How things sorted out

Our Mac died on Sunday, so I've been away from blogs for a few days.

I had the dIUI on Monday. I told my manager that I had a last minute doctor's appointment and I went and then came back to work. I had my meeting later in the afternoon where I told her from time to time I will have a last minute doctor's appointment. She said okay, but that I should go tell HR so it will be on record that I let them know. She proceeded to tell me what a great job I am doing and that I am clearly "the cream of the crop" in my department.

The next day I made an informal meeting with HR and when the phones were slow and it was convenient for the HR person, I went over to talk to her. I let her know about the last minute doctor's appointment and she told me next time I should get a note on the doctor's letterhead from the doctor saying that these appointments have to be last minute.

To me I'm thinking, well there goes my confidentiality. I purposefully didn't want to tell them what doctor I was seeing and why, but this is going to be letterhead from a Midwives office, so they'll know something and it probably won't be the right thing. So I found that really frustrating. And then I sent an email to my manager saying I went to go talk to the woman in HR and she lightly reprimanded me for going to an "unscheduled meeting." How annoying! I'm an adult and I know when it's appropriate for me to go to a short 10 minute meeting. She knows I have really high production (she told me so in my meeting) and it makes me feel like a child to have to get permission like that. So, overall it was frustrating.

My friend E recommended that I get a note from my PCP, which I think it is a great idea. So that was a helpful suggestion. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. We only have 2 more of these IUIs left before I leave them behind forever.

The IUI itself was fine. Unfortunately T was not able to be there with me. That's the first time that happened. That was sad, but I guess any change might be a lucky one.

When I was walking into the room, a visibly pregnant midwife said to me cheerfully, "Congratulations!" I looked at her confused and said, "For what?"

Then they had me undress and get ready. When the midwife came in she said 'congratulations' again and I said 'for what' again, she said, "For ovulating." I told her she must not know my history because ovulation isn't the problem for me. I told her my whole history and I saw her eyes get wider and wider. She clearly didn't know how to react to me. That was a huge difference between going there and going to the RE's office. She said she hoped that her fertility (and pointed to her belly) would rub off on me. She was very nice, but it was a little strange to have a pregnant lady injecting some stranger's sperm into my uterus. What an odd scenario, eh?

Luckily I'm doing so much better around pregnant people and the sight of her didn't make me want to cry. There was a bulletin board in the room with tons of pictures of babies which kind of bummed me out after staring at it for 40 minutes or so before, during and after the procedure. But otherwise it was fine. The midwife said I had tons of fertile cervical mucus, so that is good too. I think the timing was spot on. So nothing to do but wait.

I'm drinking beer during this 2ww, though. At least for the first week.

So things are basically ok. We have a lot of stuff going on that is making me feel a bit stressed an crazy, but being busy makes the time go by easily, so that is a good thing. I'm trying to employ my new found ability to go zen -- just breathe and accept that this is the way things are. I'm doing okay. Nothing is horrible. Things are moving forward, slowly. It's okay. One step at a time.

Stress

I'm trying really hard to not stress myself out.  It's not my forte.  I had been doing pretty well because I really thought my LH surge would happen today, we could to the dIUI at the Midwife place and it wouldn't interfere with work at all.  But of course, that's not what happened.  I have yet to surge.  I'm expecting it to happen tomorrow, but who knows at this point.

I haven't yet told my boss about my 'medical' issue.  I have a meeting with her on Monday (which has been delayed for 2 weeks) where I have planned to tell her.  I thought I would be able to get the talk in on time, but now it looks like I may fall short.  I'm going to have to talk to her first thing on Monday because I may have to miss our meeting depending on when the IUI is scheduled.

At the Midwife place, I have to call the morning of my surge between 9 and 9:30 to schedule the IUI (I assume for the following day) except on the weekends when you call the day of the IUI and page the midwife so that she can schedule something with you.  I guess if you surge on a Sunday that you call on Monday between 9 and 9:30 for an appointment that day.  So if I do surge tomorrow, I'll have to do that.

So I'm stressed that this won't work out somehow.  And I don't know if T will be able to be there with me, which sucks.  And my work is getting stricter and stricter about things, and since I want to apply to a new job and get out of the call center asap, missing random hours randomly due to some unexplained 'medical' issue doesn't look so great.  So I'm stressed about that to.  And of course, stress delays ovulation.  Hurray.

I'm trying really hard to just breathe through all of this.  I am.  I have definitely been better at not stressing about things, lately, but this minutiae is driving me crazy!  At least at my RE's office I knew I could call in the afternoon to schedule for the next day.  Not here.  So I have to use the OPK first thing in the morning, which I don't like to do.  I think it throws the timing off.  I hope it's positive tomorrow in the afternoon and I can just call on Monday morning and have it that day.  Of course that may throw off my work meeting and the going away party we're having for one of my co-workers, but we'll see.

