF my unicornuate uterus cannot sustain this pregnancy to term?

What IF my son cannot forgive me for seeking an anonymous donor?

What IF I had given up without trying every avenue to have a child of my own?

What IF I am not a good mother?

What IF I forget the journey and take for granted my hard fought family?

What IF our families treat our son differently because he is not genetically mine?

The IF journey is a hard one. I don't think it matters if you have been trying for 6 months or 6 years, the What IF questions that we ask ourselves are generally the same. They unite us despite where we live geographically or our life circumstances.

Our journey has been a tough one. I have had 2 laparoscopies to clean out endo and diagnose my unicornuate uterus. I was born with only one kidney and I have a blood clotting disorder. My husband has had a vasectomy and a vasectomy reversal that was not completely successful. We had 5 cycles of IVF/ICSI before travelling to Thailand for a donor cycle which happily has been successful. I have cried many tears, the depth of the despair that I have felt cannot be easily described but I have also felt the cautious joy of success. I say cautious because even when I had the positive test, I was happy but didn't let myself be too happy because What IF it all went wrong? I have had cautious happiness each time I have reached a new milestone and I am hoping that unbridled joy will be mine once again at some point in the future - perhaps at the birth of JourneyBabyBoy?

In my country (Australia), the government took away much funding in January for IF services putting the cost out of reach for most average Australians. Generally, we had been lucky enough to be one of the best countries for funding IVF but now that declining every day. They also imposed new rules, one of which is police checks that must be completed before treatment commences which has increased the cost, increased time delays and has further alienated the IF community from every day Australians. JourneyMan and I chose to travel to Thailand to seek an egg donor because it is illegal to pay for egg / sperm donations in Australia - there are some very generous souls who do it out of the goodness of their heart but the waiting lists are, at minimum, 2-3 years. In my home state, you cannot advertise for a donor without submitting the advertisement to the government for approval. What IF we actually made it easier for infertile couples to receive treatment?

The What IF quesitons are not all bad ones - there are so many there that have hope. Hope was something that had become somewhat of an enemy but I am now gently holding it in my heart like a precious, fragile jewel. I am afraid to embrace it entirely but it is there nonetheless and growing every day.

What IF my son is brought up in a loving and attentive family and changes the world simply by his presence?

What IF we appreciate every moment of our journey for the rest of our lives?

What IF I hadn't been on this journey and didn't appreciate the preciousness of the life growing inside of me?

What IF I let unbridled joy back into my life?

For more information about infertility - please visit Resolve's Infertility 101
For the list of bloggers who answer the questions 'What IF' please click here.