Wouldn't It Be Loverly?

I'm in the midst of examining Xtreme Measures for family building. Tragically, all of them have one thing in common - all require a five-figure sum of $$$$$. The figures are daunting, especially given the sorry state of the economy and the fact that hubby's job is in some jeopardy. Since I have always been frugal (some may say cheap) the thought of spending that much money with no guaranteed result tends to make me a little nauseous. But thanks to years of frugality we already have the five-figure sum in the bank at this moment, so no debt would be involved. Still, that's A LOT of money and the last thing I want to do is add financial stress on top of everything else.

Looking at our options and essentially planning for failure this cycle has thus far prevented hope from growing in any meaningful way. Who knows what kind of wreck I'll be in two weeks time, however, when the results are in for this last cycle with Follistim? I'm guessing it could be ugly.

Today's ultrasound showed three mature follicles (and another that's a bit too small I think) so in mere moments I will inject the Ovidrel and also give my ovary a stern warning: "This is a stick-up! Quietly hand over the eggs to the tube, or next time the needle may be in you!" Yes, IVF may be on the table after all. I've found that some of the four local infertility clinics don't automatically disqualify me from the cost sharing program due to my lone ovary, and there's some chance that even with the losses I could get in. It'll take some more research, paperwork, and consultations to get a firm answer. I just have to hope that at least one clinic will buy the "cord-related losses are just random bad luck" theory.

For now, though, we're focused on giving this cycle our best shot. Whacking Day falls on the Sabbath this time. Please pray for us! May our time in the Porn Room/Stirrups be blessed with success! I don't have high hopes, but wouldn't it be lovely if it actually worked?! It would be so wonderful not to endure the intense stress of further infertility treatment and all the needles and probing that go with it, to say nothing of being able to use the $$$$$ we've saved for a house, as intended.

All I want is a room somewhere
Babe and I in a rocking chair
An answer to a prayer
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

What we need are some good gametes
Then baby smiling in the back seat
Wee face, wee hands, wee feet
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?


UPDATE: Sunday morning 11 am - Sperm count at IUI 10 million with 50% motility. This is not a good number. Insert expletives here.

If I Only Had A Brain

For the last 3+ years I have suffered from short-term memory loss, much like Dory from Finding Nemo. I assume this another of the myriad trauma-induced symptoms since my losses. Does anyone else have this?

Sometimes the results have been comical, like the time I shaved a big bald spot on hubby's head. Well, maybe he didn't think it was so funny. I was giving him a haircut and forgot to put the length attachment on the clippers. This was the day before a big job interview. He didn't get that job.

Sometimes it can be scary, like the time I forgot the stove was on. A children's book that was on the stovetop got burned all the way through, but did not catch fire. Whew!

I forget things all the time - my kids' tennis lessons, swimming lessons, dance class, birthday parties, dentist appointments, etc. I forget peoples' names. I forget what day it is. Last month I forgot to pay the rent. I forget why I went downstairs or what I need to get at the store. I try to compensate by keeping ridiculously detailed lists of EVERYTHING I need to do. . . but what good is that when I forget where I put the list or forget to look at it?

Finally this week I thought I'd figured out a way to get my act together. I programmed my cell phone to beep in advance of every scheduled event to remind me. So . . . this morning at 9:30 the phone alarm went off and I was totally confused. What's that noise? Where's it coming from? Oh yeah - I set the cell phone to go off before Tania's dance class! Hey, at least I'd already remembered that she had dance class today - I just forgot about the reminder. I'm an idiot, a dimwit, a moron. I'm going to get Alzheimer's for sure. It's starting already.

I miss my brain. Not so very many years ago I was well-organized and intelligent. At least that's the way I remember it . . .

Death Lives On

It's official. I'm a failure. Again. There's nothing more depressing than to fail at such a fundamental thing as keeping your children alive, and at this point, even managing to conceive at all. I try distracting myself from this failure by trying harder to succeed in other things I have some control over, but I seem to fail at everything. And even if I did have some small successes, no success can compensate for the failure to fill my home.

