Out of Control

I think a lot of what is so difficult about infertility is the lack of control. I decided where I wanted to go to college, where I wanted to live and work when I graduated, that I wanted to go to graduate school and where and when I would go, and who I wanted to marry. I've decided where to work, play and live. When I decide I want to do something, I make it happen (well, okay, I don't look like Heidi Klum yet, but I've decided to work on making myself accept that).

I studied like crazy for the LSATs and got myself into a good law school. I decided I wanted to make some money and work at a big law firm, and I worked hard to get interviews and to get offers out of those interviews.

At each stage of my life, for the most part, I've had control. I guess I would have liked to have met The One a little earlier in life, but in retrospect, why? I was having a great time with my single friends, travelling, studying, exploring, enjoying. I wouldn't trade it for anything, even now that I have lost control over something I really, really want.

I think at some point, evolution will catch up, and instead of having 15 year olds get pregnant by breathing the same air space as a boy, our bodies will adapt to accommodate the reality that a 35 or 40 year old woman is much, much better equipped to become a mother than a 16 or even 22 year old woman is. I mean, people used to have a life expectancy of about 50, and so everyone was married by 17 because you were elderly in your 30s.

I saw Idiocracy this weekend - the premise of which is that in 2500 the earth is populated by the lowest common denominator (to put it nicely) because all of us smart yuppie types waited too long to have children and were infertile by the time we got around to it (nice, huh?) while the uneducated intellectual lottery-losers had 12 kids by the time they were 20. It was sort of insulting (the rest of the movie was funny in a stupid way - it's a good time waster) but made me think that at some point, our bodies will evolve.

In the mean time, I can't control the fact that I'm 37, or that I didn't meet anyone worthy of marrying until I was well into my 30s. But in the last three weeks, I've done a lot of things to take as much control as I can, and it's made me feel 90% better (there's still at least 10% of me that is miserable and actually glared at a woman with three kids under 5 yesterday - three! Three!!! I only want one, God. Really!).

My husband mentioned that coming home has been a pleasure (which made me feel good and awful too - imagine if staying at work was preferable to coming home to your psycho wife) since I started the Domar Center's programs.

Here is what I have done, and so far, it's made a huge difference:

I changed doctors and hospitals. Why should I slog through heinous traffic to find no parking to be sat in a waiting room with pregnant women for 2 hours to see a taciturn and mean doctor who treated me like a lab rat? No, thank you. I looked for a program with both body (excellent doctors and facilities) and mind (the belief and services to support the belief that you need emotional help with this, too) programs.

I started a Mind/Body program, which has weekly meetings and "homework" - which includes guided meditation (something I have never been able to do without laughing or falling asleep and have frankly never really believed in) and a great book by Alice Domar. The CDs and the book are available to anyone - go to bostonivf.com and follow links for the Domar Center.

I started acupuncture. So far, no miracles, but I like it. I thought I'd hate it - but the needles are the size of a strand of hair, and the acupuncturists are so professional but warm and nice that i look forward to it.

I started yoga. So far, only one class, but it's nice to be doing something that is 100% for ME and which is working my body without the goal of getting it skinnier.

I started sleeping again (okay, I still fall asleep to the meditation CD, but hey, it's much better than not sleeping at all or waking up at 4 a.m.).

I cut myself some slack. Don't feel like going to that thing because I know there will be babies or annoying friends of my parents who will ask annoying questions? Good. I'm not going. Laundry piling up? So what? Who suffers? Me because I have to wear that ugly orange top? So I'll wear an ugly orange top that I should have given away a year (okay, five) ago. Look at what my coworkers wear. That orange top is pretty nice when I think about it that way.

All of these things have helped me to feel more in control in a time when I have not much control over the "no one knows" answer to my question: Why can't I get pregnant? and I recommend them - or any method - that makes you feel calmer, less worn out, and less crazy.

- L.

Luck Is No Lady

Before I even had a chance to pee on a stick, my period arrived late on Saturday. To say I was surprised is a huge understatement. First of all, I just don’t get periods without direct medical intervention – usually by the name of Provera. And second, I was ready for it to possibly appear this week, but it never occurred to me that it might come before then.

