Beatle Breakdown

I just heard back from Xy.tex. The Beatle still hasn’t come in for his blood work. Once he does, it will take three weeks to get the results back, at which point they will begin calling his pending list. We’re number 6, so… yeah. She didn’t say how many vials they have in quarantine but I’m guessing sixth place isn’t going to make the cut. Even if they had enough vials to get to us on the list (assuming several people ahead of us pass or only purchase a couple), we’re still probably out of the running based upon timing. He’d have to have a blood draw in the next 72 hours to have any chance of his samples reaching the clinic by their deadline.

I feel completely crushed under the weight of this news. I really thought I’d be okay with needing to use a different donor – not thrilled, of course – but not destroyed either. I was so wrong. It’s the powerlessness thing again. I GET that I am not in control of anything when it comes to conception, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding... Really, I do. Is it so necessary to keep reminding me of it at every single goddamn turn?

I’m trying to keep perspective and remember that someday, this will all feel like exactly what needed to happen, but I’m also feeling pretty fucking angry at whatever powers don’t see fit to cut us a break on this one.

Beatle update, but first...

Here’s the follow-up on Meno.pur: The nurse I talked to yesterday said she’d try to use her “limited knowledge” to answer my question and proceeded to recite the same explanation you already gave me (FSH/LH versus FSH alone, promotes better egg development, etc.). Then she gave me the most salient reason of all: All of the clinic’s standard protocols have been updated since my last IVF cycle to include Me.nopur. It’s just What They Do now. Apparently, the Me.nopur sales rep hit the jackpot with the director of my clinic, either through booze and bribes (always a cynic!) and/or incontrovertible scientific proof (always an optimist!). I explained that I was just hesitant to add anything to a cocktail that worked so well for us before and she said, “I understand but you know what? You’re going to do great. Try not to be nervous. I know you will be anyway, but try not to because you’re going to do really well.” She doesn’t know me at all (my regular nurse is out all week) and has nothing to base her reassurance on, but for whatever reason, it satisfied me. I’m taking a laid-back approach to this cycle (relatively speaking, of course) which leads me to…

We may have a Beatle problem.

We picked The Beatle back in February. We were told at the time that his inventory was low and if we did not buy before they ran out of vials it might be “a couple of months” before they’d have more available. We did not buy any. It felt premature, and we knew were weren’t going to be doing IVF again until at least July or August, so the 2 month wait wasn’t a big deal. Shortly thereafter, his vials sold out. Fast forward to May when our 3-month membership was about to expire. I went online to print off his profile and pictures and… Hmm. He was still out of stock. I emailed our Xy.tex rep who sent me all of his data via email. She also informed me that (1) The Beatle wasn’t scheduled for another blood test until July so his vials wouldn’t clear until “sometime in August”, and (2) since our communication in February, he resigned from their donor program, so (3) the vials they currently have in storage will make up his last release, and (4) we can be added to the waiting list to receive first (well, behind whoever else is on the list ahead of us) right of refusal to his vials once they are available.

I asked her to add our names to the list and went about my day with only the slightest itch of worry that his vials wouldn’t release in time. I’d projected my IVF dates based upon my last cycle and figured my transfer wouldn't be until late September, so as long as he released in August as she said he would, we’d be fine. Over the next couple of weeks, I got my clinic schedule and found they’d tightened up the timeline quite a bit. My retrieval would be scheduled 1-2 weeks earlier than I expected. I also started thinking about who else might be on the list ahead of us, what they were told about the donor’s future availability, and what resources they might have at their disposal to snatch up and store a few extra vials. It was easy to imagine a scenario in which the one or two people ahead of us on the list might buy up all of his vials before we even reached the front of the line, and we’d be back at the starting line with very little time to make our next choice. And that is when panic set in. We already lost KD, and now we might lose our diamond in the rough, too. Where in the world would we find another donor that would so closely fit our KD-shaped hole?