Plus I carpool with two people and I'll have to hide the vial of sperm in the back of my car and make sure it doesn't topple over.  I guess I'll have to use towels or something.

Sigh.  I'm really trying hard to not stress out about this.  It will all work out.  It's not big deal.  If worse came to worst, T and I could try on our own and this vial could just go into the freezer and we could try next month.  It wouldn't be the end of the world.  Breathe.  Breathe.

On Time (as in waiting while time passes)

So, two years. That makes about two and a half since I was first pregnant. And little S, who was due 4 months before I was due is going to be 2 in July. I remember thinking how I didn't know what I was going to do if I wasn't pregnant by the time S turned two. But here I am, facing the reality that I will not be. And though it took E a long time to have a healthy pregnancy, I will assume that she will be pregnant again while I will remain fully and wholly un-pregnant. At least I'm confident I will not be pregnant with anything healthy. I wouldn't be surprised if miscarriage number 5 is in my future, though.

The funny thing is, I'm really doing pretty okay in real life. Babies don't make me really sad anymore, though I don't feel like holding other people's babies or ooohing and aaahing over pictures. I don't like hearing endless stories about other people's children. But the sight of a pregnant woman doesn't make me want to cry. I have really come to accept that this whole pregnancy thing just isn't going to work (though I do, in all honesty, hold out a small bit of hope for a miracle), and we're just going to have to grow our family through adoption. I'm even coming to believe that our genes aren't so great anyway, and wouldn't it be better if they had other people's genes. And I do really believe that in a physical sense. It's a little bit harder to deal with in a mental sense -- but luckily personality resemblances are a lot more learned than physical ones. I'm really coming to believe that I can live my life this way and it's okay.

At the same time, there still is a tremendous sadness about all of our loss. I feel like we have lost a lot. We've lost 3 pregnancies that we started on our own. We've lost hope that IVF could ever work for us because of T's poor genes and my poor response to medication. We've lost 8 embryos to bad genes. We've lost a genetic connection to my husband. We've lost a pregnancy with hope because we used donor sperm. We've lost hope that donor sperm will work at all. We've lost hope that I will ever be pregnant long enough to hope we can bring a baby home. We've lost several months of hope and expectation and knowledge (though not a guarantee, of course, because I've learned how fragile even late term pregnancies are) that we will know when we might bring our baby home. We've lost the possibility of experiencing a full term pregnancy.

So, though I am better in some ways, I am still feeling our losses acutely. I feel for those others who have suffered great loss. It's weird how when you've suffered a lot of loss that different types of loss feel so different. In some ways we can band together with our losses, but in other ways it just seems so personal.

It always hurts a little more when you see so many people win their battles and move on. I feel desperate to talk to those who are in a similar place -- who are struggling with all of their loss and need to motivate themselves to fill out a daunting adoption application. I know this will all feel less acute someday when we finally, finally bring a baby home, but it is impossible to imagine that and I just can't stop thinking about all of the things we have to do and the amount of time we will still have to wait.

I sometimes think it's a little bit worse that there is a chance that T and I could have a baby the old fashioned way. When we finish our application and are waiting for a match, I know we will keep trying on our own. I sort of think that is a bad thing, but I also don't think I can not try. The only way for me to do that would be to go back on the pill and I don't want to. I wish I could let go and not think about it, but I've been pregnant three times with T, so why couldn't I be again? And I know scores of people with balanced translocations who have children conceived the old fashioned way. Why couldn't it happen to us? This tiny bit of hope just kills me. I want there to be no hope so that I don't have to hope any more.

So, two years since I started blogging it is. I never, ever thought I wouldn't have a baby two years from when I started this. But I don't, and I won't have one soon. Other people have them all around me, and I have to stay inside myself and just force myself to believe that some day, beyond the obstacles, costs, waits and everything else, some day, some way T and I will have a baby.

Two years

This week it will be two years since I started this blog. Two years. And I feel further away from having a baby than ever.

I will write more about this soon. I just thought it had to be said.

Support Groups

I am, in theory, a big fan of support groups. I love the idea of sharing the suffering among other people who understand. I want to commiserate and complain and know that other people are feeling the same pain that I am. It's cathartic for me. It makes me feel better.

I went to a few infertility support groups while we were doing IVF. Though I didn't go through the IUI process, having had three miscarriages and determining that I was a poor responder to medication with my first IVF, I was much more a veteran than the mostly newbies that came to that group. Most hadn't starting IVF yet. I found it helpful for the most part, but I also felt like the weirdo in the corner that most people hoped they wouldn't be forced to follow in the footsteps of our losses.