I wouldn’t have said it out loud, but the optimist in me (there is a small one…somewhere) was really, honestly hopeful that it would work this month. That I would be able to say that the process was, all things considered, relatively easy. That once we got the Clomid dosage thing down I was, as it turns out, actually a fertile myrtle within the infertile set. And that part of me cried on Saturday night over the loss of that hope.

But the realist in me is calling the shots, and I am, on the whole, okay with it. It would have been wonderful and truly lucky if it had worked this first month of actual, “game-on” trying. But even people without fertility problems usually need to try a few times before it works. Luck was not on my side this month, but there’s always next month – it’s out there, looming and hopeful. And without the added step of Provera to induce a period, I move right to Round 2 (new Clomid cycle – still 100 mg, days 5-9 since it worked) starting Wednesday. What’s more, the fact that I got a period on my own means that I did, in fact, ovulate – possibly for the first time in my life. Which is a feat I honestly was not sure my body was capable of. And I’m so, so proud. And encouraged.

By coming on Saturday, my period saved me the $15 I would have wasted if I’d taken that ept test that was all queued up and ready to go Sunday morning (incidentally, can someone please tell me why they are so expensive yet so inadequate? We’ve sent people to the moon – supposedly – but cannot come up with a home pregnancy test that doesn’t require you to wait until a missed period, when you pretty much can figure it out anyway?). It would have been another indignity in a long list.

-J.

Afraid of...I'm Not Sure What

So I chickened out. After waiting for day 3, waiting at CVS at 10:30 at night on a day when I'd been at work til 9, and after Yahoo-ing "Clomid side effects" for three hours, I chickened out and didn't take the Clomid.

I don't know what happened to me - whether it was part of this infertility insanity or what, but all of a sudden at midnight on Tuesday, I panicked. I made my husband hook up the DVD player in our bedroom (it's been sitting there unused since we moved in August) and dug out the "Understanding Infertility" DVD that I'd been given at the Domar Center in hopes that it would answer my questions about Clomid.

I know practically everyone takes it - and everyone undergoing infertility treatment certainly does - and my friend CC swears that half her friends use it as birth control (i.e. they don't take it unless they want to get pregnant). And my doctor never mentioned side effects or dangers, and no one else really has either (other than the people I know who are on it, who have told me plenty about hot flashes, night sweats, headaches, mood swings that are straight out of the Exorcist). But on the internet, little words here an there stuck in my mind.

"Effects on children conceived using Clomid: unknown."
"Changes in cervical mucus may be permanent and woman may not be able to conceive without IUI or other assisted reproductive technologies."
"Ovarian cancer..."

Plus, it was literally the worst week of the year for me for workload, and I just couldn't face getting up in front of three back-to-back two-hour classes full of grumpy law school students (grades were posted on what would have been Day 4 of my Clomid round - the day that side effects tend to be at their worst, apparently) while having nasty hot flashes and a headache and nausea and blurred vision (that's right, I'm an optimist) after a sleepless night (in addition to having to grade papers all night I fully expected to be in a bath of ice cubes, like Cheryl-Lynn from South Carolina who posted her story on an internet site - her husband Dan had to put her in an ice bath on her third night on Clomid because she was so hot she couldn't stop throwing up).

So I chickened out.

My husband was great about it - he watched the video with me (which said not a thing about Clomid side effects) and told me it was my body, and what was one more month, and I should find out as much as I could about it and then make my decision.

All that being said, I feel a little silly. Everyone else pops the pills like they were Skittles, and seems to think nothing of it. I guess it's the lawyer/professor/researcher in me - I have a hard time making any big decision before I know every last detail.

I'm going to call my doctor, and when I have answers to my questions, I'll share them here. Until then, it's sushi-city, and I'll be cracking a beer at the Patriots playoff game tonight, without worrying that anything other than the Jaguar's running game might make me sweat.