I sat with the worry for as long as I could stand it, and then I wrote an email to our Xy.tex rep asking if she could tell us how many people were ahead of us in line and how many vials they expected to release in August. That wouldn’t give me the answer I needed – are we going to get one or not – but it would let me adjust my expectations appropriately. If she told me they had forty vials ready to release and we were second on the list, I’d feel pretty good. If she said they had six vials to release and there were four people ahead of us, I’d start looking at other options. I challenged myself to sleep on the email before sending it, and the next day, I decided to hold off sending it as long as my obsessive demons will allow. I wrote the email on July 11 and haven’t sent it yet. *deep breath* What will be, will be. Being high strung about it won’t change anything except my anxiety level. I wouldn’t say we “chose” The Beatle anyway. We chose KD, and then forces beyond our control led us to where we are now. Maybe The Beatle was just a stop along the way. If the universe hasn't quite connected us to the child(ren) we’re meant to have yet, well I guess we still have a couple of twists and turns on this ride. Either way, I’m tired of driving. I’m ready to be a passenger for a while.

I explained the situation to the nurse and asked when the absolute latest, drop-dead date they needed the sperm in-house was. She said they prefer to have it there on CD1, or at least by the start of Lu.pron, but could probably stretch it to the day I start stims (September 2nd), given the circumstances. This gives us almost a month before we’ll have to activate a contingency plan, but I’m hoping, hoping, hoping they call me before then to tell me The Beatle is ours.

**Edited to add: Email has been sent; no more scary stories, please. The bottom fell out of my stomach when I read J and DZ's comment, and has yet to return. Way to ruin a girl's Zen, y'all. ;-)  Just kidding, and as always, I am endlessly grateful for your input. Will update again when I know more.

start your engines

CD1, baby.

July: Red

IVF meds... Meno-wha?!

A couple of weeks ago, we got a printout of the medication order for our latest round of IVF fun. I forgot how freaking long the med list is for a fresh cycle. We have two new additions to our list since last time: Birth control pills to be started on CD4, and Me.nopur to be used along with the Fol.listim. I’m not exactly sure why the Me.nopur was added when I did fine with the protocol I had last time (Fol.listim alone) and I plan to ask the nurse about that. It makes me nervous to rock a boat that sailed so well the first time out. I am supposed to call the clinic on CD1 which should be at the end of this week. Getting through their phone system is a nightmare so I figured I’d consolidate my calls and ask about the med change during the same conversation. In the meantime, I turn to you, oh knowledgeable Internets!

Why add Me.nopur to Fol.listim when there is no history of poor response? Is this just the med cocktail du jour? Have new findings come out about the efficacy of a Me.nopur-boosted cycle? I let my virtual RE degree lapse about three years ago, so I am not up on the latest in our field. Give me the scoop, friends.

I’d rather not add in the Me.nopur for several reasons:

1. As I mentioned before, why fix something that ain’t broke?
2. I’ve heard it burns going in. What’s not to love about that?
3. Another needle per day? I do okay with the shots, but come on!
4. We’re pretty well stocked up with Fol.listim at the moment, and I’d really like to use that before paying out of pocket for other meds we may not even need.

About that last point above… We were the lucky recipients of a large amount of unused Foll.istim, passed along to us by another blogger after her family found her through a different avenue. Based upon our dosing/response from our last IVF, it should be enough to get us through a full cycle without having to purchase anymore on our own. Have you ever received a gift that was so generous, so life-changing, so… huge… you didn’t even know how to respond? That is what happened to me when these meds showed up on our doorstep. Their generous gift saved us thousands of dollars in OOP medication costs. Thousands. That is hard to wrap your head around. I sent a thank you card, but really, what do you say to someone who does that for you? I guess you let the gushing overflow into your blog and hope they read it and can somehow feel how much you appreciate what they have done.

