Visit

Expectant mom, N, wants to meet us in person. So T and I are planning on making a quick trip down to FL to meet her and expectant dad, B, this weekend.

Ack!

This shorter wait with an expectant mom who likes contact is SO MUCH DIFFERENT than our previous failed match. It feels like we should have known it wouldn't work out the last time. But I guess you never know anything for sure and hindsight is 20/20.

So the plan is to leave Henry with my parents and fly down and back quickly and meet them. I'm nervous, but I've spoken to both of them on the phone, so it's a little less nerve wracking. She really is very sweet and I can tell she really wants to love us.

Things are getting very real, very quickly.

Showing our profile

We are having our profile shown to some expectant parents. It's a girl due at the end of February.

As with all these situations, there are some complexities to this situation, but we have decided we think the risks are worth it. If we are chosen, we can hopefully resolve a few of the question marks before the baby is born to ensure this is the right situation for us.

I am feeling anxious about it. I will not let myself be excited or hopeful.

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As a side note, Henry's behavior has improved enough lately thanks to some therapies, glasses and some suggestions from friends around food, that I have found myself once again hoping a baby would enter into our lives before Henry grows too much older.

Here's to whatever.

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Here's Henry on Halloween with his new glasses. In case you wondered, he was a "puzzle bug." (His invention.)

Sad again

This episode has made me sad again. I am so ready for a baby *right now* that I'm just not sure how to proceed.  I have no particular interest in experiencing pregnancy. I am much more interested in expediency. I'm just not sure which route will be faster.

I mean, if we do this embryo donation thing, which I'm not even sure is likely because the potential west coast donor has not been particularly communicative with us unless we're being really forward, then it's going to be a year before a baby. Without question.

If we just wait, there is the possibility that a baby could come sooner. But it's also possible it would take even longer than a year.

All I know is that this really sucks and I'm sad. And the check engine light on my car came on this morning and I'm kind of pissed about it. And I still miss my dog a lot (even though I have to admit life is much easier without him here). But I just miss him.

I feel so lonely all of the time. Staying at home can be such a challenge sometimes because I am extremely extroverted, and talking with other adults helps me unwind and relax. I don't get to do that particularly often. I find myself jealous when people post on "Face Space" that they have a meeting. Meetings suck -- I remember well -- but I just wish I could be in a room with adults only for an hour and talk about something that doesn't involve going to the bathroom or making a mess.

Hoo boy, I am a mess right now. And I don't even have PMS.

Blah.

Nibble

I had planned to write a post this morning about how I knew it was going to be difficult to find an embryo but I had greatly underestimated how difficult it would in fact be. Finding a donated embryo is really a challenge.  But I got a nibble this morning.

No match has been made, but there is someone who just may be interested in donating embryos to us. Nothing for sure. Trying to not keep my hopes up too high. And of course, the FET could be a failure and all of this will have been for naught.

But we will see where this goes.

Discussion

So, the director of our adoption agency called yesterday. She felt really bad about the adoption falling through and told me she is going to make a few phone calls on our behalf and has put us at the top of her priority list in terms of finding a match. I thought that was really nice.

All things being equal, I think I'd rather an adoption match work out. I will explore embryo donation, and I would do it too, but the idea of going back to the RE and the IVF operating rooms just freaks me out. Also, as someone who has come to terms with never gestating a live child, to go back is really difficult emotionally. Some people might be super excited at the prospect, I suppose, but I guess I had just completely given up on it that the idea of going back to hoping is just terrifying.

We want to do whatever is fastest, so I guess for now we are technically going down both roads. I have no idea what is going to happen.

Being shown

We got two expectant mother profile emails in one day after not hearing from the agency for about 3 months. We are having our profile shown to both expectant moms. These adoptions would be much more complicated than H's. Unknown birthfathers, perhaps methadone, etc. Are we ready to deal with these things? I'm not sure. But if we keep an open mind, we are more likely to be parents sooner. I suppose we can back out if things get overly complicated. These things happen.

I see babies and I feel ready. Babies don't make me sad, like they did when we were waiting for H. I feel a little scared. H has had a good week and I'm hoping we're over the horrible 3 hump and headed for a slightly better 3 1/2. What will happen when a new baby is introduced? I don't know. We do talk about it sometimes.

He likes giving things to babies, so that's good.

I think babies born with methadone addiction have a rough start as they detox, but generally do well if they weren't exposed to other drugs in utero.

We have to send our prints in to the FBI again and do the CORI and SORI and stuff again. Paperwork sucks.