- L

Living Day (28) to Day (28)

Okay, you know you are officially insane when you hear that someone has a follicle that large and you put on a party hat. I'm not kidding, Jennifer, I'm sitting at my computer in a party hat leftover from New Year's, and I'm very excited and happy and hopeful...

and I could not agree with Jennifer more - the waiting and the not-knowing are definitely two of the things that make those of us dealing with this the craziest. Unlike Jennifer, I ovulate (or at least they think I do), so I live in 28 day cycles (or sometimes 27, or in one case, a very cruel 32 day cycle).

Days 1-5 are spent starting a new 28-day calendar, figuring out when day 13/14 (when I usually get two purple lines on the ovulation predictor stick) will be and where we'll be for those days, and what else we have going on during that week (do I have anything due at work that will make me pull an all-nighter - never conducive to wanting to have sex - or will my husband (who is a lawyer) have a trial? Will someone be visiting us - and therefore staying within inches of our bedroom? Does it fall on a weekend when we will want to be at our ski house, with its paper thin walls and 100% guarantee of house guests?

Days 6-10 are spent impatiently waiting for day 10, when I will start to pay attention to the "egg white" situation and maybe will part with some of those very overpriced pee sticks on the off chance that I ovulate early.

Days 10 -16 will be spent dutifully having sex every other day, or sometimes every day or every third day depending on our schedules. Fun. Wahoo. Sex On A Schedule - I've heard there's a new porno out with the same name.

Days 18-28 are then spent waiting. Waiting for what I know will come - even though I try to tell myself that if I assume that I'm not pregnant, I won't be. I don't even bother with the home pregnancy tests anymore. It's too painful to get all hopeful and "cheat" early with a test only to have disappointment arrive a few days early.

And so this is my life. This fall, we stopped "trying" - or rather, we decided to forego fertility treatment for a few months to recover from Dr. G. I told myself we wouldn't think about it - we'd just live normally. After all, that's when you get pregnant according to everyone and your mother in law. When you just "relax" and "don't think about it."

But honestly, unless I go back on the Pill, I can't not think about it. I just can't. I know exactly what my body is doing and when it's doing it and that little spot of hope is always there, so I have to take advantage of it.

I think with anything in life, it's the Not Knowing that is the worst part. I've always thought it would almost be worse to have your child kidnapped than anything else - the Not Knowing would literally make me 100% insane. Because with Not Knowing, you can never grieve, never move on, never Get Over It. Not that you ever get over the loss of a child or the loss of the ability to have a child, but there is something about Not Knowing that adds to the emotional insanity that is Infertility.

I'm terrified that this insanity is going to destroy my marriage, and change me permanently. I can only imagine what it is like for people who have gone through this for years - I honestly think they are the strongest, most amazing women I don't know (very few people talk about this) because if I had to ride this roller coaster in hell for two or three or four or five years, I'd be a shell.

But for now, it's not two or three or four or five years. It's just 23 days, cause I'm on Day 5.

-L

How to Become Patient (or Lose Your Mind) in 18 Days

On New Year’s Eve, I went in for my follow-up ultrasound prepared to leave the office in tears and collapse in a heap of despair over failure to ovulate while the rest of the world (except my husband, who would have to deal with me) rang in the new year. When the doctor said, “We better get you home – you’re about to ovulate,” I had to ask him to repeat himself and say it two different ways before I was able to process it. Because although I respect science and medicine immensely, and I’m seeing a well-regarded expert in this area, I never, never thought this would actually work. I think my nature is to prepare myself for the worst in every situation – and infertility seems to reinforce that tendency with all of its accompanying sadness, disappointment and irony.

But there it was – a 20 mm follicle taking over the ultrasound screen. We were told to go home and do the deed every other day for a week. Suddenly, a different kind of pressure – the pressure of success. I had this budding follicle in there and needed to get the sperm to meet it at the right time. Oh, if I could only see in there and cheer them on from the sidelines – “go spermies!” - or do anything that would lend me a modicum of control when all I’ve been instructed to do is have sex and hope for the best.