So on that note, it seems ungrateful and silly to raise an eyebrow at $750 worth of Me.nopur, and of course we will gladly pay it if the RE thinks it will make a difference, but… will it? What do you all think? What has your experience been like on Me.nopur, with or without Foll.istim? (And yes, I promise that I will ask my nurse about it and get Actual Medical Advice before leaping to any conclusions. I just trust you guys, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts.)

looking backward and forward

This is my 400th post. Interestingly, this month also marks my fifth anniversary of blogging. My first post was on July 13, 2006. Five years. It’s amazing to think of all that has been captured here: Good moments like this one and this one and this one and this one, and bad like this one and this one and this one and this one. I feel as though I’ve made real friends along the way, and I’m so grateful to all of you who have held my hand, and allowed me to share in your lives as well. Since starting this blog, I have survived infertility, experienced pregnancy and childbirth, raised an infant into toddler-hood, grieved an early pregnancy loss, and found myself on IVF’s doorstep yet again. What a wild ride. There is a lot of growth catalogued in this blog. I know this because I can hardly stand to read anything I posted during the first year. I was so pathetically bright-eyed and sure of myself. I try to go easy on the girl who wrote those posts, but mostly I just want to grab her by the shoulders and give her a good shake. I guess that’s not all bad. It’s a sign I’m evolving, right? Anyway, 400 down, 400 to go? Hmm, we’ll see about that. But I’m glad to be here today, and while I can’t say I’m thrilled to be picking the IVF torch up again, I’m feeling very grateful to have this blog and this community to help me through it.

I have a bunch of posts in the queue. Specifically:

• Screw you, IRS. And screw the anti-gay-marriage folks, too! (A Rant in Two Acts)
• IVF Meds… Meno-wha?!
• Screw you, health insurance. And screw the anti-gay-marriage folks, too!
• Beatle update
• The recurrence of my TTC-related shopping disorder 
• My impending move to Wor.dp.ress

I was also planning to write a vent about this blogger comment situation, along with a summary all of the comments I haven't been able to leave on your blogs over the past two weeks, but then I read this post by Jersey and it totally worked! So, I'm sharing here in hopes it can help some of you as well.


I’ll write more here soon, and hopefully more in your comment boxes now, too!

hello again, friends

Well, this is an awkward post to write an intro for. Sorry I disappeared without a word of warning and stayed away for... Yikes, over three months? That was rude. All I can say is this break was hard - much harder than I expected - and I needed to turn inward for a while to make it though. 

Even when we were in the darkest days of TTC #1, I still thought those struggling to conceive #2+ had it worse. Maybe “worse” is the wrong word, but I could appreciate that there were things about TTC that would be made harder if you already had a child. Based upon my experience over the last six months, I’d say I was right in ways I expected and ways that weren’t even on my radar.

The part I knew:

When we were TTC #1, I was acutely aware of how quickly life was moving for everyone around us, and I realized that perception would be all the more agonizing with a would-be sibling under your roof to act as the measuring stick. The difference between starting your family at age 26 or 29 or 32 isn’t insignificant, but I felt (and still feel) strongly that it doesn’t alter your life to the same magnitude as having children that are 2 years apart versus 5 or 8. The experience of infertility shaped who I am in monumental ways, but setting that aside, I don’t believe that having a baby two years later than I hoped to changed the experience of becoming a mother in any kind of a fundamental way. (Remember, infertility scars aside.) However, I DO think there are tangible, life-long differences for both parents and children in raising siblings that are close in age versus farther apart. I believe that siblings that are 2-3 years apart relate to each other differently than siblings that are 4-5+ years apart do – not inherently better or worse, just differently. And parents of children that are 2-3 years apart go through parenthood differently than those whose children are 4-5+ years apart. And if you want one for whatever reason, being forced into the other by circumstances beyond your control is lousy. For me, the last six months have been disappointing and disempowering in different and more lasting ways than my primary infertility was capable of. I watch E grow and change by the day, and every day I mourn the fact that I am currently powerless to stop this developmental divide from stretching its roots into the fabric of our family.

