(No Longer New) Midlife Mommy

Eeney, Meeney, Miney, Mo

My goodness.  It is taking me so long lately to write a post.  I save it and save it and save it, and before I know it, the original date is a week (or two) old.  We've been having some work done around the house, and our handyman hangs around during our "family time" to shoot the breeze, and it extends into our "me" time.  It really eats into my blogging time, let me tell you.  Or, recently, my time was eaten up because I was looking for presents for my mom and dad's FIFTIETH wedding anniversary.  Yep, you read that right.  Fifty years.  How they ever made it that far is fodder for another post.

Anyway.  I read a lot of blogs.  Most of them are mommy blogs.  My favorites are written by women who struggled with infertility before having their babies, but there are some really good ones out there without that focus.  I read a few blogs from women who are trying to conceive, but not many, because it's kind of hard for me to go back to that dark place where I used to be.  Once you've crossed over to the other side, the pain fades.  I sort of want to keep it that way.  And I  hope that each and every one of them gets to the other side of the bridge.

Lately, I've been reading blogs by women who have moved on to donor egg (DE) or donor sperm (DS) and are trying to choose their donors.  And it made me remember what that was like.

To begin with, I never, ever saw myself using donor eggs.  Never.  When the doctor suggested it, I completely dismissed the idea (and I was kind of p*ssed off that he would even suggest it).  To me, the biological link was everything.  For some strange reason, I didn't think I could identify with someone who couldn't link back through my family blood line.  Not that we are that great.  Really, we're not.  And we have a lot of bad diseases on my side of the family -- heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, strokes, and diabetes, to name a few. 

My RE (reproductive endocrinologist) brought up the subject after we'd been going through injections for a couple of years.  (Before that, I'd used Clomid for a year, and timed intercourse before that.)  I remember that he said that my clock was ticking with my own eggs (I was over 40), but if I wanted to proceed with donor eggs, time wasn't such a big deal. 

I thought "not me."  No f*cking way.  Just no.  I was going to have a baby with my own eggs or die trying.  It just seemed so very important.  I even wondered if I could love a child who was not "my own."

I kept trying and beating my head against the wall.  I tried to keep my injection cycles back to back wherever possible, unless I had a leftover follicle that made me wait a month.  Along the way, I had two miscarriages (ironically, both of the pregnancies occurred without any help from modern medicine).  I lost one pregnancy at nine weeks (a blighted ovum), and the other at four weeks.  I mourned those losses.  I blamed God.  I knew that He could have saved my babies if He wanted to.  He just didn't want to.  And that made me angry.

I don't want to go into all the blackness that engulfed me during that time.  I've talked about it to some extent in previous posts.  I remember talking with DH, and I asked him what he would do if it were him who was the infertile one -- would he hold onto biology?  He said that he wouldn't.  He just wanted the child.  He didn't care how that came about.  He considered open adoption.  I couldn't go there either.

And then I came around to DH's point of view.  I just wanted a child.  And I wanted to feel what pregnancy was like.  I finally realized that the only way that was going to happen for me was to use donor eggs.  And it began to seem like a very good choice.  With my eggs, there was a chance that my child could have genetic problems.  With donor eggs, those problems are eliminated to a very large extent.

Our clinic used an "egg br*ker."  That label still cracks me up.  Our egg br*ker had a very Jewish name, and DH and I pictured a nice little old lady who helped people get pregnant.  I kind of envisioned the matchmaker from "Fiddler On The Roof."  As it turned out, our egg br*ker, M, was a nice lady, but she was a lot younger than we had imagined.  I would guess that she was in her mid-30's.  She had a Master's Degree in Social Work, and she worked with a couple of the local hospitals.  She was awesome.

M said that she looked for donors who were motivated to help others.  Anyone who focused on how much they would receive was rejected outright.  Honestly, I can understand that, because the donors really don't receive that much considering what they have to go through.  M would only allow her donors to donate six times.  They received $2100 the first four times, $2300 the fifth time, and $2600 the sixth and final time.  Having gone through an IVF cycle myself before coming to M, I can honestly say that the amount of money that we paid the donor was just not enough to compensate her for her time and risk.