Last night I went to an adoption support group. It was mostly more of the same. We have been educating ourselves for months about adoption. We have picked our agency, know what type of adoption we want and just need to get off our asses and fill out the paperwork. We have had the 4 miscarriages and 3 failed IVFs and we just don't want to do this anymore. I wanted to commiserate about the wait and the forms and the invasiveness of the adoption process. That didn't happen. For most of the people in this group, this was their first bit of education about adoption. Most people had maybe one failed IVF or were single or had other reasons to come to adoption. I spent the time feeling like the co-leader of the group because I had a bunch of the information that they wanted. I didn't commiserate; I informed. I like informing, so it was okay. I just wanted to get some anxiety out, I guess.

I don't know why I want to find more people 'like us' out there, but I do. I sort of feel lonely in our loss and failure right now. I know lots of people around have suffered great loss. I personally know people who have had late term losses and/or years and years of repeated failure, though I suppose only a handful of those are still childless now. I know how much pain and suffering infertility has caused for so many people out there. I see it all the time. So why do I feel so alone with all of this? This is just something I can't answer right now. All I know is that I am feeling quite alone in all of this these days.

Luckily I have T alone here with me, I suppose.

The Mondays

The MS Walk was sunny for the entire morning! We couldn't believe it! Poor T got a major sunburn because we thought it was going to rain. He is extremely fair skinned and burns in the slightest sun. But because we had been told over and over again that it would rain the entire morning, we only brought sweatshirts and raincoats - no hats or sunscreen or sunglasses! My family together raised over $3,000 so that is a good thing. The weather was lovely (despite T's sunburn) and it went really well.

That night we went over to E&R's house for dinner. Little S is almost 2 now (yes, really) and running and talking up a storm. The ultrasound on the fridge was there, but didn't bother me that much, really. I guess now that I have accepted that it's there and it bothers me, it bothers me a little bit less. I really don't want to tell E that it bothers me because it will make her feel tremendously guilty. Little S walked up to T and said, "Up!" and T picked him up. Then S said, "Down!" and T put him down. Of course this became a game and happened at least five times.

This was the first time T had ever held a child under age 5. It was a big deal to me. He is so afraid of Other People's Children. He's afraid he's going to break babies. He just doesn't have lot of experience with them directly. This just was huge for me.

Sunday, T was very, very sad. After seeing S, he just feared that we will never have a child. He is convinced that a birthmother will never choose us. I understand that fear. But in the history of every social worker that we've spoken to about adoption, they have never had a waiting family not have a child placed. Sometimes it takes a while, but it always happens. Why would we be the first to not have it happen? But seeing little S walk and talk and sing and dance and be busy as all 2-year-olds do, it made him deeply sad about what we are missing and for how long we've been missing it. It makes me so sad to see him that sad.

AF has arrived with a vengeance. I've felt gross all day, and my bleeding seems pretty heavy. I went on the pill right after the miscarriage, so I'm not sure all of the lining was shed because I get very light periods on the pill. Not this one, though. I should have a nice, fresh lining for the donor cycle in a couple of weeks, I guess. Hopefully that's a good thing.

Going back to work is good. It keeps us busy and less depressed. The Sox took 2 of 3 from the Yankees this weekend, and the weather is supposed to perk up at the end of the week. Tomorrow we both have plans separately, and we will have our Seder this weekend at my parents' house. We are trying to make a date to really work on our adoption application. Busy is good.

Life after testing

I did pee on a stick this morning. It was very white. I was mostly expecting it to be white, so I'm not feeling too down about it. My b00bs still vaguely hurt, so I'm not sure what that's about. But there is clearly going to be no live baby resulting from this particular ovum, so that's that. We will be doing a donor cycle in a couple of weeks at the Midwife place. I have to go to that place. And by that place I mean mentally, not physically.

We haven't done anything else about the adoption thing. We spoke to another adoption agency to see if they would be good for us. They were fine. We've found three adoption agencies that are fine. We don't know what to do. I guess we're kind of frozen. I think we're going with the adoption agency that's closest to us. I literally have no preference. I don't like that. Does it mean that we're not ready for this yet?

Adoption in Massachusetts is very highly regulated, so all adoption agencies work in very similar ways. Lawyers and facilitators are not allowed in this state. If you do an inter state adoption things change a little, but the agencies have worked with other agencies in other states and they tell you (they try to be subtle because the adoption world is pretty small) if they don't like the way the other agencies work. So I honestly feel that we are reasonably safe choosing one of these agencies. We just need to choose and move forward.

I guess I'm finding it difficult to cycle and do the application at the same time. We have to write our personal biographies in order to start our homestudy. Maybe I can force us to work on that.