This cycle generated more hope than I've had in quite some time. Four follicles - my personal best. Still, hope disappeared rapidly once The Wait began and by the end of it I couldn't even muster up enough hope for the one second it takes to, um, administer the progesterone. Just couldn't do it. I HATE that progesterone, not because it's icky but because is encourages false hope with its evil side-effects, especially sore Milk Cups. (This is what my four-year-old daughter calls breasts. It's funny and distressing at the same time, because my Milk Cups will likely remain dairy-free until the end of time.) How pathetic is it to obsess for days over whether my boobs are sore from the drugs, from pregnancy, or from constantly being poked at to see if they're sore?

Hope is simultaneously killing me and keeping me alive. Every time it dares rear its increasingly ugly head, I do all I can to smash it down. It entices me with visions of happiness, and then drops me into progressively lower levels of hell. And yet I keep falling for it because sometimes that vision of what may be is the only thing that keeps me going on the darkest days. I have only one cycle left to try, maybe two. With Hope out of the picture, I'll be left to hang out alone with Despair. How's that going to work out?

WHY can't I just quit and do what soooo many people have told me soooo many times . . . "just be happy with the two you have". Ah, there's that "just" again - as if it could all be so easy if I'd only heed the advice of people who have no idea what they're talking about. I am very thankful for my children, and I'm very offended every time any one dares imply otherwise. I love my children and live for them (though some days I feel I'm not doing them any favors by doing so). If I'd known what was going to happen, I never would have gotten pregnant again after I'd had David and Tania. Then I believe I could have been HAPPY with my two. As things are now though, with a body full of pain and a head full of horrific images, happiness is only a distant memory and my love and thankfullness for my two living children doesn't change that. I wish it did.

The last few years have destroyed me. The truth is that this is not simply about having a baby. Yes, I desperately want a new life in me and then in my arms, but I also want to be alive again myself. I felt death inside me when it came to take my babies and even after they were delivered and buried, death stayed in me, casting a cold dark shadow over every aspect of my life. One woman who has lost many babies once told me that the experience taught her a lot about death. Truly, you can't get any closer to death than to have it inside you and not die yourself. I've grown weary of having such a close relationship with death. Death lives in me, killing not only any child I manage to conceive, but also my faith (which is just as dead and just as missed as my babies), friendships, family relationships, and my ability to function as a wife and mother. Everything I touch seems to die.

Quite simply, I want life to drive death out of me. And that, quite simply, just isn't going to happen.

The Answer to All Your Problems

Hope has been steadily declining since Whacking Day, as typically happens as the seemingly interminable Wait drags on. Thus, I was not my usual cheerful self (heavy sarcasm) during last Sunday's obligatory chat with my folks. My dad called me later in the week to see if perhaps things weren't all sunshine and lollipops around here. Answer: NO!!! But can I say that to my parents: Hell NO! They are kept as far out of the loop as possible regarding our unproductive reproductive efforts, and about many other matters as well. Our relationship is increasingly superficial. It's also more and more difficult to cut my parents out of huge parts of my life, but it seems necessary to do so.

I wouldn't mind my dad having a limited knowledge of our situation, but my mom was such a spectacular jerk after our losses (and on many other occasions as well) that I don't wish to open myself up to further emotional trauma. They both have been kept in the dark because I can't have Dad spilling info to Mom, nor can I ask Dad to keep secrets from his own wife.

My mother has a nasty habit of looking down upon anyone with health problems. She has never in all her 60 years (52 of them pre-enlightenment) suffered from any serious or chronic illness and believes that if someone is ill, it is somehow their own fault. For example, when my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, she whipped out a list by "healer" Louise L. Hay, which she keeps by the phone. It lists hundreds of ailments, their supposed metaphysical causes, and the magical affirmations you must repeat to yourself ad nauseum to make your troubles disappear. I will share a few for your enlightenment:

Bowel problems - fear of letting go :D
Burns - No, not hot stuff! Actually they're caused by anger, burning up inside.
Diabetes - longing for what might have been. Make sure to share this with the next diabetic that you meet. They'll surely appreciate hearing that their disease is their own fault.
Poison Ivy - feeling defenseless and open to attack (To think I've been avoiding a certain to plant for all these years! From now on I'll go skipping barefoot through the forest while muttering affirmations.)

It's astonishing how many people really believe crazy stuff like this. There are even crackpots out there who think pregnancy is caused by HAVING SEX! Don't I wish!