We had no idea what we wanted, but after talking with M, we decided that the donor should share my ethnic background.  M printed out six or seven profiles for us (no pictures were available).  None were an exact match, but a couple were close.  "CG" was someone that she almost didn't give us.  She was currently in a donation cycle, and another couple had expressed an interest in her sixth and last cycle.  But, on the off chance that the other couple didn't choose her, CG was included in our set of profiles.

DH and I are really quite different people.  He is very analytical.  I am more intuitive, a process which I have always argued is just as analytical as his way of doing things -- it's just not conscious.  So, DH took his set of profiles, wrote down the things that were important to him, assigned a point value to each, rated all the candidates, and then he prepared a little matrix with a rank ordering.

On the other hand, I "experienced" the candidates.  I read their profiles, and I put them in order based on the ones that felt the "rightest" to me.  There were traits that turned me off, e.g., alcoholism in the family or severe allergies, and I will admit that I put those candidates toward the back. 

And guess what happened?  DH and I arrived at the same top choice -- CG.  The traits that I recall off the top of my head are that she was 31, had four kids of her own, was an emergency medic, she was going to school for nursing, and she had good grades.  She was 5'5" tall, had brown hair and hazel eyes, and she was of average weight. 

As it turned out, the other interested couple went with someone else.  When we said that we had an interest in CG, M said that she was pleased.  Not only was CG a good producer in terms of the volume of eggs, M said that CG and I looked very much alike.  I was glad to hear that.  And I was even happier to learn that out of the five donation cycles, there had been four pregnancies.

And, the rest is history.  I waited while they synchronized our cycles, and as I recall, CG gave us 23 eggs.  We ended up with 12 fertilized eggs.  We transferred three, and the other nine were frozen (three sets of three).  Two of the embryos implanted, but I lost one a couple of weeks later.  DD was born at 38.5 weeks by planned C-section.

Deciding on a donor is a very difficult thing to do.  I had to decide who was going to be the genetic mother of my child.  But I also know that without me, my daughter wouldn't exist.  And for nine months, I nourished her inside my body.  I've been nourishing her from my body ever since she was born.  She and I are a part of each other, even though we don't share some of our genes.

And as for CG?  I know that she's out there somewhere.  The program was anonymous, so I will never be able to properly thank her for the gift that she gave to us.  But I can say it in my heart.  And I hope that she feels it in hers.

Pregnancy Rocks

I loved being pregnant.  I really, really did.  I should say upfront that I didn't get morning sickness, and I didn't get hemorrhoids.  But I did have swollen ankles from 12 weeks on, frequent urination, bleeding gums, an explosion of mole growth, sciatica toward the end, etc.  So, while I didn't get some symptoms, I did get others.  But I was pretty limber up to the end, and I think that was because I still kept up my exercising, with weights.  I wasn't allowed to add any more weight, and I gave up abdominal work, but still, it was very helpful.  I was allowed to have the occasional drink, but only one, never two days in a row, and only after my first trimester, which I think kept me sane.

As I mentioned before, my pregnancy didn't start out with a bottle of wine and a positive stick.  We used donor eggs, which meant that our child was conceived with neither of us present.  (How weird is that?)  They transferred three embryos to me on a Saturday morning, with my husband there to keep me company.  I had to lie still for a half an hour, and then I had to play couch potato for three days.  That was a little difficult to do, considering that I had been a smoker and had just quit smoking, cold turkey, at 11:30 p.m. on the day before the transfer.  Ugh.  (The good news is that I'm still a non-smoker, and I still do it "for the baby.")

My two week wait extended through Christmas.  I remember being with my family on Christmas Eve evening, when we do our celebrating, and noticing some brown blood.  I called the doctor, and of course, he didn't know if it was implantation bleeding or something worse.  We waited, and worried.