It's supposed to be rainy and cold tomorrow for our MS Walk. Oh well. (The donation link is still on my sidebar.)

Cycling

It's been a while since I cycled, but now I see why taking some time off is so relaxing. Not that I didn't see it before, but all of those months of cycling really comes back to you when you haven't done it for a while. I'm obsessively feeling myself up, I'm thinking about when I can POAS, and from moment to moment I change my mind about whether I think I could be pregnant or whether I think there's no way I'm pregnant or whether there is just absolutely no way to tell. I've been in all of those places for the last three days. Today is 10dpo. This is a natural cycle. Even if I am pregnant, the chance of miscarriage is very, very high. I'm trying really hard not to be hopeful, but I am finding it difficult. It's amazing that no matter how much I go through, I definitely have a little spot inside of me that hopes for a miracle that a pregnancy might work out. But we see it all the time -- miracle pregnancies. There are certainly plenty of people with balanced translocations who have had children conceived the old fashioned way. It's not unheard of. I know bt people whose first pregnancy was a successful pregnancy. Why couldn't it happen? It could.

But I also know how dangerous hope is. Hope leads to disappointment. Hope leads to depression and desperation. Hope can come crashing down on you and make you feel like you can't try again. And yet we have to.

So right now, I'm just deciding when to POAS. I think I will do it on Friday.

Adoption Conference

Today T and I went to an adoption seminar put on by Adoption Community of New England (ACONE). It was difficult and overwhelming, but we learned a lot and it was definitely worth our time.

Our first seminar was a panel of birth moms. I was pretty scared of this panel, but I thought it would be good to hear that side of the story. It's not something I have much exposure to at all, but it's something I think about. I had never seen or met a birth-mother, at least that I've known about. There were all sorts of people in this seminar -- birth parents (mothers and fathers), prospective adoptive parents (like us), adoptees and adoptive parents. Some birth parents and adoptees have met their birth children/parents. The birth parents on the panel all had their children years ago when single young women who were pregnant were whisked away and basically given no choice but to place their children for adoption, so there was definitely an old school skew to the discussion. Things are definitely better now in that area. But the session definitely made me feel more comfortable with openness and helped me see the importance for an adopted child to be able to find their birth parents when the appropriate time arrives, and it made me feel perfectly comfortable about sending updates to birth parents through the adoption agency.

The second seminar was about adoption after infertility. We heard two interesting stories from two couples who have adopted after failed treatments, etc which was nice. Unfortunately there wasn't much time for discussion afterward, so I didn't get quite as much out of this one as I had hoped. I wanted to discuss the whole loss of biology thing in there since in the birth mother panel, the importance of allowing an adoptee to know and see their biological connection to other people was discussed. I get it -- I really do. I completely understand an adoptees need to know about or see their birth-parents. However, as much as that child mourns a biological connection, so do we as adoptive parents. They (hopefully) will be able to someday meet those people they are biologically connected to, but we won't because those people (our imagined children) do not exist. This is the part of adoption that I find some difficulty in resolving.

The third seminar was a men's only group for T and a women's only group for me. This was the best seminar of the day. We talked about all sorts of things, including the biology issue I mentioned above. T's group talked about dealing with their wives and finances and other issues. He really seemed to get a lot out of it which made me really happy since there are so few resource out there for men. This seminar made the whole conference worth it, in my opinion.

The fourth seminar was about open adoption. There was a birth-mom and an adoptive mom in an open adoption situation. Now, I believe in semi-open adoptions, but this situation was really, really open. The adoptive mom was incredibly vehement about this openness and frankly put me off a little bit. I was hoping that this would be a discussion about openness and how to decide what level you're comfortable with, but it ended up being more a lecture on how you are morally and ethically obligated to include birth parents into your child's life as much as possible. While I agree it is important to be able to give information to your child about his or her birthparents, and the information about them should be available so when the time comes they can meet or at least talk to each other, the openness this family had is more than most average families can handle, I think.

We got information from another adoption agency, and we are going to make sure that we are picking the right one for us. We did start filling out one application, but I am feeling a tiny bit of uncertainty about it, so I just want to do a little more research about the agency we think we want to use and this new one that looks pretty good.

Anyway, overall it was good to be around people in the adoption community and to discuss all of our feelings surrounding adoption. I am glad we spent our day this way. It was hard, but we definitely learned a lot.

MS Walk

My family has been doing a local MS Walk for 5 years now. My sister-in-law is living with MS. My grandfather had MS for over 50 years. If you could find it in your heart to sponsor me, I'd appreciate it.

I will keep the sponsor me link in my (un)Related Links category.

To donate, please click HERE.

