Archive for the ‘IVF Journey’ Category

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What If?

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

What if I’m not a good mom after all?

What if our child has a disease?

What if our child doesn’t grow up to love us?

What if our child doesn’t have that perfect combination of our eyes, his red hair, my curls, his diligence and my creativity?

What if I can’t potty train properly?

What if I lose my mind?

What if my kid is a pickier eater than I am?

What if parenthood exceeds my wildest expectations?

What if I forget who “I” am?

What if I lose my nice ass and my hot boobs?

What if I never sleep in again on a Saturday?

What if I never sleep again ever?

What if motherhood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

What if I can’t teach my child to read?

What if we lose our first IVF attempt?

What If, What If, What if. These are questions that constantly plague me. Hopefully I’m not alone. More times than not I can’t wait to have a little wriggly body that calls me mom. There are times when I see how my girlfriends are exhausted, haven’t had a break in months and at their wits end – that I think, is it worth it? Maybe I’ve been given a free pass. I don’t have to endure all of this. I get to just be me, just be us. That’s not what I want though. I want to be tired, exhausted, frustrated and out of fresh ideas – the way all the good mommies I know are.

I’ve been reading Dooce.com for nearly five years, on a most-days basis. She’s irreverent, honest, real and on my level. She inspires me to write more candidly and to not think that my odd work-from-home lifestyle is, odd. She makes me want to embrace the good, bad and incredibly ugly of motherhood. This week, her little girl turned five-years-old.

Each month she writes Leta a note. A very public Internet style baby book. Exactly what I’ve always intended to do. This five-year post is why I want to be a mom. I want to realize that I can’t spell things in front of my kid. I want to realize that they are quite possibly smarter than I am. That they resemble the one person I love more than any other in the world. That they changed “the demension” of my life that I never knew possible, and for all the right reasons.

That my what-ifs turn into:

What if I can’t keep a secret anymore?

What if my baby is more beautiful than I imagined possible?

What if Shelton turns out to be the nicer parent?

What if my kid is funnier than I am?

What if parenthood exceeds my wildest expectations?

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Overheard in the Fertility Clinic

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

Shelton and I sat anxiously waiting to see the doctor, and the following conversation occurred:

Him: I hate being in this place.

Me: What?! I LOVE this place. This is where babies are made!

Him: No, babies are supposed to be made at home.

Me: Well, we see how well that worked out for us.

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Here We Go

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

So here’s some news. We’re ready to start this whole baby making business. We visited with our fertility specialist this morning, kind of a second “first time” appointment in which we discussed the schedule and procedures. I’ve been anticipating doing this in September 2009, but it looks like we’ll be doing their July/August cycle. All goes well and as planned, I should be pregnant this time next year!

The procedures that we’ll be using are ICSI, IVF, and MESA (microsurgical epididymal sperm aspiration, a surgical procedure to retrieve sperm). We had a long and informative conversation with the clinic’s insurance coordinator. She walked us through each and every expense, and the total bill is $18,407. That’s Shelton’s entire MESA (about $4,000 cash), all of my medications/Rxs (about $3,500 cash), the IVF procedure ($8,000 cash), all the sonograms, hysterosalpingograms, blood work, IVF class, tests for hepatitis and HIV in both Shelton and I, lab work and freezing (about $3,000 cash).

All I can say is, this baby had BETTER love me! haha

We’re looking at doing the MESA in January, the class in the spring, I’ll start my cycle of birth control in June and then mid-July start taking my injections and then egg retrieval/IVF in early August. I know it’s going to come so quickly. I’ve been on the verge of happy and nervous tears all day long. So who knows, maybe on our seventh anniversary in August, we’ll find out we get to be parents.

The doctor was confident, given our health and young age, that we’ll have ample eggs and being able to transfer a single embryo successfully.

I know it’s been quiet around here for a while, but we’ve just been trying to decide the best time to try to start our family. We hope 2009 turns out to be that time for us and we’ll of course continue to update as things happen. It’s going to be one heck of a ride and we’re excited to take all of you along with us.