Now I know what everyone’s been talking about – this time of trying, of real trying steeped in reality, when it’s actually possible that it could work – is all about “hurry up and wait.” Meanwhile, I must avoid, in the following order: alcohol, sushi, ibuprofen, really any painkiller of any kind, soft cheeses. I tell you, I’ve never wanted a red wine and sushi dinner so badly in my life. And the thing that kills me is this could all be for nothing – a cruel exercise in self-deprivation for another disappointment. But I’m trying to stay positive.

The week is over and now we wait another week and a half to confirm what’s happened. I think I’m going to test on Sunday at home, though even then the results won’t be conclusive. But the waiting is the hardest part, as they say. Perhaps infertility is mother nature’s way of giving parenthood-required patience to those who lack it. Okay – I get it, mother nature. Now give me two pink lines.

-J.

Be Good To Yourself

It happened again. I got my period. December was our last chance to get pregnant without a little "help" - oh well. I've never liked my period - who does - but now I definitely know why they cali it The Curse. I know that in the world of infertility I should be thankful that I'm regular. But in the world of fertility, I'm sad, frustrated, annoyed and depressed every time I get my period.

So now what happens? Clomid (a drug that makes you ovulate or ovulate more), IUI (my husband gives a sperm sample, they spin it so only the sperm are left, and then they inject it directly into my uterus on the day I ovulate), acupuncture and putting our weekend plans on hold around a certain 4-5 day period in case the second purple line on the ovulator prediction stick is dark on a Saturday.

I tried acupuncture for the first time last week, and I'm not sure what I expected but...nothing happened. It was nice to have someone ask me a lot of questions about myself, and it was a little scary to have the acupuncturist look at my tongue the morning after I had had at least a bottle of wine to myself (you would too if your mother in law came for dinner with 6 of her relatives and brought three extra people without telling you and brought her voodoo doll - I am not kidding - which she taps with a hammer - I am not kidding - and which she took out in my living room and tapped it announcing (for the seventh time in front of other people) that a woman she knows got pregnant this way - and then she tapped on the doll's stomach area while I announced that I was "checking on the pork."). And right before she put the first needle in I got a little freaked out. But overall, it was just sort of a relaxing half hour of nothingness, and didn't seem to make much difference.

My neck still hurt (stress) and my lower back still hurt (old fracture) and apparently I wasn't any more fertile.

But in case you're considering it, here are a few things I learned: the needles are more like strands of your hair than needles. THey are the size of a strand of hair, and almost as flexible. You do feel some of them - for me, I felt the needles that were on my left side, but none of the needles on my right side - but after a few minutes of relaxation, you almost don't feel them at all. You won't bleed or bruise or know most of them are even there. And having them removed is completely painless - or at least it was for me.

And my feeling is that whether it works or not, it's part of a holistic plan for me. Tomorrow I start a mind/body class for women (and their partners during three classes) dealing with infertility, and next week I continue with acupuncture and start meeting with a nutritionist. And I've signed up for a beginner yoga class once a week, and am starting to weight train again.

I think when you're dealing with this, you have to take care of You. If you need to skip a family gathering, baby shower, or whatever, skip it. What are you doing that's fun? Dr. Domar asked me what my husband and I do for fun, and besides skiing on the weekends, I couldn't think of anything. He's starting a new job, so activities we could do together during the week aren't a good idea right now, but I decided I'd so some things that are sort of frivolous and fun for me - the yoga, the acupuncture, the nutritionist and I'm also getting weekly manicures - something I"ve always considered to be a waste of money.

I once told my friend Kate that when I had kids, I'd get a Volvo, because I had a friend in college who was in one when she was hit by an 18 wheeler and the police said if she hadn't been in a Volvo, she'd have been killed. Kate looked at me and said, "then why wouldn't you get a Volvo now? If you get killed in a car accident, you can't have any kids."

I laughed, but she's right. Why am I waiting until I get pregnant to take care of myself, to eat right and sleep a lot and relax?

Be nice to You now. You deserve it.

- L.