The part I didn’t know:

Now that I have a child, my social calendar is full to the brim of things like swim lessons and daycare picnics and birthday parties and playdates at the park. Guess who else frequents these places? Other people with kids. Fertile people. Fertile people with kids who, like mine, are at the prime age for bringing a new baby into the family. And they’re doing it in droves, let me assure you. I accompanied E’s class on a field trip to a concert at a park the other day and as I watched the other moms and toddlers congregate, I couldn’t help but notice that well over half of the women in attendance were sporting baby bumps. I tried to take some sort of odd comfort in the fact that not EVERY woman there was knocked up (sad state of affairs when that’s the best you can do) until I realized that, statistically, half of the non-bump ladies probably WERE pregnant too. They just didn’t have the bellies to show for it yet.

It’s happening on my blogroll, too. When we were TTC#1, I only read blogs of other people that were struggling like we were. I tucked myself into an insulated little corner of the internet where everyone was comparatively sucky at getting and/or staying pregnant. (Said with the utmost of love and solidarity, my dear sisters.) Then I got pregnant and had a baby and (very, very) slowly, I tiptoed out to read the blogs of other people who had babies the same age as mine. In the beginning, I’ll admit I kept a mental tab of who had trouble conceiving and who didn’t, and I kept the latter group at arm’s length. However, as my affection for their families deepened (and my own infertility scars continued to heal), I lost track of who was who and subsequently forgot the difference ever existed. Now E is at That Age where people start thinking about and conceiving and delivering siblings, and I forgot how quickly and easily fertile people can accomplish all that. Those fertile bloggers are my friends now, and I’m happy for them – genuinely – but reading their stories also stirs up all the old $#*%@ about how relatively broken I am. How unlucky. How cash-strapped and expense-heavy. How powerless. How behind the curve, again.

I needed a break. Refusing to take E out into the world wasn’t exactly an option, but the blogosphere was something I could limit my exposure to, and so I did, for my own sake. I know it was kind of a selfish move, but it was what I needed to do. I was having a really, really hard time. In many ways, I still am. But our IVF cycle is right around the corner and that helps. I’ve also had time to reflect and heal and make my own peace with how everything has played out.

I’ve come to the point where I feel really okay with it all, most days. I feel genuinely grateful to have this extra time alone with E before asking him to share us. At age 2 and some change, I find myself marveling equally over how big and independent he seems at times, and how much of a baby he still is at others. On the days when he seems younger, I’m glad we don’t have another baby to tend to so that we can give him 100% of our focus and nurturing. That said, I feel like the expiration date for this mindset is drawing near. Our current plan calls for a fresh IVF cycle that would result in an EDD a few months after E’s 3rd birthday. And that works for me. I feel really good about the idea of a 3 year gap, and not in "silver lining" kind of way - in a "I feel genuinely positive about the fact that we are giving Elliot three full years as the sole center of our universe" kind of way. Pushing it out any further than that though, for me, tips the scale to where the benefits of giving him our undivided love and attention start to be eclipsed by the consequences of having too large of a developmental gap between him and his sibling(s).

So what if the IVF doesn’t work? Well, the options are not pretty. We have a major move on our horizon that we have put off for years for various reasons – most of them infertility related – but we’re nearing the end of being able to extend that, too. We want to put down roots in a new community before E starts school, and we’re moving to a city we know very little about, so we need to build in a year or two to fine-tune our location after we parachute into the general area. But I’m going to stop all of this here because it is (a) hopefully moot and (b) definitely overwhelming.

I have my IVF schedule in-hand and my meds have been ordered. AF is expected around August 5th with a transfer in mid-September. Here we go again. *deep breath*

June: Black

May: Yellow

April: Pink

P.S. We're still alive, just crazy busy. Proper update coming soon, universe willing.