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Irony

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Today, my doctor gave me a prescription for birth control. Alanis Morrissette never spoke truer words as she did on Jagged Little Pill- “A little too ironic… don’t ya think?”.

It’s a necessary evil. Birth control is just as effective at, well, controlling birth, as it is regulating hormones. Mine are jacked right now. I’m having long periods with weeks of spotting in between. It has been months and months and months of this nonsense and I’m pretty much over it.

I thought it had something to do with my ovarian cysts, but he assured me one has nothing to do with the other. We’re going to try it for four months and then stop using it. Hopefully that will hit some sort of period reset button.

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Tip Toes and Egg Shells

Saturday, April 5th, 2008

We were told this morning that yet ANOTHER friend is having a baby. (He reads the site so Congrats!!) I hope you don’t mind me calling out your note like this- but it just made me remember that I’ve wanted to post about this for a while. Basically- told me they’d just found out they were pregnant. But hesitant to let us know because he didn’t know if we would care of if we would even want to know. And asked if it was dumb to feel that way.

Not dumb to feel that at all. You and everyone else do the exact same thing. It’s not necessary though.

I seriously love finding out someone is pregnant. Sure- I have a twinge of jealousy and that eensy little flash of “is this EVER going to happen for us?” It lasts for mere seconds and back to the YAYYYY!!!! Why wouldn’t I want to know? Shelton and I have had had the pleasure of being a part of so many close friends and family members pregnancies, births and raising children. It’s the most amazing and truly blessed gift- for both the parents to receive the baby- but for us to be a part of it. We’re like the unofficial aunt and uncle to 3600 kids! That’s an exaggeration- but I’ve never claimed to be any good at math!

We always kind of snicker amongst ourselves because we think watching all of you have all of your babies- we’ll have it pretty well figured out when ours arrives. Sometimes we forget about the baby restrictions and that a lot of our friends don’t have the freedom to come and go and do as they please like we do. But we’d give up that freedom in a heartbeat.

Like I said, this happens all the time. Our closest and dearest friends avoid telling us for fear we’ll be to hurt or something. I promise- we won’t be. I’m more hurt when I find out months later that someone has been pregnant for months and didn’t tell me. That’s what I don’t like. So please, just tell us. We really do want to know and we really do want to celebrate with you. Let us live vicariously through you for a while… and then we’ll call in some favors for babysitting later on.

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False Hope

Monday, March 24th, 2008

I forgot to tell you…

In January I was experiencing tremendous abdominal pain. Immediately I thought, “here we go again!”. I wasn’t at all interested in another surgery for these friggin’ cysts. I rode it out a couple of days, but the pain was different, excruciating, but different. It was tucked up under my rib cage- it hurt to sit, walk, lie down, breathe, cough, on my side, standing- it just hurt.

Finally, Shelton insisted I make an appointment with the doctor. Our family doc, Dr. H, wasn’t available that day so I saw his P.A. I had never met this P.A., but he was likable right away. I explained the agony, my med history and my personal hypothesis for the problem. He asked if I could be pregnant. I laughed. He looked amused. I explained that unless God himself planted a baby in my womb that there was no way I was with child. Again, he looked curious. I explained. He thought my pain could be a few things, but wanted to rule out pregnancy for sure. I said why not.

It’s funny because the night before I was joking with Shelton- “what if I go in tomorrow and they tell me I’m pregnant?”. He told me he’d have a paternity test. (Insert lots of laughing)

So I took the pregnancy test and a bunch of other lab work. And then I sat in the waiting room for about 15 minutes. Suddenly my brain went to this strange little world of What If. “What if I’m pregnant? Is it possible? It’s possible. People tell me all the time stranger things have happened. Maybe one snuck through? I’m pregnant! Holy crap, how cool would it be to leave here and tell Shelton that I’m actually pregnant?” These hopeful, silent little ramblings went on inside my head until the nurse (the scary one) called my name to return. He told me I wasn’t pregnant.

Really? I do not have a medical degree and I could have/did tell/told you that. But thanks for the past 15 minutes and the swarm of butterflies that have taken flight in my digestive region. I guess we saved a few hundred dollars on a paternity test.

Nothing was wrong with me- the pain went away… by the way.

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