Thank you!

eating

I love to eat. I find food comforting. I love good food. I enjoy fancy restaurants with well prepared meals and selective ingredients. I love "bad" food too -- doughnuts and fried clams and onion rings and cookies and greasy Chinese food. Lately, I have been eating a lot. Too much, in fact. I have been exercising regularly, but I have not lost any weight. It's been over a month now. But I find my desire for food has greatly increased. I don't think it's hunger. I think I eat to feed some inner emptiness I have. Whenever I feel unsettled, I want to eat. I generally allow myself to eat what I feel like eating. I know I need to stop -- I am eating too much and food that is bad for me and when I'm not even hungry. I suppose that what I eat concerns me a little bit less than how much I eat. If I only ate when I was truly hungry, I'd probably be okay. But that is just not how it goes these days.

I eat when I'm hungry. I eat when I'm not hungry. I eat because it tastes good. I eat because it relaxes me. I eat because I'm bored. I eat because I feel unsettled. I eat because I want a baby. I eat because I want to be pregnant. I eat because I don't have a baby. I eat because I know I'm probably not going to be pregnant. I eat because I have been pregnant and I lost those pregnancies. I eat to fill some sort of emptiness inside of me.

I can't make it go away. I know I do it, but I don't know how to stop. I have gained so much weight and I don't feel good about myself. Exercising is making me feel better, but I am just not losing the weight. I feel like I am denied so much in my life that I don't want to deny myself food. But I do want to find some way to stop eating when I'm not hungry. How do I do that? What can I do?

Announcements

The only other woman in my new hire class at work told me today that she's pregnant.

My stomach did not drop to the floor. I did not feel like I was going to start to cry. I was able to say, "Congratulations!" with a somewhat cheerful tone of voice (I think). I was pretty proud of myself.

But then she kept talking about it. Her lunch wasn't agreeing with her. Her husband was cooking more because he didn't want his kid to be fed frozen meals. She has started to have a distaste for certain foods. The thing about pickles is true.

I almost said, "When I was pregnant (the second time), I craved oranges." But I didn't.

This talk made me sad. I was okay with the announcement. I really was. But I just couldn't take the discussion. But we were sitting in a classroom and I couldn't move away.

Then when I came home I saw my neighbor. She's an older Italian woman and asked me when I was going to start having kids. I said I didn't know. She told me not to wait too long because I didn't want to get too old. I told her that sometimes it wasn't so easy. She took that to mean that raising kids isn't easy. She told me it was hard to put so much energy into them when all they want is for you to die and to leave them your house and your money. I didn't have a response to that. She told me that there are things she knows from experience. That made me sad too, though in a completely different way. Not all children feel that way. At least I know my brothers and I don't.

So, it was both a good and bad day. I was pleased with myself that I handled the announcement well, but these other discussions didn't go so well.

At least it's almost Friday. I'm looking forward to the weekend. We are going to look at beds at the furniture store and start filling out the adoption application.

Nothing is new

I'm here, just watching the days go by. I called the alternative clinic (it's a group of midwives, so maybe I'll call it that) and it seems that if I pulled everything together, I'd be able to do the dIUI there when I'm ready to ovulate in about a week. I asked them to resend me some literature, so as soon as that arrives I will probably be good to go. The only question with that process that remains is how to pick up the sperm. I think I may have to send T as my job is totally inflexible and the bank's hours are also inflexible.

The only question is, do I try to do the dIUI this cycle, or do we just try on our own for a month and organize it for next cycle. For some crazy reason, I just want to try on our own for a month and organize for next cycle. Maybe it's because I'm enjoying my time off. Maybe it's because it's a pain to coordinate work issues. Maybe it's because I'm deluding myself to think we could bypass all of this crap and get pregnant with a healthy baby that's genetically related to ourselves on our own. In any case, I think I just want to wait and try on our own. I mean, what the hell?

We do need to start the adoption process, though. I need to talk to T about choosing an agency (which I think we have) and filling out the application and just moving forward. I think we are choosing a flat fee agency because it's a bit easier on our end. I'm feeling very conflicted about that one. With this agency, we could even find a baby who was born in MA where we live. But T likes this agency, and since I don't feel strongly, I feel like we should pick that one.

The last thing to think about is work. I haven't talked to work yet. I have planned to tell my boss that I have a medical condition that requires I be out occasionally for a last minute doctor's appointment, and that I only will know the day before. But I want to tell my boss this privately, and I haven't yet. I think that's part of the reason I want to wait. But something kind of crappy happened at work, and I just don't want to bring it up right now. I didn't get in trouble or anything, but I sent an email to the wrong person and it got escalated in this really bizarre and incredible way so that it got sent to a VP of the company. Anyway, it was a silly mistake (I sent it to a person with the same first name and the same last initial, but it ended up being in the wrong department) and the person who mistakenly got the email blew it completely out of proportion. I'm sure it will blow over just fine, but I just don't want to talk about time off right now.