Waiting to hear that we haven't been chosen sucks, though. I can't help but wonder when things will work. It will have been a pretty short wait if we got chosen now.

Bitterness

I have decided that I need to try and let go of my bitterness. I need to do this for Henry's sake. I was talking to a friend who is going through a rough patch and she put it like this: I have a choice. I can be happy or I can be sad. Why should I be sad. I'm going to be happy.

Happiness isn't really my issue these days as Henry makes me happier than I ever imagined, but my bitterness and resentment around fertility is still strong. I need to let it go. I don't want to affect Henry in any way. Children indirectly pick up on things. I need to resolve this and move on.

It's just so hard. It's hard to know that I have to share my son with another set of parents when other people don't. This of course does not mean I am closing Henry's adoption and I will refuse to share him. That's just dumb and not in his best interest. That's not what I mean. I mean that if T and I were able to have a genetic child then this would not be an issue. This is one of the many reasons I'm sure that people choose to live child-free instead of adopting. My eyes were wide open about this when we adopted Henry. I knew what I was getting in to.

But that doesn't mean I still have some anger deep down inside of me about this fact. And I need to get it out and smash it to pieces so that it can go away.

I think part of what keeps my bitterness around is that tiny speck of hope that still lives in me. Even though my head tells me that T and I will never have a genetic child and that we did all of our trying and it's over, my heart knows that people with a BT diagnosis get pregnant the old fashioned way and have living, healthy children. I need to let that tiny grain of hope go away.

This will take time and effort. But I've decided to work on it.

Home Study Visit #1

I cried. During and after.

I feel so empty and alone. And I don't feel one bit of hope at this point. Even though intellectually I know it will work out in the end, I cannot bring myself to truly believe that will happen. And we have been warned and know that it will take a long time, so I have to steel myself for that wait. It will most likely take more than a year. Probably closer to a year and a half. A year and a half ago I thought that IVF with PGD would work for us. A year and a half is a damn long time.

The interview was informal and went generally well. She could see my sadness and I couldn't keep it in. She said that she could tell we weren't feeling hopeful. I hope that's not bad.

I know we are moving forward. I know that we will write a dear birthparent letter and make a book and it will be shown to people and some day, someone will choose us to parent the child that they created.

But it doesn't feel real. The concept that this possibility exists doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't make me feel like I might be a mom someday.

I only feel pain and failure and misery. I just feel like I've missed out on what so many people take for granted. I see only empty time left where we wait and wait and wait some more.

Haven't we already done this? Yes, there were differences. I do not have to inject myself with hormones or spread my legs for some doctor or midwife. But it's still all of this fake "trying" while nothing happens and we just get disappointed.

Why, why, why do we have to do it again?

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.

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.

hopeless already

I'm just already convinced it didn't work. I'm convinced that my large follicle ovulated too early and the smaller ones ovulated with immature eggs.

I peed on an internet cheapie just to be reminded what two lines look like and it came up with one line. Does this mean I didn't even trigger properly?

I cannot have hope that this might work anymore. IVF, maybe, but not this.

And I have to get a job so that I can have the insurance to do IVF. I have two interviews next week, one with a place from a placement agency and one at the place where I'm temping. Just like I can't imagine treatments working, I can't imagine being hired. I have had too many jobs in too short of a time to be desirable. Even though there are reasonably good explanations why I left each job, nobody wants someone who jumps around in the workforce and that's what my resume looks like.

I'm trying to remember that T and I are comfortable and we live good lives, but it's just so difficult to find comfort in this under these circumstances. I just feel constantly desperate. I am desperate. I am desperate for some comfort.

Hope?

Can I allow myself some hope for this cycle? Do I dare? Is it too dangerous? I am scared to have hope. Hope has led me nowhere except to despair. But what else can I do?

It is 7 dpo. My b00bs are starting to feel pretty sore. And I am starting to feel exhausted. I fell asleep last night at 9:30 (during a Sox/Yankees game that went very, very bad) and slept until about 7:30 this morning. And now, when it's almost 9pm, I'm exhausted and cranky again. I'm not sure I can stay awake.

I can't help but feel some hope creeping in. I promised myself that with the seemingly poor timing that I would have none. I told myself with the pregnancy announcements that I couldn't make up symptoms to make myself feel better. But there it is, creeping none-the-less.

What do I do with this? I feel like I actually hate hoping. I hate hoping that things might work this time. How can I possibly hope for that? I feel like the chances of all of this working out are just so slim.

And yet. And yet.