But, Life

"It always seems impossible until it's done." ~ Nelson Mandela

*Deep sigh*

It didn’t work. 

Fortunately, I’m not talking about the IVF. But the guy I asked to be my sperm donor, the guy who said “yes” to being the father of my child after many hours of conversation together, the guy I was supposed to travel to Chicago with to begin the end of this journey, backed out at the last minute. 

I had started to suspect something might be wrong a few days after he had given me his final affirmative answer. I had texted him about the travel arrangements and asked if he would want to stay an extra day in Chicago to go to a baseball game and I didn’t hear back. When I didn’t hear back, I texted him I had needed to make an “executive decision” in order to get the best airfare price so I was going to leave the arrangements just as we had discussed. But when another day went by without hearing from him, I decided that I would drop by his house to check in and make sure everything was okay. I think somewhere in my posts I must have written about how “J” is a really good-souled guy, but with deep personal problems... namely alcoholism. He had been six weeks sober when we had been talking about this “brighter future” we might live with a newborn baby. He seemed excited.

But when I did stop by his house in the late afternoon, he didn’t answer the knock on his front door. I could see through the blinds that the big screen tv was on ESPN. I knocked more but - though I suspected he was on the couch where I couldn’t see him - he never answered. I went about running errands around town and then when it got dark I parked up the street and walked back to his house. By this time, surrounded by the darkness outside, I could clearly see him sitting on the couch watching the tv in probably the exact same place as he was earlier in the day. I called but he didn't answer. I texted him that I would drop by his house the next day, though I had no intention to. I just wanted to make him answer me. Finally, two days later he texted me, “L I’ve prayed about this for days. I’m just not able to do this. I hope we can remain friends.  J”

I was not just flabbergasted - because, like I said, we had spent a great deal of quality time in the previous month discussing everything! - but upset, as well. I probably should have waited - though maybe it wouldn’t have made much difference - but I texted him back immediately saying, “Yep. Totally. It will take a long time to get back to the level of friendship I have had with you b/c you basically fucked me over, but def appreciate your honesty now. I’m happy actually... because I know my kids will have the father that they deserve! I don’t want them to have someone that doesn’t think they’re the shit, lol, because I just know they will be awesome personified! Good luck in your life; I wish you all the best! Have a good one! Laters : )“

And now that has been six months ago.

I actually forgave him probably within a month-and-a-half. I just had this weighty feeling - whether it was true or not, I don't know - that maybe him making the kind of life-altering decision about becoming the father of a child - even though he wouldn't be financially responsible - was what made him go back to drinking alcohol. I also thought, and again, this was just a feeling, not anything I knew for sure, that he may have talked with his mom about what he and I had agreed to and she - being the controlling figure in his life that she is - may have said that if he went through with his plans, he would have been cut out of his inheritance. And J being the lost soul that he is - and mind you, he comes from a very smart, high-achieving family... his father and brother are both cardiologist and his sister is an attorney - a guy who has been down-on-his-luck for most of his adult life, fighting the disease of alcoholism, and really surviving financially off the good-will of his parent's - just couldn't afford to be left feeling as if his life might be altered too adversely for what it was worth to leave the legacy of child to this world. Nevertheless, it felt devastating to me. But I had to move on. I had to keep planning; keep trying to get the baby I so desperately wanted; the baby I felt was out there waiting to come to me.

To be continued...

All These Years

“Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth.” ~  Menachem Begin

After all these years my hour of reckoning is near. I have recently talked to my IVF doctor and I finally found a partner that wants to be the father of my child(ren)! In the next week I will travel up to Chicago with him, at which time six of my nine eggs will be thawed and his sperm will fertilize them. The potential embryos will then be frozen (yeah, these kids have to come out of two thaws!) because - from my unnderstanding - the genetic testing that needs to be done on the embryos to ensure they will be viable for implantation takes a couple of weeks.

So let me re-hash all the miracles that need to take place in order for it to seem as if I got one miracle... a baby!

First miracle, my just-shy of 46 year old eggs have to be good, i.e., they need to be normal and viable. Second miracle, those eggs which have now been frozen eight years need to come out of the thaw intact and remain viable. Third miracle, my eggs need to be fertilized with healthy, viable sperm. Fourth miracle, the resulting fertilized egg needs to be incubated to the embryo stage and remain viable going into another freeze. Fifth miracle, the embryos need to be ascertained by genetic testing  to be healthy - genetically viable. Sixth miracle, my 55 year old post-menopausal body needs to be healthy enough to receive the embryos upon implantation so that they can begin to grow inside me. Seventh miracle - and this one relates to the sixth miracle - I need to overcome my own DNA’s propensity for miscarriage because of having both the MTHFR gene mutation and being homozygous for COMT 2. Eighth miracle, I need to carry my healthy fetus to full term, or near enough, to give birth and have my child survive and thrive. I feel like I’m missing several other miracle parts, but these are definitely some of the bigger miracles to getting that “one” miracle.