I guess I just have to do what feels right for me, and right now it's trying on our own one more time this month. Maybe we'll win the lottery.

Starting over (sort of)

Thank you for all of your comments. I am feeling a bit better, though my sadness is still lingering in the background. Work, which keeps me busy and not thinking about my own problems, is a great help. I really feel I chose the right job for myself right now (so far). It is very helpful.

I did not take my bcp last night. T and I decided that we probably will try on our own this month. Whatever happens, happens. Most likely nothing will happen, which is fine. It is possible, though a lot less likely, that I may get pg and miscarry and even less likely that I get pg and it is healthy. But what do we have to lose by trying? We decided that I'm not even going to chart, though I can try OPKs if it moves me. I don't want to take my temp every day. It seems to stress me out.

I will need to organize everything for a dIUI at the out of pocket place for 6 weeks from now. I will need to get my test results faxed from the RE's office to the new office and I may need to go in for another meeting. I need to call them next week.

T and I talked last night about him getting the SA done and we agreed that he should, but as I type this I feel like I don't even want to do that. I just feel like fighting the insurance company is futile, and I don't feel that strongly about it, so why should I make myself angry and emotional when I have an opportunity to just move on?

What really bothers me about all of this is semantic. I am angry that T and I are not considered infertile. According to my insurance company, a genetic defect is not a qualifying event for the use of donor sperm. According to my insurance company, multiple miscarriage does not equal infertility. According to my insurance company, because we requested an IUI with FSH injectables, we cannot go back to just doing a monitored Clomid cycle because you are not allowed to go 'backwards' with your treatment. If I had the time and gumption I feel like I might be able to fight for some coverage, but at this time I have neither. It feels appealing that we will be done with all of these dIUIs in a mere four months from now. I just keep going back to that thought about us not being infertile, though. It galls me. But I guess that's what I get for trying to apply logic to a bureaucracy that tries to not pay for anything so that it can make money.

It has been 2 years since T's diagnosis, and almost two and a half since my first miscarriage. Cycling exhausts me. I need to use up the three vials of donor sperm we own, but I am feeling incredibly antsy and like I no longer have options. It seems that the bottom line is that we need to start a home study so we can move forward with adoption. If I am not doing injectables and whatnot, perhaps starting the home study process won't be quite so overwhelming.

The thing is, I feel like we have no hope to have a baby in less than about 2 years from now. I was pregnant for the first time when I was still 33, and it is a real possibility that we will not have our first child until I am 38. This disappearance of years of my life into a black hole of trying to start a family is devastating to me. I hear over and over that the 30s are the best times of your life. You settle down, work your job, start your family. I did one wonderful thing in my 30s, and that is marry my husband, T. He is sweet and supportive and I never thought I would love somebody the way that I love T. I really feel like our marriage is strong, even through this adversity. I don't want to diminish my marriage or my great relationship with T, but aside from this wonderful thing, my 30s have been hell. I have had a series of bad jobs, miscarriages and disappointments in trying to start a family. My grandparents all passed away, and I saw my delight in other people's children disappear.

I just want to have an average life with an average family. I am exhausted by this roller coaster, and I can't believe the wait and the roller coaster that lies ahead of us as we enter the adoption world.

Irony. Or not.

I talked to my RE's financial coordinator. She basically said we had pretty much no hope for being covered because a genetic defect is not a qualifier for using donor sperm under the rules of my insurance company. This is ironic because we were so excited to get my insurance so we could move on. I think we may have had coverage with T's insurance (though not at my current RE's office) and we were so eager to switch. We can't even go back to just doing monitored Cl0mid cycles with a trigger because now that our request has opened a can of worms and created a need for a semen analysis, they won't cover anything until they get that SA and T's SA will be normal.

So, we may have T do the SA, get rejected and have a lawyer write a letter. That is our only hope, and it is a slim one since according to the law, we are not infertile.

Or, we may go to another clinic and do a Cl0mid IUI using OPKs and just pay out of pocket.

Or both.

This is really hitting me hard. I kind of expected a rejection, but it's hitting me hard anyway. I am really coming to realize that although I have been pregnant four times, the chances of me ever giving birth to a child is extremely low. I will most likely never bear a child. Ever. Yes, I know that I can parent, but this loss feels huge to me right now. It's almost like finding out about our infertility all over again.

I really feel empty inside today. I am feeling my losses so acutely. I don't have the will to fight anymore.