I couldn't wait for the blood test and used one of my many HPTs.  It was POSITIVE.  I was so excited.  My husband was a little more laid back about it, since we'd had two miscarriages previously.  The blood test ultimately confirmed the good news.

I had an ultrasound at six weeks (four weeks from transfer).  They found the reason for the bleeding -- there were two babies, but one hadn't made it.  I was saddened, but a little relieved, because the thought of one baby made me nervous; two babies freaked me out.  We would have survived, but it would have been so hard.  I can't imagine having two DDs running around now.

My pregnancy was very low maintenance.  I felt the baby moving around 22 weeks, which was late.  We were delighted at 20 weeks to learn that she was a girl, and a very active one at that.  Both DH and I really wanted a girl, but we would have loved a boy as well.

All my tests were normal, and I managed to avoid a lot of the "advanced age" pregnancy tests because the donor eggs came from a 31 year old.  Feeling DD moving inside me was awesome.  I actually walked around holding my belly, telling my husband that this pregnancy was absolutely the best thing I had ever done.  (And I still feel that way.) 

DD was breech for the longest time, then transverse, but she managed to turn at around 37 weeks.  That wasn't fun at all.  Still, my doctor and I had discussed the pros and cons of C-section, and I decided to go ahead and have one done.  The risks to me were higher, but the risks to DD were a lot less, just because there is a lot less that can go wrong that way.  And I liked the idea of knowing when she would come, since we were pretty far away from the hospital.

My section was scheduled at 8:00 a.m.  And they wanted us there an hour early.  Which meant that we had to get up at 5:00 a.m.  I couldn't eat, but I was so excited, I wasn't even hungry.  We bought two of the local newspapers on the way to the hospital, so that DD would be able to see what was going on the day she was born.  When we arrived, my parents were already there, which was pretty unusual, since they are always late.

I remember all the preparation details, but I won't bore anyone with them here.  I was a little afraid of the spinal, but it went OK.  I wasn't even aware when they started cutting, until my husband told me.  Three minutes later, my doctor said "here's your little girl," and some lusty cries filled the room.  It was a little surreal when they handed her to me.  Me, a mom?

I can't say that it was love at first sight, because it wasn't.  I didn't feel the attachment that I'd read that others felt.  In fact, I don't think I started feeling attached for a few months.  Nonetheless, I would have taken a bullet for her.  It's hard to explain.

But we're attached now.  I can't imagine life without her.  People say that babies "change your life."  That's not really accurate.  Actually, they destroy your old life, and you need to rebuild it brick by brick.  The couple becomes a family.  And then it's better.

My Name Is, And I Am An Infertile

I would feel remiss if I didn't at least talk a little bit about our struggle to have DD, and I would feel disloyal to the sisterhood (and brotherhood) that comprises the infertiles.  I have "unexplained" infertility, probably the most frustrating of all the possible diagnoses.  That means that all of my tests were normal, but I just couldn't have a baby.

When DH and I married, we were both middle aged (he more than me -- ha ha).  We had talked lovingly about "the twins" we would have once we were married, and we started trying right away using timed intercourse.  Silly me -- I thought that I was pregnant right away, on our honeymoon.  Yeah, right.  I did get pregnant though, within six months.  That baby wasn't -- it turned out to be a blighted ovum, and I lost it at 9 weeks.  It was devastating.

Then I talked with my OB/GYN, who recommended the baby (first step) infertility drug, Clomid.  Along with the Clomid, I had to use an ovulation predictor to make sure that we were doing "it" right.  We used Clomid for six months to no avail before receiving a referral to an RE (reproductive endocrinologist, for those keeping score at home).  I remained on Clomid for several months.  Nothing. 