Let’s get this party started!

Small Packages

Miracles sometimes come in small packages, but to this 48 year old mother and 50 year old father, it probably felt like they got the biggest gift package in the whole world!

As Simple as That

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up though the pace seems slow--

You may succeed with another blow,

Success is failure turned inside out--

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit." ~ Unknown

I finally had the consult - I had had to reschedule it - with my fertility doctor in Chicago. It had been just over 8 years since I had last spoken with him during my egg retrieval on September 18, 2009. He sounded exactly the same.

During our conversation he curiously asked me why I put my age as 53 on the forms they had sent when I was really 54. I was like, hey, I filled those forms out on September 30th, I wasn't going to age myself up a whole year when my birthday wasn't until the next day ; )

He also told me about all the dreadful statistics regarding me having my frozen eggs result in having a baby. At one point he said, "I know this is just going in one ear and out the other with you." And I told him, "Yep, it is!" I reminded him of the horrible statistical probability he had given me when I was just two weeks shy of turning 46, "The costs of the procedure," he said then, "is $10,000 and at your age you'll be lucky if I can get one good egg." I had told him it would be worth it not to have regrets.

And when I had gone to Chicago and had the procedure done and there were 18 eggs at the last ultrasound testing before retrieval he told his nurse, "She is making eggs like a spring chicken!" Of course, I wrote in a post of how devastated I was when he ended up only being able to get the nine eggs, how I was crying uncontrollably in the recovery area and the anesthesiologist stopped to ask me what was wrong, and I told him about how few eggs were retrieved and he said, "It only takes one good egg to make a baby."

I don't want to pay attention to his statistics. Why should I? I either will have a baby or I won't have a baby. I don't need to know what the outcome for others is. I'm my own person; different from every other statistic out there. I see differently. I think differently. I act differently. I'm sure the realm I live in is not the realm he lives in. It's my goal to bring him into my realm, not be boxed in by his. Only God and I control my destiny; the doctor is just a catalyst on my journey to motherhood.

So, yes, the statistics did go in one ear and out the other (I honestly could not tell you what he spouted off!). But what did stay between my ears was him telling me the timeline I was up against. He said that in the United States a doctor can't do IVF on a woman past the age of 55. You might wonder why, if I just turned 54 and am ready to have my eggs fertilized and the embryo implanted in my uterus, would the cut-off age of 55 matter. It matters because of my Plan.

My Plan is to have a procedure having 5-6 eggs fertilized and go on to have a child and then to use the other 3-4 eggs to try for a second child! But that's only part of the "fly in the ointment." The real kicker was when he told me that because I wasn't using anonymous sperm - because my donor would be known to me (another small hurdle... I have candidates but don't know who to ask!) - the guy would have to go through psychological testing ($500), have a consult with the doctor ($600) have his sperm “washed” etc. so the total costs of the donor part is like, $3,000! That’s added to the $10,000 I would be paying for the insemination. Bottom line: a lot of money. But what’s the worst thing of all is that the sperm has to be quarantined for six months!!! That’s six months cutting into my Plan timeline! 

I feel, per usual, that I take one step forward and two steps back. It’s frustrating. But every “Hero’s Journey” - the kind of journey I’m on - has dragons to slay (or some equally scary, near impossible conquest to overcome) before they can acquire the “boon.” I’m going to keep slaying dragons - however many come my way - until I get the boon I’ve always dreamed of. It’s as simple as that.

Dreaming Miracles

"Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon... must inevitably come to pass!" ~ Paul J. Meyer

I made the call!!! I called the fertility clinic where - eight years ago! just two weeks shy of my 46th birthday! - I had 8 oocytes and 1 germinal vesicle cell retrieved and cryopreserved. I set up an appointment to talk with the doctor who did my procedure back in 2009. We will have a consultation on Friday - a week away! - to talk about the next steps on my journey of having my babies!

When I have my phone consult with my fertility doctor I will be just two days shy of my 54th birthday - October 1st.

I'm completely excited that Life is propelling me towards the continuation of following my dreams, but I still have so much left to be conquered (nothing like slaying a lot more dragons to get me pumped up!). Like, soooooo much more!