Last night T and I decided that I am going to go on bcps for one more month because there is no way I can scramble together an IUI in two weeks, and if, by miracle, we get the medicated thing approved I'd be all ready. But I'm not sure if I really should do that because the chances of an approval is so small. I want to stop taking bcps and just try on our own. I mean why not? What difference does it make any more?

I am so sick of making these decisions. I want to be done and have a baby on the way, but that is just not how it's going to be in my life. It is going to be finger prints and FBI checks and home visits and waiting and not knowing and possibility and rejection and more waiting. It's going to be money and more money and waiting and renewing and not knowing.

I just can't think straight anymore. I can't make logical decisions any more. Logic has left me. I am a bitter, angry shell. I'm paralyzed. I literally do not know what to do anymore.

Denied

Well, we've been denied coverage for the injectable IUI. Not sure what we're going to do next. We probably will appeal, but I am just so fucking sick of all of this that I really don't know what we're going to do. But I have to call my RE's insurance coordinator to see what to do next.

See, what really kills me is that we don't meet the definition of infertility in the state of Massachusetts. By law, we do not have to be given coverage.

But really, how can we not be considered infertile?

I sucked it up

Thanks for your comments, everyone. Your input definitely helped me think about what I needed to do for myself, and I appreciate all the advice.

The bat mitzvah made me sad on many levels.

I have had waxing and waning interest in Judaism throughout my life. I have a strong Jewish identity in a lot of ways. I very much identify with my Judaism as an ethnicity, but the religious part has always been a bit weird. There are plenty of ideas in Judaism as a religion that I don't agree with. I also have some ambivalent feelings about how interconnected Judaism with the state of Israel. I really don't want to get into all of this geo-political stuff on this blog as it's too huge and too sensitive, but I do want to express that my Judaism does mean a lot to me in many ways and has definitely influence the way I see the world and I believe it has had an impact on my personality and who I am as a human. I like a lot of the way Judaism talks about the world and its point of view, and I am especially fond of the liberal tradition in Jewish culture. I would like to make sure the liberal Jewish faction does not die. I had always planned on raising my children Jewish. It's not so much about God for me, though I do believe in god, though I don't think it's in the traditional, Jewish way of seeing G-d. But I have my own belief, and as a liberal Jewish person, I'm allowed to integrate my beliefs with my religion and my ethnicity and make it work the way I want it to. And that's one of the things I love about being Jewish. I can do that.

T is not Jewish. T is an atheist. He does not like organized religion. He is uncomfortable around it. He does not like to acknowledge or to do anything that may indicate that he believes god exists. He has come to a few services with me, and he doesn't mind coming as long as he can just sit there with his family and be part of a family thing. When it gets really traditional, he does get a little uncomfortable.

When we got married, I told him that I wanted to raise our children Jewish, and if he couldn't do that, I couldn't marry him. He agreed with that. All he wanted was that after a child was of a certain age (to be determined later) he or she could decide what religion he or she wanted to be -- or if he or she wanted a religion at all. That's reasonable. At some point your children become independent and make these decisions on their own, and that was reasonable to me. I can't make them be Jewish if they don't want to be. We still haven't talked about what that age was. For me, it's after the bar/bat mitzvah (13). I don't know if it's earlier for him.

Even though we agree on this, it still makes me sad that he can't identify with the coolness of Judaism. Fundamentally, he feels like an outsider in that community. He can't participate in the traditions without feeling like he's betraying his own beliefs. I respect that, but at the same time it makes me incredibly sad. I know that deep down inside our beliefs aren't that different. But at the same time, we come to them from completely different ends, and they just aren't quite compatible. T did not come to the bat mitzvah today because it was at a very traditional congregation and he wouldn't have been comfortable, so we decided it was better if he stayed home. I know it was the right decision for him, but I was incredibly sad that he couldn't be there. I want to find a way to make this work, and we can when we find our own congregation, but there is no way to control what the congregations that our family members belong to are like. It just worries me and makes me sad because I know he doesn't like not being part of family things.

Then there was the baby. My cousin brought the baby to the bimah (the pulpit, I guess) and she was holding him in the reception area. I said hi to her husband and asked how things were going. I found a time when my cousin wasn't holding the baby (because everybody wants to hold a 7 week old and he got passed around a lot) to go over and say hi and ask how things were. Then I high tailed it out of there. It worked okay

I'm sad now on many levels, as I mentioned before. There's the religion thing and there's the baby thing. I used to love babies. If there was a baby in the room, I would make a bee line and always ask to hold it. I wanted to babysit and take care of them and hold them and I would kiss their heads and smell their baby smell. Infertility has ruined babies for me. I see a baby now and I head in the other direction.