Sadly, no quick fix is listed for infertility or miscarriage. I'll make sure to email Louise about this oversight. So stay tuned - I will let you know what affirmations fix these problems just as soon as I hear from her.

See what the rest of the class is showing over at Mel's:

In a Happier Place, If Only Briefly

Well, we've survived Whacking Day again and arrived at that happy place, Week One of The Wait, with some hope of good news in twelve days' time. The stats this time are as follows: 4 mature follicles in me, 43 million swimmers from hubby delivered via catheter plus two deposits at home the fun way.

Last year at this time I was pregnant, but didn't know it yet. That of course ended in yet another loss. Will I still be in this awful place next February? It's all I can do to think positively for even a day, but assuming my anatomy hasn't been too severely damaged by the endo and cysts, we may have a shot at it this time. All I can do now is hope and say a little prayer: Dear God, Gimme a break, Man!

Also, I'm putting up a pic of the T-shirt hubby got on a recent business trip. Funny, but I don't think I'll let him wear it out in public:

The Ice Cream Diet

First of all, congrats to The Steadfast Warrior for winning my recent giveaway. I will be making her a pysanky (Ukrainian egg) and sending it off soon.

Secondly, I've added a new section to my sidebar just under the Blog List. It's titled Some Desperately Needed Laughs and has links to some funny websites and video clips. Check it out - and if you know of more funny links I can add, please send them my way!

So ... if you saw my last post you know that this month (Cycle #1 of Follistim) resulted in a BFN. This did not come as a shock, since I had ovary pain beginning on Whacking Day and lasting for an entire week. I suspect something went very wrong so that ovulation didn't go quite right(despite all the positive signs indicating that it did) or that there is some mechanical difficulty such as adhesions or damage from the many large cysts I've had lately. In any case, I am very cynical about our chances for success in the future. Just under a year ago I got pregnant on my first Clomid cycle and even though that ended in an early miscarriage, I had high hopes that I was what every infertile girl wants to be: Easy, Fast, and Cheap. Sadly, time has proven me wrong.

This recently ended two week wait has been awful, though not as awful as the last one back in September when my brother died the day before the IUI and we had to pile in the car the day after the IUI to get to the funeral in a distant state. When I heard the news that he had died, I was shocked by it and also shocked by my reaction, which was simultaneous sorrow and jealousy. That's where these years of physical and emotional pain have gotten me - I'm jealous of the pregnant and the dead.

So in comparison, this wait wasn't sooo awful. But I was stuck in the house for over a week worried about my two sick kids and in a state of dark depression due to the odd combination of 1) being unable to get a moment away from the constant "I want mommy" of my sick kids and 2) not being able to end my family with another little person constantly clinging to mommy.



Being depressed and stuck in the house resulted in the consumption of A LOT of potato chips and ice cream. Apparently, despair and anxiety burn a lot of calories, because I've lost six pounds that I didn't need to lose. That's right - I'm complaining about losing weight. My waistline has been shrinking and hubby's has been expanding. This is exactly the opposite of what we're going for here.

Now we have, at most, three days to decide how to proceed. Of course there's the option of doing the same thing again and hoping for different results. I could have surgery again before continuing with treatment. My endo is dramatically worse since the last one (in 2008) and I'm worried about adhesions. But the last surgery was a disaster that made things much worse, so doing it again doesn't seem very promising. Or we could explore Really Extreme Measures that are very expensive but much more likely to work. I hate making these decisions!

More Rain and No Rainbow

A rainbow is God's promise to never again destroy the whole earth with a flood.
And so the earth lives on and I am forced to live on with it
While this never-ending flood of tears is destroying me
Because the storms never end and there is no rainbow.


Once again, I can't even get a pink line, much less a rainbow baby. A rainbow baby, for those who don't know, is a baby born after loss, bringing light and color after a dark and terrible storm.

In Greek mythology, Iris is the goddess of the rainbow, which she used to travel down to earth to deliver messages from the Gods and to transport women's souls to the underworld. This is the only kind of rainbow I have gotten. Since my first loss I've gotten pregnant twice more, but the hoped-for rainbow babies never arrived. Instead, Iris's rainbow transported me to hell. I've often wondered what message God is sending me on this rainbow. He takes my babies again and again, but offers no peace, no comfort, and no guidance in the aftermath. I don't know how to live with this kind of a rainbow.