We started injections with IUI (intrauterine inseminations).  That involved daily shots for two weeks, a blood draw, and an ultrasound on days 3, 7, 9, and 11, as I recall.  DH gave me the shots; I managed the appointments on my own.  It played havoc with my work schedule.  Then, the IUI followed the trigger shot which would release the eggs from my ovaries.  DH came with me for all my IUIs, which always seemed to occur in the middle of the day.  I would put my head in his lap while we waited the requisite 30 minutes; he would read me news stories from his Palm.  We did this for about a year and a half.  Fortunately, the stims (injections) were covered by insurance; otherwise this would have cost us several thousand dollars a month in drugs alone.  Nothing.  During one of two resting cycles (forced, because I had a leftover ovarian follicle), I became preganant again, but we lost that baby at 4 weeks.

We finally moved up to in vitro.  That involved higher levels of stims.  More blood draws.  More ultrasounds.  I was at the clinic on days 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.  They retrieved 10 eggs.  Eight were ICSI'd (intercytoplasmic sperm injection -- because we couldn't trust Mother Nature not to eff things up).  Ultimately, only two were transferred.  I was relegated to the couch for the weekend, missing a wedding, because the clinic required three days of couch potato type rest.  Then I had to take the dreaded PIO (progesterone in oil)-- a huge needle in the butt until the BFN (big fat negative pregnancy test).  $12,000.  No results, but I have a nice photo of my embryos for posterity.

If I told you I felt like a pin cushion, it wouldn't be an exaggeration.  If I told you I felt like a failure as a human being, that wouldn't be an exaggeration either.  Infertility is like planned manic/depression.  The cycle starts the first day of your period, which is Cycle Day 1.  All of the action takes place the first two weeks of the cycle, and then there's the dreaded two week wait (2WW).  My period would start, and I would cry and be reminded, once again, that I was a broken person.  But, that day was also Cycle Day 1!  So we could try again!  And again!  And again!

I grew to despise pregnant people at some level, even though I was supposed to be happy for the people I knew, who all seemed to stumble into pregnancy with their "oopsies."  I remember disliking women in their 20's, because I presumed they were all fertile.  I remember crying in a room full of adults, because all of them started out as babies, so that meant that everyone could have a baby except for me.  I remember wondering why God seemed to bless all the crack whores with pregnancies, and ultimately unwanted children, and why not me.  I cried.  I cursed.  I hated the world.  It was ugly.

I was also very wrapped up in biology, and I thought that only way that I could have an acceptable result to all of this was to have a child that was genetically related to me.  I strugged with this notion for the three and a half years we went through treatment.  Finally, I gave up and decided that what I wanted more than anything was a child, and it didn't matter how she came to us.

On to donor eggs.  We met a wonderful "egg br*ker" who allowed us to look at profiles that matched our desires.  My interest (and I won out on this one) was to find a donor who was the most like me.  We selected a wonderful person who had donated successfully five times before (six times was the maximum for my hospital's program).  They retrieved 17 eggs, and 12 fertilized.  Again, we used ICSI.  Three embryos were transferred to me; 9 were frozen.  And the dreaded PIO began again.  (And I gained 10 pounds waiting for the donor to catch up to me cycle wise before the transfer, all the while taking hormones that kept me ready for transfer -- I still haven't lost those darn 10 pounds, and then some).

We were very blessed, because we had a pregnancy on the first try.  I learned during an ultrasound that we did have our twins, very briefly.  I had some bleeding, and that was the loss of that little one.  But DD carried on.  We saw her heartbeat at six weeks.  It looked like a little piece of pepper, blinking off and on.  Small, but strong and steady.

It's funny being an infertile, with miscarriages.  You have lots of DBT's (dead baby thoughts, to borrow a phrase from Tertia).  No matter how well things are going, you are certain that disaster is about to happen and the miracle will be snatched from your hands.  But I went on to have a blessedly uneventful pregancy that resulted in my sweet daughter.  I remember being incredibly excited at the ultrasound when we learned that we were having the little girl I'd spent my life dreaming that I would have.

And now she's here.  Our miracle baby.  May her heart always beat strong.