It's cloudy today, and I think I'm just going to stay home and be sad for the rest of the day. Maybe I'll drink. I hope tomorrow is sunny and a little bit warmer so I can find a way to lift my mood a little.

Sitting here in limbo

Do you know that Jimmy Cliff song? It's mellow.

Except for relaxing, I did all of the things on my list. I had to schedule that pickup before writing this post so I could say that. I even managed to clean the bathroom. Yay me!

Things are okay. My job is pretty good and is keeping me busy, which I like. It's also good because when the clock hits 5, I can leave and not feel bad that I'm leaving. My time is all recorded on the phones, and my time is my time and that is it. It's great that way.

I got my letter from all my test results through the RE's office. It says I should contact a specialist regarding my MTHR: +2 A1298C (which means I don't absorb folic acid properly), but my RE didn't tell me I had to do that. So I'm not sure what's going on with that.

Still waiting on hearing from the insurance company, hence the limbo. I'm sick of limbo. I'm finishing the active pills on my pack of bcp's and I'm not sure if I should stop for the week and bleed or if I should keep going in case the insurance company approves. I'm leaning toward taking the break. It will only delay it for a week or two if that's the case. Right?

Right?

I'm going to a cousin's daughter's bat mitzvah this weekend and I realized that one of my cousins who had a baby will be there with the baby. It's her niece's bat mitzvah. My mom told me I'll have to go over and see them with the baby because I can't avoid them. I'm not sure I can handle that right now. They don't know about our issues. I know that they had issues and I'm sure they did IVF. Should I email the new mom and let her know what's going on with me, thereby basically telling that whole side of the family that doesn't know? Do I say nothing and avoid her? Do I suck it up as best I can, go over say mazel tov and high tail it out of there? I think I need some assvice.

Insurance freak out

I'm really worried that we are going to be denied coverage for our IUIs. If that happens I'm ready to sic lawyers on them, though, because we have previously been approved to have an injectable dIUI cycle with this insurance company (right before my most recent miscarriage) and because I'm certain they would approve and IUI with T's sperm and their expenses aren't any different from that scenario because we aren't asking them to pay for the donated sperm. I'm just worried about the time it will take and my emotional state if we do get rejected.

I know I shouldn't worry about this stuff and worry just makes things worse, but I am a natural worrier by nature and I just can't help it. I try to stop myself when I find myself freaking out about it, but so many things I do at home allow for a lot of internal reflection, and I just think and worry. Sewing, knitting, cooking and cleaning all allow for a racing mind.

We better watch a movie.

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I'm feeling sad. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who are pregnant and having babies, both infertile and not. I feel so left behind in the process of starting a family. We are no further along than we were over two years ago, and we still have a year or two more to go before we could possibly even begin to have a family.

And I mailed something to my niece and I guess I didn't seal the envelope properly and I guess the thing fell out of it or someone took it. I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it just feels like another way I've failed. I understand that this is pretty stupid, but it's a card for an old digital camera, and we're not sure if those cards are available anymore and because of my stupidity and carelessness, my niece may never be able to use the camera we gave her.

I just feel so useless sometimes.

Meme and more

I've been tagged by Almamay.

Step 1. Reference back to the blog that sent you.
Step 2. Make a list of 5 things that you have to get done this week, no matter how small.
Step 3. Get 2 other people off their asses to get their shit in order.

1. Finish our taxes. We've started, but they have to be done.
2. Get some thread so that I can finish the curtains that I've started. I'm nearly done.
3. Call my mom. It's her 70th birthday on Saturday.
4. Set up a pickup for the clothes we have to give away. We still have some leftovers to donate to charity after the big clean.
5. RELAX!

I know I'm supposed to tag people, but I really don't know who's done this meme or not, and I don't even really know who reads this blog or not. So, if you want to be tagged, you're tagged. Oh, and I want to tag my husband, even though he doesn't have a blog. :)
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Got a message from my RE's office today. My insurance company wants a semen analysis from T. Now, a semen analysis doesn't mean shit for us. T's semen analysis is normal. He doesn't have male factor infertility. In fact, his numbers are pretty strong. After all, he knocked me up three times in 13 months. This isn't the issue. The issue is his DNA. A semen analysis will guarantee no coverage for us. After 5 unsuccessful dIUIs, 4 miscarriages and 3 failed IVFs with T's sperm, you think they'd have enough evidence that we need a little help. But no, that would be too logical. So now my RE needs to write a letter to the insurance company to explain all of this. This is especially frustrating because it's the same damn insurance company that PAID for ALL of that treatment! Feh. Nothing is easy.

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Update:
Yes, the insurance company should know about the BT already. I cannot explain the stupidity of that bureaucracy.

Also, I forgot to mention cleaning the bathroom. I really, really need to clean the bathroom.