First, I'm in menopause so I know that I will have to be jacked up with a lot of meds to put myself in a position of being able to carry a baby.

Second, I have found out in the last few years that I have two gene "markers" - the MTHFR gene mutation AND I'm homozygous for the COMT gene - that are going to be big obstacles to overcome. Both MTHFR and COMT affect fertility and being able to carry a child full term, as well as, having a healthy baby. But between my GP doctor, an internist, and her referral - a neurosurgeon by trade and biochemist by necessity - I feel that I could have no better help of achieving the best possible outcome for having a successful pregnancy and delivering healthy babies (I often write "babies" rather than "baby" because I feel as if I may have twins).

Third, I still don't know who the father of my children will be! I have a line-up of six potential guys - pretty big long shots in saying yes - but at least I know I've had the guts to get this far and I will have the guts to take a rejection until I get to my yes.

And fourth, I'm practically like a 16 year old girl who unexpectedly gets pregnant, feels very alone and has no idea what she is going to do - in all realms, but particularly, mental, physical, and financial  - in being able to actually have a baby and take care of that child for all of its life. I mean, I'm not in the greatest financial position to be having a child, but neither are many teen moms. I suppose in a perfect world - of which most everyone else I know seems to be in! - you and your spouse talk over when to bring a child into the world based on variables that make you feel most able. But Life has given me my particular journey and I don't have any of those variables in place. But just like the lost teen mom who puts her head down and just does what she needs to do for her child, I will do the same. It's too late in the game for me to wait any longer for a "best time" scenario. I have to understand that this IS the time and let the rest of the best part of it find me!

I'm not planning on doing the procedure until January or February - I need the interim months to help my body overcome the MTHFR and COMT gene problem through supplementation - but I want to talk to the doctor now to let him be prepared for taking me - a 54 year old menopausal women with gene problems - on and figuring out how he is going to be a part of allowing a true miracle to happen!

I started writing Dreaming Miracles in January of 2010 to chronicle my journey towards a miracle... I've said many times before that story was still being written... well, now, I think I'm heading into the last few chapters of the book. 

Anonymous Deception

"Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them."
~ Hugh Miller

This is why I know the anonymous sperm donor route isn't for me... it's not just that I want to know who the father of my children will be, it's the deception that can surround anonymity. Deception can surround anything, but I'd like to try to alleviate it as much as I might. As I've said before, the anonymous donor sperm route is right for many woman - it's their blessing! - just not me. I'm not the type of person - maybe the brave enough type of person - to do it. Even if it should mean I don't get the children I so desperately want, I won't do it. We all have to make our own decisions... this is one personal decision I made long ago. My prayers have been said... now I'm just waiting for the answer. 

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bit.ly/thisiswhyidont

Cliff Diving

"Never, never, never give up!" ~ Winston Churchill

Oh my gosh, it has been so long since I last posted. I'm actually kind of shocked out how quickly time has swept past me. I don't have any real good excuse for not writing. I mean, I guess things had slowed down to a near slug crawl, but the slug's still crawling.

The biggest thing - the thing I should have written about when it happened - was that I fell off a cliff... it was a pretty high cliff; it was a pretty long and hard fall... and it hurt... badly. But it wasn't my whole body that took that unexpected nose-dive, it was just my fertility. I went straight from "fertile-myrtle" to menopause.

One month I was still in that fertile window of opportunity, and the next month it was if I was shot into a different orbit. The orbit of infertility.

I had always thought that menopause was a stage kind of thing. As in, you were pre-menopausal, then menopausal, then post-menopausal; that menopause lasted a few years. That even when entering menopause you still had times where you might have a period until finally after a couple of years the time came where - after one full year of not having a period - you were given the full-on title of Menopausal and then the "post" followed.

I was wrong. And it was depressing.

I'm sure at the time - and gosh, it's probably been a year-and-a-half now - I went into full-on "woe is me" syndrome, but eventually I reminded myself that I still had nine frozen eggs cryopreserved in Chicago.

And then whenever I bemoaned the fact that I had so few eggs to count on in making my dream of having a child come true, I always remembered the anesthesiologist who encountered me sobbing uncontrollably in the hallway of the clinic after my egg retrieval. When he asked what was wrong and I said that the doctor was only able to get nine viable eggs from me, he said, "It only takes one good egg to make a baby."

Presently I'm strategizing on my new game plan. I've got a lot of things to figure out. I'm 53 1/2, and, Lord, I've gotta start figuring more quickly now. 

Stay tuned: I am going to be pregnant in my 54th year.